It\u2019s a stuffed animal that Goldman gave us at our IPO: a squirrel with a ridiculous, rabid expression on its face. I never knew whether it was a token of appreciation or just a gentle poke. But it represents the way Redfin has thought of ourselves from our start-up days in a stifling apartment to becoming a billion-dollar public company: supposedly savage, a tad self-mocking.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Rabid-Squirrel-282x300.png\")
Many Employees Went Feral<\/strong><\/h5>\nWe failed so consistently to meet corporate norms that we didn\u2019t always try. We relied on each employee to do so much that many went feral: wary of bureaucracy, restless to get results. Like any business, Redfin has been a grubby grind, and a welter of triumphs and mistakes, but what we hoped to stand for as an independent company is a rejection of corporate hogwash and executive plunder, and the aspiration that everyone\u2019s work can be meaningful and maybe even beautiful.<\/p>\n
What We’ll Take With Us Wherever We Go<\/strong><\/h5>\nNow I know that a stuffed animal can hardly stand in for all that, but still for this last leg of our move, it\u2019ll have to do, sitting on our lap in the cab of the truck, reminding us of what we want to take with us wherever we go.<\/p>\n
Redfin Was Always Different. No, Really Different.<\/b><\/h2>\nAvoiding the Prison Dentist<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat\u2019s most important to take with us is that Redfin has never been conventional. One of our first agents went to prison for running a pot farm. When asked why he spent his last months of freedom showing houses, he said that our benefits let him get work done that would\u2019ve otherwise been handled by the prison dentist.<\/p>\n
A Russian Spy<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother agent was arrested as a Russian spy. When Scott Nagel, our long-time president, called to tell me, I asked him, \u201cWas it you?\u201d Thus began a history of sometimes getting attention for the wrong reasons. Our first advertising expense was to plaster the Redfin logo all over a car that we entered into a demolition derby. When Redfin listed my home for sale, a competitor took a chainsaw to our yard sign.<\/p>\n
A Sea of Love<\/strong><\/h2>\n\u201cI Think That Guy Wants To Put You In The Hospital\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nCompany events had the same flair for fiasco. At our first picnic, our HR leader set up a boxing ring with oversized gloves, shuttling between contestants to say, \u201cI think this guy wants to put you in the hospital,\u201d which is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Taylor-Connolly-187x300.png\")
Taylor Connolly Just Before the Fight<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSprinting Through A Scavenger Hunt<\/strong><\/h5>\nIn our Redferno sales kickoff, we asked every employee to sprint through a scavenger hunt. After participants complained of being drenched in sweat or left behind, the next year\u2019s contest was in cars driven by our youngest employees, at speeds we should\u2019ve anticipated and still regret.<\/p>\n
The Night Is Only Over When Bridget Says It\u2019s Over<\/strong><\/h5>\nLater, when we tried to organize a company trip to Whistler, a colleague let us borrow his Land Cruiser, which was impounded by border agents with drug-sniffing dogs. Our board finally asked if there was anyone even in charge of these things. I blamed Bridget Frey, our chief technology officer and mother of two; she was known for hosting after-parties at hip hop clubs, then taking the survivors to see the sunrise from a Waffle House.<\/p>\n
The Best Possible Board\u2026 But Also A Little Weird!<\/b><\/h2>\n\u201cHave You Ever FedExed a Horse?\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nEven the board had its quirks. Our founding chairman hired me only after another candidate asked for severance. A second board member asked if any of our execs had ever FedExed a horse. A third had a vacation home made of rubber. A fourth flew across the country the day I told him I\u2019d lost sight of how to be good at my job and good at raising my children. This is a kindness I will never forget. I organized two board hikes into the mountains, and forgot to bring food for both.<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Flew-Horse.png\")
OMG You Really Can FedEx A Horse!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nNobody Talks About How Fun It Is To Be a CEO<\/b><\/h2>\nEight Years Of Days, Another Eight Through the Nights<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn one of those trips, a board member said he\u2019d been a CEO for 16 years, even though his LinkedIn profile said eight. \u201cEight during the day,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnother eight worrying about it in my sleep.\u201d It\u2019s true what everyone says about the job, which has probably shortened my life.<\/p>\n
