From 'Billion-Dollar Mistake' To $300M Exit: The Early Entrepreneurial Experiences Of Benzinga Co-Founder Jason Raznick

You might not have heard of the Razzie, but that's the name Benzinga co-founder Jason Raznick gave to his first invention: a device developed in the early 90s that could digitally record TV programs.

Raznick never patented the idea, and it was eventually developed by TiVo. But the experience taught him an invaluable lesson that he would apply later in his successful career as an entrepreneur.

On the latest episode of The Raz Report, Raznick told co-host Aaron Bry about the key moments on his path from a garage start-up entrepreneur to the CEO of a $300 million company.

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Jason Raznick's Formative Years Before Benzinga

Raznick came up with the Razzie when he was 13 but never got to file the patent, and two years later, TiVo founder Mike Ramsay patented the idea.

"I started the process, had the attorney, and I realized I could do it, but I didn’t run through the finish line," he said, calling it his first "billion-dollar mistake."

Raznick moved on to study at the University of Michigan, where he continued to think of ideas that could benefit society and were ahead of their time.

"Ideas are like noses. We all have one, right? But it’s really the execution of the idea," said Raznick.

His first successful business was an e-commerce website called College Book Zone. It was one of the first sites that sold textbooks online, Raznick said.

"I was getting orders from all over the world," he said.

Yet, marketing the business was one of the biggest challenges for Raznick, who was still an undergrad student living with his parents. Raznick recalled one night before the first football game of the season, when he hand-made large-scale signs from two-by-fours that he set near the stadium when it was attended by over 106,000 people.

"It was definitely an interesting experience. I’ve sold thousands of thousands of textbooks to pretty much every state in the country," he said.

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However, College Book Zone presented Raznick with a significant drawback: the requirement to spend more on shipping costs, which ultimately diminished his profit margins.

"So then I’m like, what would people pay for that doesn’t have to be a shipped product?" he said.

It was around the year 2000 and online dating came to mind as an untapped market. Raznick started envisioning a site that could dominate regionally in the state of Michigan. He developed different sites aimed at specific areas of the Midwest where single people could meet each other online.

"Online dating and app dating is huge now. This is before it was huge," he said.

He didn't have any capital to start an online dating business but, in his own words, he was "forced to be resourceful." He found a partner abroad who was willing to develop the back-end for the sites in exchange for half the ownership in the company.

Raznick personally took to the streets to advertise the sites, strategically placing signs in the restrooms of bars and in coffee shops to capture attention.

The business wasn't able to make enough revenue to become a hit, because Google Adwords hadn't come out yet, and all the revenue came from client subscriptions instead of advertising. It made between $400 and $600 a month, and he ended up looking at other ideas.

However, these were the formative experiences that gave Raznick the knowledge to build Benzinga and grow it into a successful company some years later.

"You can’t be afraid of failure," said Raznick. "You just got to do and see what happens and not overanalyze it so much, but also recognize where you need help."

Raznick recognizes that not everyone is built to be an entrepreneur, but he believes that the entrepreneurial spirit can also exist for people working within companies. He calls them "intrapreneurs."

"The entrepreneurial nature is a needed thing. That self motivation, that drive, is super important," he said.

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Photo: Benzinga