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That's why they call it money. The best thing they'll ever be. From full global headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Fool Money Radio Show.
Thanks for being here. I'm Chris Hill, joining me in studio this week for Million Dollar Portfolio, Jason Moser and Matt Argusinger. And from Motley Fool Deep Value, Ron Gross. Good to see you as always, gentlemen.
How you doing? We've got a couple of big deals and a really big IPO. Zillow Executive Amy Bittinsky is our guest this week and as always, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. But we begin with the travel industry.
Shares of TripAdvisor up 20% this week after the online travel company expanded its partnership with Marriott. Starting later this summer, anyone on TripAdvisor.com will be able to book a room with Marriott hotels without having to leave TripAdvisor's site. And Jason Wall Street thinks this is a big deal. Do you?
As a TripAdvisor shareholder, I do, too. Congratulations. It's a great deal. I think we talk a lot about how much easier it would be for TripAdvisor to become more like Priceline than it would be for Priceline to become more like TripAdvisor.
It's the reviews and the content that really set TripAdvisor apart. And so this deal with Marriott, I mean, that's 4,200 hotels worldwide, includes brands like Ritz Carlton, Fairfield, and Suites, along with all the other Marriott names. And it's really interesting to see kind of how they work this deal. It's a little bit different than you might see something with Priceline.
But ultimately, this allows someone on TripAdvisor to book a reservation with a Marriott property. Now, what this does, it keeps the service side of this transaction in Marriott's on Marriott's side of the court. Marriott is going to be able to handle the customer service side of this transaction, learn more about their guests and take this really from the point of that booking on TripAdvisor. Now, TripAdvisor concedes a little bit on the pricing side of this, but that's okay, really, because really what TripAdvisor is doing is just diversifying their revenue stream more and more with deals like this.
And so, you know, I think that it is definitely a win-win for both parties involved. And it's really interesting to see if they will be able to land more deals like this with big reputable names in the space, because I think that most property managers, most hotel chains would like to be able to keep control of that service aspect, particularly if they have a brand to protect like Marriott does. How do we feel about the reviews on these types of sites? Because I got to admit, they always confuse me.
One person is the best place ever. The next person in this place is a dump. How many do I have to read? Is it like the Olympics?
I have to throw out the best and the worst. Well, and along those lines, do we now have to add a grain of salt to the Marriott reviews if we're on TripAdvisor? Well, I think that's all very good points. I mean, regardless of what you're doing when you read reviews, I think you have to take them with a grain of salt.
And I think with TripAdvisor, it's important to note that there is a vetting process involved with these reviews that are being posted. As someone who has posted on TripAdvisor before, it's not like you just make a review and it automatically goes up. I mean, they're going to take the time to vet it, to read through it, to understand exactly what you're saying. Is it consistent, generally speaking?
Are you making stuff up or really do you have an axe to grind? And so with TripAdvisor, because they have garnered so many reviews, it really is pretty easy to separate sort of the wheat from the chats, so to speak, and find the real good places to go. And not just speaking from experience, but we're getting ready to go to Hawaii here. And we've had, all the past couple of months, just looking at these different things to do and places to go and just having read through all these reviews.
I mean, they're really is healthy separation. Absolutely. All right, that's fair. Mattie, Jason mentioned Priceline.
If you're Priceline or Expedia, I'm nervous are you right now. I think you're getting a little nervous because it seems like all roads now are starting to go through TripAdvisor. And the OTA is Priceline, the online travel agent is like Priceline's speedy traditional ones, are a little worried that they're cut of these deals, if the travel agent deals might be going lower if someone can book instantly through TripAdvisor probably so tell us. I think it's a little nervous.
So it's the nature of the transaction, right? I mean, you're going to Priceline to book this transaction. This is sort of, you're going pre-trip booking the transaction, and then that relationship is done. You're not going back to Priceline to post a review with TripAdvisor.
You're researching the trip. Now if they can offer me the opportunity to book that transaction as well, wow, I mean that's killing two birds with one stone is pretty attractive. CVS Health, the leading drug store chain in America, is buying targets, pharmacy and clinic businesses for $1.9 billion. So now, Ron, when you walk into any of the more than 1,600 target locations across the country, those pharmacies are going to be rebranded as CVS Health.
This also seems like a win-win. I like this deal. It makes sense. It's clearly not targets bread and butter, but they do need those pharmacies to generate traffic.
