Apartment List's Vertical Evolution
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Sam Parr shares the story of how a company called Vertical Brands grew through various lead generation businesses.
"The company that bought my company years ago was called Apartment List. Originally they were called Vertical Brands and they owned lead gen sites for senior living. They owned a lead gen site for rent-to-own housing, which they bootstrapped to about 6-7 million in revenue. Then they owned Apartment List, which eventually became the main company. They also owned a car site called AutoList.com which was acquired by CarGurus for $30 million.
The math behind their success was based on three factors: the value of the purchase price of the product, multiplied by the frequency that one person buys the product, multiplied by the number of people who have that need. For example, if it's lead gen for CEOs of small to medium-sized businesses, they might spend $50,000 on that, but they're only going to hire once every 8 years. That gives you the math behind the opportunity."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.