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When Zillow launched 20 years ago, the home-buying process happened almost entirely offline. The companys digital listings, combined with its innovative Zestimatean estimate of a homes value, based on the kind of data typically only available to real estate professionalsmarked a turning point for the housing market. Zestimates werent exact representations of value, but they put power back in the hands of prospective buyers (to sellers and agents chagrin). Their near-instant popularity was an early do your research internet moment. Fast-forward to the present day, and Zillow, which has a $13 billion market cap and reports earnings after the market close on February 10, is once again under pressure. In partnership with First Street, a provider of climate risk data, Zillow had been publishing climate risk scores for the homes on its platform. But some homeowners have balked at their scores, and some have even sued. A home that First Street labels as high-risk for flooding, for example, can quickly drop in value. Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman, who joined the company in 2009 and became CEO in 2024, is walking a careful line. Zillows brand is associated with data transparency and consumer empowerment, but an increasing share of its revenue is tied to real estate agents who pay for software tools that help them virtually stage homes and message with open house leads. On the eve of the companys Q4 2025 earnings, which analysts estimate will be $650 million in revenue for the quarter, 17.4% growth, Wacksman sat down with Fast Company to talk about how Zillow is navigating the competing demands of its two-sided marketplace, the affordability crisis, and more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Zestimates werent perfect in Zillows early days, but even so, they were never taken down. Yet in the case of First Streets climate risk scores, youve moved them to a separate place; people have to click through and leave the site. Walk me through the thinking there. Jeremy Wacksman [Photo: Zillow] When you are focused on helping the consumer, the buyer, and seller, you want to try and provide as much information as you can with the right context. That’s what the Zestimate always has been. And we show our work, right? We show what our accuracy is. It’s not an appraisal, it’s not a professional opinion, but its a great starting point. Our philosophy is: Information needs context. And its hard for it to be perfect, but more information generally, when given the right context, is better than less. Climate is the same way. We still have climate data on our site. We’ve tweaked what we show on Zillow versus what we link out to third parties, just given some of the accuracy data on some of the [climate] data sets. Get an official appraisal and figure out what you want to do, but almost every buyer and seller appreciates that data to start that conversation. It feels like part of the reason people are so sensitive to potentially a bad climate score or a bad Zestimate is just because of the state of the housing market. Inventory is tight, sales are sluggish, prices are high. There is this growing consensus that we need to make owning a home more affordable. Where do you see that tension over affordability show up on Zillow? The most stark change over the last decade has been the percentage of buyers who start with an affordability question versus start by window shopping. When I first joined, everyone just wanted to window shop. Thats how you got started. You fell in love with a home, then you hired an agent, then you figured out your financing. Now thats flipped. About half as many buyers will say, I dont even want to go get excited. I want to understand, can I do this? That massive shift, I think, is the best representation of the affordability crisis. Youre right: We are in a period where homes are incredibly unaffordable. Home prices have run up nearly 100% in some markets from pre-pandemic levels. Average rates obviously ran up, too, so your mortgage per home gets even less affordable. That’s why you’re seeing transaction volumes at 30-year lows. In a normal housing market, 5.5 million to 6 million homes will trade every year. We’re at 4 million. Relative to the last couple of years, it’s getting a little better, but if you zoom out, it is still dramatically unaffordable. What are the leading indicators you’re watching to see if the market is on the cusp of change? One way to track the overall picture is [to look at] what you consider an affordable home for a median-income household. With a 20% down payment, 30% of your income [going toward] a mortgage payment is affordable. At the markets worst, we were close to 40% on average, so almost nothing was affordable. Now its drifting back down. I think that’s what you watch for. Zillow has been investing a lot in AI. One of the features that probably a lot of people have seen is virtual staging, or the use of software to add furniture and design elements to a listing. How do you go from conception to execution on something like that? Virtual staging as a concept is not something we invented. What we invented was the ability to do it with really modest tools. We saw this technology coming; we saw 3D tours and interactive floor plans, all these things. But they were done with very high-end, very expensive cameras and media capture. How do you get that to an average real estate agent? Thats the problem. The average real estate agent has maybe a $100 360-camera or an iPhone. So we built the technology ourselves. Thats why you now see virtual staging on 5% or 10% of listings in some markets. The agents can easily