Rich Barton

Rich Barton began his career after studying at Stanford University, where he earned a degree in industrial engineering. He briefly worked in management consulting before joining Microsoft. In 1994, at age 26, he pitched the idea of an online travel booking service to Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Nathan Myhrvold. Microsoft greenlit the project, launching Expedia in 1996 as one of the first online travel platforms. Barton led it as an internal venture until its 1999 spin-off as a public company, raising $80 million in its IPO and growing it into a major revenue generator before stepping down as CEO in 2003 after its $3.6 billion acquisition by IAC under Barry Diller. After selling Expedia, Barton took a year-long sabbatical in Florence, Italy, with his family before returning to Seattle in 2004. He then co-founded Zillow in 2006 with Lloyd Frink, targeting the opaque real estate market with the Zestimate algorithm for property value estimates using public data. Zillow quickly gained popularity, with Barton as CEO from founding until 2010; he returned as CEO in 2019 amid strong earnings that made him a billionaire in 2020 per Forbes, transitioning to co-executive chairman in August 2024. Barton expanded his impact by co-founding Glassdoor in 2007, a job search site with a 'give-to-get' model for company reviews, where he served as non-executive chairman until its 2018 acquisition. He also launched Avvo for attorney ratings and worked as a venture partner at Benchmark Capital from 2005 to 2018. Currently, he serves on boards including Zillow Group, Qurate, Netflix, and Stanford University's Board of Trustees, while advocating for innovation, ethical leadership, and industry disruption through digital marketplaces.