Zillow AI Project

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49 views4/1/2025
Zestimate goes wrong - and the consequences are felt. If only he could fix that error rate.

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00:00 - 00:05CEO of Zillow calls me and says
00:05 - 00:07"Head of AI - We need to do more AI!
00:07 - 00:10...raise our stock price.
00:11 - 00:16I tell him we can use that data to buy and flip houses. Data is our moat.
00:17 - 00:21Error rate was was 7%.
00:21 - 00:247%
00:29 - 00:31.
00:31 - 00:34We bought like 30000 homes
00:38 - 00:40.
00:41 - 00:47we only ended up selling like half of them. Now we have 10,000 homes
00:47 - 00:50And we can't sell one of them.
00:50 - 00:56We had to write down $300M in inventory.
00:58 - 00:59.
00:59 - 01:01Stop price plummets
01:04 - 01:06down 40% in one day
01:06 - 01:08down 40% in one day
01:13 - 01:14.
01:14 - 01:16CEO calls me into his office
01:16 - 01:20shuts the door - starts yelling -
01:21 - 01:27says 'what on earth happened???'
01:35 - 01:36you told me
01:36 - 01:39Error rate was supposed to be less than 2%!
01:41 - 01:44I say - 'Boss.
01:44 - 01:47Boss. I'm going to fix it right now.
01:47 - 01:49let me re-run the model'
01:50 - 01:53I run up a $1M amazon bill.
01:54 - 01:56CIO TURNS RED
01:56 - 01:58RED IN THE FACE
01:58 - 02:02They just fire me on the spot
02:05 - 02:07escort me out of the building.
02:10 - 02:11.
02:11 - 02:13I try...
02:15 - 02:17I try to find another job..
02:17 - 02:20everyone calls me the "zestimate guy"
02:21 - 02:28I can't find work anywhere - no one will touch me. I'm nuclear and need to change professions
02:29 - 02:30Now what?
02:30 - 02:32I'm a Field CTO now!
02:36 - 02:39But no one in seattle will meet me.
02:40 - 02:42Everyone hates me.
02:50 - 02:55I had to move my entire family.
02:56 - 02:58Where did you go?
02:58 - 03:04I had to move to middle of nowhere
03:04 - 03:09Iowa or Nebraska or something like that....on my way out of town
03:09 - 03:11I call the CEO
03:16 - 03:20I asked for a discount on one of their houses
03:23 - 03:26In all my life
03:31 - 03:36I've never seen anyone so mad