 Hello So it's a pleasure today to share the stage with Pete Flint Pete is a rare class of entrepreneur. He has built multiple billion-dollar companies. So that's a pretty rare Atmosphere he's in he did it first with the travel website last minute calm where he's a founding executive And then that company was sold the travel velocity in 2005 for over one billion dollars Then he co-founded with CEO of Trulia A real estate marketplace Trulia was sold to Zillow in 2015 for three and a half billion dollars And I have to note that his co-founder at Trulia was a Finn named Sami Inkinan. So he's got some Finnish cred here today and Now he's with two partners. He's founded a VC firm called NFX that helps to bring something new to the venture world There I say something disruptive to the venture world and of course they will fund many more billion-dollar companies So he can add to his billion-dollar list at some point. I hope so wow what you have quite a resume Pete What a pleasure to have you here. So tell me a little bit about the start of your career How did you get going in this world of? entrepreneurship So so thank you Mika great to be here so So I guess my kind of you know my career started I you know During undergrad like many people I took a bunch of internships to figure out like well is gonna go and I took a Job at JP Morgan, which was basically the most high-paying job. I could get a student intern and And this was the summer of 1995 and I learned two things one I learned was like I didn't want to work for a corporation or certainly not an investment bank at that time But two it was a time the internet started. So this was 1995 Netscape went public. This was really the dawn of the kind of internet revolution so I knew from that I wanted to get involved in internet startups and Then I kind of I joined Brent soon after a graduate joined Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox who founded last minute calm And I think the sort of the kind of lesson from from my experience at that point was really about How do you find the fast-moving water or how do you find the momentum at that time the internet was exploding? This is kind of 95 to 97 the internet was exploding and putting yourself at the center of that That was like a huge less for me that helped upon my career And then in addition to that surrounding yourself and and really Following I was like early 20s. So following kind of these incredible people Brent and Martha have gone on to do incredible things So put myself in the ecosystem You're pretty fortunate. I know Brent and Martha that was quite a quite a ride for you guys and So then you went from being in the UK running a travel website. Yeah to running a real estate website in San Francisco How did how did that happen? so the you know Being in London is incredible the startup ecosystem is incredible but I like you sort of feel you're doing good stuff but moving to Silicon Valley and and You know going to Stanford I ended up doing a an MBA in Stanford was just an incredible opportunity So to move over to Silicon Valley where really the the kind of network is incredibly powerful all these iconic companies are founded So I went there to do an MBA and Then the summer between the first and the second year I Kind of stumbled across the real estate industry So I was sort of had this expectation that in Silicon Valley everything was kind of digitized amazing Transformation or you could really do it do anything But the real estate industry if anyone that spent time in America's in sort of incredibly traditional so And antiquated so I was sort of astounded at this industry and then I'd sort of conceived of this idea to To start truly it really can empower the consumers with information So started it really is a sort of while with students at Stanford and Sammy was a a good friend and like fellow Entrepreneurially minded individual and then and we just bounced ideas across warrior business schools So you're both foreigners starting a US real estate company. I think if people don't know this I live in Silicon Valley I'm was born in Finland. I'm I also started my companies in the US I'm an immigrant over half the companies in Silicon Valley are started by immigrants and so I think you and Sammy is a case in point that there you are a Brit and a fin starting a company in Silicon Valley in basically US real estate centric business So, I think yeah, I think they were just like what on earth are you guys doing? I think they were like the real estate industry was kind of afraid of the internet But they were certainly not afraid of too young like Europeans who were like doing some crazy stuff in real estate I have to ask so a fin was he the quietest guy in the meetings or what was it like having a fin as a co-founder? Well, you know, yeah, you know Sammy's not he's not a quite quite guy I think you know, I mean it was like a credible partnership it continues today. We're partners on many different things You know sound on the office No, it's sort of in the office, but I coming here. I do appreciate his enthusiasm for it You know, he's you know, I I was just in the sort of taxi coming here this morning and like You know, I was amazed to see these kind of like fins running at like 7 o'clock in the morning in the snow And Sammy used to do that frequently we'd have like, you know off-site Sintaho and Sam We would wake up at 6 o'clock and run in the snow. So now I kind of I see where it gets it from So let's go back to you being a founder So do you feel you because you had this experience story at last minute where you were part of a founding team? You saw go through it's it's kind of a early stages of growth and everything else But now you're actually were a founder. How did you actually change as a? Executive as the leader at Trulia because now you're in the seat actually of running that company Did you feel you actually? grew and changed and in what way did that that happen? So I mean, I you know I benefited enormously from kind of shadowing like in my early 20s shadowing kind of Brent of Martha