I was doing some light reading of the transcripts from the Move vs. Zillow court hearings in King County Superior Court last week. This excerpt from in the Wednesday afternoon transcript was certainly entertaining.
Richard Stone, the attorney for Move was questioning Spencer Rascoff on the stand:
Stone: It’s true, isn’t it, that you referred to the CEO of Redfin as ugly and annoying, correct?
Rascoff: I don’t remember if I said that. As I’ve said though, when you review tens of thousands of emails and days of videotape deposition, you will find examples of things that I’ve said inarticulately or emotionally, and you take them out of context and put them under a microscope, and they don’t look so good.
Stone: And Redfin was a competitor of Zillow?
Rascoff: Redfin is a competitor of Zillow.
Stone: And you said they were a bunch of jerks as well?
Rascoff: As I’ve already answered, I don’t remember having said that, but when you review tens of thousands of emails, you will find things that I have written, and if you take them out of context and put them under a microscope, there will be examples of things that I’ve said which don’t look so good.
Stone: And you’ve said similar, very personal aggressive statements about every CEO who was competing with you; is that a fair statement?
Rascoff: It’s not a fair statement to describe those statements as aggressive. I think it depends on the context. So you have me goading fellow employees and needling them by talking about competitors in certain contexts. That’s what some of these emails out of tens of thousands of emails are referring to. So I wouldn’t describe them as overly aggressive. I think that was the term you used.
Stone: Did you tell Curt Beardsley, if Redfin F’s with you, you will F with Redfin?
Rascoff: Basically the same answer that I’ve already given is how I would answer that question. I don’t remember saying that to anybody. If I did, it would be an example of something out of tens of thousands of emails that I have fired off on a whim and maybe doesn’t look that good when you —
Stone then cuts him off and they play a segment of recorded video from a deposition, which is not transcribed.
Of course it is important to note that I used to work at Redfin, and in fact I worked rather closely with CEO Glenn Kelman. In my personal opinion, he is neither ugly nor annoying. I will also say that when I worked there, there are very few of my coworkers who I would describe as jerks.