Company: Zillow
Description: Online real estate services
Competitors: Real Estate ABC, HouseValues.com
Location: Seattle
Amount Raised: $25 million
Round: Second
Date Announced: 7/25/06
VC Firms: PAR Capital, Benchmark Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures
VC Directors: Bill Gurley, Jay Hoag
Quick Take: The real estate world is poised for a shakeup and Zillow is at the forefront of that change. At its launch five months ago, Zillow introduced the first free and easy way to use a online home valuation service. Since then, it has struck a distribution deal with Yahoo!, signed new advertisers, finetuned its valuation algorithm and added a new financing information tab. Its traffic is impressive, but stagnant, so it's a good thing CEO Rich Barton says the company will use its new $25 million second round of funding to introduce completely new products. The first round investors brave enough to invest $32 million last year are in very good shape. And if PAR Capital invested at a reasonable valuation --which seems unlikely--, they too should eventually profit from this well managed startup.

Technology (1 out of 10): 3
Market: 7
Management: 9
Chances for IPO: 5
Overall VC Rating: 8

For more on Zillow, see:
SiliconBeat
Zillow blog
The Deal

Technorati tags: zillow, real+estate, benchmark+capital, vc, venture+capital