TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) - Spencer Rascoff, co-founder of Zillow and Hotwire, was announced Monday as this year’s featured speaker at the Power Forward Speaker Series.

It’s the ninth year for the popular speaker series which brings celebrity entrepreneurs to Tallahassee to share insights and tangible takeaways with local business leaders.

“As co-founder of Zillow, Spencer Rascoff transformed the real-estate industry by putting home values at our fingertips,” said First Commerce CEO Cecilia Homison. “We believe his journey to incredible success as a world-class entrepreneur is just the inspiration our business leaders need to keep powering forward in these challenging and ever-changing times.”

First Commerce Credit Union and the FSU Office of Research present the Power Forward Speaker Series each year. It typically draws a crowd of a thousand people.

“Hearing from world-class entrepreneurs like Spencer Rascoff is an excellent opportunity for FSU and the wider Tallahassee community to learn about the twists and turns of innovation and entrepreneurship,” said FSU Vice President for Research Stacey Patterson. “Spencer is someone who has lived that life and we are glad that we could help bring him to Tallahassee.”

Rascoff is a New York Times bestselling author who co-founded four tech companies, invested in over 100, and was CEO of Zillow for a decade. Recently, he cofounded dot.LA, a media company covering the cutting-edge LA tech scene and hosts a podcast called, “Office Hours with Spencer Rascoff.”

Rascoff will be speaking in Tallahassee Thursday, February 16, starting at 3:30 p.m. in Ruby Diamond Concert Hall on FSU’s campus.

Tickets go on sale Tuesday, December 13, for the 2023 Power Forward Speaker Series at Tickets.fsu.edu. All tickets are $11.

“There’s so many of our small businesses that cannot afford the time away from their businesses to go to a conference and see really a national caliber speaker of a well-known company and brand to share lessons learned and give them tangible takeaways to take back to their business,” First Commerce Credit Union COO Kim Howes said. “So at First Commerce, we believe Power Forward, in conjunction with our major sponsors, makes it easy for them to see somebody of that caliber right here in their own backyards.”

The Power Forward Speaker Series started in 2013 and has previously featured Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran; Chris Gardner, CEO of Happyness whose autobiographical movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness” was made into a movie; Peter Diamandis, Founder of the XPrize Foundation; Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary; Airbnb’s Chip Conley; NFL legend and entrepreneur Jim Kelly; Facebook startup team member Randi Zuckerberg; and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.