Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Twitter dukes it out with Meta’s Threads, New York City seeks to regulate A.I. in hiring, and Opendoor’s CEO navigates a tricky housing market. Have a restful weekend.
– Just keep building. In 2022, the real estate technology business Opendoor became a Fortune 500 company for the first time. It debuted at No. 425 with $8 billion in revenue. At the end of that year, the company’s CFO Carrie Wheeler took over as CEO from cofounder Eric Wu. That meant that in 2023, Opendoor was a woman-led Fortune 500 business for the first time.
Opendoor was one of 52 Fortune 500 companies to be led by a female CEO when the Fortune 500 was published last month. And Wheeler was one of 12 women hired to those CEO jobs within the past year.
On this year’s Fortune 500, Opendoor ranked No. 266 with $15.6 billion in revenue. That’s a big leap from the previous year—but it’s been a rocky journey. The housing market has been chaotic and unstable amid rising interest rates. For a company whose value proposition depends on homeowners being willing to sacrifice some profit in exchange for ease and convenience, low home prices are a challenge. Tech-based peers in the real estate industry, like Zillow and Redfin, long ago gave up on flipping homes.
“The macro is uncertain, but real estate isn’t going away,” says Wheeler. “People are still moving…So nothing about our actual focus and mission has changed…We’re focused on making sure that we are going to leave this cycle better than we came into it.” She says Opendoor is focused on becoming “leaner and meaner”—and indeed, the company laid off 22% of its workforce in April.
Before joining Opendoor first as a board member, then as CFO, then as CEO, Wheeler spent the bulk of her career in private equity at TPG. She says that her PE experience has helped her run a real estate business. She says that in PE she saw “different industries, different CEOs, and different industry structures” as well as “good management, how to lead teams, how to make strategic business decisions, how to think about capital allocation, how to test your investment thesis on a regular basis.” Opendoor is a business that “has inventory, cares about terms, and cares about managing its balance sheet,” she adds.
“All those things from private equity have helped me here,” she says.
Opendoor’s stock is down around 30% over the past year, trading under $4 today. But Wheeler’s Fortune 500 ambitions aren’t fading. “We aspire to be on the list for many, many years to come,” she says. “Because that means we’re executing. We think we’re building a very, very big business.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Twitter v. Threads. The war between Twitter and Meta's Threads competitor is heating up. As Twitter reportedly threatens to sue, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino said that the platform is "often imitated" but "can never be duplicated." Fortune
- I knew you were trouble? It turns out that Taylor Swift's business acumen may not have been what saved her from an ill-fated deal with the fallen crypto exchange FTX. The New York Times reports that the star in fact signed a $100-million deal and disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was the one to back out. Fortune
- Hiring check. A new law in New York City requires companies hiring using A.I. in the city to prove that their A.I. is free from racist and sexist bias. Businesses will have to pass an audit showing that their A.I. hiring systems don't replicate biases when choosing which candidates progress. NBC News
- Just like Livvy. Gymnast Olivia Dunne has been the highest-earning female athlete to benefit from NIL (or name, image, likeness) deal reform in college athletics. The rising senior at Louisiana State University is now launching the Livvy Fund, a collective meant to help other LSU female athletes reach similar success. Sports Illustrated
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: NBCUniversal is expected to promote Donna Langley to become chairman of NBCUniversal Studio Group and chief content officer. Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud will step down at the end of August. Nonprofit leader Kaberi Banerjee Murthy and former FedEx exec Mary H. McDaniel join the board of the Ms. Foundation for Women. Patricia Mota, president and CEO of the Hispanic Alliance of Career Enhancement, joins the board of digitalundivided.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Alarming discovery. Researchers have determined that Australia rules football player Heather Anderson suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, the first known case of the brain disorder in a professional female athlete. Anderson died by suicide last year at 28; her family donated her body for research. "She is the first female athlete diagnosed with CTE, but she will not be the last," researchers wrote. ESPN
- Rivals, friends, survivors. The professional tennis careers of Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova were intertwined to an almost weird degree. They both rose to world No. 1 at the other’s expense. Each ended a storied career with 18 Grand Slam wins. In their 60s, the rivals and friends shared another bond: fighting—and beating—cancer at the same time. Washington Post
- On-campus contraception. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a new type of vending machine started popping up on college campuses. Thirty-nine universities in 17 states have installed vending machines selling ibuprofen, pregnancy tests, and the morning-after pill, “part of a push on college campuses to ensure emergency contraceptives are cheap, discreet and widely available,” the Associated Press reports.
ON MY RADAR
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A new decade, a new album, a new life—Olivia Rodrigo's next chapter Vogue
The high-profile, high-power women hooked on making jam Grub Street
PARTING WORDS
“There’s always something unique that, as a woman, you can bring to the table that actually makes it better. And the trick, I think, is not to just give in and put up with the [garbage], but to make your own path.”
—Surgeon and breast cancer crusader Susan Love, who died on July 2
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