spencer rascoff
At the age of 16, Sophia Rascoff is one of the youngest entrepreneurs to launch a social media app. Her love for cooking inspired Recon Food, an app that brings food lovers together.
On this episode of PCH Driven, Rascoff discusses being a co-founder of the app Recon Food and how Gen Z is changing social media.
During the holiday season, Rascoff and her family make traditional Colombian dishes, including a caldo (a broth-based dish) she grew up on that her grandmother passed down to her mom.
Experiences like that, along with her love for food, gave Rascoff the idea to create an app.
"Recon Food is a vertical social media network for food. So, we aim to create a community where people can bond over a shared love of food," said Rascoff.
With features like adding recipes alongside posts or seeing the restaurants where other users have been, Rascoff wanted to lean into making the community accessible.
When joining the app, it automatically prompts the user to follow Rascoff’s account. But, she says, it’s not designed so that she can gain followers.
"It was to really set the bar for the app. So, we wanted to show people anyone can post on here. It's not for chefs, it's for people who like food and think it's kind of fun sometimes," said Rascoff.
Growing up around other entrepreneurs like her father, former Zillow executive and dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff, the young co-founder believes passion is one of the most important things when it comes to starting a company. For other young entrepreneurs, that's the advice she would offer.
"Find something that you're really passionate about. I've heard a lot that there are no good founders, there's only a good founder for a good problem," said Rascoff.
In the rest of the episode, Rascoff talks about entrepreneurship, the value of intrapreneurship and how a “post-heroic” leadership approach can create more collaborative team. Oh, and we also talk a lot about food.
Click the playhead above to hear the full conversation, and subscribe to PCH Driven on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeart, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Engagement Intern Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
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LA Venture: Serial Entrepreneur Spencer Rascoff on the Future of Social Media and His Investing Strategy
Former Zillow executive and serial entrepreneur Spencer Rascoff loves Los Angeles.
So much that he named his venture capital fund, 75 & Sunny, as an ode to L.A.'s yearlong balmy weather. This week, he joins the LA Venture podcast to talk about what helped him grow personally and professionally into one of the most revered investors in Southern California.
"I'm at the stage of my career where I'm trying to be a coach and a mentor and an advisor," said Rascoff.
Rascoff is best known as the former co-founders of successful startups including Zillow and Hotwire. He has since built other companies including the news site you're currently reading (dot.LA) and Pacaso — a platform that helps people co-own a home. Rascoff said he's now looking for new partners to work with to start more companies.
An avid Twitter and Instagram user, Rascoff said he's not pleased with the social media world and the misinformation it has propagated in the last few years.
"The horizontal social networks have become kind of cesspools of humanity, where everyone's yelling and screaming about everything," Rascoff said. "There's all this misinformation. The algorithms are sending us down these black holes."
But he said he sees hope for vertical-specific social networks, and is personally investing in several. Rascoff said 75 & Sunny has made over 42 investments this year across the worlds of proptech, consumer and fintech.
Along the way, Rascoff said he's been fortunate to surround himself with smart and supportive co-workers and friends.
"That's the most important thing is surrounding yourself with people that you learn from, that you are motivated by, that bring out the best in you, that complement your skills. That's everything," he added.
Hear the full episode by clicking on the playhead above, and listen to LA Venture on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Engagement Intern Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
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Los Angeles has long taken a back seat to San Francisco when it comes to investing in and incubating local companies, but in recent years the venture capital scene in Silicon Beach has exploded.
Greycroft Partners co-founder and partner Dana Settle told dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff during the second annual dot.LA summit Friday that when she started Greycroft 15 years ago, her fellow investors in Northern California balked at her choice to leave the Bay Area and start investing in what was then a seldom talked-about market: Los Angeles. But since then, Settle's happily proved the haters wrong.
Settle told Rascoff that being an early investor in LA technology wasn't easy, and that over the years she also struggled to raise funding for Greycroft at first, which informs how she advises new companies.
"We are like a 16-year-old startup… and I promise you, by the way, to any of you founders, I have been turned down more than you have in fundraising," Settle said to the audience at the dot.LA summit. "So I have lots of, you know, lots of scar tissue, which I actually think is important because (I) do empathize, I do understand that process."
Greycroft has invested in some of L.A. tech's biggest names, including Bird, Gwenyth Paltrow's Goop, Maker Studios, Thrive Market and Culver City-based mobile game maker Scopely. The firm manages over $2 billion in capital and backs companies in various stages of development, from pre-seed to buyout. Some of the most notable companies Greycroft has exited over the years include Axios, dating app Bumble, and automated investing platform Acorns.
Since 2006 Greycroft has grown from just three founders — Settle, former Apax Partners founder Alan Patricof, and Ian Sigalow — to over 50 employees working in Los Angeles and New York.
Rascoff noted that over the years venture capital investing has evolved to become more personal as firms shift to prioritize building a recognizable brand. "The other thing that's changed is the importance of brand," Rascoff said. "For the venture capital firm, in the earlier years of venture capital, let's call it the Kleiner Perkins era in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, it was, it would be weird for them to have a website or a PR person and now, the social media presence of these companies… they're a media company really, right. They're putting out huge amounts of content."
Settle agreed, and added that Greycroft tends to attract new clients that have networked with existing ones.
"Our sort of first principle is that venture capital is a long-term, repeat business," Settle said. "If you believe that, then all of your interactions with founders and everything that you do every day, ultimately should build your brand, because ultimately it's a referral business."