At Zillow, we built a PR data distribution infrastructure to feed local newspapers with housing data, capitalizing on the constant demand for housing news, which helped establish our brand without spending on traditional advertising.

The idea for Zillow emerged from recognizing the lack of transparency in the real estate market, where basic information like home prices was hard to find online.

After launching Watsi, we experienced a surge of interest, with major media outlets like TechCrunch, Huffington Post, and NBC covering us, leading to a rapid increase in donations that outpaced our ability to post new patients.

I believe the product is the most important part of the marketing mix; when we launched Zillow, we focused on creating a provocative feature that would generate discussion and interest.

The realization that our technology could work for both hobbyists and enterprises was pivotal when we received an email from Zillow about rewriting everything on top of Next.js.

In pursuit of price discovery, we discovered the Zestimate, which became our killer feature, providing real-time estimated values for homes, akin to a stock chart, appealing to homeowners who care deeply about their largest asset.

Launching our show garnered national attention, and we experienced significant growth, hitting 150,000 unique visitors in the first month.

We started with bloggers to gain initial press coverage, which eventually led to national media attention, helping us gain traction despite being in debt.

In late 2009, we decided to publicly announce our product, which led to significant interest and media coverage.