(Exclusive HQ Tour) Inside Opendoor on Earnings Day

0:00Michael Judd:Modern companies become like very meek, they're afraid of themselves, like it's wartime. Public markets were created such that average Americans could have a say in their companies and could actually pick companies and invest their dollars in capitalism. And most companies do this thing where they use the word retail investor as though it's a swear word. We're deeply proud, genuinely deeply proud that Opendoor is one of the most broadly held companies.

0:24Kaz Nejatian:Not many companies really get a chance at a second or kind of third birth like this. This mission matters so much, but to have people who have been here for a while is recognizing how broken the existing process is. And the fact that we believe that our solution is not just important to our customers, but to America, like generally. If you were a door, what kind of door would you be? I'd be open, Molly. Come on.

0:57Michael Judd:Kaz, welcome to Sorcery. Thanks for coming by. Let me show you around. Long time coming. It's been... I'm a fan. I'm actually a fan. I'm really excited to have you here. Welcome to Open Door San Francisco.

1:09Kaz Nejatian:So where are we going? What's the plan?

1:10Michael Judd:I'm going to show you my messy desk. Okay. But also we do these, the merch for every earnings call. My assistant literally packs them and sends them out. This is literally them. We try to get them out before the earnings call because I wear a new t-shirt on every earnings call.

1:29Kaz Nejatian:So your team is literally physically packing this right now.

1:35Michael Judd:Do we have any other merch? Is there like a...

1:38Kaz Nejatian:We do have a merch. There's some over there.

1:42Michael Judd:That's my desk. You can actually see my desk. This is your desk? Yeah.

1:46Kaz Nejatian:In the middle of the open office.

1:47Michael Judd:Yeah, no, it's like the actual desk you can see because there's always random books on it. um this is our like

1:57Michael Judd:it's like this shirt i'm gonna wear that's my shirt that i'm wearing at learnings call and the open oh yeah we have like more um it's actually hilarious because like everyone has seven jobs here like everyone has like multiple jobs all right we're merch shop today they're merch shopping they're like uh open door caps we have oh we have the open army oh wow you guys are we getting blazers yeah there's like we actually like dude like the merch is cool here um i'll take you to don't look there okay is that we both not legal no we both we both um

2:31Kaz Nejatian:when i got here there were no dashboards on the wall uh-huh i'm like fuck that lots of dashboards

2:37Michael Judd:please so we bolted that's the actual model that is running one of our war rooms right now And it's hilarious because our chief growth officer tracks them and has them sticky. He says, grow more. And he puts them under whatever's chart. He's like, I'm focusing on that year week. But it's a hilarious thing.

2:59Kaz Nejatian:Just for context, this is day of earnings. This is earnings day. Your financial open house.

3:03Michael Judd:Yeah, it's our earnings day. We're actually going up in a couple of hours. That's our head of engineering with his dog.

3:11Kaz Nejatian:Wow. very intense

3:16Michael Judd:our lawyers were all I think these guys were in a room last night I think literally these three people have not left the office in a week I'm not kidding I don't think I'm actually being a relatively bit serious like when did the deal get done? 2 a.m.? yeah and I think I'm not kidding for like three or four days

3:36Kaz Nejatian:you guys look good

3:38Michael Judd:and then here I'll show you this is my conference room they're not gonna hang out that long um my sword are you oh you actually have a sword no i'm lucky it's like look i wasn't kidding like as an homage to like

3:53Kaz Nejatian:elon we all have that sword so funny so it's like like you think i was kidding i'm like not kidding actually like it's like real that's great and you keep it in yours i mean like

4:05Michael Judd:You know what the hilarious thing is? So I wanted to get throwing stars, but they're very illegal in California.

4:14Kaz Nejatian:I would imagine.

4:15Michael Judd:You cannot have throwing stars in California, but that's the weapon. How old is this sword? Oh, it's not old. It's an Arabian sword. Actually, hilarious story. I told my assistant, I want a sword. I said, I want a sword. She's like, for the question mark, because I think she thought I had a typo. She's like, what do you mean? I'm like, no, this sword, please. No, I think, look, I think the very real thing that happens is that, like, modern companies become, like, very, like, meek. They're afraid of themselves. Like, it's wartime.

4:54Kaz Nejatian:Do you think it's important that the best public company CEOs have swords?

5:00Michael Judd:I mean, Elon has one. Alex has one. I have one. I'm not going to say we're all the same. I'm not saying that we're all similar people with similar styles and similar companies. I mean, other people might say that. But yeah, I think weaponry is important. It's actually very real. Like most companies, it's actually like one of the saddest things about capitalism is that if you go back to the start of public markets, public markets were created such that average Americans could have a say in the companies and could actually pick companies and invest their dollars in capitalism. And most companies do this thing where they use the word retail investor as though it's a swear word.

5:48Michael Judd:We're deeply proud, genuinely deeply proud that Opendoor is one of the most broadly held companies in America. And I think it actually does an important thing, which is the average American believes in our mission because the average american thinks is unfair that people can't afford a home to live in that a system is stacked against average people having average jobs um so no we're like like we're not hiding it like we're deeply proud of the army uh and i think everyone in the company is like if you actually walk around you'll see people wearing army jackets and army shirts and like army swag all over i love how uh keith once tweeted it out spelt

6:28Kaz Nejatian:incorrectly because it's the workout class of egos. It is.

6:33Michael Judd:I think the motto is it'll be army till 82. It'll be double A army till 82.

