Richard Barton is an American entrepreneur and the chief executive officer of Zillow Group, an online real estate database company.
Early life and education
Rich Barton is an American entrepreneur who was born on June 2, 1967. Barton is the son of Jim Barton who is a retired executive at Union Carbide and Betsy, a homemaker.
Born in the Midwest, Barton enhanced his entrepreneurial talents while growing up in New Canaan, Connecticut. In 1981-1985, Barton attended high school in New Canaan High School. From 1989, Barton graduated from Stanford University with a degree in engineering.
Career
Before establishing Expedia, Barton was employed from 1991 to 1994 by Microsoft in several product management capacities. Barton was involved in the research and development of such products as the MS-DOS 5, MS-DOS 6, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 operating systems. Barton pushed and eventually accomplished in selling MS-DOS with a DOS for Dummies book even though the Microsoft rival published it. Barton felt that it would be more convenient for beginner computer users to buy DOS if it came with an easy-to-read user’s guide.
While traveling on a CD-ROM work project to establish travel guides, Barton proposed with the idea of e-travel or by means of electronic resources to help out travelers. Barton thought that the CD travel guide project would only fail, but his e-travel concept would be successful. Barton enlightened his boss, Bill Gates at Microsoft and started to like the idea. Barton created Expedia, and in 1994, began working on the concept.
Barton’s achievement with Expedia was made possible by the company’s tactic to the hotel business. So instead of retailing rooms on commission, Expedia purchased them at a discount using its growing size to bargain low prices. It then resold the rooms at a higher price to its customers, often packaged with airfares. Barton was very adept at using technology and consistently reduces the costs of the travel process.
In 1996, it was Expedia’s first appearance on the Internet. At that time, Barton anticipated that Expedia would become the online destination for people who booked travel reservations such as for airplane trips, hotels, and rental cars from their computers. Barton also came up with other travel-related features for the Expedia Website, including frequent flyer tracking tools, chat room, and maps. These attainments were contributory in helping Expedia to develop its customer service operations.
From Expedia to Sale to USA Interactive
Microsoft spun off Expedia with an initial public offering of $14 per share in the fourth quarter of 1999. On the first day of trading, the stock jumped 280 percent, producing a market cap of $2 billion, making Barton a rich man.
In early 2000, Barton began to finance considerably in developing a comprehensive merchant inventory and enhancing the company’s computer system. As a result, the income from the merchant business almost doubled from a year earlier to about $67 million, while agency revenue grew about 88 percent to $34 million.
Microsoft approved to sell control of Expedia to the cable television company, USA Interactive for an estimated $1.3 billion in 2001 of July. Barton expanded Expedia to what he called a travel superstore on the Internet, one that sold everything from vacation packages, discount airfares, and island hideaway rentals to tickets to professional sporting events with the support of Expedia’s new parent company. From 50 original employees, Expedia grew up to more than 1,300 worldwide under Barton’s management.
Barton resigned as Expedia’s president and CEO, effective March 31, 2003. Barton departed the company at the peak of its financial earning history, with the company had booked $5.3 billion in gross in 2002. In 2003 of February, he assumed at Expedia’s parent company, IAC/InterActiveCorp, a position on the board of directors. The InterActiveCorp position permitted Barton to carry on his connection with Expedia. Barton also acted on the board of directors of Ticketmaster, AtomShockwave, and Netflix.
Zillow
In 2005, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink founded Zillow and launched the website in 2006. Zillow is an online real estate company whose main purpose is to help buyers, sellers, home-makers, real estate agents, renters, landlords, mortgage professionals, and property manager share and find important information about real estate, home improvement, homes, and mortgages. Their objective is to provide people with the proper tools, and information so that they can make decisions about their homes, real estate, and mortgages.
The National Community Reinvestment Coalition filed a protest with the Federal Trade Commission in 2006 of October, saying that Zillow was “deliberately deceiving real-estate experts and consumers to trust upon the accuracy of its assessment services despite the full awareness of the company officials that their valuation Automated Valuation Model (AVM) mechanism is highly imprecise and misleading.
In December 2006, Zillow started three new pieces of functionality, allowing customers to post homes for sale and set a “Make Me Move” as well as a real estate wiki. In the same year, Zillow and Microsoft teamed up to provide well-defined aerial photos, a feature called Bird’s Eye View. Zillow utilizes this functionality for entertainment-focused features of well-known homes.
In a letter dated on May 4, 2007, the FTC nominated not to inspect this complaint, which was later pulled out by the NCRC. On April 3, 2008, Zillow announced a service called Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. This service grants for borrowers to get custom loan quotes without disclosing personally identifying information. In the same year, Zillow released Zillow Advice, letting people ask real estate questions online and get answers from the Web site’s community of specialists.
In 2009, Zillow announced a partnership as a part of Zillow Newspaper Consortium in which the company offers its real estate search engines to the websites of the prominent newspapers in the US. Zillow has often embraced the business model to surge more growth. In December 2009, Zillow expanded its facilities to include the rental market. The addition of rental listings authorized users to list a home for rent and search for both rental homes and homes for sale.
In February 2011, the brand opened an exclusive partnership with Yahoo! Real estate. They formed the real estate advertising network on the web which is the biggest of all till date. The company started transacting on the NASDAQ Stock Market in July 2011.
In late 2013, Zillow began running AOL Real Estate. Zillow is one of the US’ brands which are visited by the majority of the people and in May 2014, the company has beaten all the records when Zillow mobile apps were considered for over 480 million homes. Thus, it is believed as the most popular and in-demand real estate apps. Zillow also took over the real estate portal in July 2014, for MSN Real Estate.
In the same year, Zillow encountered numerous charges from former staffs at the Zillow operation in Irvine, California, claiming abuses of California Labor Code and California Business and Professions Code. On February 26, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California attested the class to include anyone who worked as an inside sales consultant at Zillow between November 2010 and January 2015. Among the numerous allegations brought by high-profile attorneys Bobby Samini and Mark Geragos, Zillow is charged of failing to pay overtime pay, failing to pay wages, and failing to provide meal and rest breaks. On May 5, 2016, Zillow resolved the action for an undisclosed amount, without confessing any wrongdoings.
Early this year, Spencer Rascoff, also a co-founder, served as CEO for nearly a decade is out. Zillow declared that Rich Barton, who co-founded Zillow in 2005, has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer. Zillow has revealed headwinds in its new business segment in recent months, highlighting slower-than-expected home sales and rising interest rates. The company’s stock is down more than 25 percent in the last 12 months.
Zillow proclaimed the change alongside mixed fourth quarter earnings. The company stated $0.01 per share adjusted earnings on revenue of $365 million. Analysts had anticipated EPS of $0.01 on revenues of $351 million. Zillow publicized higher-than-expected profits guidance, predicting first-quarter revenue between $417 million and $443 million, compared with Wall Street estimates of $404 million. The stock jumped as much as 8 percent in extended trading before recovering and trading up as much as 8 percent.