Unicorn in the Making: Avi Steinlauf, CEO of Edmunds.com (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So you’re not a founder of Edmunds?

Avi Steinlauf: I’ll tell you a little bit about the history of Edmunds. I think you’ll see it interwoven with some of the things that I’ve mentioned earlier. Edmunds is a majority-owned family business. It’s my family. My father, Peter Steinlauf, who is our active Chairman, was a serial entrepreneur. He built up outdoor advertising business in the ’70s. Then there was some industry consolidation in the 1980s. He sold his business and was looking to get into another business.

He came across this small print publisher called Edmunds that published quarterly pricing guides for new and used cars that were sold in bookstores and in news stands. He went ahead and bought the company. At that time, there were a handful of employees based in Long Island. >>>

Unicorn in the Making: Avi Steinlauf, CEO of Edmunds.com (Part 1)

As you may know, we just launched a book called Billion Dollar Companies profiling the journeys of entrepreneurs building massive businesses. Edmunds.com may just be another unicorn.

Sramana Mitra: Where does your journey begin? Where are you from? Where were you raised and in what kind of circumstances?

Avi Steinlauf: Originally, I was born in London, England. For those folks from the UK or familiar with the UK, I’m a cockney by right given the fact that I was born within the sound of the Bow Bells, even though the accent that you hear is nothing like an English accent. I really grew up here in Southern California and spent most of my schooling here in the United States. >>>

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Strategies From 5 Entrepreneurs

You have already read my recent piece, Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, as one of the tried and true approaches to building Unicorn companies. In this piece, I want to share with you some other strategies worth looking at as well, as part of our Billion Dollar Unicorns exploration. Each of these has a video conversation from one of our recent 1M/1M roundtables. You only need to listen to the first 30 minutes of each session.

Roll-Ups

Aaron Skonnard, founder and CEO of Pluralsight, one of the very few EdTech ventures out there that are scaling at Unicorn levels, discussed his journey over the last decade. Aaron bootstrapped Pluralsight to $12 million in revenue before raising a $27.5 million Series A at almost a $100 million valuation. From there on, the company has gone on to follow a roll-up strategy with additional funding and is currently valued at close to $1 billion. >>>

Billion Dollar Unicorns: What Have You Learned?

As part of our continued coverage of the Billion Dollar Unicorns, I’d to like to create a space on this blog to welcome analysis and observations from entrepreneurs who have built Unicorn businesses, as well as investors who have supported these entrepreneurs on their remarkable journeys.

Over the last 10 years of this blog, we have had the founders of over 350 highly valued companies share their entrepreneurial journeys with us. These entrepreneurs have been generous in sharing their lessons from the trenches, helping us further our understanding of the strategies and tactics of building robust businesses.

Over 40 of these have emerged as Unicorns with billion dollar plus valuations.

Overall, we have touched 5000+ companies through our media platform and the 1M/1M accelerator.

To kick off the discussion, I’d like to point you to one theme we’ve heard over and over again: Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later.

In the book, we’ve also explored themes such as fat startups, roll-ups, etc.

Here, we hope to collect more insights and analysis from a broader community of practitioners.

Please weigh in.

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Cloud Investment Thesis of 5 VCs

Last fall, we had five VCs participate in our 1M/1M roundtables to discuss their Cloud Computing investment thesis. These interviews cover as well as build upon the themes discussed in my two recent books, Billion Dollar Unicorns and Carnival In The Cloud. If you are looking to build a Unicorn company in the Cloud Computing domain, I strongly recommend you listen to these five interviews. In each case, listening to just the first 30 minutes would be adequate.

>>>

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Web 3.0 and E-Commerce Investment Thesis of 3 VCs

Last fall, we had three VCs participate in our 1M/1M roundtables to discuss their Web 3.0 and e-Commerce investment thesis. These interviews cover as well as build upon the themes discussed in my two recent books, Billion Dollar Unicorns and From E-Commerce to Web 3.0. If you are looking to build a Unicorn company in the Web 3.0 / e-Commerce domains, I strongly recommend you listen to these three interviews. In each case, listening to just the first 30 minutes would be adequate.

>>>