Finder COO and co-founder stepping away, starting AI newsletter
Finder co-founder and COO Jeremy Cabral is moving to an advisory role after 16 years with the financial comparison platform. Cabral has started a Substack and intends to explore large language model (LLM) visibility – how content “ranks” in ChatGPT and other AIs – building on Finder’s historical strength in SEO.
Finder was founded in 2006 by Fred Schebesta and Frank Restuccia, with Cabral coming on board two years later. What began as creditcardfinder.com.au expanded to other financial product comparisons, moved into global markets, and now employs between 300-400 people and reportedly turns over more than $100m in revenue.
Fred Schebesta, Jeremy Cabral and Frank Restuccia
“I just really wanted to see what I could achieve working on such an important thing: helping Australians make better financial decisions,” Cabral said. “We ultimately took that way further than I originally thought.”
Cabral said he maintains a significant equity stake in the business.
“I’m obviously very invested in making sure the company continues to succeed. For me it’s really about having the time and space to go all in on AI.”
“I reflected back on key moments in my life where I was at the beginning of these technology curves – I think it’s time for me to make sure that I’m really going deep and immersing myself in AI and exactly how it plays out for the future, how it impacts the world.”
Finder spokesman Taylor Blackburn said Cabral would continue to provide advice to the company.
“It’s not that he’s dropping the mic and leaving,” he said. “He wants to go and [explore AI] – this is a ‘horses-to-car’ moment … he’s on this journey.”
Blackburn said Cabral’s COO role would not be backfilled, instead leaders from different parts of the business would step up to fill operational vacancies.
Cabral said that in making the decision to step down, he was also wanting to be able to spend more time with his family. He has twin five-year-old girls.
Finder has recently had a legal win in the Federal Court against financial regulator ASIC over its crypto product Finder Earn. The court found the product wasn’t a debenture (a way for businesses to raise money without selling shares), and therefore wasn’t subject to finance regulations. Finder not only won the case (most recently on appeal), but was awarded costs.
In launching his Substack newsletter, Cabral said he would cover the new issue of optimising content for LLMs.
“ I’ve gone deep on LLM visibility and how to rank in ChatGPT and those sort of platforms. I am planning to share what I’ve learned on that front,” he said.
“Obviously Finder has historically had very strong foundations in SEO and content, and so we always are ahead of the curve in this sort of stuff and have very strong LLM visibility. It is something I’m personally passionate about.”
He will also post about his personal health journey – he tracks his health variables closely and will run a marathon for the first time this weekend – and case studies from his years at Finder.
“I think there are a lot of cool things, incredible things we’ve done as a business over the years. And I’d love to share about how we created our values, how we grew internationally.”
“ It’s been a fun ride, man … I want to remain very connected to the company and work very closely with Frank and Fred.”
Have your say