What you Learn at a Harvard College Reunion

Recently, I went to my Harvard college reunion. It was a lot of fun seeing what people are up to. As you’d expect from Harvard grads, it was a mix of Wall Street types, lawyers, doctors, and occasionally someone with a more interesting job like filmmaker or writer (or online real estate entrepreneur). I was very pleased that most of my classmates had heard of Zillow and had lots of great stories about how they had used our website.

I did learn an interesting, though somewhat concerning, piece of information about my alma mater. Harvard is a notorious fund-raising juggernaut with a $30 billion endowment (by far the largest of any academic institution in the world). During this reunion, I learned one of their tricks: apparently they have software that queries public real estate transaction records nationwide and checks the names against their database of alumni. When alums buy big houses, then it’s time for a call from the good people at the alumni office, looking for a bigger donation. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’re also “Zillowing” their alumni to compare our generosity with our real estate net worth… Ah, Harvard.