Ten years ago this week, I stood in a conference room in downtown Seattle, with 75 of my colleagues and we flipped the switch, launching Zillow.
For the first time, homeowners, buyers and sellers had access to unprecedented information about the housing market – including millions of free home valuations, which we call Zestimates – on the web.
It wasn’t easy to find and unlock that information, but I have never been surprised about Zillow’s appeal. The idea for the company came from our own desire for more information about real estate, and even before launch I knew we were hardly unique in that desire. I couldn’t be more proud of the way Zillow has brought such valuable information into the light to enable people to make smarter decisions about their homes. Buying, selling, renting or financing a home today is a vastly different experience than it was 10 years ago.
Today, we are the largest real estate site in the U.S with nearly 124 million people visiting Zillow and Zillow Group’s consumer brands. We have data on 110 million homes. We created a verb -- 80 percent of homes have been “Zillowed”.
Our success can’t just be attributed to a great idea, though. A lot of ingredients have to come together to make this company thrive.
Our people have always been our greatest asset. We launched Zillow with a close-knit team, and 10 years later, almost all of the employees who first joined at launch are still working at Zillow Group. That has given us level of management stability that is almost unprecedented in the tech world. Today we have more than 2,200 employees and are a magnet for top talent at our Seattle headquarters and Zillow Group offices all over the country.
The reason we’ve been able to recruit retain such great people is because of our company culture. When we first started Zillow we didn’t need to work hard at culture – we were a small group, all on the same page, and working toward a defined goal. We have 100 times more employees today, have formed Zillow Group which operates five consumer brands, and have eight offices in the U.S. and Canada. So our focus on maintaining that fast moving, start-up-like culture is now more deliberate. Our corporate culture is unique, and the key to our success. It is based on our core values – Own It; Team Sport; Move Fast Think Big; Act With Integrity; and Winning is Fun. I’m proud of our story, but what excites me the most is what the next decade will bring. On the technology front, we’ve never shied away from exploring how we can evolve the home shopping experience or real estate transaction. We launched our first iPhone app the day the iPhone launched, and it transformed our business with more than two-thirds of Zillow’s visits now coming from a mobile device. What’s next? I honestly don’t know. But I do know that the way people shop for homes will be different 10 years from now, and Zillow will be at the forefront of that change.
Company culture is something that will continue to evolve as well. As access to information becomes more and more democratized, what employees need from their leaders will continue to change. I think about this a lot, and I’m committed to keeping Zillow Group the kind of place that values transparency.