Haboobs in the Distance<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut the job\u2019s also fabulously fun. Just before taping a 60-Minutes segment from our tiny office, the make-up artist told me my interview was likely to go well. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be getting powder if we wanted to see you sweat.\u201d For a week, I rode a rented bicycle up a mountain where Netflix was shooting a real estate reality show.<\/p>\n
Sneaking Into Stranger Things<\/strong><\/h5>\nTrying to sneak into the nearby “Stranger Things” set felt like breaking into Hawkins Lab. Hanging with the cast, many of whom knew each other from a Survivor gig in the Philippines, felt like being at camp. The NFL player who was my costar led us in prayer before every segment. Riding back, swarms of bats would flutter by my face.<\/p>\n
\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Buy-My-House.png\")
Making A Reality TV Show Was Really Fun!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAn Underdog for 20 Years<\/b><\/h2>\nTwo Left Shoes<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Carollo-Family-300x300.jpg\")
Jim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Glenn-and-Jim-225x300.jpg\")
Glenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Now I know that a stuffed animal can hardly stand in for all that, but still for this last leg of our move, it\u2019ll have to do, sitting on our lap in the cab of the truck, reminding us of what we want to take with us wherever we go.<\/p>\n
Redfin Was Always Different. No, Really Different.<\/b><\/h2>\nAvoiding the Prison Dentist<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat\u2019s most important to take with us is that Redfin has never been conventional. One of our first agents went to prison for running a pot farm. When asked why he spent his last months of freedom showing houses, he said that our benefits let him get work done that would\u2019ve otherwise been handled by the prison dentist.<\/p>\n
A Russian Spy<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother agent was arrested as a Russian spy. When Scott Nagel, our long-time president, called to tell me, I asked him, \u201cWas it you?\u201d Thus began a history of sometimes getting attention for the wrong reasons. Our first advertising expense was to plaster the Redfin logo all over a car that we entered into a demolition derby. When Redfin listed my home for sale, a competitor took a chainsaw to our yard sign.<\/p>\n
A Sea of Love<\/strong><\/h2>\n\u201cI Think That Guy Wants To Put You In The Hospital\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nCompany events had the same flair for fiasco. At our first picnic, our HR leader set up a boxing ring with oversized gloves, shuttling between contestants to say, \u201cI think this guy wants to put you in the hospital,\u201d which is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nTaylor Connolly Just Before the Fight<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSprinting Through A Scavenger Hunt<\/strong><\/h5>\nIn our Redferno sales kickoff, we asked every employee to sprint through a scavenger hunt. After participants complained of being drenched in sweat or left behind, the next year\u2019s contest was in cars driven by our youngest employees, at speeds we should\u2019ve anticipated and still regret.<\/p>\n
The Night Is Only Over When Bridget Says It\u2019s Over<\/strong><\/h5>\nLater, when we tried to organize a company trip to Whistler, a colleague let us borrow his Land Cruiser, which was impounded by border agents with drug-sniffing dogs. Our board finally asked if there was anyone even in charge of these things. I blamed Bridget Frey, our chief technology officer and mother of two; she was known for hosting after-parties at hip hop clubs, then taking the survivors to see the sunrise from a Waffle House.<\/p>\n
The Best Possible Board\u2026 But Also A Little Weird!<\/b><\/h2>\n\u201cHave You Ever FedExed a Horse?\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nEven the board had its quirks. Our founding chairman hired me only after another candidate asked for severance. A second board member asked if any of our execs had ever FedExed a horse. A third had a vacation home made of rubber. A fourth flew across the country the day I told him I\u2019d lost sight of how to be good at my job and good at raising my children. This is a kindness I will never forget. I organized two board hikes into the mountains, and forgot to bring food for both.<\/p>\n
\nOMG You Really Can FedEx A Horse!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nNobody Talks About How Fun It Is To Be a CEO<\/b><\/h2>\nEight Years Of Days, Another Eight Through the Nights<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn one of those trips, a board member said he\u2019d been a CEO for 16 years, even though his LinkedIn profile said eight. \u201cEight during the day,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnother eight worrying about it in my sleep.\u201d It\u2019s true what everyone says about the job, which has probably shortened my life.<\/p>\n
