Sessions · Speaker session
Fireside Chat with Rich Barton
Thursday, July 10, 2025 · 4:15–7 PM PDT
This session has ended.
About this session
Rich was the co-founder of two of the most successful companies in Seattle history, Expedia and Zillow. His career has been the stuff of legend, and he has a wealth of experience to share. Join us for a fireside chat with Rich, and be sure to bring your best questions.
Agenda
9–9:30 AM PDT
Arrive and Check In
Connect with fellow attendees before the event kicks off—arrive on time to make valuable connections and start building relationships that could accelerate your founder journey.
9:30–10:30 AM PDT
Speaker Session: Rich Barton and Court Lorenzini
Rich and Court have founded some of the most successful companies to come out of the Pacific Northwest in the last 20 years. As longtime friends, they'll have a comfortable chat about their respective journeys and lessons learned.
10:30–11 AM PDT
Product Delivery
What product delivery issues are you facing now? Engineering, quality, maintenance, specifications, infrastructure, technical operations?
11–11:30 AM PDT
Revenue Generation
What revenue generation issues are you facing now? Direct sales, channels, partners, marketing, bus dev, customer support?
11:30 AM–12 PM PDT
Operations
What operational issues are you facing now? Fundraising, personnel, Board, staffing, supply chain, logistics, purchasing, accounting, legal, IP?
Hosting this session
Rich Barton
Co-founder of Zillow, Expedia, Glassdoor
Rich is the co-founder and co-executive chairman of Zillow. Rich has been a member of Zillow’s Board since its inception in 2004 and served as chief executive officer and/or executive chairman ever since.
Before Zillow, Rich founded Expedia within Microsoft in 1994 and successfully spun the company out as a public company in 1999. He served as president, CEO, and board director of Expedia until 2003. He also co-founded and served as Chairman of Glassdoor from 2007 to 2018.
Rich was a venture partner at Benchmark Capital from 2005 until 2018. He’s served on several private and public company boards and continues to be a board director for Netflix, Qurate, Stanford Board of Trustees and Zillow Group. He earned a Bachelor of Science in General Engineering: Industrial Economics from Stanford University.
Next step
Have a question behind the session?
Share what you’re working through. If your company qualifies, we’ll reply personally within 24 hours.
For companies that have raised at least $1M from venture firms.