Paul Levine, the ex-president and COO of Trulia, has definitely put in his time, brains and energy into the real estate industry. From 2011 – 2017, Levine essentially held the reins at Trulia. Prior to that, Levine held leadership roles in product, marketing and general management with YAHOO!, E*TRADE, CurrentTV and AdBrite.
Now, Levine is putting his time, brains and energy into Sapphire Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital company committed to helping innovative tech companies scale to become global category-defining leaders.
Levine is most interested in building upon innovations within the real estate industry that were initiated by Trulia and the Zillow Group. Levine told Inman News, “As much as I’d love to say that Trulia and Zillow revolutionized real estate, really where we had significant impact was in making it easier for consumers to understand what’s on the market and connecting them with agents. But the core process of buying and selling a home is not that different from what it was 10 years ago. The innovation to come around the real estate transaction is going to blow people’s minds.”
Peter Flint, the founder of Trulia who is now a partner with the venture capital firm NFX, influenced Levine to join forces with Sapphire. In fact, the two of them have already partnered on an all-cash offer start-up called Ribbon.
No stranger to working as an advisor and investor with some 25 tech start-ups, Levine is particularly motivated to work with iBuyer companies such as Knock and Open Door, companies offering tech tools for agents like Agentology and Homelight and mortgage tech companies such as Blend and Ethos Candy. A real sweet spot for him is helping to make real estate assets more accessible to consumers as investments.
No doubt real estate consumers and professionals alike will benefit from Levine’s insights into and experience within the industry as he helps propel real estate transactional innovation.
