Richard Barton (born June 2, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur and the chief executive officer of

Zillow Group Zillow Group, Inc., or simply Zillow, is an American tech real-estate marketplace company that was founded in 2006, and was created by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, former Microsoft executives and founders of Microsoft spin-off Expedia; Spencer R ...

. Barton founded online travel company (and Microsoft spinoff) Expedia, Inc.,

real-estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...

internet company

Zillow Zillow Group, Inc., or simply Zillow, is an American tech real-estate marketplace company that was founded in 2006, and was created by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, former Microsoft executives and founders of Microsoft spin-off Expedia; Spencer R ...

, and job search engine and career community

Glassdoor Glassdoor is an American website where current and former employees anonymously review companies. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, it has additional offices in Chicago, Dublin, London, and São Paulo. Glassdoor also allows its users to ...

. He also founded the online travel photography sharing website and app Trover, which was acquired by Expedia in 2016. Barton was also a venture partner at

Benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Benchmark (surveying), a point of known elevati ...

, and is on the board of directors for

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

Avvo Avvo.com is an online marketplace for legal services, that provides lawyer referrals and access to a database of legal information consisting primarily of previously answered questions. Lawyer profiles may include client reviews, disciplinary acti ...

Nextdoor Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. is an American company which operates a hyperlocal social networking service for neighborhoods. The company was founded in 2008 and is based in San Francisco, California. Nextdoor launched in the United States in October ...

, and

Artsy Artsy, formally known as Art.sy Inc is a New York City based online art brokerage. Its main business is developing and hosting website for numerous galleries as well as selling art for them. It utilizes a search engine and database to draw conn ...

. He serves on the

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

Board of Trustees. In 2003, he was named as one of the top 10 innovators under 35 by

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

. In April 2012, he was named to

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

's Presidential Ambassadors for Continental Entrepreneurship.

Early life

Barton, raised in

New Canaan, Connecticut New Canaan () is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 20,622 according to the 2020 census. About an hour from Manhattan by train, the town is considered part of Connecticut's Gold Coast. The town is bounde ...

, is the son of a teacher and mechanical engineer. He graduated from

in 1989 with a degree in engineering. He first worked for Alliance Consulting Group, and in 1991, began working for

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

as product manager for

MS-DOS 5.0 MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

. Barton's forefathers, John Barton and his son Horace, were inducted into the 1999

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

Tennis Hall of Fame.

Entrepreneurship

Barton founded Expedia within Microsoft in 1994. In 1994, Microsoft was planning to build a travel guidebook on a

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

. Barton, who was familiar with text-based internet services of the time, had come across an online service hosted on

Prodigy Prodigy, Prodigies or The Prodigy may refer to: * Child prodigy, a child who produces meaningful output to the level of an adult expert performer ** Chess prodigy, a child who can beat experienced adult players at chess Arts, entertainment, and ...

designed for travel agents working from home. He pitched the idea of an online travel booking service to

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

Steve Ballmer Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American business magnate and investor who served as the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Associ ...

, and

Nathan Myhrvold Nathan Paul Myhrvold (born August 3, 1959), formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures and the principal author of '' Modernist Cuisine'' and its successor books. Myhrvold was listed as co-inventor ...

. Gates, Balmer, and Myhrvold gave Barton permission to move forward with the project, which debuted on the web as

Expedia Expedia Inc. is an online travel agency owned by Expedia Group, an American online travel shopping company based in Seattle. The website and mobile app can be used to book airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, cruise ships, and vacat ...

in 1996. Barton served as CEO through Expedia's IPO in 1999, and stayed in the position until 2003, after the company was acquired for $3.6 billion. After a year-long break in Italy from the business community, Barton returned to Seattle in 2004, and began working toward the launch of Zillow with Lloyd Frink, another Expedia and Microsoft alumnus. Barton and Frink did not reveal much about the company prior to its launch. In February 2020, Barton became a billionaire according to Forbes, after reporting strong earnings at Zillow.

References

1967 births Living people American computer businesspeople American technology chief executives Businesspeople from Connecticut Microsoft employees Netflix people People from New Canaan, Connecticut Stanford University School of Engineering alumni 20th-century American businesspeople Stanford University trustees {{US-business-bio-1960s-stub