Two Silicon Valley Executives Join Leadership Team at HomeAway
Brent Bellm, Former PayPal Executive, Appointed Chief Operating Officer; Tom Hale, Formerly of Linden Lab, Appointed Chief Product Officer
AUSTIN, Texas, July 14 /PRNewswire/ -- HomeAway®, Inc. – the world's leading online vacation rental marketplace – today announced the appointment of two extraordinary executives to its rapidly growing global team.
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Brent Bellm, who served as CEO of PayPal Europe Ltd. and most recently as head of global product at PayPal, joins HomeAway as chief operating officer (COO), succeeding COO Andrew Harris, who passed away in early June. Bellm is responsible for leading the daily operations of HomeAway's online vacation rental marketplaces in the United States, Europe and Brazil, as well as its HomeAwayRealEstate.com and BedandBreakfast.com websites. He brings to the company a wealth of knowledge about international operations, internet marketplace strategy, and global payment solutions.
In addition, HomeAway has tapped Tom Hale as Chief Product Officer (CPO), a newly created position at the company. In this role, Hale will be responsible for all aspects of product and technology on a global basis. During his career, Hale has been instrumental in bringing to market many world-class products including Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Connect. Prior to HomeAway, he served as the CPO at Linden Lab, creator of the virtual world, Second Life. Hale is known for his passion for product development and enhancing the user experience, and is an avid traveler and vacation rental owner himself.
"HomeAway is fortunate to be able to attract these two talented and seasoned professionals to our business," says Brian Sharples, CEO of HomeAway. "Their skills complement one another, and we expect that together their experience, smarts, and passion will raise our game significantly - giving us and our customers an even brighter future."
Both Bellm and Hale have relocated to Austin, Texas, and office out of the HomeAway World Headquarters.
About COO Brent Bellm
Bellm joined HomeAway from a nine-year tenure at PayPal, where he most recently served as vice president of global product and experience responsible for product strategy, product management and user experience design. Prior to that position, he served as CEO of PayPal Europe for four years. Under his leadership, European business revenue tripled and maintained 40 percent annual growth rates in total payment volume. Bellm joined eBay Inc. in 2001 as director of corporate strategy, where he had an active role in the acquisition of PayPal.
Early in his career, he worked for McKinsey & Company, focusing on the retail, e-commerce and payment industries, and Goldman Sachs in New York.
Bellm holds a bachelor's degree in economics and international relations from Stanford University and a MBA from Harvard University.
About CPO Tom Hale
Hale has more than 16 years experience in product development. Prior to HomeAway, he was the Chief Product Officer at Linden Lab from 2008 to 2010, where he led the renovation of all aspects of the Second Life experience.
Before Linden Lab, Hale was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures (a capital investor in HomeAway) focused on social networking and virtual goods marketplaces.
From 1995 to 2007, Hale held a variety of senior leadership roles at Macromedia and Adobe Systems Incorporated. At Adobe, he headed the Adobe Acrobat business and drove the redesign of the Acrobat user experience. At Macromedia (acquired by Adobe in 2005), Hale played key roles in making Macromedia the standard for web development, evolving the Flash Player into a platform for video, mobile content, and rich internet applications (RIAs), and starting up the company's knowledge worker division.
Hale holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard University.
About HomeAway, Inc:
HomeAway, Inc., based in Austin, Texas, is the global leader in online vacation properties, representing more than 480,000 paid vacation rental home listings throughout 120 countries. HomeAway offers an extensive selection of vacation homes that provide travelers with memorable experiences and benefits, including more room to relax and added privacy, for less than the cost of traditional hotel accommodations. The company also makes it easy for vacation rental owners and property managers to advertise their properties and manage bookings online. The HomeAway portfolio includes the leading vacation rental websites HomeAway.com, VRBO.com and VacationRentals.com in the United States; HomeAway.co.uk and OwnersDirect.co.uk in the United Kingdom; HomeAway.de in Germany; Abritel.fr and Homelidays.com in France; HomeAway.es in Spain; and AlugueTemporada.com.br in Brazil. The company's portfolio also includes HomeAwayRealEstate.com, which offers unique real estate information that highlights a vacation rental's income potential and destination-specific characteristics.
In addition, HomeAway operates BedandBreakfast.com, the most comprehensive global site for finding bed-and-breakfast properties, providing travelers with another source for unique lodging alternatives to chain hotels. For more information about HomeAway, please visit www.HomeAway.com.
SOURCE HomeAway, Inc.
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