The Sonic Boom Heard ‘round the World

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 06:40:25 -0700

At Zillow we just released a completely re-conceived Zillow on iPad. It was fantastic fun to develop and even more fun to use. Here is my launch post about it on Zillow’s blog and below is a video for those of you who don’t yet have an iPad. Zilllow has only had “mobile” apps (iPhone, Android, and now iPad) for less than a year, yet well over 1 million apps have been dowloaded and they now account for significant usage of our service. One day, they will be the majority. I encourage you to try them out.

New Travelco is Formed

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:03:31 -0700

A quick post to say how pleased I am at the formation of what, for now, we are calling NewTravelco.com. I’ve helped form this company with Expedia veterans Greg Slyngstad, Simon Breakwell, and Sunil Shah. I remain CEO of Zillow.com, but will serve as non-executive Chairman of New Travelco, which means I am on the board, but don’t work there. I want to thank Joel Cutler at General Catalyst, Brad Silverberg at Ignition Partners, and Benchmark Capital as well as a few “cats and dogs” for believing enough in us to part with $9.8m in funding for us to get this off the ground. If you know great developers or others who might be looking for a job, please send them to us. Finally, here are a few articles that have been written about the newco:

 Expedia alumni Rich Barton, Simon Breakwell, Greg Slyngstad and others funded for travel startup  Posted by Dennis Schaal
 Zillow CEO Barton, ex-Expedia execs start stealthy NewTravelco  John Cook on Sunday, March 21, 2010
 Ex-Expedia team hiring, promoting new travel company  Posted by Brier Dudley
 Rich Barton’s New Startup to Re-think Travel Planning By Liz Gannes

Erik's San Francisco Restaurant Recommendations

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:24:35 -0800

In email i just asked a good friend who lives in San Francisco:
“Where should a group of 12 price insensitive, wine-loving conference go-ers go for a dinner where we can get great wine, and maybe bring a few of our own bottles?”

Erik came back with the following that I thought I would share for fun:
• RN74 is new French place with great Burgundy list – http://www.yelp.com/biz/rn74-san-francisco
• Zuni Café is up the street from Four Seasons, can’t go wrong there -- http://www.yelp.com/biz/zuni-cafe-san-francisco
• La Folie is great French also - http://www.yelp.com/biz/la-folie-san-francisco
• Town Hall is a bit more casual - http://www.yelp.com/biz/town-hall-san-francisco

Video of My Startup Day Speech

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 19:57:30 -0800

Marcelo Calbucci of the Seattle 2.0 blog hosted a terrific conference in Bellevue a few weeks ago called Startup 2.0. It was attended by ~300 engaged and switched on folks who are in the process of or thinking about starting up companies. Marcelo asked me to keynote and has recently posted a video of my speech as well as those from several other accomplished Seattle entreprenuers, including Kelly Smith, Alex Algard, Ben Huh, and Jonathan Sposato. In my talk, I simply tell the founding stories of Expedia and Zillow and then take a few questions. All of the presentations can be viewed here.

If you are restlessly bobbing your knee inside the belly of some whale of a company, and dreaming of striking off on your own, I highly recommend you go to school on these presentations.