Considering interviewing with Legalzoom and was wondering if you all have thoughts on the direction of the company? In terms of market fit, growth potential, culture, etc
I don't see them growing exponentially or ever going out of business. I think they'll just exist. That's because they offer a lot of paid services that people can easily do for free. It's not an issue when they first use the product, but eventually they find out and they're upset for good reason which makes retention very hard. We also used to then increase the cost of those subscription products by 2X and 3X when it was time to renew (based on Glassdoor, that still seems like an issue), not give customers a heads up, and make it very hard for them to cancel. If you look at customer reviews, this is a very common complaint. There is a large market for some of the services we provide...but we're just so awful at providing them. Competitors do most things better than we do. (Before the new regime, we had a 1-star average on Google but then overnight it went up to 3.5 stars. We don't know what tricks new management pulled because the products were still as horrible as the night before.) Employees used to get 1 free product a year. Because I knew that there was a high chance of things going wrong, I paid to form my LLC at a competitor and advised friends and family to do the same thing. But a lot of people are familiar with LZ so I think many will think of LZ first...they just might reconsider after reading the negative reviews or when they get a surprise $200-400 charge after a year.
I don't work there anymore, but based on my experience when I left a year ago, it was getting pretty toxic. Teams were working 60-hour weeks and burning out. Managers were being pressured by execs to make product changes that seemed deceptive but would improve decreasing revenue. Based on people I've kept in touch with, it sounds like nothing's changed much. It's unfortunate because most of the people there are amazing and it really did feel like a second family. Before the new regime, there was a huge focus on taking care of employees and most had been with the company for years. But most of them have been replaced with people from the CEO's previous company because he wanted to replicate that business strategy at LZ and it made sense to do it with the people who built those original strategies at Intuit.
What would you say your confidence level is in the future of LegalZoom? In terms of market, potential growth, etc