Barton

Hanauer

Rich Barton and Nick Hanauer have had a hand in some of Seattle's most successful Internet companies, from Expedia and Amazon.com to aQuantive and Zillow.com. Now the two Internet executives (and good buddies) are hoping to create a breakout startup in the fast-growing social gaming arena. And they've partnered with some top minds from the good old days at aQuantive -- including Scott Howe and Maggie Finch -- to get the ball rolling.

The new company is called King of the Web. Barton isn't saying too much about what they are up to. But he did confirm that they are attacking an opportunity in the social gaming space, an area popularized by wildly successful upstarts such as Zynga and Playdom. "It’s one of those ideas that’s totally binary. It will be huge or it will be nothing," said Barton in an email. "Fun."

Barton said he and Hanauer came up with the idea over a bottle of red wine on a Y-Guides weekend with their kids. Barton stressed that the idea is in the early stages of development, though the company is hiring.

"Obviously, the miracle/curse of Facebook has completely transformed what we used to think of as the web in the last couple of years, and we were simply brainstorming on what kinds of new apps and entertainment this would enable and got excited about the KOW idea," he said. "We were also just curious to put a sharp team of somewhat wacky people together to throw some spaghetti at the social network wall to see what might stick."

Barton and Hanauer are not serving as executives of the company. But they are listed as co-founders along with Howe, Finch and Wassef Haroun.

Howe ran the Digital Performance Media and Digital Marketing Technologies divisions at aQuantive, and later served as an advertising executive at Microsoft following its $6 billion acquisition of the online advertising giant. Finch also worked at Microsoft following the aQuantive acquisition. Haroun is a former Microsoft employee who worked on startups in Paris and Dubai before returning to Seattle.

Barton just announced last month that he's handing over the CEO reins of Zillow.com. The former Expedia CEO and venture partner at Benchmark Capital said at the time that he planned to continue to dabble in a number of startup projects. Hanauer, a co-founder of Second Avenue Partners, was one of the earliest investors in Amazon.com and aQuantive.

[Via The Seattle Times.]