Finder co-founder Fred Schebesta. Source: provided.
Fred Schebesta has been the face of Finder since its inception in 2006. Although Finder has three founders, it was Schebesta who naturally dominated the spotlight with his quirky style, cryptocurrency evangelism, and penchant for being “straightforward.” in external communications.
But that will now change as the crypto king steps back to work on other projects and ventures in the Finder stratosphere. Addressed exclusively to SmartCompany, Schebesta revealed that he is stepping down as co-CEO of Finder’s global operations and will no longer be the public face of the company.
Frank Restuccia takes over the international reins of Finder
Co-founder Frank Restuccia will now take a more active role in media and brand communications, as well as day-to-day leadership of Finder’s global arm. Chris Ellis continues as CEO of Finder Australia after taking over in 2020.
According to Schebesta, role switching is built into the Finder’s DNA.
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“With Frank and I, our roles have always changed over time. There was a time when it was just me… I was the coder, I wrote the content, built the links and called the clients,” Schebesta said in an interview with SmartCompany.
“Over time, I replaced each role with people who are much better than me. Frank is a much better day-to-day leader and allocator of capital than I am in a large organization…Frank is a much better CEO.
Restuccia also outlines the evolution and growth of Finder and how it led to this point.
” Fred and I worked together for 20 years and I’ve worn many different hats along the way,” Restuccia said in an interview with SmartCompany.
“He tended to take on more of those corporate spokesperson duties. And more times I’ve done my part, but now it’s really important for me to take on more of that responsibility.
However, Restuccia says Finder’s internal, day-to-day business operations haven’t changed much.
“My Historically, skills have been more about managing the business as a whole, P&L, people. So the actual formality of the title change is one thing, but the actual underlying responsibilities haven’t really changed much.
Finder co-founders Fred Schebesta, Jeremy Cabral and Frank Restuccia. Source: provided.
New companies after HiveEX and Finder Earn
Schebesta may be taking a step back from the public and management aspects of the business, but he’s not quitting Finder. Instead, it will work on other initiatives, such as the laptop recycling program the company recently launched with Good360.
“I think my natural passion is to take big creative risks and in a way you create amazing and unexpected things for people,” Schebesta said. SmartCompany.
He also continues to be active on his personal social media accounts. In addition to posting personal and ambitious content, he uses Instagram and TikTok to promote other business ventures and side activities. This includes his book go live as well as renting his South Coogee ‘Crypto Castle’, which can be booked for $10,743 a night on Airbnb.
Schebesta also recently entered into a paid partnership with Red Rooster where he tried some of the brand’s chicken burgers.
@fred.schebesta 1 bite of burger review.. @redrooster 🍔 The Picklebird Burger – only available at select Red Rooster restaurants! #foodtok #burger #sydney #chicken #red rooster #Australia #for you #ad #theroasterscalling
A key objective for Schebesta is to reinject itself into the construction phase sections of the business.
“Frank asked me a question the other night. He said, ‘Blank slate, if you could build anything, what would you do?’ He asked me the same question in 2017 and that’s when we built HiveEX and all crypto content and all crypto projects.
HiveEX was the cryptocurrency exchange that Schebesta and Restuccia founded in 2018, under Hive Empire Trading Pty Ltd.
In August 2020, 100% of Hive Empire shares were sold for $300,000. They were purchased by Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm founded and owned by FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried. These shares were then forwarded to FTX itself in December 2021 for $100.
More recently, Finder launched Finder Earn, a stablecoin investment product. Earn allowed users to invest in TAUD for a fixed high yield return of 4.01%. Between May and June 2022, this figure increased to 6.01% for users who had invested more than $10,000 TAUD in Finder Earn.
But the product was short lived. Searcher Timed Earn end of November, just one year after its launch. The company cited the current economic climate as the reason. It is unclear if the continued crypto bear market factored into the decision.
“At Finder, we always put our customers first and have determined that Earn is no longer serving our customers the way he did in a low rate environment,” read a text to customers.
Restuccia confirmed SmartCompany that Earn had approximately 5,000 customers and $500,000 in profits were paid out to customers over the life of the product.
According to Restuccia, this was not a loss for Finder because investors frequently engaged in another action on the comparison platform, such as buying insurance or getting a better mortgage rate.
The company claims that all TAUDs held by clients have already been converted back to 1:1 AUD and returned to clients’ Finder wallets. Sales seen by SmartCompany confirm this.
“It’s time to fix the finances”
Finder plans to keep trying new things, with Schebesta at the helm.
“Freddie is really keen on spending as much time as possible on businesses and creating new businesses from scratch and bringing them to one,” Restuccia said.
And according to Schebesta, this is still likely to be in the fintech space as he wants to disrupt finance as we know it.
“So a lot of finance is still down,” he said.
“It annoys me to the point of saying, ‘I’m just going to fix this and have the ultimate experience.'”
During the interview, Schebesta described recently calling contacts about it as he was returning home from a 10:30 p.m. meeting.
“I was really excited. I’ve absolutely had enough. It’s time to fix the finances and build something amazing to do where people are going ‘wow, that’s unexpected and surprising,’” Schebesta said.
“I want to spend zero dollars on marketing. It’s all advertising and product all day.
Although this product has yet to take shape, for Schebesta it is all about durability and efficiency. He cites a recent Value Stream Report which revealed that the banking sector uses up to 56 times more energy than cryptocurrency.
“What’s in all these transactions, what are all these bits of paper? How much trees are cut down because of inefficiencies in this area? These are people who review stuff and stuff. What’s going on there? Schebesta asked.
“There must be a more efficient way to do this.”
While shaking up deep-rooted institutionalized finance may be a long-term goal, for now Finder’s goal is to help people weather the current economic and interest rate storm.
“The mission of researchers is to help people save and earn money. And at the end of the day, we take a very customer-centric view of how we do it,” Restuccia said.
“I just want to make sure they have all the information and all the tools at their disposal to be able to make good decisions.”
Disclaimer: The author is a former Finder employee.
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