Making Uncommon Knowledge Common

The ultimate purpose of the “Data Content Loops + SEO” strategy of Barton’s companies is to own the demand side of an industry. Expedia wants to be the first place you go when you travel. Glassdoor wants to be the destination when you’re thinking about companies to work for. And Zillow wants to be the place you go to look at real estate.

Rich Barton is hardly a household name. Perhaps this is because he’s not based here, and makes relatively few investments. However, while there are more visible founders (like Bezos and Zuckerberg) who’ve built bigger businesses, market cap and notoriety aren’t the only measures of a founder. And Barton is a strong contender for the title of best c... See more

In order to grow their demand high enough to become a beneficial flywheel, Barton’s companies use a Data Content Loop to bootstrap their demand and create unique content and index an industry online (homes for Zillow, hotels and flights for Expedia, companies for Glassdoor).-Expedia: Prices for flights and hotels that before you’d have to get from ... See more

If you look at the sources of traffic for Barton’s companies, the vast majority of their traffic comes from search or direct. This makes their user acquisition far cheaper than any company that relies primarily on paid acquisition. It’s this ability to get free acquisition at scale that made it possible to build companies in these otherwise difficu... See more

Barton career can be summed up by his mantra “Power to the People”. His companies take power from the incumbents and give it to consumers. Instead of trying to hoard information, they are on the side of consumers and giving them more data transparency.

Over the years, he’s refined this model. Expedia aggregated all the various hotel and travel options, but others had done that as well. However, Expedia and Booking.com were among the most aggressive to understand the importance of search. If you had the top spot in search, the next best thing was to acquire more sites so you owned the next top res... See more

These Data Content Loops help the companies reach the scale where other loops like SEO, brand, and network effects can kick in. Barton’s companies then use this content to own search for their market. This gives them a durable and strong source of free user acquisition, which enables them to own demand.