Peter Tafeen: The Prince or Piranha of Homestore? by Blanche Evans
In August, 1996, Peter Tafeen met with Stuart Wolff and they pounded out a mission to take Realtor.com into the next century. Starting with $6 million and a great business plan, Stuart Wolff started Realtor.com, and then launched Homestore, the Internet's largest real estate vortal. Today, Homestore is valued at over $6.4 billion. As Homestore's front man, Stuart Wolff has received many accolades, but behind the scenes was a master puppeteer who pulled many of the most important strings in manipulating Homestore's massive success. Tafeen's role as executive vice president of business development covers a broad range of responsibilities including advertising and content. His real job? To see to it that Homestore meets its business plan. Meet Homestore's prince of deals, Peter Tafeen. Blanche Evans: You were Wolff's first major hire. Did you ever think that you could achieve what you have? Peter Tafeen: No, I thought we had the right ingredients to be very successful and create a great company. My goal was to create a billion dollar company, so we have exceeded our goal by six times. B.E.: What was your early plan? P.T.: Exactly what you are seeing today. Homestore has been planned out for two years. The vision of what you are seeing is exactly what we thought we could do. B.E.: Describe Peter Tafeen. P.T.: Aggressive, passionate, loyal, trustworthy, honest, intelligent B.E.: You left out tough. You've often had to play the bad guy. How does it feel that others may see you as a rough player P.T.: People call me the Piranha. (laughs.) My job is to make sure the company executes its business plan. We don't have a lot of time to spend on things that don't fit into our mission. If others have intelligent offerings, that's fine, but we know what we want. If I have to be the fall guy, I'm more than happy to do that. B.E.: Why is it worth it? P.T.: We want to be the biggest and the best. I compare us not to other real estate companies, but to the greatest companies in the world. I look at UPS, GE, Microsoft, AOL and others and that is where we want to be. B.E.: What is your relationship like with Wolff? Are you friends outside of business? P.T.: Yes, we are friends outside. I consider him my partner. My first job is to increase shareholder value. My second job is to increase the perceptions of Stuart. He should get the glory. Every great company needs a great figurehead. And he is it for this company. And he is the brightest man I've ever met. We share the same ideals. We care about winning and greatness. When you find people who are alike that way, you tend to gravitate toward each other. B.E.: This association has not been without its sacrifices. You've had to hop a plane at a moment's notice and work long hours to get things done. What sacrifices do you make for Homestore? P.T.: I logged over 200,000 air miles last year. I work seven days a week. I come to the office at 6:30 and leave at 7:30 at night. Go home for an hour, and still make more phone calls. I have sacrificed everything. B.E.: How do you do it? P.T.: I don't believe in balance. In order to win, you have to give 150%. There have been a lot of rewards. Like I've said, I have had time to play golf and tennis. Now is the time to create a great company. B.E.: What is the biggest deal you've ever made? P.T.: There are lots of ways to look at these deals. I look at the level of importance. As you try to build a great company, you have to look at the whole package. I look at each deal with the same significance because we are building a jigsaw puzzle. If we don't get one piece, the puzzle is never completed. B.E.: The hardest? P.T.: It's always hard to deal with other competitive companies. AOL and Cendant were tough to deal with. Each deal seems difficult, and each one is anti-climatic. You assume you are going to get it done, so you don't get excited about it. I go into every deal with the attitude that we are going to get it done and that is the right deal for the company. We will do whatever it takes. And we always have a contingency plan. B.E.: What deals didn't you make that you wish you had? P.T.: It has to be the right deal at the right price. There isn't one deal we haven't gotten. We are batting pretty close to 1000. B.E.: Who's on your wish list? P.T.: There are still targets out there. There are new opportunities for us in gardening and decorating since we've added those categories. B.E.: Where do you see Homestore going? P.T.: I think we have concentrated on looking for a home, so our additional focus will be on home ownership - how to make owning a home a pleasure. That's when we will get into consumers putting their personal stamp on the home via gardening, decorating, etc. We'll be making more deals along those lines, and the model has the possibility to expand internationally. B.E.: And 2000? P.T.: I want to say that we are very committed to the realty industry. We couldn't do this without them. We have done this with help. We are a company built on partnerships. Our deals have to be good with our partners. We are committed to strengthening the industry, together. B.E.: What about the secondary stock offering? P.T.: That will be in a couple of weeks, and the stock will sell for whatever the fair market value as of that day. We are raising more money so we can do more. | 
