People on the Move Roundup: Frontier Digital Ventures, Swiss Marketplace Group, Zillow and CoStar

There are four big-name hires in this week's hiring roundup.

We'll start in the United States with a new SVP for Zillow...

Zillow hires new senior VP of agent sales

Zillow has announced Soumya Tulloss as its new senior vice president of agent sales, responsible for integrating and scaling Zillow's sales organization to offer a more seamless experience for the real estate agent community.

Her resume boasts a successful stint as chief revenue officer of Deliverr, where she oversaw the sales, marketing, customer support and revenue operations for the e-commerce specialists before its successful acquisition by Shopify for $2.1 billion.

She served as vice president and head of global messaging sales at Twilio, an industry-leading global customer engagement software, and helped grow revenue from $89 million in 2014 to $2.8 billion in 2021.

Other names on her CV include PayPal, Deutsche Bank Securities and Google.

Tulloss said:

"I'm excited to support Zillow's critical mission of getting more and more people home. My goal is to make the more than a million agents powering the residential real estate industry wildly successful by offering exceptional services that enable them to serve more customers, more efficiently.

"As a first-generation American, purchasing and owning a home was a dream for my family. The partnership and support we received from our agent helped my family turn that dream into a reality. I'm excited to support our agent customers as we all work together to make this dream a reality for many more people."

CoStar appoints new president of LoopNet

LoopNet, CoStar Group's commercial real estate marketplace, has appointed Ben Drew as its new President.

According to a post on Drew's personal LinkedIn page, he joined the company from the Presidential role at travel specialist Viator in April, but has kept his new role under wraps until now. As president, Drew will be responsible for P&L for $277 million in revenue and oversee a team of 315 people, reporting to Group CEO Andy Florance.

Drew said:

"I’m delighted to share some big life changes: I’ve moved to Richmond, Virginia where I’ve taken up the incredibly exciting role as President of LoopNet.

"LoopNet, the world’s largest marketplace for commercial real estate, is part of the CoStar Group. It’s a team I feel very lucky to be a part of. CoStar Group is amongst the mightiest names in real estate — it’s scaled household names like Homes.com and Apartments.com. It’s simplified the complicated. It’s changed an industry. And LoopNet is its next billion-dollar opportunity."

FDV Chief Operating Officer resigns to take up new CEO role

Frontier Digital Ventures' COO, Jason Thoe is to leave the company to take up the position of Chief Executive Officer of Malaysia-based Xamble Group Ltd.

Xamble Group is the parent company of Nuffnang, an influencer and content marketing platform which counts Georg Chmiel (formerly of REA Group, iProperty and iCarAsia) as a Non-Executive Director.

Thoe has been with Kuala Lumpur-based Frontier Digital ventures since 2016 leading the operations of the company's diverse portfolio that includes the likes of LankaPropertyWeb, Yapo and PropertyPro. Before joining FDV, Thoe held management positions at iCarAsia.

SMG hires new director of business customers for real estate

Swiss Marketplaces Group has announced Dr Sando Principe will become the Group's new director of business customers for its real estate department, succeeding the outgoing Marcel Meier.

Principe's resume boasts senior roles at the likes of Wincasa AG and Accenture. He also founded the Swiss marketplace LemonFrog. He will take up his new role in November 2024 and will be responsible for SMG's sales and customer services sectors.

"We have gained a proven expert in the Swiss real estate and IT landscape and welcome him to the team," commented Martin Waeber,  managing director at SMG.

SMG has an extensive real estate marketplace portfolio, including big-name portals like ImmoScout24 (Germany) and HomeGate (market leader in Switzerland). Other names include FlatFox, ImmoStreet.ch, Alle-Immobilien.ch, Home.ch, Publimmo, Acheter-Louer.ch, Casasoft and IAZI.

The portal operator has struggled with negative PR this year and recently discovered it will no longer benefit from advertising and sponsorship agreements from the Swiss Association of Real Estate after continued pushback for SMG's price hikes.