Burn the Playbook: What I Learned Building and Unbuilding a Venture-Scale Business
In 2016, we set out to reinvent real estate from the ground up. Flyhomes launched with a bold vision: vertically integrate the transaction and build a tech-driven consumer experience. We pioneered cash offers, “buy before you sell,” and a scalable direct-to-consumer model, growing to nearly $100M in run-rate revenue, 1,200 employees, and $200M raised. But when the market turned in 2022, capital dried up and our model no longer held. Unwinding the business we’d poured everything into was painful, but it gave us the clarity to rebuild with sharper focus. Today, we’re a profitable B2B2C platform focused on lending, but still chasing the same mission on firmer ground. This talk is for anyone operating in high-burn, high-competition spaces and digs into the hard stuff: the difference between product-market fit and business-model fit, the cost of unprofitable growth, and how failure can become foundation.