'This year is a huge year for us on many fronts,': Houzz CEO and Co-Founder Adi Tatarko
Yahoo Finance Video
Houzz CEO and Co-Founder Adi Tatarko talks to Yahoo Finance's Jen Rogers about the the inception of Houzz, managing a business during COVID-19 and the importance of being passionate about your work. Tatarko is part of Yahoo Finance's exclusive list, THE NEXT: 21 to watch in 2021.
Video Transcript
ADI TATARKO: I'm Adi Tatarko, the co-founder and CEO of Houzz, and in 2021, I'm super excited to continue providing the millions of home professionals on Houzz with more tools to help them grow and manage their businesses and thrive. It's a very big year for our pros, and I'm very excited about it.
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JENNIFER ROGERS: OK, so I have remodeled and built a house. And I did not start a side business at the same time and revolutionized the home design industry. You turned your remodel into Houzz. It's a business worth billions now. So if somebody is new to Houzz and is just hearing about it, they're just starting out a remodel project, what's the elevator pitch for the company?
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ADI TATARKO: I would say we are a global community of 65 million homeowners and home design enthusiasts around the world, with 2.7 million professionals and both growing, that came together to learn, educate each other, be inspired, find each other, and work together, start to finish on home projects. And this last platform that we built for the professionals in our industry, start to finish, from the ability to meet their future clients, their home community members on Houzz, to managing their whole business on the platform, start to finish, and all the projects with their clients, it's all there, end to end.
JENNIFER ROGERS: What about the fact that you have three kids and we're in a pandemic? How has that been going having everybody-- I mean, your whole life, like your work and your home right now, together?
ADI TATARKO: At the beginning, we didn't even take care of our own situation. We took care of the kids, we took care of the company. Frankly, we didn't have a home office. You had to see us, how we were rotating from the backyard to the kitchen, you know, to our bedroom. It was crazy. But two months in, my back was broken, and we said, OK, we stabilized it. What do we do?
And like many people around the world, Houzz came to play. We had to renovate a little bit and take care of our little spaces. We still live in the same house that started Houzz. It's not a big house, but we found two corners, two areas for each one of us.
JENNIFER ROGERS: So a year ago right now, the pandemic hit. Things looked scary for every business, including yours. But you're thriving now. You might even go public. How has the pandemic changed your business?
ADI TATARKO: So we had to do lots of difficult things, make difficult decisions in order to support our clients, to support the professionals, to support the industry, which wasn't easy. I think we were very fortunate that we were able to go through it, support everybody, and come out of the situation stronger on the other side. The fact that during this time we developed more tools, technology, and software, which was part of the plan beforehand, really helped us. Because now there is much more demand.
And in a way, corona accelerated it. The COVID accelerated this trend. More demand for online tools, for this software, for these 3D tools, for the imaging, for the proposals to be done less face to face. A lot is moving to the digital world. So being able to support our professionals in different ways, financially walking them through how to get support from us, from others, and providing them with the right tools really helped us to emerge out of it as a much stronger company.
JENNIFER ROGERS: This year finds it's a very interesting intersection right now, that we're seeing for private companies. I'm sure you've seen the whole SPAC craze. Is that anything that you're looking at? I mean, you have a background in finance as well.
ADI TATARKO: Financing, whether it's private or public, not as a goal, but more as a tool and in a way to build more, do more. And of course, there are always different options of how to do things. I think the most important thing for us was last year, to first support the community and roll out more tools and more software, Houzz Pro, which became very, very strong and prominent and empowered the community, which is great.
This year is a huge year for us on many fronts, because of the success of Houzz Pro and how we're seeing the adoption and involvement of the industry and the professionals because of this. And again, stay tuned, but different things can happen as you are growing the business and new opportunities come up. But again, it's not a goal by itself. It's always a specific moment that you get more partners or you are enabling more things to happen because of that.
JENNIFER ROGERS: Now, if you go to your LinkedIn page, it just lists Houzz for 12 years. But you were at an investment firm, you worked in tech before that. What was easier, working for other people or working for yourself?
ADI TATARKO: I think at the end of the day, it's not who you work for. It's what you work on and who you surround yourself with and what's the major domain you're passionate about. It can be for somebody else. It can be for yourself. That's the only thing that can hold you for so many years through these crazy times. It's a roller coaster, as I've said. And you want to really love what you do in order to be in that very long ride and enjoy it.