Richard Barton (born June 2, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur who is the co-executive chairman and a former two-time chief executive officer of Zillow Group, a company he co-founded in 2006. Barton founded online travel company (and Microsoft spinoff) Expedia, Inc., real-estate internet company

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

, and job search engine and career community

Glassdoor Glassdoor is an American website where current and former employees anonymously review companies, operated by the company of the same name. In 2018, the company was acquired by the Japanese company Recruit Holdings (owner of Indeed) for US$1. ...

. 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 * Experimental benchmarking, the act of defining a ...

, and is on the board of directors for

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

Avvo Avvo.com is an American 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, discipl ...

Nextdoor Nextdoor Holdings, Inc. is an American company that 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 conne ...

. He serves on the

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Board of Trustees. In 2002, 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. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

''. In April 2012, he was named to

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

'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. The town is part of the Western Connecticut Planning Region. About an hour from New York City by train, the town ...

, 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 corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

as product manager for MS-DOS 5.0. 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, 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 Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...

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 computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

. Barton, who was familiar with text-based internet services of the time, had come across an online service hosted on Prodigy 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 businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

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

, 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. Early life and education Myhrvold w ...

. Gates, Ballmer, 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, based in Seattle. The website and mobile app can be used to book airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, cruise ships, and vacation packages. Expedia.com was launched on ...

in 1996. Barton served as CEO through Expedia's

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

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 ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

, after reporting strong earnings at Zillow. He was CEO of the company from its founding until 2010, returned to the position in 2019, and transitioned to the role of co-executive chairman in August 2024.

References

1967 births 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople American chairpersons of corporations American chief executives of travel and tourism industry companies American computer businesspeople American media executives American real estate company founders American technology chief executives Businesspeople from Connecticut Expedia Group Living people Mass media people from Connecticut Microsoft employees Netflix people People from New Canaan, Connecticut Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Stanford University trustees {{US-business-bio-1960s-stub