Robert Reffkin had a hard time fitting in when he was growing up: raised by a single mom in Berkeley California, he was both bi-racial and Jewish, and had to learn to "feel comfortable with being uncomfortable." Even though he was a self-described C student, he was admitted to Columbia and landed a series of prestigious investment banking jobs, but often felt like he was failing.
Then in 2012, Robert was tasked with writing a business plan as part of a job interview, but the plan was so intriguing that he was encouraged to launch it as an actual business. So with a partner, Robert launched Compass, a real estate company that focused on building technology to make agents' jobs easier.
Less than ten years after launch, Compass is a publicly traded real estate brokerage with about 20,000 agents, valued at around $6 billion.
1:18 - Intro
3:44 - Robert’s parents
11:53 - Becoming comfortable as an outsider
15:50 - Robert’s relationship with music
17:54 - Selling rasta gear and DJing in high school
20:32 - Graduating from Columbia in two and a half years
22:54 - Interviewing for McKinsey
25:04 - Losing $1,000,000 in the stock market
27:17 - Returning to business school
28:16 - Experiencing inequality as a banker
31:07 - Working at The White House and at Goldman Sachs
33:06 - Finding real estate
37:16 - Coming up with a business idea
39:54 - Meeting Ori Allon
41:59 - Launching
43:57 - Changing the model
49:53 - Finding the best agents
55:15 - Fixing the real estate business
61:38 - Things take off
66:23 - Beating the competition
67:36 - Failures
68:59 - Criticisms
71:11 - 2020 changes the real estate industry
73:50 - Robert’s mom becomes an employee
76:42 - The fear of failure
78:30 - Luck vs. hard work
Compass
Ori Allon
Robert Reffkin
Woodstock
Souls of Mischief - 93 ‘til Infinity
McKinsey Consulting
Lazard
Vernon Jordan
Goldman Sachs
Henry Cornell
America Needs You
Bayo Ogunlesi
Leonard Steinberg
David Goldsmith post on UrbanDigs about Compass