I think the fact that they'll now be CVS pharmacies and their MinuteClinics as well in 80 stores will even be a better driver of traffic into targets. It allows Target to concentrate on their bread and butter business, which they had been struggling with for quite some time. Brian Cornell, they're relatively new CEO, I think has been doing a good job of getting the company back on track, refocusing on its core business. As he says, getting back to its core DNA, getting out of that disastrous Canadian business, a win-win I think for both companies, I think the $1.9 billion is actually reasonable.
I don't usually think that when it comes to acquisitions. So good job for both companies. Well, and you mentioned Brian Cornell at Target, Larry Merlow, who's been CEO at CVS Health for about four years. He's building up a really nice track record.
Getting it done, really? I think in his mind, he wants CVS to be a healthcare company, not a retail business. And he's been doing a great job. They acquired OmniCare, relatively recently, a $12 billion dealer in nursing home pharmacy operator.
They're making this deal. The stock obviously is doing quite well at up 36% over the last year. Target's actually up even more, 42% over the last year. Both CEOs, I think, doing a nice job.
Fitbit, the maker of wearable fitness trackers, went public this week, shares up as much as 60% on opening day. The company raised more than $700 million, making it the biggest consumer electronics IPO in history. Matt, are you buying? I don't know.
And a $7 billion market value. It's approaching almost over nine times sales. And they did $745 million in revenue last year. They come in multiple colors.
They knew they do. And prices from $60 to $250. I mean, it is profitable. Well, I give it a Fitbit this.
They had $745 million in revenue last year. That's tripled from the year before. And they generate profits of $131 million. So this is that rare IPO this year that actually is profitable.
My problem is with Fitbit is, as I was a Fitbit user at one point, is that it just became Jason and I were talking before the show. It became a pain. I mean, I'd have my little Fitbit. And for a while, the first month or two, I'm loving.
I count my steps. I'm counting my stairs and my distance traveled every day. And I'm checking. I'm going on a Fitbit.
It's great dashboard and looking at it. Over time, I just got tired of it. And the day I stopped wearing the Fit was the day I said, gosh, I feel great. You're free.
I'm like, I'm not going to be that interesting to you. If you're someone who doesn't do anything and you're like, I need to get up to 10,000 steps, it's a nice neat little product that gets you moving. But once I think you're used to it, I even have one. That'll tell you something.
And the day where you actually exercise 10,000 steps is nothing. And the day where you're relatively sedentary, it's kind of difficult. You've got to get up from your seat and walk around the building a couple of times a day together. But let's also admit, I mean, it's kind of fun to be sedentary every once in a while.
Every once in a while. Speaking of sedentary, shares of the gap up this week, not because the apparel retailer is crushing it. The company announced it is closing. 25% of stores in North America.
That's 175 locations, Jason. And they're also cutting some jobs at their headquarters. What happened to this company? That was such a great segue.
It was almost as good as investor relations headline of this press release that read, gap ink announced strategic initiatives to increase productivity and profitability of namesake brand. And nowhere in that headline would you ever think for a million years that something actually was wrong? Yet they're closing down. He'll love stores.
No indication that there are fewer gap stores year over year for the past decade. I was going to say they've been closing stores every day. They have been. And I've listened to this call.
It was really interesting. Management's kind of back on its heels here. It seems that they've lost touch with their core gap customer over time. And the entire process from inception to production to supply chain to selling was just full of inconsistencies.
And so they're talking about these stores that they're closing, that they weren't representative of the brand, the traffic patterns have shifted. Certainly they are seeing some changes there with e-commerce. They do about 15% of overall sales online. I mean, I will say to Gats credit, it is nice to see that they have more than just a gap brand underneath that umbrella.
Oh, maybe I think is what really is buttering these guys bread right now. But yeah, I mean, hey, plus some fashion comes and goes. Retail apparel is such a tough market. They're not immune to this.
And so I think this is going to be something that we're going to see more and more of as time goes on. And they really need to figure out a way to get back in touch with their core gap customer. Coming up, just in time for Father's Day, we'll share some advice we got from our dads. They're right here.
This is Motley Fool Money. As always, people on the program may have interested in stocks they talk about in the Motley Fool May have formal recommendations for or against. So I'm going to buy or sell stocks based solely on what you're here. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money, Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Moser, and Ron Gross.