and kind of learning from all The good stuff and some of the mistakes that we made You know, I think the sort of and there's you know, it was a ten year journey So a whole kind of catalog of different ideas I think some of the kind of founding lessons for me were as sort of transitioning from a founder to Founding a company and not just being a founder but also being a CEO is really that you know There's multiple transition points throughout the journey. So one was like, you know moving from that sort of head of product to head of the company So early on you're just in a small team. You're the product manager I was the product manager and then moving from being head of product to head of company and really stepping out of that kind of individual contributor role into that leadership role and Figuring out how to focus on all the functional areas from sales to marketing and everything else and then you know like that you know what at the acquisition we were 1100 people and so You know every, you know, I think this you know, I kind of break it down There's like the zero to 40 is one sort of company the kind of 40 to like 150 There's a different type of company 150 to 500 and so on so like there we had to like as soon as we kind of Had a sort of a normal say we had to change it up again So constantly changing up constantly changing the management team constantly changing the org design and You know, I think some of the you know Some of the kind of things that I found particularly hard I think as a first-time CEO was kind of making those transitions from figuring out How do you the right person who's perfect to be a VP at a 40 person startup is not the right person to be VP at 400 person start, right? Is there any particular thing that you would change looking back a Million things, you know, there's like at the million things. I think the You know, we had our own set of like crazy crisis. So like you imagine a real estate company in 2008, you know, the people people remember what happened in real estate industry in 2008 The real estate collapse precipitated the financial collapse and so it was just this incredible time. Yeah, so So we were just in the eye of the storm We had like investors on one hide sequoia one of our investors and they were like saying fire everyone get profitable This is kind of the end of the world and then the other the experience from last minute was this sort of notion that She companies are built in a downturn. This was an incredible opportunity. So we saw how in 2001 to 2003 that was when the sort of dominant travel companies Expedia price sign last minute were created and so Similarly, we saw that opportunity, you know, I think sort of relative to kind of a Expedia Sorry relative to Zillow We were under capitalized. We raised 33 million They raised like 90 million by the time they went public and so like this kind of figuring out the financing sort of angle Would have been, you know, would have been better if we raise more money that would be better But that's the kind of that's hard thing to change I like this idea that companies are built during the hard times whether be hard times economically Like I said 2001 2004 or 2008. Yeah That's a very I think astute kind of observation You have to have the cash to weather it or at least have some way to get through that pile But I think that's very interesting What about the differences between building a company in Europe compared to building a company in the US? Did you see a lot of differences in terms of the culture of the startup or the kind of atmosphere or the attitude? Well, I think the things have changed a lot So, you know, I was in last times in Europe operating was in 2003. So things have changed a lot I think what is What some of the changes that the kind of our experience was it's it was really hard to scale Across Europe. So like at last minute or come like setting up different offices setting a different structure Whereas in the US you just immediately have 250 million people you can access like very very quickly So that scaling process in the US was probably easier and much much easier That the talent has got so much better today in Europe the reading the atomica report last night It's like the talent is really created next generation of companies, but in There's no substitute for Silicon Valley. You know, I remember, you know for for truly for truly when we're public We just said, okay, here's here's 10 CFOs that could take the company public Here's 10 general councils that can take the company public and we kind of immediately could tap into that talent pool That's kind of lacking in Europe particularly in just one concentrated area So those are you know that I think things have got a lot better in Europe But it still just lacks that kind of network effect that Silicon Valley There's sort of density of people in capital and then that efficiency to scale So now you are moving on from being actually a founder founder of a fund But you still work with a lot of founders. I know you do a lot of Advising and working a lot of founders. I'm curious like when you meet a founder Do you have kind of like standard advice you give them or do you give them kind of tips? Like you like from from the experience you've had or do you have you do you tailor for them with you? I'm just curious like what when you meet a founder, what's the first thing you say to them? If you have a first thing, um You know, I think this I mean, there's no sort of golden rule. Obviously. I think some of the stuff that kind of I'm sort of particularly focused on is like is one is like, you know We assume you have a great product to breakthrough product and you're searching for product market fit But how are you going to grow? What is the growth strategy? Like it's kind of I you know My role at last minute was in growth that truly really focus on growth So finding whether you're in a sort of a SME company. How do you get your first thousand customers? If your consumer business, how do you get the first million users? Just finding what is that? Momentum, what