(Reuters) – Real estate website Trulia Inc said on Thursday it hired veteran finance executive and deal-maker Sean Aggarwal from eBay Inc's PayPal to help manage a business that has grown significantly in the past year.
Aggarwal, formerly vice president of finance at PayPal and chief financial officer of eBay's U.S. category, is joining Trulia as the company's CFO.
Trulia, backed by venture capital firms Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital, also hired Scott Darling, former general counsel of Imperva Inc, a data-security software company that went public last month.
Trulia, which competes with Zillow Inc in the online real estate market, has been growing quickly despite a lackluster U.S. housing market. In the third quarter, Trulia's website averaged 16.5 million monthly unique visitors, up from 8.7 million a year earlier.
Pete Flint, co-founder and chief executive of Trulia, said the company hired Aggarwal and Darling to help manage what has become a much bigger business.
"We see a long-term opportunity to be an independent public company, but when that happens will be when we're ready," Flint told Reuters. "These executives have private company and public company experience -- both of those are important for Trulia."
Zillow went public in July and its shares almost doubled on the first day, valuing the company at almost $1 billion. The shares have since fallen and recently traded at $22.38, just above their $20 IPO price. Zillow is currently worth just over $600 million, according to Thomson Reuters data.
At PayPal, Aggarwal ran finance at several divisions, including PayPal Mobile. He also worked on eBay's recent acquisition of mobile payment company Zong and led the financial integration of Bill Me Later, which eBay acquired in 2008 for almost $1 billion.
Aggarwal, who is an angel investor in Silicon Valley, was also previously director of finance at Amazon.com and PepsiCo and an investment banker at Merrill Lynch.
Flint said Aggarwal's deal-making experience was another draw for Trulia. The company bought Movity in late 2010, it's only acquisition to date.
"We're always intrigued by other opportunities," Flint said.
(Reporting by Alistair Barr in San Francisco; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
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