capture some media; we can generate an interactive walk-through. Zillow is trying to go from being an ad-based business to supporting transactions directly. Do those tools generate the kind of leads that you’re interested in? We are fortunate to have hundreds of millions of people on Zillow every month, shopping, dreaming, starting their transaction, using us as a companion. But we only help a very small share of those people actually buy, sell, or rent a home. Virtual staging and interactive floor plans and 3D tours: Those are tools for a listing agent to go win more business. But we spend as much time on software for agents to run their business, whether that’s book their appointments, schedule showings, run their offer processes. Sometimes, the best use cases of AI are just making that more efficient. I’ll give you an example. Agents are sending hundres of messages a day to all their clients. Well, that’s something that generative AI can help with. We’re now sending millions of what we call smart messages. That’s something that sounds very simple, but think about the productivity gain. It helps them be a better guide, which helps them convert more business, which helps Zillow convert more business. Zillow is a partner to ChatGPT, which has been starting to encourage e-commerce through its interface. Some shopping categories are pretty simple. Its easy to imagine, for example, that someone is going to go to ChatGPT and say, What are the best pliers? But a home is a little bit different, right? Buying a home and selling home, for sure, it’s a very different category than most verticals. The most interesting stat to me is that as technology gets more pervasive, and as data gets bigger, buyers and sellers feel even more paralyzed, and they want even more help. The percentage of people who say, I want a full-service professional to help me is higher now than it was before the internet, before the smartphone. You could think about ChatGPT and Gemini as a source of traffic for a vertical like ours, or as a technology we can build into our experience. We think the latter is really where its going to go. The average buyer spends six to nine months shopping, sometimes longer, sometimes years on and off. In this category, you are ultimately making a set of trade-offs between what you can afford, whats available at the time, and all of your lifestyle situationsthe commute, the school, the neighborhood. You dont get to just pick from a shelf of endless supply. Thats why you end up hiring really good people to help you figure out how to make those trade-offs and figure out how to make sure you don’t make a financial decision that will cost you, because its the biggest financial decision youll ever make in your life. When it comes to figuring out the mortgage, figuring out which house to buy, figuring out how to sell your house, we think it will be this interweaving of professionals, professional software, buyers and sellers. And now you’re going to see LLMs [large language models] weave into all that. Twenty years in the future, what’s the one thing that will be really different about the search and the one thing that will be really different about the actual transaction? This category doesnt work like any other category on your phone. You open your phone and you look at shopping and ride-hailing and travel and even wealth managementso much is digital. Real estate doesnt work that way yet. Weve made a bunch of progress, but it doesnt. Its very analog. Its very paper based. Its very asynchronous. We survey consumers every year, and the stat that always sticks out to me is that more than half of homebuyers cry during the process. I’m hopeful that in 20 years, hopefully in less than 20 years, we [can make Zillow into] more of a one-stop shop. Its smart. It’s personal. It’s just all there for you.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its time we recognize the compelling case for “wellness governance.” Being a leader today requires a new level of performance. One that overrides fatigue, can suppress internal signals, and absorbs constant urgency, all while rapidly context-switching. Simply said, modern leadership demands have increased, and not everyone isor wants to stayon board. Today’s leaders face growing expectations, dynamic responsibilities, and constant pressure to perform amid deep uncertainty and an ever-accelerating business ecosystem. This is reshaping the role of leadership into something increasingly challenging to sustain, and driving CEOs like HSBCs Noel Quinn to step back and refocus on better balance between their personal and business lives. But performance and well-being arent oppositesthey enable each other. Wellness is a fundamental pillar of sustainable business practice. It provides the foundation of our clarity, stamina, and presence, and notably cant be achieved through the avoidance of burnout alone. So its not surprising that with new leadership demands seen to be untenable, CEO turnover is at record levels and continues to climb. Around 52% of C-suite executives feel overworked and burned out. Median tenure among the S&P 500 companies has decreased 20% from 6 years in 2013 to 4.8 years in 2022all at a time when HR heads are warning their boards of drying pipelines for high-potential future leaders. This pipeline crisis is magnified by Gen Z and millennial workers who are progressively rejecting traditional high-demand career pathways marked by high burnout rates. The result? Loss of key existing talent, associated productivity decline and risk during key leadership transitions, and significant erosion of internal readiness around succession planning. The data supports this: By early 2025, 44% of new