Three years ago, Starbucks paid $100 million for La Boulange, a small chain of bakery space in San Francisco. The goal was to improve Starbucks food offerings across America with food from La Boulange and Ron. I'm assuming it's mission accomplished. I was about to say.
They took it out of my mouth. They announced they're shutting down all 23 of the La Boulange locations, calling them a distraction. How big is it? It's the same business.
It's not really the same business. As you said in the lead up, the point was to beef up the food offerings in the stores, different offerings, better offerings. There are 12,000 different stores, La Boulange is in for Starbucks. They did that.
As you said, mission accomplished. 23 bakeries doesn't move the needle for Starbucks. Any time they spend talking about it, plus the two manufacturing facilities that they used to create the products for the bakeries, it's just not worth it. There's nothing to adhere.
The real estate is worth something again for a company the size of Starbucks. Okay, we shouldn't spend even too much time talking about that, but this is a Bay Area and that is valuable real estate. That'll be something to watch to see what happens there. But otherwise, yes, it's a distraction and the company mission accomplished.
The stock for Starbucks had a new all-time high this week. Does it look cheap to you or is it pretty fairly valued? 20 times even now, typically not a cheap number. But it was probably there just a year ago and it's stuck up 40% since then.
The company continues to make great headways, keeps expanding internationally. Here domestically, the numbers look good. It's probably a relatively low risk stock that you can keep as a core holding and do just fine. All right, it's Father's Day this weekend.
Jason, I'll just start with you. One piece of advice that you got from your father that you like. Sure, it can be about money, it could be about anything. Oh, wow.
Yeah, I guess so. My dad is the one that got me investing. So thanks, Dad. Happy Father's Day.
I love you. He taught me from a very, very young age and he was a fool and didn't even really know it, I guess, because he's a long-term style investor and he said, listen son, you will never buy at the bottom and you will never sell at the top. Get used to it and move on. And everything will be fine.
And I tell you, Dad is just some good medicine to swallow right there, because there's so many people I know, they'll buy shares of a company the next day. It's in the right. They're like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm losing money. You just keep on going on and it's worked out all right.
Right. Yeah, Happy Father's Day, Dad. I think humility is the most important thing anyone can teach anyone, including a son. And I'd say that the one thing my dad told me really early on, and it was really hurting when he told me at the time, was he said, you know, son, he said, you're going to meet people in life that are better at you at everything.
So it's not just better at you in something that you can, no, no, you're going to meet people that are smarter and better at you than everything. And just that's great. You should embrace that and just hang out with those people. And I always thought that was really great advice.
Right. I think the best lesson he taught me was one that he taught by example. He's my dad is 85 years old and he still works two days a week. Wow.
Strong work ethic, work hard, save your money, but always put family first. Nice. For my dad on the financial side, it was definitely teaching me the difference between being thrifty and being cheap. Being thrifty is a good thing.
Saving money is obviously a very good thing. Being cheap is just one of the takiest things imaginable in my father's mind. So it was a great lesson to learn at an early age. Let's bring in our man from the other side of the glass.
Steve Bridal, before we get to the radar stocks, one lesson from your dad you'd like to share this father's day weekend? Well, my dad and I talk about stocks all the time we were talking this morning, in fact. And this advice he picked up from a broker, which is the first bad news is not the last bad news. Oh, wow.
Wow. Deep. That feels like the Bridal Man are deep. It's heavy.
That is heavy. That feels like, I don't know, something you should buy on a t-shirt or something like that. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Ron, gross, you're up first.
All right. I got K-12. Ticker symbol is L-R-N. Learn.
It's the largest operator of online public schools in the US, originally backed by folks like Michael Milken and Larry Ellison. Tremendous growth in the early days have really stumbled now. We've got allegations of aggressive recruitment practices. We test results.
Student turnover. Stock has come way, way, way down. Whitney Tilsen doing a short attack on it. It did not help.
It is now a deep value potential stock. If they get their act together, there could be significant upside here. Balance sheets are real strong and they're still profitable, even with the problems. The problems though, I really need to dig in to see where this goes from here.
But this could be really interesting. I think the correlation of Steve's dad would be the first allegation. It's not the last allegation. That could potentially be true.
Steve, question about K-12? If you were hiring for a position and someone had gone to an online university, would you look at them differently than someone who had gone to a bricks and mortar? Wow. That is really fair.
