How Coupons.com Quietly Became A Top 50 Site By Operating Like A Real Business – with Steven Boal

Steven Boal, Coupons, Customer Acquisition, eCommerce, Non-Tech, Web 1.0

When I asked him how he got his early customers, Steven Boal, founder of Coupons.com, didn’t say that he courted the digerati or threw a launch party. Instead, he told me stories of how he convinced packaged goods companies to try digital coupons by waiting in their lobbies longer than most people would have been willing to or jumping a redeye to get a prospect to run a small test campaign with him.

I implied that what was describing didn’t sound like a sexy business. “It depends on your definition of sexy,” he said. “‘Sexy’ to me is [being] profitable [and] hiring and saving consumers an awful lot of money.”

Listen to the full program and you’ll hear how he and his team did it.

Steven Boal

Coupons

Steven Boal founded Coupons, Inc. in 1998 and is responsible for it’s strategic and operational direction. He previously served as vice president of Business Development for Integral Development Corporation, a privately held Silicon Valley financial software company whose investors include Accel Partners. Prior to that, he was vice president and head of Global Emerging Markets Derivative Technology at J.P. Morgan. Before that, he was president of OptEdge, Chicago-based real-time options, analytics and risk management business.

 

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