In the early 90s, Rich Barton arrived to work at Microsoft just as the world wide web was taking off. He wound up pitching Bill Gates on an idea that was transformative at the time: to let everyday travelers book their own flights and hotels by giving them online access to previously hidden reservation systems.
Expedia launched from inside Microsoft but was so successful at transforming the travel industry that it was spun out into a public company with Rich as CEO. Then in 2005, Rich moved on to a new idea with some Expedia colleagues, co-founding Zillow as a way to "turn on all the lights" in another sprawling industry: real estate.
When the site launched in 2006, so many people tried to look up their home-value "Zestimates" that the site crashed within hours. By 2020, pandemic-era interest in housing saw Zillow accessed almost 10 billion times.
1:20 - Intro
4:03 - College at Stanford
5:09 - Getting a job at Microsoft
9:26 - Working on a travel idea
10:33 - Pitching to Bill Gates
14:55 - Coming up with the name for Expedia
16:23 - Working with the airlines
18:20 - The public response
20:01 - Leaving the company and the Zillow idea
27:15 - Auctioning houses
31:19 - Finding success
34:13 - Profiting
37:32 - Collecting the info
44:25 - The reaction to the launch
46:32 - Generating revenue
49:02 - Co-founding Glassdoor
50:20 - The crash of the housing market
53:13- Stepping down
53:53 - Returning
56:45 - Working with real estate agents
58:10 - Consumer behavior changing in the pandemic
60:45 - Long term growth
61:35 - Handling money
62:28 - Luck vs. hard work
Information Asymmetry
Rich Barton
Estimated Prophet - The Grateful Dead
MS-DOS
Prodigy
Netscape
Expedia
Barry Diller
Zillow
Wall Street Journal Zillow article
Glassdoor
