Redfin

Draft: October 1, 2004
Founder (s): David Eraker, Glenn Kelman, David Selinger
Headquarters: Seattle, Washington

Key CEO / s: Bridget Frey (Chief Technology Officer) Glenn Kelman (CEO), Chris Nielsen (Chief Financial Officer), Scott Nagel (President of Real Estate Operations), Adam Wiener (Chief Growth Officer), Karen Krupsaw (Vice President of Real Estate Operations, Vinny Pasceri (Senior Product Manager), Lee Peterson (Web Designer & Developer), Nela Richardson (Chief Economist), Eric Scharnhorst (Senior Data Architect), Joshua Shanks (Senior Development Engineer), Jani Strand President, Brand Marketing and Communications) and Pei-Chin Wang (Director of Product)

History

Redfin was founded in 2004 by David Eraker, Michael Dougherty, and David Selinger. David Eraker, who had dropped out of the University of Washington’s medical school for a project in software design, was inspired by his own estate misadventures and founded Redfin with hopes Of the recent stock of the traditional brokerage model. Unlike the other major real estate web portals (Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com), which get the majority of their earnings from advertising and lead generation, Redfin operates as a brokerage and makes money when users buy or Sell ​​homes with its real estate agents

Red_sheng launched offering online, map-based real estate search when David Eraker, who was working out of his apartment in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, and his partner, Michael Dougherty, an electrical engineer with a degree from Yale, struck upon the idea of ​​displaying Homes for sale on an online map. This was before the introduction of Google Maps or Microsoft’s Bing Maps. Redline combined satellite maps with real estate information, and the help overcome the limitations of online real estate search systems at the time. David Selinger, who had previously led the research and development arm of Amazon’s Data Mining and Personalization team, joined Redfin as the third founder And the CTO. Selinger subsidies build Redfin’s mapping and real estate data analytics engine.

After receiving $ 1 million in initial financing from Madrona Venture Group, Redfin raised $ 8 million in Series B funding from Vulcan Inc., the investment arm of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in May 2006. In April 2006, CNN reported that Redfin had received threats From competing seeking to “break their kneecaps.” In July 2006, Redfin was the recipient of the Innovator of the Year award by Inman News, a leading online news source for the real estate industry.

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman accepted a third round of funding for $ 12 million from Greylock and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in July 2007. In May 2007, just a few days after appearing on 60 Minutes, Redfin was fined $ 50,000 by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service and was forced To shut down its “Sweet Digs” blog, Which used to contain reviews of the homes on the market. Northwest MLS said that such reviews are not allowed under Multiple Listing Service (MLS) rules. Sweet Digs was relaunched in June 2007 With an analytical format, and covers all the markets Redfin serves.

In May 2010, Redfin won the Seattle 2.0 award for “Best Startup”.

Redfin an automated agent rating system in 2012, which drew criticism for using inaccurate data, and pulled its tool from the market.

In October 2012, Redfin was named one of The DIGITAL 100: World’s Most Valuable Private Tech Companies by Business Insider.

In June 2013, Inman News again named Redfin as the recipient of the Innovator of the Year award. In June 2014, Seattle Business Magazine recognized Redfin as the best company to work for in 2014 in the Large Companies category and Redfin was placed number 1 out Of 21 large Seattle-based companies.

The firm has been added in several progress funding rounds, most recently raised $ 50 million in a mezzanine round led by T. Rowe Price and Tiger Global, bringing its total venture funding to slightly over $ 96 million. In December 2014, Redfin raised another $ 70.9 million to Lt; / RTI & The