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Zillow- Online Real Estate Company Founded By The Owner And Former Svp Of Expedia

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With every latest product coming into the market, the consumers grab the power of choice. The right to information and the freedom to choose are the two main goals every company wants to provide. And, this idea to make people aware of information led to the establishment of Zillow. Founder of Expedia, Richard Barton and the Former Senior Vice President of Expedia, Lloyd Frink developed Zillow. Zillow is an American online real estate company established in Seattle, Washington. It is mainly a database company that generates its revenue by selling advertising on its website. The idea of Zillow and how it came up is really interesting.

About the Founders

Richard Barton is one of the most famous American entrepreneurs. Apart from Expedia, he is mainly known as the founder of Expedia and Glassdoor. Lloyd Frink acquired a degree in economics from Stanford University. He started his career life from working at Microsoft as a Group Program Manager. He worked there for twenty-five years. In 1996, he joined Expedia as SVP and left the company in 2004. After he left the company, a lot of ideas popped up in Richard’s and Lloyd’s mind for the next start-up.

Rich Barton and lloyd frink
Image Source: Google Images

The Next Idea

The thought of building a new business came up when IAC acquired Expedia in 2003. They could have easily started working for some MNCs. But, for them and especially Frink starting a new start-up would have been far more exciting and challenging.

The first idea that came into their mind was what we call today’s cloud storage. A space to store high-resolution photos and it resembled Dropbox. But, they dropped the idea soon. Because they figured out after a point of time companies like Microsoft and Google would provide it for free.

Finally, they came up with Zillow when they needed some market-related information and won’t able to fetch it. Lloyd and Barton thought of creating a database containing such information. That’s why they founded Zillow.

The Hard Work

After Expedia, it was their second start-up. The founders admit that the journey wasn’t a bed of roses but they were certainly relaxed about it. After they were finally decided what to go for, they started doing thorough research and studies.

The idea of opening a website bothered them a little bit. It happened because they did not have enough expertise in the area of brokerage and real estate. But, they figured out opening a website and then learning to connect with people will be more effective. So, they launched the website in early 2006.

Withstanding Recession

It’s really hard for a start-up to be in the game when the global financial crisis hits after a couple of years of establishment. Still, Zillow managed to survive the big catastrophe. When the recession hit the market, Zillow already had 3-4 million users every month. Around 150 employees working at Zillow at that period.

So, at this moment they just needed to take a big decision and kind of sacrifice. They declared the layoff of one-third of the company. It was a hard decision to make but the team stood together and came out of it stronger. Lloyd also mentioned they were kind of in a bad situation due to their fault. The reason he showed was they just hired too many people too soon.

But, today Zillow has emerged out as a company making billions over a year. The company has made a lot of acquisitions since 2011.

Acquisitions

Zillow started off the list with Postlets in April 2011. In December 2011, Zillow acquired Diverse Solutions which was followed by RentJuice in May 2012. The company also acquired Buyfolio, Lincoln, and HotPads in this year. One of the biggest acquisitions of the company was in 2015 when it acquired Dotloop for $108 million.

Zestimate

Zestimate is one of the most interesting products of Zillow. The product mainly determines the value of a home in a neighborhood considering all the available information. So, the value might vary from place to place depending on the kind of information available.

In 2011, the replacement of Zestimate’s calculated algorithm took place. It estimates the values of over a million houses in the country.

Success of Zillow

Instead of many controversial remarks from Wall Street and other lawsuits, Zillow has become successful. According to the statistics of 2016, Zillow served around 140 million active monthly users.

Richard Barton- Founder of Expedia

Founder, Story / By

A true businessman is someone who observes a problem that exists in the society, thinks for a possible solution and comes up with something to resolve that problem. Thus, making a difference in the society by providing the services which makes our life easy. Richard Barton is founder of multiple ventures all focused to make people’s life easy. Barton uses a slogan “power to the people”, the staunch philosophy behind his each start-up. Barton has created a space for the people where they can access information, data, and even share their views, thus making internet a place for people.

Image Credit: Twitter

Born on 2nd June, 1967 in New Canaan, Connecticut, United States, Richard Barton is a son of a teacher and mechanical engineer. His father, Jim Barton, once gifted a Commodore 64 to Richard when they lived in New Canaan. Barton has a strong family background with his forefather John Barton and his grandfather Horace Barton known as celebrated in the 1999 South Dakota Tennis Hall of Fame.

Richard Barton completed his degree in engineering in 1989 from Stanford University. Before joining Microsoft in 1991, he took a job at Alliance Consulting Group. After joining Microsoft, one day in a conversation with Bill Gates, Barton pitched the idea of his first business venture – Expedia, and asked Gates to back him. The idea behind Expedia was it would directly allow the consumers to view the prices and book online airline travel tickets, thus, removing the travel agents from the picture. He founded Expedia in 1994 and the idea took off a great leap becoming a massive success for Barton. Later, he left Microsoft as Expedia was declared as a separate company and went public in 1999. He remained as CEO of Expedia till 2003 after which the company was acquired by IAC Corp.

The acquisition of Expedia and considerable amount of free time gave Barton much needed space to think and work on his next ventures. He wanted to create something which had the same motto as Expedia had – to make common people’s life better. In one of the interview he said, “If we’re doing things for regular folks that make their lives better and save them money and give them transparency, we’re on the side of the angels”. His next project was to start a website called Glassdoor.

The idea behind Glassdoor was to provide job seekers transparent information about the company, employees, their salary and even rate the working based on the information. This would encourage the job seekers to find the right job for themselves and for the company to raise their bar so that their ratings are not affected. The site has a whopping 22 million members and has successfully raised $93 million. According to Mr.Hohman, Chief Executive Glassdoor, the company is willing to go public.

Barton’s another idea was to create a space to share transparent information about the local real estate markets. And thus was launched Zillow – a website to find any information needed about real estate. The aim of this website was to provide all that information which was previously hidden from the customer. Barton, as of today, owns shares worth $400 million in Zillow.

Although a genius business mind Barton avoids the hubbub of Silicon Valley and doesn’t wish to get himself mixed up in the flashy corporate world. He prefers to stay away and work from a place where he finds peace and can relax whenever he wishes. Currently, he is a board member at Netflix, a venture partner with Benchmark, and also an active investor in start-ups. Barton has managed to keep a low profile and lives in Seattle.