Haboobs in the Distance<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut the job\u2019s also fabulously fun. Just before taping a 60-Minutes segment from our tiny office, the make-up artist told me my interview was likely to go well. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be getting powder if we wanted to see you sweat.\u201d For a week, I rode a rented bicycle up a mountain where Netflix was shooting a real estate reality show.<\/p>\n
Sneaking Into Stranger Things<\/strong><\/h5>\nTrying to sneak into the nearby “Stranger Things” set felt like breaking into Hawkins Lab. Hanging with the cast, many of whom knew each other from a Survivor gig in the Philippines, felt like being at camp. The NFL player who was my costar led us in prayer before every segment. Riding back, swarms of bats would flutter by my face.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nMaking A Reality TV Show Was Really Fun!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAn Underdog for 20 Years<\/b><\/h2>\nTwo Left Shoes<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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What\u2019s most important to take with us is that Redfin has never been conventional. One of our first agents went to prison for running a pot farm. When asked why he spent his last months of freedom showing houses, he said that our benefits let him get work done that would\u2019ve otherwise been handled by the prison dentist.<\/p>\n
A Russian Spy<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother agent was arrested as a Russian spy. When Scott Nagel, our long-time president, called to tell me, I asked him, \u201cWas it you?\u201d Thus began a history of sometimes getting attention for the wrong reasons. Our first advertising expense was to plaster the Redfin logo all over a car that we entered into a demolition derby. When Redfin listed my home for sale, a competitor took a chainsaw to our yard sign.<\/p>\n
A Sea of Love<\/strong><\/h2>\n\u201cI Think That Guy Wants To Put You In The Hospital\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nCompany events had the same flair for fiasco. At our first picnic, our HR leader set up a boxing ring with oversized gloves, shuttling between contestants to say, \u201cI think this guy wants to put you in the hospital,\u201d which is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nTaylor Connolly Just Before the Fight<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSprinting Through A Scavenger Hunt<\/strong><\/h5>\nIn our Redferno sales kickoff, we asked every employee to sprint through a scavenger hunt. After participants complained of being drenched in sweat or left behind, the next year\u2019s contest was in cars driven by our youngest employees, at speeds we should\u2019ve anticipated and still regret.<\/p>\n
The Night Is Only Over When Bridget Says It\u2019s Over<\/strong><\/h5>\nLater, when we tried to organize a company trip to Whistler, a colleague let us borrow his Land Cruiser, which was impounded by border agents with drug-sniffing dogs. Our board finally asked if there was anyone even in charge of these things. I blamed Bridget Frey, our chief technology officer and mother of two; she was known for hosting after-parties at hip hop clubs, then taking the survivors to see the sunrise from a Waffle House.<\/p>\n
The Best Possible Board\u2026 But Also A Little Weird!<\/b><\/h2>\n\u201cHave You Ever FedExed a Horse?\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nEven the board had its quirks. Our founding chairman hired me only after another candidate asked for severance. A second board member asked if any of our execs had ever FedExed a horse. A third had a vacation home made of rubber. A fourth flew across the country the day I told him I\u2019d lost sight of how to be good at my job and good at raising my children. This is a kindness I will never forget. I organized two board hikes into the mountains, and forgot to bring food for both.<\/p>\n
\nOMG You Really Can FedEx A Horse!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nNobody Talks About How Fun It Is To Be a CEO<\/b><\/h2>\nEight Years Of Days, Another Eight Through the Nights<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn one of those trips, a board member said he\u2019d been a CEO for 16 years, even though his LinkedIn profile said eight. \u201cEight during the day,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnother eight worrying about it in my sleep.\u201d It\u2019s true what everyone says about the job, which has probably shortened my life.<\/p>\n
Haboobs in the Distance<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut the job\u2019s also fabulously fun. Just before taping a 60-Minutes segment from our tiny office, the make-up artist told me my interview was likely to go well. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be getting powder if we wanted to see you sweat.\u201d For a week, I rode a rented bicycle up a mountain where Netflix was shooting a real estate reality show.<\/p>\n
