While in college in his native Guatemala, BrokersWeb.com Inc. CEO Matias de Tezanos came across an article about a 21-year-old entrepreneur in the U.S. who had started an Internet company. Reading the article inspired de Tezanos to try his hand at entrepreneurship.
Before long, he had dropped out of medical school and started going around to each embassy in Guatemala asking for a copy of their country’s business phone book. Over the next few months, he manually digitized the hotel section of each phone book. With some investment help from a friend’s grandfather, he purchased the Internet domain name www.hoteles.com, making it successful enough to sell to Expedia.com within 18 months.
The first success turned de Tezanos into a full-fledged Internet entrepreneur, and several business ventures later, he became the CEO of BrokersWeb.com, a leading pay-per-click advertising platform providing targeted Web leads for health, life, home and auto insurance products. His customers include Geico and Esurance, among others.
De Tezanos has used some of the lessons he has learned along the way to build BrokersWeb into an industry leader. Unlike a large number of other marketing services firms that sell leads, BrokersWeb’s vertical focus generates better quality leads. The company’s success lies in its ability to deliver leads that convert into sales for advertisers.
The business model implemented by de Tezanos and his team can be easily replicated in other product categories and geographies. BrokersWeb has begun work on a German version of its site, but de Tezanos sees the most potential in expanding his business model to new products. This year, the company plans to launch its mortgage vertical and eventually get unto the credit card vertical. He is setting up a team in each vertical category to replicate the business model used for the various insurance fields that BrokersWeb serves.
How to reach: BrokersWeb.com Inc., (877) 887-5267 or www.brokersweb.com
