#49 Inc500 Fastest Growing Companies in America (2021): How to Compete With a Multi-Billion Dollar Business Like Zillow with John Berkowitz, CEO and Founder of OJO Labs

CEO SECRETS

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to CEO Secrets. Our special guest for today was named an Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2021 Central Texas Award winner. He is the CEO and Founder of OJO Labs, which ranked 49th out of 5000 of the fastest-growing companies in America. I’m super excited to welcome on the show, John Berkowitz.
John came from a family of entrepreneurs. This fueled his desire to seek out problems that have never been solved before, find solutions, and build a business around them. In 2005, he co-founded Yodle, an all-in-one digital marketing platform for more than 50,000 SMB customers. It was later acquired by Web.com for $342 million.
However, John felt unfulfilled after the exit from Yodle. He felt that he didn’t meet their company’s goal, making a significant difference in favor of small business owners. This is why in 2015, he started OJO Labs to empower real estate consumers to make better decisions with the help of deeply personalized technology.
Today, OJO Labs has expanded to five regions with over 500 employees. They’ve also acquired several technology companies over the years and are expected to grow by 250% by the end of the year.
Let us hear from John as he shares how his biggest failure led him to build a business that is a powerhouse in the industry and provides real-world value.
Top Takeaways:
9:07 How the Prime Minister of St.Lucia jumpstarted their company’s startup.
12:49 What do OJO Labs’ growth and growing bamboo have in common?
15:10 Does John consider Zillow as a competitor?
16:34 What is OJO Labs’ strategy to overcome a behemoth like Zillow?
17:42 Why not being number one on Google doesn't mean you can't be a more prominent company
17:55 The importance of identifying the right partners
20:36 The one feature you could focus on that would just suck off so much traffic from portals like Realtor.com and Zillow
22:43 The most significant innovation in real estate
24:24 Why John thinks that iBuyers and cash offers are just iterations on an old business
25:37 What makes OJO Labs significantly different or better than Zillow?
27:17 The thing that John has been obsessing about for the last five years
29:44 What was John’s most significant failure?
33:26 Why John feels super-uncomfortable when it comes to awards
34:51 When to raise money, and when to bootstrap?

To get a hold of John Berkowitz, send an email to:
[e-mail]

Episode Transcript