I'm from COMPASS RE NJ, and I love this company!!
Happy Birthday!!
Email from Robert Reffkin | Founder & CEO:
"Compass Team,
I would have loved to bring the whole Compass community together yesterday to celebrate the company’s 8th birthday. But even though we can’t be together in person, I’d love to take a moment this morning to look back briefly on each of the years that led us to today.
In our 1st year, Ori Allon and I founded “Urban Compass” to try and improve the apartment rental experience in New York City with “neighborhood specialists.” Mayor Bloomberg came to the office to announce our official launch as part of his daily press conference.
In our 2nd year, we realized that apartment sales was a bigger market than rentals in New York City and transitioned to hiring great agents to provide a great real estate experience. We shifted our entire strategy in a matter of months and partnered with Leonard Steinberg as our first top agent.
In our 3rd year, we rebranded from Urban Compass to Compass and expanded outside of New York to Washington, DC, Miami, Boston and Los Angeles. We learned a huge amount about opening new markets and the regional nature of our business, which has guided us ever since.
In our 4th year, we welcomed hundreds of agents from across the country for the first time and hosted our first national REtreat. I’m grateful to every entrepreneur who took a chance on a young company like ours, putting their faith in the idea that, together, we could make the real estate experience better for everyone. These early agents built the foundation of our culture and our company.
In our 5th year, we launched our Collections tool to empower agent-client collaboration and articulated our mission: to help everyone find their place in the world.
In our 6th year, we launched our Compass Entrepreneurship Principles, expanded to all of the remaining Top 20 markets in the country and grew our team and joined forces with some remarkable brokerages to become the largest independent brokerage in America by sales volume.
In our 7th year, we launched or expanded Compass Concierge, Bridge Loan Services and Coming Soons/Private Exclusives to help agents win more listings by helping your clients sell their homes faster for more money.
In our 8th year, this past year, we faced a pandemic and an economic crisis and found a way to support each other and see abundance anyway. We launched a whole suite of Virtual Agent Services, Video Generator, Digital CMA, Livestream Open Houses, Livestream Toursand more to help agents navigate these unprecedented times — which agents did with resourcefulness and resilience.
And I’ve got a very good feeling about the year ahead.
If this is your first year at Compass, looking back at 8 years might feel like a long time. But this company we’re building together is still extremely young. For comparison, Microsoft is 45 years old, Apple is 44 years old, Amazon is 26, Netflix is 23, Google is 22. Even just looking at the intersection of technology and real estate, we’re roughly half as old as Redfin (17 years old) or Zillow (15 years old).
If you’re receiving this email, you are here for the early days of Compass. You’ll all be able to tell your grandchildren, when they see Compass signs everywhere, that you were one of the people who helped build this company from the beginning.
Thanks to all of you who’ve powered our progress over the past eight years, and thanks to all of you who are going to work together to build the future of this industry for decades to come.
Best,Robert
P.S. If you’d like to share a video celebrating our first 8 years on your own social media, please click here to download the video.