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8:03Kaz Nejatian:Visit Turing.com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. All right, so we're here with Judd, Michael Judd, and we're going to talk a little bit deeper on Open Door lore because he's been here the longest. So, Judd, what is it like? What is it like? It feels like a book with many chapters, but none of the chapters have been exactly the same, but with a common through line. See, I joined in the fall of 2016. We were in two markets. I'm one of the very few people here who actually remembers the days when Keith was in the office every single day. Oh my God. So yeah, there's just a small handful of us there. But no, I started my career in New York in finance and really didn't have any plans to like leave that world but I always kind of had in my head like you know if there's something that really speaks to you that feels like worth kind of making a leap on sometimes trust that instinct and yeah it's fall 2016 this little series b company open door was revolutionizing the way the like homes are bought and sold in America and what really like resonated for me was I could explain this idea to my grandpa he would understand what it was and understand why it was needed and And so that was kind of what initially drew my interest.

9:23Kaz Nejatian:Once I kind of like dug under the hood and saw what they'd built so far and what the kind of vision looked like, I figured, hey, this might be worth, you know, shipping across the coast and trying something new out on. And yeah, obviously, as you've kind of been able to tell from the kind of outside lens, there's been, you know, ups and downs and, you know, kind of in equal measure here at Opendoor over that decade or so. but what I feel really grateful for is you know with kind of CAS coming online and just the momentum that came from this past fall you know not many companies really get a chance at a second or kind of third birth like this and I think this mission matters so much and that's what has kept me around so long and what's kept the people who have been here for a while is recognizing how broken the existing process is and the fact that we believe that our solution is not just important to our customers, but to America generally.

10:18Kaz Nejatian:And just having, again, another chance at kind of cracking that code is just something I'm really grateful for. I'm just so curious from a cultural standpoint. So you're head of IR, but I've also heard everybody here has multiple hats. So what other roles do you have? And is that like, what is it like working here now under CAS and that transition? It's been pretty incredible. Yeah. So depending on the day, it's investor relations. I kind of came up doing capital markets, a little bit of corporate development, some financing strategy, really just kind of depends on the task for the day. I think what's been really remarkable and what Kaz has honestly taught me is that we're all probably a little more capable than we sometimes give ourselves credit for.

10:59Kaz Nejatian:So when Kaz came in, he joined at the end of September and we did our Q3 earnings call just a couple weeks later. And before Kaz, we had done things pretty much by the books we had the the boring just you know dial an audio call it was you know shareholder letter with like very like basic script Kaz came in and day one was like guys we're doing video live stream I want to stream it on Robin Hood which we were the first company to actually stream our earnings on Robin Hood other than Robin Hood themselves you know we're getting rid of the shareholder letter we are going to do say Q &A and it was like what it was like I would have thought that we could do one of those every quarter and like that that was like the most that we could do but Kaz set a high target and said hey Judd I know that you know this sounds like a lot but I know you guys can do it and sure enough you know we got to production it wasn't without some long nights and some uh stress along the way but uh we were able to get that done and I think what was really important about that is kind of conveying to the people who are paying attention to our story and who are giving Opendoor a second chance that like if an IR team of one is able to pull off all of these changes in like five or six weeks.

12:09Kaz Nejatian:Imagine what our engineers are doing in that time. Imagine what our kind of AI enabled and AI built, like ops folks are able to build. So the idea is that like, you're often more capable than you would think you are if you set like a quarterly cadence for yourself. Why is it so important to innovate on IR in such a digital world now? No, I mean, you know, you and your audience, I feel like are a great testament. It's, you know, I don't retail is a word that, you know, I feel like other companies like refer to with, you know, a different like taste in their mouth. But for us, our mission is to change the way that like Americans like think about their houses.

12:51Kaz Nejatian:And I think that's such a core kind of just part of the American dream. and so with the advent of this summer and the you know kind of heightened attention that the business got I think that us being able to show that we can meet the narrative where it is rather than asking the narrative to kind of come to us on these boring more institutional more kind of classic like Wall Street forums and really feeling like people have a say in how management speaks and kind of what kind of questions we answer. And so I think for us, it's really about just continuing to drive the transparency and acknowledge that this second birth came on the back of people believing in us.

13:32Kaz Nejatian:And so meeting those believers where they are rather than forcing them into old Wall Street corners. What's the hardest challenge you face? Keeping up with Kaz, honestly. The pace is pretty incredible. And I think, like I said, And he kind of pushes each of us to expand what we think we could do, both in terms of the quality of the materials and, you know, just the different hats. Like I was saying, I used to have a few hats. I'd pick up more with Kaz joining, which is normally the opposite when a company grows like this. And I think just remembering, again, how important that mission is and like using that as kind of the fuel to continue to get the things done that you can.

14:12Kaz Nejatian:So, yeah, he sets a fun pace. Is it cool to have an open army? What is that like? It's very fun. I don't have a sword to, you know, lead them into battle. I just get to read the safe harbor disclosures at the start of our earnings call. But no, we're incredibly grateful. We certainly don't take it for granted. And I think that, you know, we launched that website accountable at opendoor.com. And we really believe that because we want to be held to account. One, again, because we recognize how critical this community has been to giving us the second birth. And again, I, you know, I've been here at Open Door for 10 years because I believe in this mission so much.

14:52Kaz Nejatian:And I think that you're still kind of hearing me keep going back to it so often is that, yeah, the mission matters. And so having people who believe in that same mission, being able to hold us accountable is just kind of table stakes for the way we talk to our community. Seeing what you've seen with a company sink down to a 50 cent share price, almost get delisted, get resurrected and then go full speed ahead. how do you think about all of these other companies that are in zombie land that need some sort of like hail mary to get to the next state what kind of companies do you think are going to fail and what do you think i guess to reposition it what do you think is most critical for companies to accelerate and meet this next innovation cycle look i think for us or at least from what I've learned, like in my experience, it's, we got this tremendous opportunity from this community that found us on the back of a couple of years of beleaguered stock price and, you know, declining sentiment.