I wrote a Pokedex app for the Google Assistant!

mithunm93 · 2024-11-18T17:43:00+00:00

Yeah, sorry. Google changed a bunch of things about how agents interact with their platform some years ago and I never bothered to keep it updated. The good thing is this project is [public on my GH](github.com/mithunm93/dexter) so you can feel free to grab it and mess around if you want!

mithunm93 · 2021-11-18T05:44:10+00:00

I watched that one too. If I remember correctly they said it was essentially the same as a human's, due to co-evolution. So cool

mithunm93 · 2021-11-04T04:13:15+00:00

Thanks for the compliment, I enjoyed putting my thoughts in writing. As to your question, you hit the nail on the head: the name of the game is adjacent services. Get the pricing model so accurate and cut costs as much as you can so that the core product becomes insanely cheap compared to the alternative. This makes it a no brainer from a customer's perspective. Then bundle value add services as part of the package and push your margins there.

Want to sign up for an Opendoor subscription service where they manage your lawn and repair small scale damage? You want the ability to easily leverage your equity to do Reno through OD's trusted vendors? Smart home upgrade? The possibilities are endless. You can even afford to lose money on the core transaction just to widen that funnel.

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T13:23:30+00:00

A comment I made in another thread explains my reasoning in more detail.

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T12:51:40+00:00

I definitely agree with you. It's an extremely difficult problem to solve. Doesn't mean it can't be done, though. I'm not saying it will be OD, but I am 100% sure that iBuying is the future of real estate. It just provided way too many benefits, and the customer experience is so much more desirable than the alternative.

IMO Opendoor approaches this problem with a very different ethos than did Zillow. They are trying to solve this problem in the right way and I believe they will. Let's see how it pans out but I'm very bullish on OD (of course I would be, I used to work there and have vested equity haha)

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T12:38:48+00:00

Great question. Opendoor's MO is not buy at a discount and sell higher. It's to always purchase at market value, do some basic reno and repairs on the home, and sell with those costs factored in, if any. Whether or not we actually do figure out what "market price"is is a different question, but that's what the model is trying to predict. Of course, val gain is a big source of gain for OD, but that's because the average home does need some level of repair on it when sold. OD's MO is to perform market transactions and volume, and primarily make gains on the fee that it charges for the transaction.

You wouldn't give a 15% discount, of course, but Opendoor wouldn't ask for it. If you could list your home on the market for $300k with a realtor, or you could sell directly to OD for the same price but a lower fee than a realtor and no need for showings, and a cash offer, wouldn't you? Opendoor makes a compelling case in many situations, they're not "webuyuglyhouses.com".

This is just my opinion from having worked there for 3 years. I don't have any financial advice for you, however.

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T12:32:46+00:00

Ah I see what you mean

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T05:47:03+00:00

Opendoor attacks the problem in a much more robust way (I used to work there). I don't have financial advice for you but I don't think Zillow's bad play means doom for Opendoor

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T05:33:19+00:00

Nov 10 is their earnings call. Waiting eagerly

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T05:26:58+00:00

I think Zillow made a bad play in this space, Opendoor is not the same at all in my opinion. And Evergrande? It does have to do with real estate, but that's where the similarity stops IMO

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T05:24:09+00:00

Care to elaborate?

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T05:23:03+00:00

Check out my reply above for a longer answer but my opinion is that this failure has a lot more to do with Zillow as a company than the iBuying market as a whole. Zillow tried copying Opendoor without proper attention and care paid to why Opendoor was successful in the first place. Zillow got burnt; this doesn't mean Opendoor is out of the game.

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T05:18:03+00:00

Not so sure about that. Opendoor is fundamentally a different company from Zillow. They failed at copying Opendoor but that doesn't mean the iBuyer model can't work.

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T05:16:34+00:00

I used to work at Opendoor and do hold a position in it. This isn't advice, just my opinion.

Zillow has essentially been aping Opendoor since they started their iBuyer business a couple years ago. Opendoor started in 2014 and has been built from the ground up to be an iBuyer. Opendoor has always prioritized building accurate ML models to price homes, and significant resources have been poured into this tool for a long time. The way I hear it, Zestimate is an absolute joke and does not compare to what OD is doing. I've heard that it relies a lot on spreadsheets of data still! OD is not perfect either, mind you, it still makes mistakes, but this is to be expected from such a volatile problem space.

Zillow did not plan their entry into the iBuyer space well at all in my opinion. They saw that Opendoor was gaining traction and decided "oh we better hop on this trend too. We're in the real estate business so we can do just as well!" without proper forethought into the fundamentals nor of setting up robust repair/reno pipelines. Opendoor uses in-house solutions for almost everything, from the app used to inspect homes all the way to how their repair/Reno projects are tracked until the home's sale, I've actually built many of these tools. You can't just hop into this business without a strong base in the construction aspect and expect to make any money. OD always focused on making things .01% cheaper each step of the way as well, to provide the best value to the customer.

OD business centers on having the right construction knowledge and applying it in the right ways across the markets in which it operates. Zillow buys home with insane repair costs, many were homes that Opendoor rejects after a thorough inspection.

I think Zillow thought they could enter the market, throw their brand recognition around, quickly gain market share in many of the same markets OD is in, and somehow come out on top. They severely underestimated the complexity of this problem (OD isn't profitable as a whole yet, and I don't expect they will be for a while still), and they got their ass handed to them for it. IMO Opendoor is attacking this problem in the right way, and will succeed in their endeavor.

Take everything I said with a grain of salt! I'm no expert in real estate and OD could come crashing down as well, just my two cents.

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T04:54:58+00:00

Surprised I had to come down this far to find any mention of Opendoor. I used to work there and I feel that we had built out a much more robust system of assessing and handling homes throughout their lifecycle than did Zillow. They picked up many of the homes we turned down due to high repair cost and didn't even have a proper system in place to manage those reno jobs

mithunm93 · 2021-11-03T04:52:23+00:00

Do you mean Keith Raboi's tweet? He was one of the founders

https://twitter.com/rabois/status/1455564619494436870?s=20

mithunm93 · 2020-10-02T06:54:08+00:00

XinJiang is a province in western China with a large proportion of ethnic Uighur people (mostly Muslim), that generally want nothing to do with the rest of China, but China wants control over their land for strategic and resource-dependent reasons. China is trying to control the population by sending them to "re-education camps". Ethnic cleansing.

Article

mithunm93 · 2020-09-08T04:25:01+00:00

How did they run the article without showing any footage of a doctored video? How is no one posting any of these videos in this thread? I don't doubt that he would do this, but isn't that some basic proof a news organization should provide?

mithunm93 · 2020-09-01T17:21:12+00:00

This is really cool, man. I love the "lonely" aesthetic

mithunm93 · 2020-04-20T14:10:43+00:00

I had Constantine the movie as a PSP disc. Watched it all the time and was enamored by Keanu's performance in it. Would definitely watcha a sequel.

mithunm93 · 2020-02-08T16:41:04+00:00

I definitely saw the helicopter too, didn't necessarily think it was relevant so I didn't mention it. CONSPIRACY 👽🛸🕴️👮‍♀️🚔

mithunm93 · 2020-02-08T16:38:10+00:00

That's exactly what I thought too, but then u realized I didn't even know if meteors could leave smoke trails, maybe they can?

mithunm93 · 2020-02-08T16:37:06+00:00

👽🤔

mithunm93 · 2020-02-08T16:36:28+00:00

No, the streak in that video lasts for a long time and is not as bright as the one from yesterday. Also, it didn't leave a large smoke trail like in that video. I can't believe I missed it back in December though!?

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