Sneaking Into Stranger Things<\/strong><\/h5>\nTrying to sneak into the nearby “Stranger Things” set felt like breaking into Hawkins Lab. Hanging with the cast, many of whom knew each other from a Survivor gig in the Philippines, felt like being at camp. The NFL player who was my costar led us in prayer before every segment. Riding back, swarms of bats would flutter by my face.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nMaking A Reality TV Show Was Really Fun!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAn Underdog for 20 Years<\/b><\/h2>\nTwo Left Shoes<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. 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\u201cI Think That Guy Wants To Put You In The Hospital\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nCompany events had the same flair for fiasco. At our first picnic, our HR leader set up a boxing ring with oversized gloves, shuttling between contestants to say, \u201cI think this guy wants to put you in the hospital,\u201d which is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nTaylor Connolly Just Before the Fight<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSprinting Through A Scavenger Hunt<\/strong><\/h5>\nIn our Redferno sales kickoff, we asked every employee to sprint through a scavenger hunt. After participants complained of being drenched in sweat or left behind, the next year\u2019s contest was in cars driven by our youngest employees, at speeds we should\u2019ve anticipated and still regret.<\/p>\n
The Night Is Only Over When Bridget Says It\u2019s Over<\/strong><\/h5>\nLater, when we tried to organize a company trip to Whistler, a colleague let us borrow his Land Cruiser, which was impounded by border agents with drug-sniffing dogs. Our board finally asked if there was anyone even in charge of these things. I blamed Bridget Frey, our chief technology officer and mother of two; she was known for hosting after-parties at hip hop clubs, then taking the survivors to see the sunrise from a Waffle House.<\/p>\n
The Best Possible Board\u2026 But Also A Little Weird!<\/b><\/h2>\n\u201cHave You Ever FedExed a Horse?\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nEven the board had its quirks. Our founding chairman hired me only after another candidate asked for severance. A second board member asked if any of our execs had ever FedExed a horse. A third had a vacation home made of rubber. A fourth flew across the country the day I told him I\u2019d lost sight of how to be good at my job and good at raising my children. This is a kindness I will never forget. I organized two board hikes into the mountains, and forgot to bring food for both.<\/p>\n
\nOMG You Really Can FedEx A Horse!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nNobody Talks About How Fun It Is To Be a CEO<\/b><\/h2>\nEight Years Of Days, Another Eight Through the Nights<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn one of those trips, a board member said he\u2019d been a CEO for 16 years, even though his LinkedIn profile said eight. \u201cEight during the day,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnother eight worrying about it in my sleep.\u201d It\u2019s true what everyone says about the job, which has probably shortened my life.<\/p>\n
Haboobs in the Distance<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut the job\u2019s also fabulously fun. Just before taping a 60-Minutes segment from our tiny office, the make-up artist told me my interview was likely to go well. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be getting powder if we wanted to see you sweat.\u201d For a week, I rode a rented bicycle up a mountain where Netflix was shooting a real estate reality show.<\/p>\n
Sneaking Into Stranger Things<\/strong><\/h5>\nTrying to sneak into the nearby “Stranger Things” set felt like breaking into Hawkins Lab. Hanging with the cast, many of whom knew each other from a Survivor gig in the Philippines, felt like being at camp. The NFL player who was my costar led us in prayer before every segment. Riding back, swarms of bats would flutter by my face.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nMaking A Reality TV Show Was Really Fun!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAn Underdog for 20 Years<\/b><\/h2>\nTwo Left Shoes<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Sprinting Through A Scavenger Hunt<\/strong><\/h5>\nIn our Redferno sales kickoff, we asked every employee to sprint through a scavenger hunt. After participants complained of being drenched in sweat or left behind, the next year\u2019s contest was in cars driven by our youngest employees, at speeds we should\u2019ve anticipated and still regret.<\/p>\n
