The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Zillow strives to empower homebuyers
Company, at 10-year mark, is now rapidly expanding.
SEATTLE — Rich Barton tested the waters in 1994, when he started his first company within the much larger company he worked for — Microsoft. Now, his first venture, Expedia, has grown to be a powerhouse in the travel industry and a leading company in the Puget Sound region.
Barton’s other creations aren’t far behind. The serial entrepreneur also co-founded Zillow, a Seattle online real-estate company, and employer-review site Glassdoor, based in Mill Valley, Calif.
Barton rarely serves as CEO of the companies he creates; rather, he has a knack for finding leaders to pass them on to. One is Spencer Rascoff, now CEO of Zillow Group, who met Barton when Expedia acquired Rascoff ’s company Hotwire.
Zillow Group marked its 10th anniversary last month. It’s been a decade since the Zillow website launched.
The company has expanded rapidly, now occupying 12 floors of office space with nearly 1,000 employees in Seattle, and 2,200 overall in the U.S. Zillow rebranded as Zillow Group last year as its acquisition of rival Trulia closed. The group now owns five consumer websites and a handful of companies that help real-estate agents do transactional work.
Barton and Rascoff answered questions about the company’s aggressive company growth. Here is an edited excerpt of the conversation: Q: Zillow doesn’t keep track of vacation time and has extended parental leave. Do you make use of those benefits? Barton: Spencer sets an aggressive pace when he’s at work. However, I get a frequent email from Spencer that’s like, “All right, for the next 48 hours I am literally off the grid, I’m not checking email, I’m not looking at texts.”
That sets a strong signal that it’s OK to be gone and in fact it’s healthier for the company when you do wring the sponge out and disconnect and clean your brain out.
Rascoff: I came from investment banking, where you’d work until midnight and when you finally left at midnight, you’d leave your sport jacket on your chair and then walk down the fire stairs to a different floor so no one would see you leave. And that is not Zillow.
Q: Why did you leave Expedia and start Zillow?
Barton: It was kind of a logical follow-on to what we built at Expedia. If you step back and you kind of blur your eyes up, you can see some common themes between that and what I’ve created with other Expedia alums.
That is what we call power to the people. We believe that connected computers and smartphones have enabled the little guy, the person on the street, to be able to be super-empowered by accessing information and tools that they had not been able to access in the past.
(Zillow co-founder) Lloyd Frink and I were shopping for houses and we really couldn’t believe how bad and how disempowered we felt. We had to hire a professional and get a little drip-drip of information.
We kind of had an epiphany. We were like, “Oh my god, this is so hard. It’s 2005 and the Web has been around for 10 years. Why isn’t it easier for us to get basic marketplace information?” Q: How did you know you would pass the CEO reins to Spencer?
Barton: You know it when you see it. It’s like great art. Spencer is one of those guys who has the ability to communicate inspirational messages and stories and attract great talent. He’s a leader.
I’m a big believer that leadership is not granted. It’s earned and it’s earned from the people around and below you and not from above. So when you’re looking for leaders you don’t have to look too far. You just have to look at who people are looking to.
What has been the biggest change at Zillow in the past decade?
Rascoff: The size and scope of the company and the influence we have in the real-estate industry and in the American economy have far exceeded my wildest expectations. We probably haven’t exceeded Rich’s expectations because he dreams very, very big. But it’s quite unbelievable how far we’ve come in a really short period of time.
When we first started the company, there was a lot of fear and trepidation about what Zillow was going to do. It took us a couple of years to demonstrate to the industry that we were friends, not foe.
Fast forward to today, we have partnerships with 13,000 brokers, 400 MLSs (multiple listing services), every major real-estate franchise and brand, and we’re widely accepted in the industry.
Q: How did you get on the good side of agents?
Barton: People want the information. It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. And once they have it they want more. It’s kind of like gravity.
The more forward-thinking of the industry said, “OK, this is the gravity, and we can do our jobs better if we have a smarter customer.” A few started coming in and then more and more.