Pete Flint

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(born 25 July 1974) is a British

Internet entrepreneur An Internet entrepreneur is an owner, founder or manager of an Internet-based business. This list includes Internet company founders and people brought on to companies for their general business or accounting acumen, as is the case with some CEOs ...

and investor based in San Francisco. He is the founder and former chairman and CEO of

Trulia Trulia is an American online real estate marketplace which is a subsidiary of Zillow. It facilitates buyers and renters to find homes and neighborhoods across the United States through recommendations, local insights, and map overlays that offer ...

. Formerly, he was part of the founding team at lastminute.com. He is currently a managing partner at NFX, an early stage

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

fund focused on

network effect In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the Value (economics), value or utility a user derives from a Goods, good or Service (economics), service depends on th ...

businesses.

Education and early career

Flint earned his bachelor's degree and master's in physics from

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

and an MBA from the

Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business is the Postgraduate education, graduate business school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective ...

. Shortly after graduating from Oxford University, Flint joined

Brent Hoberman Brent Shawzin Hoberman (born 25 November 1968) is a British entrepreneur and investor. During the dot-com boom, he co-founded lastminute.com with Martha Lane Fox in 1998, where he was CEO from its inception, before selling the business to Sabr ...

and

Martha Lane Fox Martha Lane Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (born 10 February 1973) is a British businesswoman, philanthropist and public servant. She co-founded Last Minute during the dotcom boom of the early 2000s and has subsequently served on public servi ...

to start lastminute.com. He had previously worked alongside Hoberman at LineOne, a joint venture between New International and

British Telecom BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

, where he worked for less than a year. Flint spent five years at lastminute.com, helping to scale the company from a business plan to a public company with 2,000 employees and operations in 11 countries. Flint left lastminute.com to attend

in 2003. lastminute.com was then acquired by Sabre Group for $1.1 billion in cash in 2005.

Trulia

While looking for off campus housing in 2004, between the first and second year of his MBA course at Stanford, Flint conceived of

. He observed that the number of consumers researching real estate was growing rapidly, yet all the major websites in the category were not focused on delivering a compelling consumer experience. These websites also failed to provide compelling advertising products because they did not tap into the billions of dollars being spent on advertising in the real-estate newspaper classifieds. Flint wrote the original business plan while at Stanford. Flint recruited a team of Stanford students to turn Flint's concept into a company. Of the original students that worked on the project, Sami Inkinen joined Flint to incorporate the company in June 2005. Flint scaled Trulia to become one of the leading online real estate companies in the US. He raised

venture Capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

from

Accel Partners Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is a global venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ope ...

and

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

, and took the company public with an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

on the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

in September 2012. In 2014 Trulia merged with

Zillow Zillow Group, Inc., or simply Zillow, is an American tech real-estate marketplace company that was founded in 2006 by co-executive chairmen Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, former Microsoft executives and founders of Microsoft spin-off Expedia; Spen ...

in a $3.5 billion acquisition to create the world's largest real estate company.

Investor

Flint has been an active

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible de ...

and advisor to consumer Internet and network effect businesses. In December 2016 it was announced that he joined NFX as a managing partner. NFX is an early stage venture capital fund based in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on network effect businesses.

Recognition

A frequent speaker at technology and entrepreneurship conferences, Flint is featured regularly on CNBC, FOX, Bloomberg, ''The Wall Street Journal'', and ''The New York Times''. He also is a guest lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. In 2014, Flint was named Northern California EY entrepreneur of the year. He has also been named one of ''Fortune'' magazine's top tech disruptors, most admired CEO in the San Francisco Bay Area according to the ''San Francisco Business Times'', and one of ''Forbes'' magazine's most powerful CEOs under 40. Flint was named one of the 100 most influential people in real estate by ''Inman'' magazine in 2013 and one of the most powerful people in real estate in ''Swanepoel'' power 200. In 2016, Flint was named a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Flint was awarded an OBE for services to entrepreneurship in the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Personal life

Flint has two children. His brother, Richard, was the former CEO of

Sky Betting & Gaming Bonne Terre Limited (trading as Sky Betting & Gaming) is a United Kingdom, British-based gambling company, owned by Flutter Entertainment, with headquarters in Leeds, West Yorkshire and offices in Sheffield & Solihull. Sky Betting & Gaming cons ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flint, Pete 21st-century English businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Angel investors British venture capitalists Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni 1974 births Living people People from Essex Businesspeople from London British business executives British corporate directors English chief executives British technology company founders Henry Crown Fellows Officers_of_the_Order_of_the_British_Empire