If you’d like to own, they’re still the guys to see. Schebesta and Restuccia’s first business was called Freestyle Media and, in the internet wild west of the early 2000s, it lived up to its name, buying up all sorts of domain names on a bet that someone would one day be willing to pay for them. It’s a reminder of Finder’s diversified business model, comparing products across 105 categories, running a cryptocurrency exchange called HiveEx, preparing to launch a personal finance app, and ploughing profits into an internal venture capital arm in search of the next big thing.
The samurai sword commemorates the response of Schebesta and his troops to what befell them in the early hours of that morning: a dreaded “Google penalty”.Ī few metres away in the open-plan office, a faint hum emanates from a rack of servers mining for bitcoin. However on that April day eight years ago, the business was as good as dead. “I want to be the Amazon of comparison,” Schebesta deadpans. Restuccia, 39, also makes his debut, in 60th place with $53 million.Ĭomparing everything from credit cards to cruises, Finder takes a commission whenever one of its 9.7 million monthly visitors uses it to purchase a product. Schebesta is a debutant on this year’s Financial Review Young Rich List at No.22 with wealth of $193 million. It’s commemorated on a framed samurai sword that hangs, incongruously, outside the catered kitchen of Finder, the consumer information service Schebesta co-founded with schoolmate Frank Restuccia in 2007.Īs the 38-year-old Sydneysider hands The Australian Financial Review Magazine a kombucha from the fridge, everything about Schebesta – his casual demeanour, his tracksuit, his peroxide-tipped hair – make him seem an unlikely owner for an enterprise that runs websites in 83 countries, employs 400 people in five cities, and is forecasting $102 million revenue in 2019-20. On April 3, 2011, Google declared war on Fred Schebesta.