The Zillow Mafia
In our weekly tech mafia series we cover the biggest tech mafias in Silicon Valley and beyond, taking a closer look at what companies former employees have started, how much money they’ve raised, and who their investors are.
What is a Tech Mafia Group?
Disruptive startups like PayPal have produced a line of ex employees who go on to start their own influential startups. For example, employees who worked at PayPal went on to found companies like LinkedIn and YouTube.
The Zillow Mafia
Zillow, is an American tech real-estate marketplace company that was founded in 2006 by Rich Barton. It is now a publicly traded company and has also acquired many companies to scale itself.
Quick stats on the Zillow Mafia:
- Total number of companies founded: 33
- Total amount of money raised: $5.5B
We've selected 21 of the top most notable companies, followed by several rising stars of the Zillow Mafia. Learn about their investor details, money raised, and more below!
Companies Covered:
- Pacaso
- Solv
- Sift
- Tomo
- Amino
- 75 & Sunny
- dot.LA
- GoldieBlox
- Balance
- Divvy Homes
- Let's Enhance
- Laskie
- Living Carbon
- Joe Coffee
- Baton Market
- Nautical Commerce
- CTO.ai
- Wreno
- Metaphor
- Gridics
- Advocado
Pacaso
Founder: Austin Allison, Spencer Rascoff
Zillow Role: Founder & GM, Board Member & Co-Founder
Capital Raised: $1.5B
Investors: Global Founders Capital
Stage: Series B
Pacaso is a proptech company that modernizes the generations-old practice of co-owning a second home.
Austin is CEO of Pacaso and co-founded the company to make the dream of second home ownership a reality for more people after experiencing the profound effect it had on his own life.
Solv
Founder: Stephen Rossi
Zillow Role: VP of Products
Capital Raised: $95.1M
Investors: Benchmark Capital
Stage: Series C
Solv is a digital platform which allows patients to book same-day doctor’s appointments and urgent care visits. Stephen is a marketing leader, product manager, and software develop.
Sift
Founder: Jason Tan
Zillow Role: Software Design Engineer
Capital Raised: $156.5M
Investors: Union Square Ventures
Stage: Series E
Sift applies insights from a global network of data to detect fraud and increase positive user experience. Jason is an engineer, entrepreneur, and investor attracted to great products and amazing people.
Tomo
Founder: Carey Schwaber Armstrong, Greg Schwartz
Zillow Role: Vice President, President - Media & Marketplace
Capital Raised: $110M
Investors: Ribbit Capital
Stage: Series A
Tomo is a digital mortgage and transaction company, it's like PayPal for the mortgage industry.Carey is the co-founder & chief operating officer at Tomo.
Amino
Founder: David Vivero
Zillow Role: Vice President, Rentals
Capital Raised: $125M
Investors: Accel Partners
Stage: Series C
Amino is a data-driven healthcare guidance platform that helps companies and their employees navigate the complex US healthcare system.
David is an internet entrepreneur with background in media, venture capital, healthcare, and real estate, and a deep interest in network effects and platform adoption, Internet marketplaces, and consumer media.
75 & Sunny
Founder: Spencer Rascoff
Zillow Role: Board Member & Co-Founder
Capital Raised: $62M
Investors: Steve Salis
Stage: Seed
75 & Sunny is a venture fund and startup studio. Spencer Rascoff is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso, Recon Food, Queue, Path, Supernova's family of SPACs, and 75 & Sunny.
Balance
Founder: Aaron LaRue
Zillow Role: Product
Capital Raised: $25M
Investors: Seven Seven Six
Stage: Series A
Balance is a more affordable and flexible way to own a home.
Aaron is a creative, data-driven and results-oriented leader with experience designing, building and growing products.
Divvy Homes
Founder: Brian Ma
Zillow Role: Program Manager
Capital Raised: $1.2B
Investors: GGV Capital
Stage: Series D
Divvy Homes is a tech-enabled real estate platform that facilitates rent-to-own home purchases.
Brian is a serial entrepreneur, investor, passionate problem solver, calculated risk taker, and lifelong dream follower.
