From left, Jeremy Wacksman and Rich Barton
Zillow Group, Inc. announced on Aug. 7 that longtime executive and Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Wacksman has been promoted to chief executive officer and is simultaneously joining the company’s board of directors. Wacksman succeeds co-founder Rich Barton, who remains on the Zillow Group board and becomes co-executive chair alongside Zillow co-founder and current Executive Chair Lloyd Frink.
Barton, who founded Zillow in Seattle with Frink in 2004, initially served as CEO until 2011, when he became the company’s executive chairman. He stepped back into the CEO role in 2019.
Wacksman joined Zillow from Microsoft in 2009 and has earned multiple promotions throughout his 15 years there, including as a product leader, chief marketing officer and, for the past three years, as chief operating officer, with responsibility for growing Zillow Group businesses and also overseeing engineering, product, design, marketing, sales and industry relations. He previously held leadership or advisory roles in several other prominent web-based companies, including Dollar Shave Club and GoFundMe.
“Zillow’s business is firing on all cylinders and performing well through a challenging real estate macro,” said Barton in a statement. “We’ve built and integrated products, completed strategic acquisitions, enhanced our agent partner network, and leaned in hard on our Mortgages and Rentals businesses. This is due in no small part to the leadership of Jeremy Wacksman, with the past three years being a time of particularly impressive innovation for the company. Lloyd and I could not be more confident in Jeremy as CEO, in the caliber of the broader team and in Zillow’s bright future.”
During his leadership tenure at Zillow, Wacksman has been a driver of innovation in real estate, the Zillow release said. As a product leader he helped pioneer mobile real estate shopping and, today, Zillow Group apps have three times more daily active users than any other company in the category, the release stated.
On a public conference call following the company’s earnings report yesterday, Barton said his role would be “support and counseling” the leadership team, and spent significant time praising Wacksman, saying that “we organized most of the company” around him when he was promoted to COO.
“His tenure as COO the past three years, with all product, engineering, design, marketing, sales, IT, and go-to-market business operations reporting to him, has been a time of particularly impressive innovation for Zillow, which has put the company back on an accelerating growth path,” Barton said.
As CMO, Wacksman shepherded the product and consumer marketing strategy that helped Zillow grow into the brand it is today, according to the release, with 231 million average monthly unique users and the word “Zillow” searched more than the term “real estate.” When Barton tapped him as COO, Wacksman operationalized Zillow’s housing super app strategy while maintaining strong cost discipline, diversifying revenue streams, growing the rentals and mortgages businesses, and successfully acquiring industry software solutions like Follow Up Boss and ShowingTime, the release noted. He also organized and elevated the talent that now makes up Zillow’s product, engineering and design organizations responsible for innovative product rollouts such as 3D interactive floor plans, Real Time Touring and Zillow Showcase.
“With the strength of Zillow’s brand, our highly engaged audience and a steadily growing business portfolio, we are in a great position to capture meaningful transaction share for years to come,” Wacksman said in a statement. “The work we’re doing to bring the integrated transaction to life through exceptional tech solutions for consumers and agents will transform residential real estate. I love this company and its mission, and I am honored to lead our extraordinary team into the next phase of Zillow’s growth.”
Both Barton and Frink have led the board of directors and held board positions, including the chairmanship, since they founded Zillow in 2004. They will continue to be active in the company to support Wacksman and the leadership team, according to the release.