The Night Is Only Over When Bridget Says It\u2019s Over<\/strong><\/h5>\nLater, when we tried to organize a company trip to Whistler, a colleague let us borrow his Land Cruiser, which was impounded by border agents with drug-sniffing dogs. Our board finally asked if there was anyone even in charge of these things. I blamed Bridget Frey, our chief technology officer and mother of two; she was known for hosting after-parties at hip hop clubs, then taking the survivors to see the sunrise from a Waffle House.<\/p>\n
The Best Possible Board\u2026 But Also A Little Weird!<\/b><\/h2>\n\u201cHave You Ever FedExed a Horse?\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nEven the board had its quirks. Our founding chairman hired me only after another candidate asked for severance. A second board member asked if any of our execs had ever FedExed a horse. A third had a vacation home made of rubber. A fourth flew across the country the day I told him I\u2019d lost sight of how to be good at my job and good at raising my children. This is a kindness I will never forget. I organized two board hikes into the mountains, and forgot to bring food for both.<\/p>\n
\nOMG You Really Can FedEx A Horse!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nNobody Talks About How Fun It Is To Be a CEO<\/b><\/h2>\nEight Years Of Days, Another Eight Through the Nights<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn one of those trips, a board member said he\u2019d been a CEO for 16 years, even though his LinkedIn profile said eight. \u201cEight during the day,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnother eight worrying about it in my sleep.\u201d It\u2019s true what everyone says about the job, which has probably shortened my life.<\/p>\n
Haboobs in the Distance<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut the job\u2019s also fabulously fun. Just before taping a 60-Minutes segment from our tiny office, the make-up artist told me my interview was likely to go well. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be getting powder if we wanted to see you sweat.\u201d For a week, I rode a rented bicycle up a mountain where Netflix was shooting a real estate reality show.<\/p>\n
Sneaking Into Stranger Things<\/strong><\/h5>\nTrying to sneak into the nearby “Stranger Things” set felt like breaking into Hawkins Lab. Hanging with the cast, many of whom knew each other from a Survivor gig in the Philippines, felt like being at camp. The NFL player who was my costar led us in prayer before every segment. Riding back, swarms of bats would flutter by my face.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nMaking A Reality TV Show Was Really Fun!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAn Underdog for 20 Years<\/b><\/h2>\nTwo Left Shoes<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Later, when we tried to organize a company trip to Whistler, a colleague let us borrow his Land Cruiser, which was impounded by border agents with drug-sniffing dogs. Our board finally asked if there was anyone even in charge of these things. I blamed Bridget Frey, our chief technology officer and mother of two; she was known for hosting after-parties at hip hop clubs, then taking the survivors to see the sunrise from a Waffle House.<\/p>\n
The Best Possible Board\u2026 But Also A Little Weird!<\/b><\/h2>\n\u201cHave You Ever FedExed a Horse?\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\nEven the board had its quirks. Our founding chairman hired me only after another candidate asked for severance. A second board member asked if any of our execs had ever FedExed a horse. A third had a vacation home made of rubber. A fourth flew across the country the day I told him I\u2019d lost sight of how to be good at my job and good at raising my children. This is a kindness I will never forget. I organized two board hikes into the mountains, and forgot to bring food for both.<\/p>\n
\nOMG You Really Can FedEx A Horse!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nNobody Talks About How Fun It Is To Be a CEO<\/b><\/h2>\nEight Years Of Days, Another Eight Through the Nights<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn one of those trips, a board member said he\u2019d been a CEO for 16 years, even though his LinkedIn profile said eight. \u201cEight during the day,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnother eight worrying about it in my sleep.\u201d It\u2019s true what everyone says about the job, which has probably shortened my life.<\/p>\n
Haboobs in the Distance<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut the job\u2019s also fabulously fun. Just before taping a 60-Minutes segment from our tiny office, the make-up artist told me my interview was likely to go well. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be getting powder if we wanted to see you sweat.\u201d For a week, I rode a rented bicycle up a mountain where Netflix was shooting a real estate reality show.<\/p>\n