Well, the honest answer is yes, I would. But perhaps we shouldn't because more and more, even regular, normally accredited schools are going to be offering more and more online. I think that's certainly the way this educational industry is going. Certainly, accreditation is very key.
Jason? Sure. This just happens to be great timing with our guests this week. But I'm going with Zillow.
Ticker Z. This is the premier web property for real estate. These guys have hit it first. They hit it hard.
They have a wonderful mobile presence. Solid management team and plays. They've been working together a long time already. Tremendous market opportunity.
They continue to improve the information on their site on their listings. They made the transition from the relationship ending with list hubs seamlessly. And anytime management refers to the business being in a transition year, which is what they've said here because they're integrating that truly. It's the uppermost of correctly because it's truly acquisition.
The short timers bail. They do. But the long-term picture with this company still looks great. I share my stuff.
We own it a million dollar portfolio. Love this business. Love its future. Steve?
My question is, have you ever looked at the zestimate on your home? I have. As a matter of fact, I've looked at the zestimate. I'm not one, not two, but all three houses, which bear my name is Steve.
Hi, Roller, Jason. Oh, Donald Trump. Mattie, what are you looking at this week? I've been looking at Reel State investment trust lately because as interest rates have kind of ticked up, you've seen a lot of stocks in that space come down.
Now, one of those is Alexandria Real Estate Equities, ticker A-R-E. It is the biggest real estate owner of life sciences, medical labs, and biotechnology facilities. And I'd say it's a great way if you're interested in the biotech industry, it's a safer way in my view to play. It's just only coming that owns most of the real estate behind those places.
And it's got a 3.4% yield on it, too. Steve, are folks looking at appreciation in these equations of REITs? For this particular industry, I would say it's more about sustainable advantage. This company owns some of the really premier biotech and facilities like that.
So yeah, there's going to be some growth that will kind of grow along with the biotech industry. But you know, so top line, you got my 10%, but then you throw in the 3.4% line. So it's probably a nice return from here. Steve, you got a REIT, online real estate, online learning.
Any of those interest you? I'm going with REIT. Sounds interesting to me. I like real estate.
Here we go. All right. Drop us an email. Radio at full.com is our email address.
Drop us a note. Let us know the best advice you ever got from your dad. Ron Gross, Jason Moser, Matt Argersinger, guys. Thanks for being here.
Thank you Chris. Shares of Zillow have nearly tripled the market's return since the online real estate company went public nearly four years ago. Up next, a conversation with Zillow's chief marketing officer, Amy Bittinsky. Stay right here.
You're listening to Motley Full Money. And the Kaleh. Our house is a very, very, very fine house. Welcome back to Motley Full Money.
I'm Chris Hill. Zillow is the number one player in the online real estate market, a position that's gotten even stronger after it acquired number two player, Trulia. At our event in Seattle last week, Motley Full CEO Tom Gardner had the opportunity to talk with Zillow's chief marketing officer, Amy Bittinsky. And he began the conversation by asking about Zillow's business model.
So we started Zillow nine and a half years ago because at that time it's hard to believe, but if you think back a decade ago and you were trying to figure out what's for sale in a neighborhood or how have prices dropped, where their foreclosures here, what's for rent, what's a home worth. Here we were, you know, 2005, more than a decade, 15 years into the internet, and you could not find that information online. Every single area, different marketplaces, have been empowered with information via the internet and real estate really hadn't. It was still kind of in the dark ages.
So when we started Zillow and launched it in 2006, it was about empowering consumers with information to help them become smarter about what is the biggest, often most expensive and most emotional purchase of their lifetime, where to live, their homes. And at the time when we started Zillow, we didn't have much beyond that. We didn't have a business model. We didn't know how we were going to monetize this.
But we said, if we build something that doesn't exist, that's going to help consumers with something that's so important and so kind of near their hearts and find and synthesize and create the best information we can, it's going to turn into something. So that was the genesis for Zillow. We evolved much, you know, over the years today, we're largely mobile. I would guess that most of you who said, you know, Zillow, you have used Zillow on a mobile device or a tablet.
Today, and today we derive the bulk of our revenue through something called, which is called our marketplace revenue, our premier agent program, which is real estate agents who pay us for exposure when someone's searching in a certain area. So if you're looking at homes for sale, you'll see on the listing of the home on the right hand side, it'll say, need a buyer's agent, here's three or four. And they pay us to be a premier agent. They're rated and reviewed by thousands and thousands of consumers, and that's not something that can be impacted whether they pay us or not.
