Trulia went public as the housing market was still digging out of the worst crash since the Depression. Home buyers wanted information, and they wanted it on their phones. Trulia gave them listings on a map, plus crime, schools, and commute data for the streets around each house. Agents paid to appear next to those listings. When the San Francisco company priced its offering in September 2012, its stock rose 41 percent in a day.

Two Founders and a Map

Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen started Trulia in San Francisco in 2005. Both had come out of Stanford's business school. Their bet was that buyers would start the hunt for a home online, long before they met an agent. Trulia built search around maps and local data. It made money from agents, who paid to put their names beside the listings that buyers were already reading.

The Rival Next Door

Trulia priced at $17 a share on September 19, 2012, and closed its first day at $24 on the New York Stock Exchange. Its biggest rival was Zillow, which went public a year earlier. In July 2014 Zillow agreed to buy Trulia. The deal closed on February 17, 2015, valued at about $2.5 billion in stock. Trulia still runs as a brand inside Zillow Group.

Cover: Farmhouse in an Evergreen Forest, Johan Christian Clausen Dahl. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a house among the trees (home search).