House Broken: Pete Flint on Disrupting Real Estate and Building Trulia
In this episode of Breaking Precedent, host Leah Solivan dives deep with Founder of Trulia, Pete Flint. Pete opens up about his early days studying physics at Oxford and how his curiosity eventually led him into the fast-paced world of startups. He talks about his experience at lastminute.com, one of the UK’s hottest tech companies at the time, and what it was like navigating through the chaos of the dot-com crash and the aftermath of 9/11. After moving to Silicon Valley to attend Stanford, Pete shares the story behind the lightbulb moment that sparked Trulia—and how he broke into one of the most tightly regulated industries in the U.S. Now a partner at NFX, Pete reflects on what he's seeing in the next wave of startups, especially around AI, and how the rules of building and scaling companies are changing in real time.
Guest Bio and Links:
Pete Flint is a serial entrepreneur and investor who co-founded Trulia, steering the company through its IPO and a multi-billion-dollar merger with Zillow. Today, he's a General Partner at NFX, investing in early-stage companies that leverage network effects and cutting-edge technologies.
Listeners can learn more about Pete Flint at NFX, and on LinkedIn @PeteFlint
Show Notes:
(0:00) Intro
(2:00) Leah introduces guest and founder of Trulia, Pete Flint
(2:30) Pete gives a brief background of himself
(5:00) Pete's childhood and early influences
(9:30) How studying physics shaped Pete's thinking
(12:00) Internships, London startups, and lastminute.com
(17:30) Dot-com crash lessons
(20:30) Transition to Silicon Valley and Stanford
(24:40) The birth of Trulia
(26:30) Launching during a market collapse
(38:00) The role of technology in disrupting industries
(42:00) The Zillow merger
(44:00) Becoming an Investor
(47:30) The future of startups and venture capital
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Leah Solivan is the host of Breaking Precedent, a podcast that explores the stories of innovators who are pushing societal boundaries and setting new precedents in their fields. Leah is General Partner at Fuel Capital, where she invests in early-stage companies across consumer technology, hardware, education, marketplaces, and retail. Leah has 15 years of experience building and creating technology products that have reached millions of people around the globe. She started her career at IBM as an engineer in the software group, working on Lotus Notes and Domino. In 2008, Leah founded TaskRabbit, the leading on-demand service marketplace in the world.
Connect with Leah:
Website: breakingprecedent.com/
Instagram: @labunleashed