But to them, the value is interested buyers who contact them. And that's where most of a revenue comes from. Of course, some people I'm sure you're asking every conversation or interview that you have. What's the future of the realtor?
Why isn't this all just going to be automated and people will just have more and more discounted pricing when they're buying their home because they can do it themselves and have all the data right there online? Why won't that happen? So, it's interesting that there's a statistic the National Association of Realtors Tracks is the percentage of home sales transactions that are made with a realtor involved. When we started Zillow 10 years ago, I believe it was at like 70 something percent, no, maybe close to 80 percent.
Today, it's over 90 percent. Over 90 percent of all home sales transactions include a realtor. Even as more information has come online and it's empowered consumers to learn more about homes and home prices in the process. And a big part of this is, or what it is, is buying a home for most people is something that only happens a handful of times in their life.
It's expensive, it's emotional, it's the biggest purchase they make. It only happens every seven years or so on average. And it's not like an airline ticket where you just buy it, it doesn't work out, it's not a huge loss. This is really big.
So, most people feel like they want to have a professional. What has changed though is what that relationship looks like over time because it used to be you called a real estate agent and you said, what's for sale, what can I afford? Today, you pull out Zillow. When you're in the car, walking or driving through a neighborhood at night on your laptop, many months before, you're ready to even pick up a phone call an agent and you figure out what can I afford?
Can I pre-qualify for a mortgage? What's out there? What's selling? What do I like?
You may visit some open houses on your own and then there's at some point where you say, okay, I'm ready to do this. Then you pick up the phone and you call the agent. That relationship, sort of time period has shortened but people are still using agents for the transaction. I want to talk about your career and kind of the founding of Zillow.
So, what do we call Zillow people? Zillowians? Zillowites. Zillowites.
Okay, Zillowites. And then we have Zillowites and we have Trulians with the interview. It's really, it's okay right exactly. So, the Zillowites gathered at a couple of different companies and then came to Zillow.
Can you just talk a little bit about the founding and obviously how many people were there in your founding group when the company started? Yeah, so I'll tell if you, you know, I'll tell a little bit of my own story that 10 years ago, Spencer Raskoff, our CEO, I had known him. He was the co-founder of Hotwire, the discount travel site and I worked there in San Francisco. We were acquired by Expedia in 2003 and became one of the brands in Expedia Inc.
And this was about, this was 2005. Spencer had since left Expedia and he went and teamed up with Rich Barton, who had been the founder of Expedia and then in 2005 was the founder of Zillow. He teamed up with him and Spencer called me in San Francisco. And you know, at the time I loved San Francisco.
I had a new boyfriend. I kind of had this great life in San Francisco and Spencer said, Amy, you've got to come talk to us. We're going to do something in real estate that's really exciting. I said, okay, I'll talk to you.
But there's no way I'm leaving San Francisco. I've got a great life here. I've got this new boyfriend like no way. But I'll come up and talk to you guys.
I came and talked to them and between Rich Barton and Spencer they convinced me in an hour. And that relationship ended. Actually, so I've got to go there. No, I've got a good footnote to this.
They convinced me an hour to drop everything and move to Seattle because the passion behind the two of them and the idea of what they plan to do was so powerful that I said, okay, I'm going to leave everything behind. So I put a footnote to that and said, that boyfriend is my husband. He followed me up here and we have two kids. So it all works out in the end.
But the point is something about Spencer, if any of you have ever met him, I know who you've spent a lot of time with Spencer, is he's an amazing leader. He has an amazing vision and he executes in a way that I've never seen or met with any leader before. And Rich, the founder of Zillow is similar. And kind of the passion behind what they've always believed in and what we've always believed in and the consumer orientation has really been the driving factor behind our success.
Everything we do at Zillow is with a consumer in mind because we believe if we're doing right by the consumer, then we're ultimately going to be able to make connections to the right professionals to help them and that will ultimately impact revenue. But if we're sitting there making a decision, should we do this or should we do this, we're going to err on the side of the consumer. And sometimes at the expense of revenue because we believe it will take us the right way. One example, actually that you may have heard about a bit on our last earnings call is with Trulia.
