Two former Microsoft/Expedia guys, Rich Barton and Greg Slyngstad, are cooking up a startup and using Twitter to recruit candidates for chief technology officer.
Barton, the CEO of Zillow and founder of Expedia while at Microsoft, will be nonexecutive chairman, and Slyngstad, who worked on the Expedia launch, co-founded VacationSpot.com and later ran Expedia’s hotel and vacation package business, will be CEO of the new venture, according to John Cook’s Venture Blog. Slyngstad also is a Kayak director.
When the Expedia founder gets a startup in the works, even if his most recent enterprise is an online real estate marketplace, it gets travel folks wondering about a return to the world of ARC numbers, merchant models and affiliate programs.
Asked if he’s getting back into travel with the pending venture, Barton tells me: “We’re not going into any detail now other than to say it’s a consumer-facing Internet startup.”
Chances are that the startup may not be travel-related. After all, Barton is a tech guy, not a travel guy, per se, and there are so many other arenas to target.
Meanwhile, Barton is using Twitter for human resources purposes.
Last week he tweeted: “Greg Slyngstad & I are cooking up a consumer internet startup. R U our founding CTO? Seeking smart, passionate team-builder.”
Tweets apparently can trump classified ads.
Slyngstad tweeted a few hours later: “I have been a twitter critic, but no more. Rich’s tweet generated more than a dozen CTO candidates in less than two hours.”
That’s team-building, Twitter-style.
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