Sneaking Into Stranger Things<\/strong><\/h5>\nTrying to sneak into the nearby “Stranger Things” set felt like breaking into Hawkins Lab. Hanging with the cast, many of whom knew each other from a Survivor gig in the Philippines, felt like being at camp. The NFL player who was my costar led us in prayer before every segment. Riding back, swarms of bats would flutter by my face.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nMaking A Reality TV Show Was Really Fun!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAn Underdog for 20 Years<\/b><\/h2>\nTwo Left Shoes<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Even the board had its quirks. Our founding chairman hired me only after another candidate asked for severance. A second board member asked if any of our execs had ever FedExed a horse. A third had a vacation home made of rubber. A fourth flew across the country the day I told him I\u2019d lost sight of how to be good at my job and good at raising my children. This is a kindness I will never forget. I organized two board hikes into the mountains, and forgot to bring food for both.<\/p>\n
Nobody Talks About How Fun It Is To Be a CEO<\/b><\/h2>\nEight Years Of Days, Another Eight Through the Nights<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn one of those trips, a board member said he\u2019d been a CEO for 16 years, even though his LinkedIn profile said eight. \u201cEight during the day,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnother eight worrying about it in my sleep.\u201d It\u2019s true what everyone says about the job, which has probably shortened my life.<\/p>\n
Haboobs in the Distance<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut the job\u2019s also fabulously fun. Just before taping a 60-Minutes segment from our tiny office, the make-up artist told me my interview was likely to go well. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be getting powder if we wanted to see you sweat.\u201d For a week, I rode a rented bicycle up a mountain where Netflix was shooting a real estate reality show.<\/p>\n
Sneaking Into Stranger Things<\/strong><\/h5>\nTrying to sneak into the nearby “Stranger Things” set felt like breaking into Hawkins Lab. Hanging with the cast, many of whom knew each other from a Survivor gig in the Philippines, felt like being at camp. The NFL player who was my costar led us in prayer before every segment. Riding back, swarms of bats would flutter by my face.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nMaking A Reality TV Show Was Really Fun!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAn Underdog for 20 Years<\/b><\/h2>\nTwo Left Shoes<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. 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On one of those trips, a board member said he\u2019d been a CEO for 16 years, even though his LinkedIn profile said eight. \u201cEight during the day,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnother eight worrying about it in my sleep.\u201d It\u2019s true what everyone says about the job, which has probably shortened my life.<\/p>\n
Haboobs in the Distance<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut the job\u2019s also fabulously fun. Just before taping a 60-Minutes segment from our tiny office, the make-up artist told me my interview was likely to go well. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be getting powder if we wanted to see you sweat.\u201d For a week, I rode a rented bicycle up a mountain where Netflix was shooting a real estate reality show.<\/p>\n
Sneaking Into Stranger Things<\/strong><\/h5>\nTrying to sneak into the nearby “Stranger Things” set felt like breaking into Hawkins Lab. Hanging with the cast, many of whom knew each other from a Survivor gig in the Philippines, felt like being at camp. The NFL player who was my costar led us in prayer before every segment. Riding back, swarms of bats would flutter by my face.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nMaking A Reality TV Show Was Really Fun!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAn Underdog for 20 Years<\/b><\/h2>\nTwo Left Shoes<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Trying to sneak into the nearby “Stranger Things” set felt like breaking into Hawkins Lab. Hanging with the cast, many of whom knew each other from a Survivor gig in the Philippines, felt like being at camp. The NFL player who was my costar led us in prayer before every segment. Riding back, swarms of bats would flutter by my face.<\/p>\n
An Underdog for 20 Years<\/b><\/h2>\nTwo Left Shoes<\/strong><\/h5>\nWhat was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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What was less fun was raising money, which was hard, because we wanted to build a brokerage, not just a website. I rode to a coffee-shop meeting with a venture capitalist, arriving early to change out of my cleats, only to find that I had two left shoes in my bag; to save time, I\u2019d bought multiple pairs of the same shoe. Trying to cram my right foot into a left shoe, I yelled and cried on the sidewalk, then hoped no one would notice that I gave the pitch with one bare foot.\u00a0They did.<\/p>\n
