Ex-Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff and teenager daughter cook dinner up a new food items-targeted social media startup

Sophia Rascoff and her dad, Zillow co-founder and former CEO Spencer Rascoff, like to get on new dishes in the loved ones kitchen, even nevertheless the 16-12 months-old states they have no intensive cooking knowledge and they are not remarkable chefs.

“We basically have exciting and do our finest,” Sophia explained.

But when it will come to a new social media app the two have created together, the important elements are there — Spencer Rascoff has many years of startup expertise, Sophia had a vision, and the undertaking is really a great deal a critical endeavor.

The Rascoffs launched Recon Foods out of beta on Tuesday, a no cost social application supposed to convey people today alongside one another around a shared enjoy of foods.

Lots of individuals use well recognized platforms these as Instagram to article photos of what they’re cooking at residence or what they’re ingesting at a cafe. Recon is a location for each, where by foodstuff lovers can share what they like to take in and assessment areas to do just that. It’s also Sophia’s way to draw individuals away from the negativity and politics that can overwhelm consumers of mainstream social media and instead link with buddies about shared passions.

Rascoff, co-founder of this kind of startups as Hotwire, Zillow, dot.LA and Pacaso, gets the prospect to produce a little something new with his daughter. He reported 6 months of enhancement has been a superb working experience so far, and that Sophia is the excellent co-founder for Recon because she life and breathes social media, she loves to cook and she’s a program engineer.

“I’ve always believed in bringing folks with unique points of perspective to the desk when tackling huge problems, but I really don’t consider I totally understood how valuable age range could be on a founding group,” Rascoff claimed. “As a teenager, she sees the globe and social media by way of a distinctive lens. That, combined with her entrepreneurial spirit and travel, has built her a great spouse and co-founder.”

Living in the very same Los Angeles dwelling also will help with 24×7 collaboration.

Sophia explained she has often admired her dad’s work ethic but “never had the option to peer driving the curtain fully to see how almost everything comes about.” She included that although it is enjoyable to function alongside one another, Recon Food items is “very substantially real” and both she and her father want it to be a success tale just like his earlier firms.

Formerly: Q&A with former Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff on his new SPAC that just raised $350M

Recon Meals features buyers two tracks on their profile — their kitchen, as a location for photos of all the meals they make, and their cafe opinions, for shots of food items they ate out. The app employs some computer eyesight tech to look for a user’s digicam roll for all food stuff-centric photographs taken in the earlier and mechanically add them to the app. Consumers can decide and pick which pics they’d like to exhibit on their personal account to their connections, or to the general public. Cafe photographs can be rated, reviewed and geotagged to the restaurant place.

Rascoff mentioned that for the duration of pandemic quarantine, his spouse and children spent a large amount of time jointly and Sophia provided insight throughout that period of time about how exhausting and divisive social media experienced turn out to be.

“At the exact same time, we ended up cooking a whole lot as a family members, trapped at home experimenting with new forms of meals, recipes and obtaining takeout from eating places we’d in no way tried using before,” Rascoff reported. “It was a meals journey we required to share with mates but we didn’t want to bombard everybody with our posts and updates.”

Building a vertical social media application all over food items took the stress off deciding where and how frequently to share foods photographs, and delivers a spot for these craving community.

“On Recon Food you can write-up 100% of your food items with a lot less pressure of perfection,” Sophia explained. “It doesn’t need to seem really or have the very best presentation. In truth, some of the most enjoyment posts are food fails — like my dad’s initial consider at wood fired pizza.”

Rascoff, who still left his Zillow Team CEO job in January 2019, is certainly nonetheless chaotic in organization dealings that are going on away from the dwelling kitchen. His SPAC, operating less than the identify Supernova Companions Acquisition Organization, led a deal to purchase actual estate enterprise Offerpad in March. But Rascaoff said at this phase of his vocation he’s targeted far more on mentoring and coaching, and not on operating a business day to working day.

He named the partnership with his daughter a fantastic in shape.

“My key piece of advice to all founders is to try to clear up a dilemma that they experience personally,” he explained. “I’m energized now to have released Recon Food items publicly and allow the earth see what we’ve been cooking up.”