The co-founders of property listings and valuation portal Zillow.com, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, are stepping down from their respective roles as chief executive officer and president, but will continue to play an active role in the company.
Barton — Zillow’s CEO since the company’s founding in 2005 — will continue to serve as chairman of the board of directors, the company said.
Frink, who also holds a seat on the board, is exchanging his title as president for what the company said will be a new full-time role: chief strategy officer.
Taking over the CEO reins from Barton is Spencer Rascoff, who joined Zillow in 2005 as a member of the original executive team and was named chief operating officer in October 2008.
As COO, Rascoff has been responsible "for the majority of Zillow’s day-to-day operations for the past two years," the company said, overseeing marketing, finance, partner relations, as well as the execution of the company’s recent partnership with Yahoo Real Estate.
Under an advertising partnership announced in July, Zillow said it would serve as the exclusive provider of for-sale property listings for Yahoo Real Estate.
Barton, Frink, Rascoff and several other members of Zillow’s management team are veterans of the online travel site Expedia.com, which Barton founded. Expedia launched as a Microsoft project in 1994, and spun off as a publicly traded company in 1999.
Barton is also the co-founder and chairman of the board of Glassdoor.com, which posts employee reviews and salary information for more than 84,000 companies. Barton is a venture partner at Benchmark Capital in Menlo Park and serves on the boards of directors at Netflix, Avvo and RealSelf.com.
Frink, who joined Expedia in 1995 as one of the first members of the team, had previously worked for Microsoft, where he started working as a summer intern in 1979.
Rascoff joined Expedia after the online travel company he co-founded in 1999, Hotwire.com, was acquired by InterActiveCorp for $675 million.
Rascoff’s resume also includes a two-year stint as an investment banker at Goldman, Sachs & Co. following his graduation from Harvard University with a bachelor of arts degree in government and economics.
Other Zillow executives previously with Expedia include Chief Technology Officer David Beitel, Chief Economist Stan Humphries, and vice presidents of product teams Kristin Acker, Christopher Roberts and Garrett McAuliffe.
Since the company was founded, it has completed three rounds of financing by outside investors, totaling $87 million. The last round of financing — $30 million — was announced in September 2007.