Enterprise Value: -$8 Million<\/strong><\/h5>\nAnother VC said Redfin wasn\u2019t right for his firm, but asked if I wanted his opinion on how much we were worth. Before I could answer, he said \u201c$0.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what about the $8 million in the bank?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon that\u2019ll be $0 too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Only an hour before, we\u2019d sat chatting on the floor outside his office, waiting for the receptionist to open the door.<\/p>\n
A Small, Hard Place<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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This repeated experience of rejection combined with our delusions of grandeur to form a small, hard place inside of us. Small is the opposite of how we usually describe our inner being. On the day we marry or meet our best friend, our heart becomes permanently larger. As we age, our soul quietly unfurls to its natural size, which is infinite.<\/p>\n
As Intense As A Neutron Star<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut there\u2019s a third part of who we are, well known to the birds hunched against a night of winter rain, that is the size of a pebble, and deep as a grudge, and as alone and intense as a neutron star. It is the refusal to die; the insistence against all evidence that you matter; the unwillingness, even in some small, easy way, to betray our flawed selves.<\/p>\n
The Hardest Pebble in the World<\/strong><\/h5>\nI don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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I don\u2019t know where Redfin got its pebble, but it\u2019s the hardest pebble in the world. Do you know what it\u2019s like to be the underdog for 20 years? To be asked over and over again why we don\u2019t just charge a full fee, or sell ads to traditional agents, or give up on health insurance for Realtors? The premise of the question has been so cynical it was impossible to answer, like trying to tell a robot about love.<\/p>\n
What Kept Us Going<\/b><\/h2>\nDriving to the Hospital With the Good Cafeteria<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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But let me try. A year before joining Redfin, I\u2019d left a company I\u2019d co-founded, in part to care for an older brother who couldn\u2019t stop drinking. His wife and I rushed him to the ER so often that we usually drove a little further, to the hospital with better food. There I met people for whom there was no percentage in slowing someone\u2019s self-destruction, but who did so all the same.<\/p>\n
Finding a Home Is Still Hard; Fees Are Still High<\/strong><\/h5>\nBecause of them, at the age of 34, I almost went to medical school. Instead, I just decided that Redfin would be my way to make the world better. We\u2019ve saved consumers more than $1 billion in fees. Our site tells 50 million people a month everything there is to know about the housing market. But we\u2019ve only partly lived up to our name: Redfin is supposed to be real estate redefined. Finding a home is still hard. Fees are still high.<\/p>\n
Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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This is why we come to Rocket with unfinished business, and why we\u2019re combining brokerage service with Rocket mortgages. Not everyone wants an agent who charges a lower fee, but everyone wants a lower mortgage rate.<\/p>\n
Confessing to Any Acts of Manual Labor<\/strong><\/h5>\nRocket is the perfect parent for Redfin because we believe in combining technology with service. But for the longest time, I felt mixed about running a business that wasn\u2019t purely virtual. I was like the monks in the middle ages, who confessed to any acts of manual labor that distracted them from the life of the mind. I missed my friends from Silicon Valley, who once teased me about being a Realtor.<\/p>\n
The Day I Knew I Was Where I Belonged<\/strong><\/h5>\nThat changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\n\nJim Carollo’s Beautiful Family<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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That changed when I got a ride to O\u2019Hare from Jim Carollo, a Redfin agent now leading sales across a string of smaller cities. He told me his dad wanted him to take over the family muffler shop, but he chose Redfin instead. He told me about adopting a child with only one hand, and then adopting another so the first wouldn\u2019t be lonely. I tried to think of anyone in tech who would do that, and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
