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Rich Barton

04/18/25

@ Tim Ferriss

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.

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How Rich Barton Built Expedia and Zillow — Audacious Goals, Provocation Marketing, and More

@ Tim Ferriss

How Rich Barton Built Expedia and Zillow — Audacious Goals, Provocation Marketing, and More

04/18/25

Related Takeaways

Rich Barton

04/18/25

@ Tim Ferriss

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.

Rich Barton

04/18/25

@ Tim Ferriss

When we launched Zillow, millions of users flocked to the site due to positive press from influential tech journalist Walt Mossberg, but our server crashed under the traffic, leading to a memorable headline about our popularity.

Rich Barton

04/18/25

@ Tim Ferriss

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.

Rich Barton

04/18/25

@ Tim Ferriss

Zillow's long-term strategy is to create a super app that integrates all aspects of renting and buying homes, embedding ourselves in the workflow to solve real customer problems.

Rich Barton

04/18/25

@ Tim Ferriss

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.

Guillermo Rauch

06/03/25

@ Accel

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.

Rich Barton

04/18/25

@ Tim Ferriss

We aimed to empower consumers in the real estate market just as we did in the travel industry, by making information accessible and transparent.

Brian Chesky

12/01/15

@ Greylock

We built a one-click tool to post listings on Craigslist, which helped us gain more distribution until Craigslist shut it down.

Kat Mañalac

09/20/18

@ Y Combinator

PR, or press, involves pitching an independent third-party publication to tell your startup's story, which is external to your own channels.