Office Hours Podcast: Lessons Learned During Zulily’s Rocketship Rise

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

Office Hours Podcast: Lessons Learned During Zulily’s Rocketship Rise

How tough is it to infuse a retail website with entirely new products every day? Very. But that's exactly what Zulily, an ecommerce site that sells unique retail brands primarily to women, did when it went live in 2010.

On this week's episode of "Office Hours," Spencer talks with Zulily founder and former CEO Darrell Cavens and Harvard Professor Jeffrey Rayport about Zulily's astonishing success and some granular lessons learned from a company that grew incredibly big incredibly fast.


The idea was the brainchild of Darrell and his cofounder Mark Vadon. Both had young children at the time and wanted to create a retail shop that offered good products at affordable prices — with a generous splash of entertainment. Consider this: When you go to a traditional retail website, the items featured will stay up for weeks or months. Zulily customers were taken in by the excitement of scrolling through fresh product daily that lasted on the site for a comparatively short 1-3 days.

Darrell describes his team as "kind of like the production people and editorial writers at a newspaper." He says Zulily headquarters had "55 photo studios that were taking photos. We had teams of writers. We had over 500 people in merchandising that were kind of telling stories with product every day."

Customers were loyal, buying around five times a year. Zulily soared in sales. And Darrell ran a smart ship. For example, Zulily might strike a 60-day term with a vendor. It collected customer cash upfront, so as the company grew, it was generating money. The company saves money on shipping costs by not delivering to customers quickly. Zulily waits until they can order the inventory from vendors in bulk. In 2015, just five years after it went live, Zulily sold for $2.4 billion.

It's a fascinating business story that includes some hard lessons, and one I watched unfold in real time as I served on Zulily's board of directors.

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LA Tech ‘Moves’: Mapp Gains New CPO and CTO, Prodoscore Taps Boeing Exec

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech ‘Moves’: Mapp Gains New CPO and CTO, Prodoscore Taps Boeing Exec
LA Tech ‘Moves’:

“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.

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This Week in ‘Raises’: GITAI Lands $30M, Steno Gains $15M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Raises
Image by Joshua Letona

A local space robotics startup raised fresh funding to expand the flight model manufacturing facilities throughout the U.S. and increase employment, while a remote litigation platform raised more funding to continue growing its footprint in new markets across the country, develop service channels for its clients and continue expanding its tech team.

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Gitai Raises $30 Million to Expand Manufacturing Footprint in Los Angeles

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

Gitai Raises $30 Million to Expand Manufacturing Footprint in Los Angeles
\u200bPhoto: Gitai

Space robotics company Gitai raised a $30 million Series B extension this week, bringing the total value of the round to roughly $47 million.

The funding will be used to further develop Gitai’s suite of space robots as well as build out its manufacturing footprint in Torrance. Previously Gitai announced it raised a $17.1 million Series B in March 2021; this additional raise is still part of that round.

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