We have intentionally taken down the number of display ads on Trulia because we know consumers don't like them. When you're going to look for a home for sale, you don't want big flashy things popping up, they want fewer of them. We believe that creating the right and most seamless and most enjoyable consumer experience will ultimately help us to win. But sometimes there are short term revenue tradeoffs we choose to do that.
I want to circle around toward the end of the conversation, talk about the culture at Zillow and it's one of the reasons that I made the decision to invest in Zillow is because it's such a dynamic workplace and you have such great retention rates and you're among your employees. But I want to talk more about marketing right now. So Chief Marketing Officer, you all did not advertise at all in the first seven years, you've been at Zillow for 10 years of course. So what was the shift?
When did you decide to start advertising? Why? And then we'll talk a little bit about some of the things that you've learned. So in the early years of Zillow, number one, we had taken venture capital money and we said we want to put this to best use.
We had all been through the first internet boom with Popwire and Expedia and it's seen a lot of companies spend a lot of money on advertising in the early years and not make it. So we said we're going to put all our money into building the best possible product because the absolute best product of marketing you can do is to build a great product that people love and they want to tell other people about. So the first seven years of Zillow, marketing was building great products and then using what we call earned or organic marketing channels to spread the word of those products. So the CR, social media, content marketing, government relations, so making sure our Zillow data is used by government agencies widely reported on by the media.
But about three years ago, we were in a position where we had taken the company public, we were in a good financial position and we kind of looked ahead and it was interesting, we were the leader in the category. We had about 30 million people using Zillow every month, yet ahead of us we saw what we called brand white space, meaning there were still more people in the United States who had never heard of Zillow than had, even though we were the category leader, the largest brand in the category and we said that's ours for the taking. There's so much opportunity to grow this. Now's the right time to put our foot on the gas and actually spend this money.
So we made a decision at the expense of near term profitability to invest for the next many years relatively heavily in brand advertising and that we fully believe that if we did this right and if we did it in a way that really connected with consumers, that we could build a household name that not just we know but our children and our grandchildren now. So we started investing in advertising and a big portion of that in brand advertising, this is our third year. It's something that's worked. It's worked tremendously well.
Two years ago, two and a half when we first started our first national campaign, Zillow brand took up about 25% of visits across the real estate category. Today it's over 50. Our monthly unique users were about 45 million uniques last year. We hit our peak at 90 million uniques for Zillow.
So it really made a tremendous difference. But I also believe that's the way that we approached advertising. It wasn't just what's called direct response, which a lot of companies do, which is I would call it focused on the near term. How many visits can we drive at this moment?
For us, it is about growing traffic, but more importantly about building a brand that resonates with people and that resonates people in an emotional way. And that says to people, we understand that buying a home, it's not just about the numbers. It's a big, scary decision because we know that there's so much writing in that decision where your children go to school, what your commute time will be. Your spouse's happiness, who you hang out with, what soccer teams your friends are.
I mean, really, we hear from consumers all the time. There's so much involved in this. And so we wanted to make sure our advertising said to people, hey, we understand we get that and we understand that your home is so much more than that. Coming up, more of Tom Gardner's conversation with Amy Bittinci.
This is Motley Fool Money. Welcome back, I'm Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Let's return to Motley Fool CEO Tom Gardner's interview with Zillow's Chief Marketing Officer, Amy Bittinci.
So just projecting forward maybe five years, somewhere in the five to ten year range. What does Zillow look like then? What is the level up from the experience that people are having now on the consumer side? It's interesting.
It's hard to say what the daily device will even be, right? Will it be here? Will it be here? I can tell you that the Zillow brand will be the prominent brand on whatever that device is.
So we, back in 2009 when we launched our first mobile app, right when the first iPhone came out, it was very, very quickly that we realized, oh my gosh, this is the future of the way people are going to be searching. And we built and carved out an entire mobile team. We're one of the first internet companies to actually do that and we made a cultural shift internally to mobile. And we said, this is going mobile.
We're going to be a mobile company. And sure enough, within the next two years we've shifted. The top toppled over where more of our visits were coming on mobile. Today, 70% of people on a Saturday use Zillow from a mobile device because it's the weekend and people are walking and driving around neighborhoods.
So Zillow will be multi-platform. Zillow, the brand will be a household name. Worldwide? International?
Probably not, probably US based. I mean, there's just so much there. What you will, if we're on stage in five years, we won't just be talking about our successful real estate marketplace. We'll be talking about our rental marketplace, which actually is quite large.
