I’ve been following a Seattle-based real estate start-up ever since someone left a comment on my site a month ago… So far the details are very limited, but a recent press release (via Seattle Property News), indicates that Zillow has recently added some very impressive names to their board. These include:

• The former Chief Executive Officer of Expedia, Inc., Erik Blachford was most recently CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp’s travel division, including online travel businesses Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Classic Custom Vacations and Interval International. Erik is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a Masters in Business Administration from Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
• Currently President and Chief Financial Officer of Oracle, Greg Maffei has also served as CFO of Microsoft Corp. Most recently, Greg was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of 360networks Corp. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and holds a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.
• Gordon Stephenson is the co-founder and Managing Broker of Real Property Associates (RPA), one of the largest independent real estate brokerages in the Northwest. He oversees more than 40 agents and brokers in their sales activities, and continues to personally represent buyers and sellers. Prior to founding RPA in 1991, Gordon was a Seattle-based Associate Broker with both Prudential MacPhersons and Windermere Real Estate. He is a graduate of Stanford University, with a Bachelor of Arts (AB) in Economics.

Want more? Here are some of my notes with links:

• Zillow.com. Only informative thing is their management team and their current job openings.
• Odds against Rich Barton’s (Expedia founder) Zillow. Dave Chase argues (quite persuasively that Zillow management may not know the real estate industry well enough. I wonder what he would say know that they’ve brought Gordon Stephenson on board as a director…
• Former Expedia top exec is back. First news account of Zillow from Nov 04
• Five entrepreneurs with solid records back in ring. Richard Burton describes the thrill of starting a new company
• Expedia founder sold on real estate idea. April ’04 article giving a little more clarity on Zillow’s game plan.

UPDATE:
David Chase seems pretty impressed with the addition of Gordon Stephenson to the Zillow Board. “The lack of knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the real estate market was a key issue that I thought would impair them (Zillow) — it looks like they are starting to plug that gap.”