Fred Schebesta has described turning up to client meetings in shoes worn almost through.
He was in his twenties and already running a business. At 22, while finishing a Bachelor of Finance at Macquarie University, he and school friend Frank Restuccia had started a digital agency called Freestyle Media in 2002. There was a version of success in that: Schebesta was named Australian Young Direct Marketer of the Year in 2007, and the agency was bought by the ASX-listed Q Ltd. The two stayed on to run it until late 2009.
The idea was a frugal one: help people compare products and avoid overpaying.
But money was tight. He has said they lived in a share house with five other people for about two and a half years, and that cash flow was one of their biggest challenges. They chased overdue invoices even when only a few cents were owed. He describes himself as someone who hates being ripped off.
That instinct became the business. In 2006 the two launched finder.com.au, and it began as a family of sites with names like creditcardfinder.com.au and lifeinsurancefinder.com.au. The idea was a frugal one: help people compare products and avoid overpaying. The money came from referral fees when readers took up a card, loan or policy.
The risky move was merging the many domains into a single brand. Schebesta has said it could have made all of the sites vanish from Google. The team pulled it off almost seamlessly. In 2015 they repeated the exercise in the United States, which meant starting again from the blueprint.
For 15 years, Finder took no outside money. When it finally did, in December 2021, it raised A$30 million from Future Now Capital at a pre-money valuation of A$650 million, with revenue around A$96 million and a net profit of A$1.7 million for FY21. Third co-founder Jeremy Cabral later stepped down after 16 years to pursue AI.
The human lesson is cheap and unglamorous. The share house and the worn shoes were not a phase before the business. They were a habit of mind that the business was built to sell: respect for other people's money starts with your own.