We just don't monetize it heavily today, but we'll be talking about the success of that. We'll be talking about our mortgage marketplace. We may even be talking about something for homeowners in home design or home improvement. We've got a small stake in the ground there.
But down the line, how someone will talk about Zillow is anything related to homes. So the vision and sort of the marketing vision for me is that when someone's 21, say, looking for their first rental home, today they download the Zillow rental app and they find that. And every year, when they look for a new rental or renegotiate their rent, Zillow is a part of that. So really, they're engaging with us over the course of the year.
At some point, they start thinking, should I rent? Or should I buy? They shift over to Zillow real estate. Search for mortgages, get pre-qualified.
Buy a home. 75% of people within the first year of buying a home do some sort of remodeling projects. They use Zillow Diggs for that. Refinance by their next home.
The point being that we do and we will increasingly have a reason and a way to communicate with people their entire lives as long as they live somewhere. Let's talk a little bit about the culture. What has kept you there for 10 years? What's kept me at Zillow for 10 years has been the big ideas.
We're going after in the leadership. Spencer is a tremendous leader. I've now worked with him for 15 years. In fact, our entire team, our entire executive team that was with Zillow in the beginning 10 years ago is still here.
That's very, very rare. Four years post IPO for a company to have its top executive team and completely intact. And the reason for that is because we still believe that we're just getting started, that there's so much more ahead of us to come. And you can see that in the way we make decisions.
We make decisions for the long term. And culturally, you'll see that a lot around Zillow too. Something else that I think is highly unusual for a public company, you walk into Zillow, spend a month with us, come to any company meeting. You'll never once hear somebody bring up stock price.
You'll never hear Spencer bring it up at a company meeting or end of the year company meeting. And the reason why is because near term, it's not important to us. We're a growth stock. We're going to go like this.
What we are building for and what we want our employees to build for and become passionate about is the opportunity long term down the road. And if they're focused on the short term, they're not going to make the right decisions. They're going to make trade offs. So it's something that's actually quite taboo, Zillow, to talk about stock price.
Because we want employees who shouldn't care what happens to the stock tomorrow because they're going to be with us for the next five years. And they're with us because they really deeply believe in what we're building and growing for the long term. Here come my few zingers before we open it to the floor. What's one thing that you and Spencer disagree on?
His treadmill desk, which he walks on. Which, by the way, is like six feet from my desk. Because I believe that if you walk slowly at a two mile pace through meetings, it's not, I mean, you'll burn some calories, it's not a real exercise. I think he should go, I would more go for a run.
I mean, I will say one thing about Zillow, culturally, that's important. Everyone has a say, and you will just as much, we could be arguing back. Everyone has an opinion. I mean, I've seen people at all levels strongly disagree with Spencer on something, and he respects that.
I mean, you have to back up what you're saying. But he respects that. And sometimes the senior manager who's 27 may make the point that turns something in a whole direction and may drive what we do. And that's something culturally that's very important that everyone has a say.
There's not sort of this hierarchy of how decisions are made, and that's really important. My last question for you, the question is, what's a core leadership principle of your careers? You mentioned sensors, how do you lead? Well, there's, I guess a couple things.
We have a set of core values. It's a little bit, we really do kind of live and breathe, and there's a couple that are my favorites. One is move fast, think big. And it speaks a little bit to the taking big swings.
One is Z as a team sport, meaning leadership is not about telling people what to do. It's about hiring the absolute best people you can, and then say, how can I empower and coach and help them to do their best work. So even today, I'm chief marketing officer, but I have a large team. And I have a lot of great people who actually do the marketing today.
I'm not that beautiful TV commercial. I'd love to say that I came up with the idea and created it, but I didn't. I have an amazing team that did. But it's how do I empower them?
How do I keep them engaged every day? How do I give them the resources and the connections and the coaching they need to go do amazing work like that? And that's something that Spencer taught me. Spencer, one of his mantra is actually is higher better than you.
And that's the true mark of a leader. Don't be afraid to hire someone who is smarter, faster, more knowledgeable or better than you. If you're intimidated by that, then you're not a great leader. You're a great leader to hire the best people you can and then say, what can I do to make them do their best work?
That's going to do it for this week's edition of Motley Fool Money. Our engineer is Steve Broido. Our producer is Mac Greer. I'm Chris Hill.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.