So Much Strength, So Much Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\nThis became a repeated experience at Redfin, talking to agents from across the country about their faith, or their fear when family members were sent into combat. I still remember when, during a period of great unrest, one of Redfin\u2019s most formidable agents called my cell from inside her closet. She didn\u2019t want her children to hear her crying because she\u2019d just been reminded that some people would always hate them for being Black. I hadn\u2019t imagined a person could feel so much grief and still be so strong. I had no idea what the real size or strength of this country was until I criss-crossed it for Redfin.<\/p>\n
Unwonted Gratitude<\/strong><\/h5>\nBut maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Redfin Real Estate News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/redfin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Redfin-IPO.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1210\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"680\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@redfin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Kelman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Glenn Kelman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e9aeac4a4bba86fdea8b35bc1eee3bf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Tale of the Tribe\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-07-01T18:48:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-04T15:43:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2186,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/07\\\/Redfin-IPO.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Company News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"copyrightYear\":\"2025\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Tale of the Tribe - 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. Glenn was raised in Seattle and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.redfin.com/news\\\/author\\\/glenn-kelmanredfin-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tale of the Tribe","og_description":"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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But maybe the conversations I remember best are with the people of Redfin who had suddenly come to grief because of a cancer diagnosis, or a husband\u2019s heart attack, or a child born with special needs. Our agents often went out of their way to thank Redfin for our health insurance.<\/p>\n
Jim Johnston, San Diego Cancer Slayer<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo one should ever have to be grateful for that, but what they wanted to talk about was so much more than that. A San Diego agent named Jim Johnston sent me a series of emails chronicling the acts of love from his team that kept him going through chemotherapy: other Redfin agents toured his clients, wrote his offers, brought him food. These emails spanned years. I became emotional only when I got his final message, which had this subject line: JIM JOHNSTON, SAN DIEGO CANCER SLAYER, IS RETIRING. He’d made it.<\/p>\n
\n\nGlenn & Jim At A Redfin Party, Before the Diagnosis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nRedfin People Are My People<\/strong><\/h5>\nThese were the moments when I decided that the people who do the hardest work at Redfin are my people, and that I will follow you to the ends of the earth. It has been an honor to run Redfin, first as an independent company, and now into the great, great beyond with Rocket. Thank you, Redfin, and thank you Rocket. What we\u2019ll do together is going to be big and good and real. I\u2019m more confident about our prospects than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. And now that we\u2019ve rolled down the door of the van and set the latch, we just realized that we need to pop back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[126],"class_list":["post-81219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Tale of the Tribe - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/the-tale-of-the-tribe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tale of the Tribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In closing today\u2019s $2-billion sale of Redfin to Rocket, Redfin has made a careful inventory of every asset to convey to our new home: the sofas, the coffee table, the books. 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Prior to joining Redfin, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, a Sequoia-backed, publicly traded company that created the enterprise portal software market. In his seven years at Plumtree, Glenn at different times led engineering, marketing, product management, and business development; he also was responsible for financing and general operations in Plumtree's early days. Prior to starting Plumtree, Glenn worked as one of the first employees at Stanford Technology Group, a Sequoia-backed start-up acquired by IBM. 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