S&P 500 CEOs and 52% of FTSE 100 CEOs were external hires, largely cited as due to internal benches being too thin. Easily overlooked While conversations on wellness in the workplace are advancingand for good reasonto support everyday workers, leaders are often left out of the conversation. Executives have become an easily overlooked segment in employer wellness discussions at a time when they are the ones tasked with driving them. Said differently, and ironically, companies investing in corporate wellness initiatives elevate leaders championing workforce health but can inadvertently ignore the well-being of the champions themselves. So, where does that leave top leaders of companies? And who should be safeguarding and governing their wellness? Leaders are not immune to the same physical, mental, social, and cognitive health stressors that impact any person. But they are highly skilled at maintaining external composure in muting or even ignoring the impact of such strain. Executive-level competence has a unique ability to mask the cost of declining leadership healthbut only until that cost mounts toward becoming unavoidable, and with potential to ripple far beyond the individual leaders. Market response When Apple announced that Steve Jobs was taking indefinite medical leave related to a physical health concern, its shares dopped 6%. United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz suffered a heart attack 37 days into the job, and uncertainty around his health condition contributed to short-term stock volatility and further share price drop for an already-declining stock. And when Bed Bath & Beyonds CFO died by suicide, the companys stock lost 15%. Markets are becoming more sensitive to executive illness and death. In fact, research shows that a CEOs medical leave can have a particularly negative impact on shareholder value, especially when the leave is extended or the CEO is older. A 2016 paper analyzing CEO deaths at U.S. public companies found that between 1950 and 2009 markets seemed to react more and more strongly to such deaths, even after accounting for other factors. Its clear that investor confidence is closely linked with key leader health and wellnessand it should be. Companies ranking higher in well-being yield significantly higher returns and outperform the S&P, and leadership is a key driver of this. So its no surprise that WTWs 2025 global directors and officers survey found, for the second year running, that health and safety is the No. 1 risk for directors and officers globally. Top priorities include physical health and safety in the workplace and workplace impact on mental health and well-being. Yet there is no specific mention of leadership health as a stand-alone topic of distinct risk and interest. Leadership takes a toll on health Interestingly, recent research out of Sweden found that not only is poor health associated with greater CEO turnover, but health itself predicts appointment to a CEO position. Which implies that not only should boards be governing wellness and health for C-suite leaders to increase overall effectiveness and lengthen executive tenure, but boards should also oversee health and wellness of high-potential, next-generation leaders as part of critical succession planning. The leadership track is an increasingly hard sell for next-generation leaders given the latest research on CEO aging. Using a database of CEO facial images and applied machine learning to estimate CEO age, new research shows industry distress causes faster visible agingadding an average of 1.2 years to their visual appearance for a given crisis or single period of distress. And with senior leaders today navigating an era of permacrisis, stacking and simultaneous crises could amplify this effect. Further, CEs who experience periods of industry-wide distress during their tenure are found to die significantly earlier. This research quantifies a previously little documented yet important cost associated with serving as a leaderpersonal health cost. Leadership bears very real and material health consequences, especially when exposed to increased job demands and high-stress work environments of high-profile positions. The health effect is sizable. While many are quick to criticize the perks of CEO life, research has found that reduction in longevity of CEOs is consistent even with big pay packages. This signals an important trade-off for companies and individuals alike when there is a substantial personal cost to health and life expectancy. Its no wonder newer generations may be gun-shy to take a similar path. There is an evolving fragility to traditional social contracts that key executives have with their companies. There are real yet often unspoken limits to the complexity, demands, uncertainty, and overload that individual leaders can sustain. And there is a necessary acknowledgment of the impact on individual leaders health and wellness, as well as broader amplified effects for companies. A lack of governance Leaders have a tendency to select for short-term productivity and hard-charge without needed recovery in order to remain responsive under escalating pressure “in the moment.” Take Elon Musk touting the benefits of sleep deprivation to achieve 120-hour workweeks and making a Tesla factory his primary residence for nearly three years. Most leaders focus their energy on being effective, not necessarily being well. And we havent developed sufficient governance to regulate this beyond the individuals themselves, both in the best interest of the leaders and the companies they helm. It is said to be a sign of intelligence to hold two opposing ideas at once while retaining the ability to function. This “doublethink” is equally true for balancing the health of a company (including financial health and workforce well-being) with the health of individual executives. Leaders are trained to regulate their corporate environments long before they regulate themselves, if ever at all. They often live in a state of chronic activation that is easily normalized but effectively overrides their physiology in an unsustainable way. Eventually, our bodies respond accurately to stressors and strain even if our intellect initially seeks to normalize them. And that is problematic for everyone involved. Well-being governance isnt just about the concept of self-care for leaders. Its about ensuring sustainable capacity and leadership to tap into the right level of decision-making, creative thinking, and steady engagement needed. This is what allows leaders to use both a microscope and a telescope, in parallel, to solve discrete near-term problems while driving long-term strategic efforts. Leaders are not without their own level of governance and oversight, which is typically provided by a companys board of directors and executive team. And while wellness initiatives for populations of employees are most effective when championed by senior management, wellness initiatives for leaders are arguably most effective where championed by the board and C-suite. Good stewardship Effective boards and executive teams create and preserve long-term value by acting as well-being stewards of their enterprises. This includes providing appropriate levels of well-being governance and oversight, underpinned by the fact that healthy employees make better decisions and drive superior results. Effective leaders and boards understand the connection between corporate performance and well-being, including the materiality of well-being for executive-level human capital. And corporate governance of executive wellness has evolved from an HR-led perk into a strategic board-level priority, essential for both risk management and long-term value creation. Getting this right involves formal safeguarding of the physical and mental health of senior leaders to ensure stable decision-making and organizational resilience. Ultimately, executive wellness is a “human capital” governance issue requiring top-level oversight and strategic integration. And in a way that recognizes that leadership burnout and health crises directly impact share price and operational stability. This necessitates having accountability via standing committees, such as governance or compensation committees, charged with reviewing wellness assessments and setting baseline health targets for leaders. It also means elevating succession planning to include proactive health governance so that leadership pipelines remain healthy and key person risks for executives health are mitigated. And given that effective governance requires leaders not only to oversee wellness but also to model it, boards can mandate resilience training and structured stress management for executives in ways that support upskilling and also help nurture a health-forward culture that filters down to the entire workforce. Other initiatives may include: Visible participation of executives in wellness initiatives to legitimize and destigmatize such initiatives Use of KPIs to track effectiveness at the workforce population level and for key executives and high-potential succession talent Review of data on absenteeism, retention, and healthcare offerings engagement as well as use of frameworks for auditing workplace health and safety at the executive level Tying executive compensation to health and wellness goals to emphasize the importance of prioritizing health Setting clear standards on using existing wellness initiatives and perks, as simple as ensuring leaders use a minimum proportion of their vacation days each year A fiduciary duty Forward-thinking organizations must now treat leadership health with the same rigor as financial reporting, ultimately recognizing wellness as a fiduciary duty. What began as private health concerns behind closed doors have transformed into a material business factor that now influences investor decisions, market valuations, and regulatory frameworks. At a time when nearly 70% of the C-suite are seriously considering quitting for a job that better supports their well-being, and 81% prioritize their health over advancing their career, we need to overcome old disconnects around performance and health. A strong focus on well-being is critical to both employee and executive retention. Now is the time to legitimize executive well-being and make it part of the regular corporate dialogue. It should be explored with authentic curiosity and deep urgency around how top leaders are doing as a way for companies and investors to develop new antennae. This is especially important given that recent research from Spencer Stuart shows only 22% of global CEOs feel their board provides opportunities to discuss sensitive topics such as pesonal well-being. And given CEOs shortening tenures, it is critical that boards and not just C-suite executives ensure well-being governance endures and is perpetuated. If best practice is oversight for areas most material to a business, whether to reduce risk or capture competitive advantage, it only makes sense that we ensure special wellness focus for top leaders as part of that oversight. The financial and nonfinancial impacts are impossible to ignore. And as we move from looking at executive wellness as a personal matter to recognizing it as a fundamental pillar of sustainable business practice, its time we recognize a novel truth: Executive wellness governance really is the new corporate imperative.
