Opendoor, a $3.8B iBuyer start up, fires staffers, asks others to move to Phoenix HQ

The company says it will double its Phoenix employees and continue to hire in its other markets

Opendoor CEO Eric Wu and Pheonix (Credit: Resolute Ventures and iStock)
Opendoor CEO Eric Wu and Pheonix (Credit: Resolute Ventures and iStock)

The $3.8 billion iBuyer startup Opendoor is shaking things up internally.

The company started firing about 50 of its roughly 1,300 employees in June, and it has asked between 200 and 300 employees throughout the country to move to its Phoenix location, according to Bloomberg. It is also scaling back on its free lunch policy, a common perk at startups.

Opendoor plans to double its Phoenix employees to more than 500 next year and will keep hiring in all of its other markets as well, a spokesperson told the publication It will also still offer subsidized lunches in all of its offices with more than 100 people.

The firm was most recently valued at $3.8 billion. It announced a new $300 million fundraising round in the spring that brought its total equity funding to more than $1 billion. SoftBank’s famed $100 billion Vision Fund is among its investors.

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The company has experienced executive turnover recently: Co-founder JD Ross left in December; CFO Jason Child left in May; and vice president of engineering Bali Raghavan left recently as well.

Opendoor has faced growing competition since it was founded in 2014. The platform lets homeowners upload information about their home, and the company then makes a cash offer within 48 hours. They make minor repairs and put it on the market if the seller accepts and charge a fee slightly higher than what a traditional broker would charge.

But the firm still leads the pack with about 7,200 home sales last year, more than double what its closest competitor OfferPad managed. [Bloomberg] – Eddie Small