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Zillow this week announced that Bill Gurley, a venture capitalist who has a long history with the portal giant, has joined the company’s board of directors for a second time.
Bill Gurley
Gurley is a general partner at California-based venture capital firm Benchmark. According to a statement, he previously served on Zillow’s board from 2005 to 2015. Zillow co-founder and CEO Rich Barton described Gurley as an early adviser to the company, adding that “we couldn’t be happier to welcome” him back.
“I can easily say Zillow would not be the company it is today without the invaluable contributions he made as both an investor and adviser in our earliest days, as well as during his original decade-long tenure as board director,” Barton continued in the statement. “Bill is a visionary and renowned adviser to mission-driven technology teams building brands for the long term, with especially deep expertise in digital consumer marketplaces.”
In addition to his work with Zillow, Gurley has also invested in and sat on the boards of companies such as Grubhub, Nextdoor and Uber.
Gurley’s return to Zillow comes at a pivotal time for the company. For years, Zillow’s leadership has touted a “Zillow 2.0” plan to grow the company into more than just a consumer portal and agent lead machine. Initially, iBuying was supposed to be a major component of that plan, though the company abandoned the cash offer space in 2021.
In the time since, Zillow has repeatedly touted a coming “housing super app.”
Gurley joins Zillow, then, when the company is under pressure to deliver on its promises about a transformative app — and for that app to have a transformative impact on Zillow’s overall business as well.
For his part, Gurley struck an optimistic tone this week, arguing in a statement that Zillow is “drastically improving the renting, buying and selling experience for consumers across the country.”
“Over the next several years,” he added, “I believe Zillow is going to harness its astounding brand power to continue transforming the consumer experience and real estate industry.”
