<story><title>Opendoor, a startup worth emulating</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2016/opendoor-a-startup-worth-emulating/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>harmmonica</author><text>Have you given thought to opening up your pricing model&amp;#x2F;algorithm to the public for every home in a market (a la Zestimate&amp;#x2F;Redfin estimate) as a means of eventually driving seller inventory even if someone is not ready to sell today?&lt;p&gt;If someone could look up what their place is worth and, unlike Zillow and Redfin, actually be told explicitly why it&amp;#x27;s worth that as opposed to being told a &amp;quot;black box&amp;quot; value, you&amp;#x27;ll open the top of the funnel by driving folks who aren&amp;#x27;t yet ready to sell (today&amp;#x27;s owner is tomorrow&amp;#x27;s seller). And since those values change frequently the not-ready-to-sell owner could track the changes to value and the underlying data driving that value, which would keep you on the tops of their minds when they&amp;#x27;re ready to sell down the road.&lt;p&gt;If you think the pricing model&amp;#x2F;algorithm is too proprietary to share beyond the &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m ready to sell today&amp;quot; market, I&amp;#x27;ll stop by for a coffee to try and convince you otherwise.&lt;p&gt;Good luck. I&amp;#x27;m stoked to see someone trying to fundamentally change the residential market.&lt;p&gt;Edit: oh, btw, not advocating sharing the actual algorithm, but the results of it (e.g. your house is worth 5 psf less than the comp from 3 blocks over bc your place is directly under the airport&amp;#x27;s flight path).</text></comment>
<story><title>Opendoor, a startup worth emulating</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2016/opendoor-a-startup-worth-emulating/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tommynicholas</author><text>One thing not mentioned: Opendoor absolutely does not have to carry the balance sheet risk of owning the homes forever. They can chop up those assets and sell them to anyone (hedge funds, banks, individual investors, etc) at any point. At scale, they&amp;#x27;d be able to do this and still maintain most of the upside.&lt;p&gt;At some point, Opendoor will be able to let businesses that simply manage financial risk for a living (i.e. banks) spread the downside risk out over the entire financial system, while Opendoor takes advantage of its customer acquisition and data advantages to capture the bulk upside. It&amp;#x27;s not a perpetually risk model if they don&amp;#x27;t want it to be.</text></comment>