- Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman left his cushy Microsoft job in 2009 for the “money-losing real estate startup.” In the thick of the U.S. housing crisis, his friends told him he’d never make money. But they were wrong: Over 15 years later and rising through the ranks to Zillow’s CEO, the company boasts a $17 billion market cap, and he says his success is partly thanks to the late Steve Jobs.
The 2008 financial crisis burned bad memories into the back of Americans’ brains: employees being laid off in droves, families struggling to put food on their tables, and a housing market in peril.
