Company Profile
Company Overview
The world’s leading brands in home and business services rely on Red Ventures to provide intelligent customer acquisition solutions. Merging online marketing and sales with proprietary optimization technologies, we generate new customers in large volumes for brands like ADT Security Services and DIRECTV. The risk is ours, and we are paid only for results, offering our partners unparalleled market reach with limited exposure.
What most sets Red Ventures apart is our people. They are perceptive marketers, technology innovators and sales pros. Entrepreneurs who like to compete, and love to win. Leaders who drive growth and embrace change. They work hard, and have fun doing it. And they are revolutionizing the way companies find new customers.
Leveraging our great people and unique capabilities, we build the best customer acquisition solutions in the marketplace. Combining new approaches with proven strategies, we create unbeatable brand visibility for our partners.
Company History
Red Ventures was founded in 2000 by Ric Elias and Dan Feldstein. After business school at Harvard for Elias and Wharton for Feldstein, the two met at Cendant, a marketing holding company. There they gained experience running direct marketing companies and discovered a shared passion for entrepreneurship.
"It was two men and a plan in Ric's basement," said Feldstein. "We talked more about what the company should be as opposed to the business itself."
"We wanted to create a company that we would want to work for," said Elias. That meant a competitive, results-oriented environment where people would work hard and have fun.
"It had to be a business with solid foundational elements as opposed to a one-trick pony," said Feldstein, "a company that could outlast us." So RedF.com, the precursor to Red Ventures, was born. The plan was to use print-based media to help online brands market themselves. RedF was a code name, a combination of the founders' initials that they used while planning their exit from the corporate world. The name stuck.
It took Elias and Feldstein six weeks to raise capital. Several friends invested in the company, and the founders contributed their personal savings. They were in the process of training their newly-hired sales force when they realized the dot-com bubble was about to burst.
"The irrational exuberance was done," said Elias. "We had our friends' money in the business so failure wasn't an option. We decided to sell our expertise and become marketing consultants until we figured things out." LendingTree, Bank of America and Duke Energy were among their first clients, and business took off, Elias said. "We woke up one day and realized we were an agency," he said. But an agency wasn't what Elias and Feldstein had set out to create. Providing services to clients, they didn't have control over the risks or rewards of their work. It was time to reinvent.
At a dinner meeting with potential clients from DIRECTV, the epiphany came. "We were pitching them agency work, and they said, 'Why don't you put your money where your mouth is and become a dealer?'" Feldstein said. The next day, they began shifting the business from marketing agency to customer acquisition marketer. DirectStarTV was launched in January 2003. It is now the largest and fastest-growing DIRECTV dealer and was named Dealer of the Year in 2006. Red Ventures has since expanded into a range of verticals, from home and business services to automotive and education. The partners intend by 2010 to more than double the company's size by continuing to draw top talent with their unique, entrepreneurial company culture.
"We've worked hard and had our fair share of luck, but we're not complacent," Elias said. "We have to use this great platform we've built to continue reinventing ourselves - launching new businesses, acquiring new companies, and recruiting the best people to run them."
But above all, Elias said he wants Red Ventures to be known as a company that takes social responsibility to heart. In 2006, the company founded a charity, Lives Linked, which connects sponsors in the U.S. with orphans around the world.
"What keeps me up at night is the notion that we need to find a broader purpose in the world beyond financial success," Elias said. "The real dream is making Lives Linked another jewel in the Red Ventures portfolio."