Office Hours Podcast: The Pain And Promise of Crisis
Spencer Rascoff
Spencer Rascoff is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire and dot.LA, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. He is currently executive chairman of dot.LA and a board member at Zillow and TripAdvisor. In fall 2019, Spencer was a Visiting Executive Professor at Harvard Business School where he co-taught the "Managing Tech Ventures" course. In 2015, Spencer co-wrote and published his first book, the New York Times' Best Seller "Zillow Talk: Rewriting the Rules of Real Estate." Spencer is the host of "Office Hours," a monthly podcast on dot.LA featuring candid conversations between prominent executives on leadership, diversity and inclusion, and startups.
Managing through a crisis is difficult, but great leaders and great companies are created during challenging times. Spencer grappled with crises at two companies he co-founded, Hotwire and Zillow. In this episode, Spencer Rascoff and Katie Curnutte, former SVP of communications at Zillow and now a partner at Kingston Marketing Group, discuss how to manage a company through the strain of calamity while keeping a steady eye on the big picture and the opportunities that can arise.
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Hamet Watt, co-founder and former chairman of MoviePass and a board partner at Upfront Ventures, quietly launched a new venture studio, Share Ventures, earlier this year in Playa Vista with $10 million in funding. Now he is ready to share details, including plans to launch several companies a year – all focused on human performance, or what is usually referred to as wellness.
"We like to use human performance because it expands the definition," Watt told dot.LA. "It's not just things like yoga. It's sports tech, behavior science and human optimization."
<p>Unlike a traditional VC firm that invests in other founders, a venture studio starts companies of its own. The small team at Share includes academics, scientists, and engineers, and counts IdeaLab's Bill Gross and former Nike president Trevor Edwards as advisors. Funding comes from Upfront, Alpha Edison, John Callaghan and Phil Black of True Ventures, Ahmed Al Mosa of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and Art Coppola, former CEO of Macerich. </p><p>Watt says he has long been drawn to human performance because he sees a lot of untapped opportunities, which have only increased with Covid-19.</p><p>"In this post-Covid world a light is shining more brightly on all these things that need to be reimagined," Watt said. "There are opportunities in mental health that are much more acute than they've ever been."</p><p>Los Angeles has enjoyed a longstanding reputation as a place where wellness is prized and lately that has been reflected in startups like Headspace and FitOn that provide on-demand meditation and fitness classes. "There is a tribe in this L.A. community that is passionate about health and wellness," he said.</p><p>Watt says he is the only Black person he knows of running a venture studio and he says by virtue of his diverse network he can tap into talent others may have overlooked.</p><p>"You can't make money doing the same thing everyone else does," said Watt. "You can't fish in the same talent pond that everyone else does."</p><p>Watt co-founded MoviePass in 2011 and departed in the beginning of 2018, before the company flamed out <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/19/20872984/moviepass-shutdown-subscription-movies-helios-matheson-ted-farnsworth-explainer" target="_blank">in the fall of 2019.</a> "I exited before the really crazy drama," he said. </p><p>The company, which offered unlimited trips to the movie theater, <a href="https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/nation-world/one-movie-a-day-for-995-a-month-moviepass-seems-too-good-to-be-true/507-464863770" target="_blank">delighted consumers</a> and<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/15/16781208/moviepass-hollywood-film-subscription-service-amc-terrified" target="_blank"> terrified theater owners</a>. Watt says he is now looking for similar all-you-can pricing plans that can work in wellness.</p><p>"I think some of the experience I've had with subscription models can apply to areas in interesting ways," Watt said. "Consumers love an unlimited value proposition."</p>
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HopSkipDrive, the ridesharing company for kids and one of Los Angeles most visible startups, laid off staff Tuesday as the pandemic ravaged growth plans.
Co-founder and CEO Joanna McFarland would not say how many of the 100-plus employees she laid off but told dot.LA that after delivering the news to the group affected over Zoom, managers held one-on-one meetings to review benefits and severance pay. Several departments were impacted including operations, branding, sales and customer support.
<p>The latest round of layoffs follow an earlier one in March in which the company cut 10 percent of its staff, according to<a href="https://layoffs.fyi/tag/hopskipdrive/" target="_blank"> layoffs.fyi, a website tracking job loss. </a></p><p>"One of HopSkipDrive's core values is 'feel it', meaning empathy," McFarland said. "It was very important to us to show empathy to all employees and to communicate directly with both employees who were impacted and those that were not impacted."</p><p>The six-year old company, that's raised roughly $98 million, spent the summer building COVID-safe standards to prepare for an abnormal school year. Then, one after the other, school districts across the country changed plans from in-person or hybrid classes to a completely virtual curriculum.</p><p>"Schools closing has a direct and significant impact on our business," McFarland told dot.LA by email.</p><p>"These reductions are not in any way reflective of work performance but were unfortunately necessary due to the impact COVID-19 has had on our business, like many others," McFarland <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joannamcfarland_today-i-made-the-difficult-decision-to-lay-activity-6699105478603108352-Rr1W/" target="_blank">wrote on LinkedIn</a> in announcing the decision. </p><p>Companies have been careful about letting go of workers remotely after startups like the e-scooter service Bird soured relationships with former employees after a <a href="https://dot.la/bird-layoffs-meeting-story-2645612465.html" target="_self">poorly planned layoff round</a>.</p><p><span></span>McFarland said that demand for this service will surge once schools reopen because it offers socially-distanced, safe transportation for schools looking to limit bus capacity. </p><p>"Schools will need to prioritize the students we primarily serve more than ever — students with special needs, students experiencing homelessness and students in the foster care system," she said. "These are the students who are likely to have the biggest learning gaps due to Covid."</p><p>LAUSD begins its entirely virtual school year on August 18.</p><p>"Schools will come back, and when they do, we are poised to take off. We will be in a position to create more opportunities for kids, for CareDrivers, for families and for our team than ever before."</p><p>Until that happens, McFarland says the company will continue operations with its partners in markets that have opened schools. It'll also support seniors with mobility needs and partners looking to use the service to fulfill meal and technology deliveries.</p><p>McFarland and two other L.A. working moms founded HopSkipDrive in 2014 to help parents juggling hectic schedules. Unlike rideshare companies that bar underage riders, HopSkipDrive was designed for children as young as six. </p><p>In February, HopSkipDrive announced a $22 million funding round to expand its operations in new cities, <a href="https://dot.la/hopskipdrive-ridesharing-company-for-kids-doubles-fundraising-2645031261.html" target="_self">dot.LA reported</a>. Months before, in November of 2019, the company relocated its office to ROW DTLA and began a sizable hiring push across departments. </p><p>The service, now offered in 14 markets across eight states and Washington D.C., is expanding to Midland, Texas this coming school year to support Midland Independent School District.<br/></p>
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