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We had some excellent Mediterranean food for lunch yesterday here at Trulia’s San Francisco offices. But the really interesting Soup that our 12 C-level executive guests and our internal team were cooking all day turned out to be even better!

Here’s what we were cooking all day: Our Trulia Industry advisory board met for the fourth time this Wednesday. We formed the initial advisory group almost two years ago. The premise for forming the group was simple: First, unlike many “customer advisory boards”, the Trulia Advisory board meeting is not a sales event disguised as an advisory meeting, but a real opportunity for us to solicit feedback from the brightest minds in the industry as well as jointly problem solve solutions to our strategic questions. And second, we believed and continue to believe an online real estate company, such as Trulia, can only be successful in the industry if we can perfectly balance and serve both our important constituencies, the consumers and the real estate professionals. For this reason, it’s essential for us to include the leading residential real estate companies in our strategic planning process. Of course, we also have different avenues where we listen to our other industry constituencies, such as individual sales associates.

While we and our advisors both recognize that you can not run a company “by a committee” (though as a Finn I know that Swedes are pretty good at that), we’ve stayed true to these two premises and the learning and insights from our advisors has been invaluable over the past two years – and yesterday was certainly no exception.

Using presentations, round tables discussions, and brainstorming sessions, we tackled both tactical (e.g., a marketing campaign for a specific launch) and strategic (e.g., a product features that could be controversial) questions under strict two-way confidentiality. It was amazing to see how seamlessly we, as an “online company”, competing brokerage companies, and our advisors’ “traditional real estate firms” could work together for everyone’s benefit. Yes – it is possible!

We also had a Q&A session to make sure no secret is left unanswered. Since one of the key questions was “What is your focus/strategy in the next 12-18 months?”, I thought to share it here as well. Unsurprisingly it has not changed much since our inception:

• Improve and build advertising products for the real estate industry to be the very best place to market yourself, your business and acquire new customers.
• Continuously improve our user experience and grow the number of people that use Trulia.com and find it useful
• Build the most engaging online real estate community that serves both the consumers and professionals.

Once again, many thanks to everyone who was able to take the time from their busy schedules and join us in our meeting in San Francisco: Anthony Azar of Realty Executives Arizona, Hoby Hanna of Howard Hanna, OB Jacobi of Windermere, Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel, Robert Moles of Intero Real Estate, Steve Ozonian, Mike Pappas of Keyes Real Estate, Bill Plattos of Firstteam, Ben Phillips of Realogy, Michael Saunders of Michael Saunders, Monty Smith of NRT and David Therries of Keller Williams International.

We look forward to our next cooking session!

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