Episode · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2025-04-16
Books mentioned on #806: How Rich Barton Built Expedia and Zillow from $0 to $35B — Audacious Goals, Provocation Marketing, Scrabble for Naming, and Powerful Daily Rituals
Rich Barton is the co-founder and co-executive chairman of Zillow, a company transforming how people buy, sell, rent, and finance homes. Before Zillow, Rich founded Expedia within Microsoft in 1994 and successfully spun the company off as a public company in 1999.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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DOS for Dummies
Discussed“We were working on MS DOS5, which maybe I would say we'll have to go two standard deviations out in your audience distribution curve to find anybody who really knows what MS DOS5 was, but it was a really big operating system for Microsoft at the time and we made an upgrade and the feature was we broke the 640K”
Where to get it
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A soldier of the great war
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin is an epic and sweeping historical novel that follows an elderly Italian man reflecting on his youth, art, and his harrowing experiences fighting on the Italian front during World War I.
Recommended“Recently, I gifted The Oceans and the Stars. Do you know Mark Hellprin? He's a guy who's a little older than I am and writes characters that are just about in my phase of life. Like a beautiful, luscious pros writer, really smart, wrote Soldier of the Great War and A Winter's Tale and Freddy and Frederica.”
Where to get it
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Winter's Tale
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin is a sweeping, magical realist novel set in a mythical New York City around the turn of the twentieth century.
Recommended“Recently, I gifted The Oceans and the Stars. Do you know Mark Hellprin? He's a guy who's a little older than I am and writes characters that are just about in my phase of life. Like a beautiful, luscious pros writer, really smart, wrote Soldier of the Great War and A Winter's Tale and Freddy and Frederica.”
Where to get it
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Freddy and Fredericka
Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin is a humorous, satirical comic novel set in the contemporary world that follows the comedic misadventures of its royal protagonists.
Recommended“Recently, I gifted The Oceans and the Stars. Do you know Mark Hellprin? He's a guy who's a little older than I am and writes characters that are just about in my phase of life. Like a beautiful, luscious pros writer, really smart, wrote Soldier of the Great War and A Winter's Tale and Freddy and Frederica.”
Where to get it
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The Oceans and the Stars
The Oceans and the Stars by Mark Helprin is a sweeping contemporary novel that weaves together elements of a traditional sea story, a gripping war narrative, and a profound love story.
Recommended“Recently, I gifted The Oceans and the Stars. Do you know Mark Hellprin? He's a guy who's a little older than I am and writes characters that are just about in my phase of life. Like a beautiful, luscious pros writer... This latest one I highly recommend.”
Where to get it
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Snow Crash
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a classic cyberpunk science fiction novel known for its prescient exploration of virtual reality, the metaverse, and digital culture.
Discussed“He's the one who wrote Snow Crash. Oh yeah. Okay. So you know him. Had pizza with him in Seattle. So with a couple of other guys.”
Where to get it
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Stories of Your Life and Others
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang is an acclaimed collection of speculative short fiction that explores complex philosophical, linguistic, and temporal concepts.
Recommended“Ted Chang... He has, last I checked, he has two collections of short stories. There is one which I always screw up the title of. It's like stories of your life and other stories... And one of those short stories was the basis for the movie Arrival... Then a second collection came out, Exhalation, and I didn't want to buy”
Where to get it
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Exhalation
Exhalation by Ted Chiang is a critically acclaimed collection of philosophical science fiction short stories.
Recommended“Then a second collection came out, Exhalation, and I didn't want to buy it because I didn't want to be disappointed. I was like, there's just no way... And the second is just unbelievably good.”
Where to get it
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The Paper Menagerie
The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu is a captivating collection of speculative fiction blending science fiction and fantasy elements into emotionally resonant narratives.
Discussed“Kenneth Leu I think is Liu. He has the paper managerie which was actually gifted to me by Matt Mullen blends or alternates in a sense between sci-fi and fantasy in this really compelling way.”
Where to get it
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The Lincoln Highway
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles is a historical novel that follows a young man driving cross-country in 1954 America alongside several unexpected companions.
Recommended“this guy Amortar Touls, do you know? ... The only thing I've read of his is Lincoln Highway, which I mean, it is such a page turner. It's so beautifully architected.”
Where to get it
