The Entrepreneur who accidentally built a billion-dollar Tech company

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For all of us unambitious folks, Steve Yi offers some inspiration. He never had that lightning-strike BIG IDEA. Never trolled the streets of Silicon Valley looking for venture capital money. Never planned to build a billion-dollar tech company, and, unlike everyone else in the business, actually disdains the idea of aiming for it. But none of that has stopped him from moving fast in that unanticipated direction with his 5-year-old company, MediaAlpha. “We don’t use the term ‘management,’” the 45-year-old says, skewering yet another trope in the lexicon of Silicon Valleyese.

Despite all of that, MediaAlpha, which Yi, the CEO, co-founded with two partners, keeps popping up on league rankings, like fastest-growing company in Seattle over the past three years, according to Inc. magazine, or 13th on Deloitte’s list of fastest-growing tech companies in the U.S. It’s in a business called lead generation, a niche in the online advertising industry that matches up consumers and sellers of complex services, explains Jeff Navach, VP of marketing.

If you’ve recently gone online to buy auto insurance, chances are you’ve run into MediaAlpha’s referral platform. Here’s how it works: When interested consumers fill in one of those online information forms to get an insurance quote, providers take a few nanoseconds to bid on the customer. For instance, who’d pay most to insure a 45-year-old woman with a Volvo station wagon in Laguna Beach, California? Or a 25-year-old with an old Honda CRV in Boston? The info is more specific, and therefore more valuable, than random clicks on display ads on websites.

MediaAlpha has hit a sweet spot in insurance trends, as the cost and complexity of new technology have driven insurance providers to go outside for help. Bryant Tutterow, insurance marketing consultant affiliated with DK Marketing, says MediaAlpha is the latest in a 15-year trend of insurance companies going digital — but that Yi’s company has pushed the bidding system further than any others.

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