Zillow rolls in new cash
John Cook reports today that Zillow.com has scored another $25 million in VC funding. Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin is calling this an “amazing war chest” and I tend to agree. This round of financing means Zilllow has raised a total of $57 million, a very impressive number indeed.
That kind of investment can only mean that investors, who include PAR Capital Managment, Benchmark Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures, see a significant potential for return.
A couple of highlights from Cook’s posting hint at how Zillow aims to accomplish this:
CFO Spencer Rascoff makes a rambling, slightly incongruous analogy comparing Zillow to a TV network:
“Right now, we have a terrific lineup of shows, if you will, which have attracted a lot of audience. But we need to keep producing hit shows in order to keep the traffic coming and keep making the money on advertising,” he said.
I think I get what he’s trying to say, but I think he could been a little more clear. That is, of course, unless misdirection was the intent.
Later, Rascoff was a little cagey when asked about the timeline for the rollout of any new features, including most likely, adding for sale listings to Zillow’s search results.
[He] said that listings are a critical piece of the company’s mission of “making consumers smarter about real estate information,” but he declined to say when it they might offer such a service.
More coverage here:
SiliconBeat: Zillow raises $25, joins ranks of bigger Web 2.0 companies
Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Zillow Raises Another $25 million
Screenwerk » Blog Archive » Zillow Awash in Cash
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Cliff Jacobson | Jul 25, 2006 | Reply
Zillow has done it again. Their ads are from Google, their pictures are from Pictometry through MSN, they supply Yahoo! with their home valuation data, their loan offers are made through LendingTree [owned by Barry Diller of IAC (InterActive Corp) who owns Ask.com and owned Expedia which was developed by Richard Barton, the CEO of Zillow] and now they have more VC money while they make money from the Google ads. Yesterday in an article titled “Avoid Paranoia, Embrace Innovation” in Inman News, Robert Butters, Esq cautions Realtors not to be paranoid, but accept and use the new technology. In my post I jokingly diagnosed “Zillonoia”, but now I’m not so sure it’s a joke. How soon will it be before we “Zillow” a house, just like we “Google” a term? How soon before “to Zillow” is a verb just like “to Google”? And Zillow has done this with almost all organic search ranking, not paid ranking or advertising. Maybe there really is a GodZillow, a sea monster rising from Puget Sound to eat up our adverting budgets. How soon before all the Zestimates and Zindexes are turned into Zillions?