Red Ventures Media Evolution

Jesse Pujji shares the evolution story of Red Ventures, from its humble beginnings to becoming a multi-billion dollar company.

"Rick and Dan started the business in 2000, months before the internet imploded. Five years later, Rick says to Dan 'give me a dollar' and Dan gives him a dollar and says 'you can have my half of the business, I hate this business.'

They did a hard reset when they were barely doing $1 million in EBITDA. Then in 2005, there was this new thing called Google AdWords. They had a relationship with DirectTV, who was looking for satellite resellers in malls. They went to DirectTV and said 'Hey, can we be a dealer?' DirectTV asked about their territory, and they said 'this new thing called the internet will be our territory.'

They became DirectTV's authorized dealer and owned all the web rights, AdWords rights, and SEO. In 4 years, they built a $75 million EBITDA business just selling DirectTV subscriptions. They were pioneers in tracking what people did on websites and connecting it to phone calls.

Then General Atlantic invested, and they took that model to any high LTV purchase - credit card companies, American Express, Verizon Wireless, pest control. By 2015, they were doing $200-300 million in EBITDA.

When growth slowed, they pivoted to buying content assets. They bought Bankrate, a $1 billion publicly traded company with $100 million in EBITDA. In less than 2 years, they tripled the EBITDA. Then they bought Healthline, CNET - now the services part of their business is tiny, and the SEO content part is massive."