is that tactic? How do you build that into the product? So thinking really critically about about growth and Building that into the product to the very outset and that's something we really focus on it in effects Another piece is the culture. It's like this is a long journey like Last minute truly are they you know, 10 years truly it took so building that culture and that persistence from a founder That's it's critical and then culture is something that just doesn't happen. You have to program that culture So programming the culture and being very authentic and being very deliberate about that and then three is like what is the defensibility so Network effects is kind of our main focus on defensibility and we've seen that you know that through the history of the internet the last 30 years network effects have been the driving force of Defensibility and returns within technology So we really look at how once you have a good product that's going fast into great culture How are you defensible and building network effects into that it's super great So growth culture defensibility those are the three things exactly great What about when you meet a founder and they're stressed out? What would you say to a founder who's stressed out? Which are inevitably are and they're probably stressed out every day all day But what's any kind of advice to a founder who is just just not having a good time right now? Yeah, really stressed out. Although, you know when you ask them, how's it going? It's awesome. Yeah I'm crushing it You know, I think what You know, I In many respects that you know going through the experience with Sammy and truly was incredibly Sort of powerful experiences are found and I think some of the stuff that we really focus on was sort of authenticity and Transparency between each other. So, you know, I think you're sort of natural Tennessee perhaps as Finns and Brits is to like it's a kind of like don't share your challenges like no one wants to hear about your problems In England, you know, like don't grumble don't can stop that complaining whereas I think you know the in You know, we build a culture which was really based on transparency and authenticity Which you know rather than boggling up the stress kind of communicate the challenges Communicate the opportunity kind of you know, I think you need to balance kind of vulnerability with With transparency and sort of being authentic saying this is really hard Like we need everyone to rally around and figure this out. So kind of I learned to kind of stop that kind of northern European Yeah, internalizing stress and kind of become a bit more northern Californian and Kind of open open that out and sharing that Let's talk about NFX. So if NFX stands for network effects by the way It took me a little while to figure that one out even though. I know the business pretty well I So it's it's a Brits in Israeli and is James in American American. Yeah, so three Two immigrants in an American founding a VC fund in Silicon Valley. Yeah, tell just on the top level. Tell me about NFX a little bit Yep. So kind of firstly, I just feel Incredibly fortunate to work with James and Gigi. So they are amazing founders investors advisors at Gigi's Seen as the number one angel investor in in Israel incredible kind of connectivities founded number of companies invested in more than a hundred companies And he's just a force of nature. Similarly James. It's just Founded a number of companies super successful and just is this Sort of behind-the-scenes growth startup expert that vises many many many unicorns So we brought together this team of sort of very experienced entrepreneurs to help to invest in What hopefully is the next set of unicorns focus at the seed stage some of the stuff that we think is kind of different exceptional is that We've we sort of look at the venture process and think it's incredibly antiquated like you've raised money We raised money. It's just like there must be a better way And it's a very sort of medieval backward process So so what we've done is the majority of a team today is software engineers So we have like half a dozen software engineers that are building tools for entrepreneurs We think the next great venture capital firms will have a significant soft proprietary software component So we're building that into the fund to help ourselves to be better investors to help our portfolio the guild the community And to help to build the the broader ecosystem. So we've focused on that we focus on early stage We just closed a hundred fifty million dollar fund where Focus on network effect businesses Any industry is a consumer if it is network effect is a key thing that's in your name. So it has to be there So we're not so we're not focused on particular industries. We focus, you know, we've got a breadth of different experience. So We are particularly excited about kind of emerging technologies whether that's AI whether that's blockchain whether that's smart cities CRISPR whole bunch of different different industries we're based in San Francisco So we like to be close to the companies in San Francisco to help them to grow and develop and we think this kind of thesis around network effects Plus a plus the background that we bring is very unique and very compelling. So there are probably At least a handful or I don't know maybe a thousand companies here. Maybe you want to talk to you So how do they get in touch with you? so the best way to get in touch we built actually built a tool to help founders meet with Investors called signal so signal to nfx.com And that's a web. That's the address the email address Well, that's signal dot nfx.com is a tool which are any founder to can use to really connect with almost any investor The best way is to use that to connect with us because that helps you find warm introductions to investors So go in there and signal dot nfx.com got it. Yeah, so that's a way to get in touch through great Well, thank you Pete. Good luck with the new fun great pleasure to talk to you great to be here. Thank you. Thank you