Bozeman Magazine

Rich Barton, a former Microsoft executive and a founder of the online companies Expedia, Zillow, and Glassdoor, will discuss his experience building several successful companies at 6:45 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, in Jabs Hall 111 on the Montana State University campus. The doors will open for informal networking at 6:15 p.m. The lecture is part of the MSU Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship’s David Orser Executive Speakers Forum and is free and open to the public. The Orser lecture is an “extraordinary opportunity to learn from one of the internet's true innovators and thought leaders,” said Kregg Aytes, dean of the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship. “Rich Barton disrupted the travel, real estate and recruiting markets and will provide the audience rare insights into how to build defining companies that scale.” Barton joined Microsoft in 1991 and then founded Expedia – a website that transformed the way individuals plan and purchase travel – in 1996. Barton served as Expedia’s president, CEO and board director until 2003. (The company spun-off from Microsoft in 1999 in an initial public offering.) In 2005, Barton co-founded Zillow, which creates an accessible site for information about local real estate markets that was previously hidden. He is executive chairman and served as Zillow’s CEO until it went public in 2010. Barton also co-founded and serves as non-executive chairman of Glassdoor, a leading employment site in which users contribute information about their employers and the job market. Barton is also a venture partner at Benchmark and is on the boards of directors at Netflix, Avvo, RealSelf, Artsy and Liberty Interactive. He has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Stanford University. The MSU Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship's David Orser Executive Speakers Forum is named for David B. Orser, a 1966 MSU graduate who started funding the program in 1988 in order to inspire MSU business students to pursue careers as innovative, responsible and ethical business leaders. For more information about the forum, contact Kregg Aytes at JJCBEDeansOffice@montana.edu or 406-994-4423.