He really said that: When asked about the company’s “Plan B” if mortgage rates don’t fall, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman responded, “Plan B is to drink our own urine or our competitors’ blood, stay in the foxhole.”
This wasn’t at some informal, off-the-record gathering. It was on Redfin’s second quarter earnings call, the kind of call where executives usually stick to blandly optimistic platitudes — a call that gets transcribed on investor relations websites.
The real estate website’s earnings were better than expected, but Wall Street analysts were focused on prospects for the larger housing market. At one point, Kelman compared the current market to “The Twilight Zone,” declaring, “I can’t remember a time when [mortgage] rates came down this far, this fast, and the market has been so muted in its response. And we just have to believe that it will [go up].”
To be clear, he’s hoping the market improves, but he isn’t counting on it.
After the aforementioned promise to drink various bodily fluids, Kelman added, “The last earnings call ended with me singing a line from a Who song, Won’t Get Fooled Again, where I had said we’re not banking on low rates when other people had thought they might come down […] We’re ready to take share if the market grows, we’re ready to take share if it doesn’t, but we’re not going to ease off.”
Then finally, right before the call ended, Kelman expressed a little regret over his choice of words: “We’ll drink our urine before the blood. Actually, I wish I just hadn’t said that. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
Susan Wojcicki, a longtime Googler who spent nearly a decade as the CEO of YouTube, passed away Friday after a two-year battle with non-small cell lung cancer. Wojcicki, who was…
While Amazon has continued releasing Echo devices, including an upgraded Spot announced last month, the company has taken its foot off the gas.
He really said that: When asked about the company’s “Plan B” if mortgage rates don’t fall, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman responded, “Plan B is to drink our own urine or…
Turkey appears to have restored access to Meta-owned Instagram, after blocking the app on August 2. Abdulkadir Uraloglu, the country’s minister of transport and infrastructure, posted today that the ban…
Elon Musk doesn’t want Tesla to be just an automaker. He wants Tesla to be an AI company, one that’s figured out how to make cars drive themselves. Crucial to…
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman has left the company for rival AI startup Anthropic. In addition, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman is taking an extended leave after nine years at…
This list only includes major penalties issued to tech firms under the GDPR. In recent years, some significant sanctions have also been issued on Big Tech
The data breach is the latest security issue to beset CSC ServiceWorks over the past year, after multiple researchers found security bugs.
Tragedy has again struck a famous Silicon Valley family. Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki just passed away, according to social media posts by her husband, Dennis Troper, and by Google…
This is the second cyberattack targeting the school device management service Mobile Guardian this year.
Anysphere, a two-year-old startup that’s developed an AI-powered coding assistant called Cursor, has raised over $60 million in a Series A financing at a $400 million post-money valuation, two sources…
The internet is full of deepfakes — and most of them are nudes. According to a report from Home Security Heroes, deepfake porn makes up 98% of all deepfake videos…
Researchers found flaws that could allow anyone to spy on the owners of Ecovacs home robots by hijacking their cameras and microphones.
When digging into the data to determine how large the exodus everyone on Threads is talking about actually is, we oddly came up short.
Substack is opening up to more users with its recent announcement that anyone can now publish content on its platform without setting up a publication. With the change, Substack is…
WeRide, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company, is officially gearing up for a U.S. public debut, over a year after China started easing its effective ban of foreign IPOs. WeRide registered…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week we…
The U.K. government has indicated it may seek stronger powers to regulate tech platforms following days of violent disorder across England and Northern Ireland fueled by the spread of online…
The Startup Battlefield is the crown jewel of Disrupt, and we can’t wait to see which of the thousands of applicants will be selected to pitch to panels of top-tier VCs…
The startup’s core technology is a proprietary material that absorbs moisture from the air, allowing air conditioning to cool buildings more efficiently.
YouTube’s latest test involves a sleep timer that pauses the video after, well, a set period of time.
Ola Electric, India’s largest electric two-wheeler maker, surged by 20% on its public debut on Friday, making it the biggest listing among Indian firms in two years. Shares of the…
Rocket Lab surpassed $100 million in quarterly revenue for the first time, a 71% increase from the same quarter of last year. This is just one of several shiny accomplishments…
In 1996, two companies, Patersons HR and Payroll Solutions, formed a venture called CloudPay to provide payroll and payments services to enterprise clients. CloudPay grew quietly over the next several…
