People On The Move Roundup: Zillow, Frontier Digital Ventures and Carousell

We've got the latest 'people on the move' news from the industry this week...

Zillow strengthens public policy department

Zillow Group has named Nicole Booth as head of public policy and operations. Booth, previously executive vice president of public affairs at Notarize and vice president of public policy at the Rocket Family of Companies, expressed her enthusiasm on social media, stating,

"I am excited and honored to join such an innovative team dedicated to shaping the future of housing for all consumers. I am looking forward to contributing to meaningful change and growth and lead our Public Policy initiatives across all housing verticals."

Zillow's government relations and public affairs team, led by Jennifer Butler, will benefit from Booth's expertise as they strive to modernize real estate and enhance the home buying, selling, and renting experience. A company spokesperson emphasized Zillow's commitment to making housing more affordable and accessible, stating, "Modernizing real estate and improving the home buying, selling and renting experience for consumers and real estate professionals is central to Zillow’s mission."

Frontier Digital Ventures appoints former CAR Group exec

The Malaysia-based international online marketplace operator Frontier Digital Ventures (ASX:FDV) has announced the appointment of former Carsales.com executive, Anthony Saines to its board as a non-executive director.

Mr Saines was the managing director of commercial at the ASX-listed car marketplace operator, Carsales for 10 years. Saines has previously been a board member at IAB Australia, a trade association for online advertising, and Listing Loop, an off-market real estate portal.

The appointment comes as FDV revealed Q4 figures that included a 20% year-on-year revenue bump and net operating cash flow of A$2.2 million for the year as a whole.

Carousell co-founder steps away from day-to-day operations

Lucas Ngoo, the co-founder of Southeast Asian generalist marketplace Carousell, has revealed that he is set to step back from day-to-day operations at the company.

In a post on Linkedin Ngoo confirmed that he would still be involved in the Singaporean company as a board director and advisor.

"I continue to have full vested interests in the success of Carousell as a co-founder, board director and shareholder, and have full confidence in our business and leadership team. My passion has always been to build the future with technology. It has been an incredible journey working with our CarouTeam to make selling secondhand even faster with machine learning and piloting features that shape our current recommerce foundations. I believe there is more to learn, hence it is a personal decision of mine to take the chance to have a break to learn new areas of innovation and other industries, such as AI in biotech/healthcare, climate tech/energy transition and web3."

Along with Siu Rui Quek and Marcus Tan, Ngoo founded Carousell in 2012 as a C2C marketplace. Since then the company has expanded across the region and today is a generalist classifieds platform with a substantial real estate presence in several markets. In 2022 Carousell was rumoured to be pursuing a deal to acquire the real estate vertical specialist. According to Bloomberg, the deal was kiboshed after Carousell's plans to go public via a SPAC merger came to nothing.