Category:
E-Commerce
At the new ad agency Ability Machine in Nashville, creatives have access to a full suite of tools ranging from podcasting and photography studios to lighting equipment and design software. They also have quiet sensory rooms, dimmable lights, and a flexible seating system. Every part of the agency, from the way it tackles projects to the physical space it works from, is designed with its staff in mind, who are all adults with intellectual disabilities. The Ability Machine describes itself as a studio powered by neurodiverse minds that turns creativity into both purpose and a paycheck for adults with varying abilities. So far, Ability Machine has already worked with multiple local brands, as well as national names like Mercedes-Benz and Kind, on a range of creative assets from slogans to artwork for retail spaces and ad campaigns. [Photo: courtesy the Ability Machine] The agency is a newly formalized offshoot of the autism-focused nonprofit On the Avenue, which provides a studio space for adults with intellectual disabilities to pursue creative passions and, in some cases, find employment on a range of projects. On the Avenue founder Tom Woodard has run the nonprofit for the past 10 years. Before that, he had a long career in advertising and brand building, primarily helping brands create signature jingles (you might remember him as the voice of the iconic Budweiser Super Bowl frogs). He says the idea for Ability Machine grew slowly over time, as he began bringing some of his creative projects to the community members at On the Avenue and asking for their input. While there are other programs out there for adults with intellectual disabilities, Woodard says he doesnt know of any other spaces that encourage their members to pursue their own creative workand ultimately leverage those passions into paid opportunities in the ad industry. A space to build professional skills Ability Machine is located inside On the Avenues 6,000-square-foot warehouse space, which is already equipped with a podcast room, sound studio, multitrack recording software, and more. Its also a work environment thats been designed with accessibility as a key priority, meaning members have access to different types of seating depending on their needs, sensory rooms to mitigate overstimulation, and customizable light and sound settings. It’s really cool because if you’ve got somebody that says, Oh, quick, we need a storyboard written, we can turn to a citizen and employ them immediately, Woodard says. There’s a familiarity of the building, of the staff, of their surroundings that someone with an intellectual disability really needs and flourishes in. [Photo: courtesy the Ability Machine] Days at On the Avenue are organized like a typical work day. Members arrive at 8 a.m., open the day with a group conversation, take a walk around the neighborhood, and then engage in something called assignment-based learning, which Woodard says is comparable to an individualized education program (IEP). The goal is to offer members a structured, productive environment that, for many adults with intellectual disabilities, can be difficult to find after high school ends at the age of 18. Eighty-five percent of all folks with intellectual disabilities are underemployed or unemployed, Woodard says. That was just a bad number. It needed somebody to step up and do something. Assignment-based learning at On the Avenue consists of projects guided by the interests of members. For example, Woodard says, one member named Riley has turned his love of college sports into a podcast called Rowdy Rileys Sports Review, where hes interviewed more than 15 NFL players and coaches. The team at On the Avenue is now looking for partners to help monetize the podcast. [Photo: courtesy the Ability Machine] People always ask me, ‘What’s the outcome that you’re looking for?’ Woodard says. And I go, I don’t know. It’s like when you go to collegenobody says, Hey, this is where you’re going to go work afterwards. We simply try to build those job skills, those life skills, those roommate skills for these individuals through creativity, which makes it fun. Its through projects like Rileys podcast that the idea for Ability Machine slowly germinated. The concept took real shape, though, when Woodard brought a project he was working on through his own creative agency for a Nashville candy shop called Goo Goo to members at On the Avenue. I remember we were doing the remodel of the Goo Goos 3rd Avenue store, Woodard says. [The Goo Goo team] came in and we were sitting around our table, and I brought a bunch of folks that were at On the Avenue to sit at the table. One guy started drawing purple goo goos, and doing different things, and it brought something out in them. [Image: courtesy the Ability Machine] After that meeting, members at On the Avenue helped complete the physical design of the 3rd Avenue location, as well as developing the slogan, Never Chocolate Alone, as a reference to Goo Goos bars with multiple mix-ins. [Image: courtesy the Ability Machine] From there, Woodard began pitching the budding creative agency to other companies, leading to more projects like a collaboration with Kind (maker of breakfast and snack bars) to create art in its New York City offices; a series of custom thank you cards and coloring books for a local Mercedes dealership; and an ad campaign for the brewery Music City Beer Co. Within the last few months, Woodard formalized this work into the official Ability Machine brand, with help from the creative and strategic partner Lewis and web development partner Ally. [Image: courtesy the Ability Machine] A new kind of ad agency The Ability Machines work model is flexiblesome of its employees are full-time staffers, while others are community members at On the Avenue who can opt to contribute part-time for a project and receive an hourly wage. The system is built to ensure that members can work on schedules that make sense for them, while gaining hands-on professional experience. Currently, the Ability Machine has several new projects in the works, but Woodard is hoping to spread the word about the agencys model to a broader base. Until established ad agencies are able to adjust their own office spaces to accommodate workers with intellectual disabilities, Woodard says, hiring the Ability Machine on smaller projects is a great way to support the community. I didn’t want to build an agency just to build another agency, Woodard says. I wanted to build something with purpose.
Category:
E-Commerce
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