Living Carbon
Founder: Maddie Hall
Zillow Role: Product Management and Marketing Intern
Capital Raised: $36M
Investors: Felicis Ventures
Stage: Series A
Living Carbon is a public benefit company on a mission to fight climate change by genetically enhancing CO2 capture and storage in trees.
Nautical Commerce
Founder: James Throsby
Zillow Role: Investor Relations Intern
Capital Raised: $30M
Investors: Drive Capital
Stage: Series A
Nautical Commerce is a multi-vendor dropship and marketplace platform for retailers, brands, and B2B businesses.
Advocado
Founder: RJ Jones
Zillow Role: Vice President of Investor Relations
Capital Raised: $12.5M
Investors: RJ Jones
Stage: Series A
Advocado is a cross-media data platform that connects offline and online audience insights to influence the customer journey.
Rising Stars
Let's Enhance
Founder: Vlad Pranskevičius
Zillow Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $3.1M
Investors: Techstars
Stage: Seed
Let's Enhance is a deep-tech company that builds next-gen AI photo management solution for marketplaces.
dot.LA
Founder: Spencer Rascoff
Zillow Role: Board Member
Capital Raised: $4M
Investors: Upfront Ventures
Stage: Seed
Dot.LA is a digital newsroom covering L.A.'s startup and tech community.
Spencer Rascoff is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso, Recon Food, Queue, Path, Supernova's family of SPACs, and 75 & Sunny.
GoldieBlox
Founder: Beau Lewis
Zillow Role: Sr. Program Manager
Capital Raised: $15.1M
Investors: Q Ventures
Stage: Seed
GoldieBlox a children's multimedia company out to show the world that girls deserve more choices than dolls and princesses.
Laskie
Founder: Chris Bakke
Zillow Role: Director of Business Development
Capital Raised: $6M
Investors: Bloomberg Beta
Stage: Seed
Laskie provides sales funnel analysis, react website construction, email outreach, Facebook ads campaigns, and other services.Chris has previously been the CEO of Laskie (acquired by X/Twitter in 2023), Co-founder of Interviewed (acquired by Indeed in 2017), COO of 42Floors (acquired by Knotel), managed business development for Zillow (NAS $ZG), RentJuice (acquired by Zillow in 2012).
Joe Coffee
Founder: Nick Martin
Zillow Role: Senior Marketing Manager
Capital Raised: $5M
Investors: Gravity Payments
Stage: Seed
Joe Coffee provides a mobile ordering and loyalty platform for indie coffee to compete with national corporate chains.Nick is on a mission create unfair advantage for small business against corporate giants.
Baton Market
Founder: Chat Joglekar
Zillow Role: Vice President, Sales Strategy and Operations
Capital Raised: $2.8M
Investors: Bloomberg Beta
Stage: Pre-Seed
Clearing the path for small businesses by giving everyone access to reliable data.
Chat is an experienced executive that has built teams / businesses from an idea to multi-million dollar scale, across the spectrum: from pre-revenue startup to launch and from $0 to $100M+ businesses.
CTO.ai
Founder: Kyle Campbell
Zillow Role: General Manager - Platform Services
Capital Raised: $7.5M
Investors: Tiger Global
Stage: Seed
CTO.ai provides a Developer Control Plane that helps companies measurably increase developer productivity up to 200x, without hiring DevOps.
Wreno
Founder: Charlotte Jingwei Schell, Mark A. Barton
Zillow Role: Senior Product Manager, Principal Program Manager
Capital Raised: $6.1M
Investors: NFX
Stage: Seed
End-to-end vendor compliance management and new vendor sourcing platform for the real estate industry.
Metaphor
Founder: Gail Wilson
Zillow Role: Software Engineering Intern
Capital Raised: $4.2M
Investors: Tiger Global
Stage: Seed
We’re making it easy to discover, join and participate in web3 communities, also known as "DAO’s".
Gridics
Founder: Felipe Azenha
Zillow Role: Senior Manager, Industry Relations- Southeast US
Capital Raised: $3.6M
Investors: BH3
Stage: Seed
Gridics provides real estate and zoning software applications and services to municipal governments, commercial brokers, and developers.
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