Compass Names Longtime Amazon Executive, Greg Hart, As Chief Product Officer

Compass, the real estate technology company, today announced that it has hired Greg Hart for the role of Chief Product Officer. The longtime executive and pioneering product leader spent the past 23 years at Amazon where, as a member of Jeff Bezos’s digital executive leadership group, he played a key role in taking Amazon from an online bookstore to a retail, media and technology powerhouse.

“Compass has spent the last seven years working hard to build the foundation of our end-to-end platform: a national network of world-class real-estate agents, a renowned AI expert as our CTO, an engineering team that’s tripled in size in the last year and a suite of products that solve real problems for our agents and their clients every day,” said Compass Founder and CEO Robert Reffkin. “Integrating these important pieces requires a leader who knows how to create products that people love while at the same time is comfortable with the challenges of operating at massive scale. Greg Hart is that type of leader and someone who we could not be more excited to collaborate with as we continue to work towards our mission of helping everyone find their place in the world.”

Hart has been at the forefront of Amazon’s transformation since 1997. During his tenure he led the development and launch of some of the most forward-looking technologies of the past 20 years. He began his Amazon career in books and then he then moved on to product management roles in music, gaming, video, software and AI. Over the past two decades he’s held multiple career defining roles, including:

• VP, WW Amazon Video (2017 to 2020), where he was responsible for steering the global expansion of the company’s digital video offerings in his role leading Prime Video’s global business, product, engineering, marketing, distribution and sports rights teams.

• VP, Amazon Echo and Speech (2011 to 2017), where he led the product, UX and cloud software organizations that created and launched Amazon Echo and Alexa, the Alexa Skills Kit, Alexa Voice Service and Alexa Communications. These organizations also created the speech recognition, natural language understanding and text-to-speech platform that is used across a range of Amazon devices and applications.

• VP and Technical Advisor to the CEO (2009 – 2011), where he served as an informal chief of staff for Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

• Vice President, Video Games & Software Dates (2006 – 2009), where he led Amazon’s gaming efforts.

• Director, US Music, DVD, Video Games & Software (2005 – 2006), where he directed product across music, DVDs, gaming in the United States.

• Previous Positions at Amazon, (1997 – 2005), where he worked across Books, Music, DVD, Video Games & Software as well as Media Pricing, Marketing & Marketplace.

“Compass is unlike any other company in real estate or technology. The company truly views agents as customers and has made it their mission to provide these customers with services and software necessary to take their business to the next level in today’s digital economy,” said incoming Chief Product Officer Greg Hart. “This customer-first approach to product development has been central to my own career, so the opportunity to better serve this massive customer group is the natural next step for me. I’m excited to join Robert and the rest of the Compass leadership team in this mission.”

Reporting to the CEO, Hart will be responsible for driving all aspects of Compass’ integrated product offering, overseeing the company’s growing team of Product Managers, User Researchers and Product Marketers.

Hart’s hiring is the latest in a long line of top tech talent attraction wins for the real estate technology company. In 2018, the company appointed former Microsoft CTO of AI, Joseph Sirosh, to the role of Chief Technology Officer. During Sirosh’s tenure, the Compass product and engineering teams have undergone rapid expansion, growing over 300% in 2019 and expanding to tech hubs in New York City, Washington DC, Hyderabad India and Seattle.

Hart will work alongside Sirosh to steer product for the Compass platform. Compass’ suite of tools, including software and exclusive programming, acts as an operating system for real estate agents, making them more efficient in optimizing the workday, pricing properties more accurately, determining the best time to list and more.

“Greg’s experience as a technology executive is incomparable, and I have personally seen his exceptional leadership in action as a former colleague,” said Compass CTO Joseph Sirosh. “I couldn’t be more excited to have him as a partner in pursuing our dream to transform real estate. The fact that he is joining Compass speaks not only to our ability to attract one-of-a-kind talent but also to the vast scope of the opportunity ahead.”