Christopher Manavi, famed technology entrepreneur from San Francisco, CA has sold SellNet Media LLC for a whopping $20M. Having started the company out of his small studio apartment in Berkeley, CA when he was a student at UC Berkeley, SellNet Media has bourgeoned into a digital and search engine marketing behemoth with over 3,500 clients worldwide and operations in multiple countries. Christopher credits his entrepreneurial spirit to his immigrant grandparents who came to the United States from Mexico. With no formal education nor even being able to speak English, his grandparents were forced into entrepreneurship as a means of sustenance, a similar plight to many immigrant household who start housekeeping or gardening operations.
Christopher Manavi spent much time on the home computer, becoming fascinated by the Internet and online businesses. In a Forbes interview Christopher details the hardship of his Mexican parents and grandparents never being able to own the mean of production to their family Mexican restaurant business due to exorbitant rent and other associated costs. The idea that one could create a business wholly online and not have to deal with many of the difficulties of a brick and mortar business struck a cord with Christopher.
It wasn’t until his time in college at the University of California, Berkeley that he decided to open his own online company. Coming from a poor immigrant household, Christopher Manavi needed a way to make money while in school but did not want a traditional job where he would have to neglect his studies. Self-taught, he created a search-engine marketing operation ranking websites for local companies and small businesses. After achieving success, he began expanding his business, offering search-engine services across the Internet. Creating his own methodology to dominate the search engine results, Christopher soon became known as one of the leading figures in the digital marketing landscape—giving talks at major industry conferences and conventions such as UnGagged in Las Vegas.
His real breakthrough was his conception of online reputation management, an industry worth a billion dollars according to recent market research. This industry came out of nowhere and was pioneers by Christopher Manavi, in essence betting his entire company on the advent of online reputation management. Being first in the space, it paid off big time, leading to SellNet Media LLC being acquired for $20 million dollars. His clients include dating giant Plenty of Fish, Johnson and Johnson, and clothing retailer Forever 21.
Christopher Manavi is a special young entrepreneur, whose story is like so many in the Internet industry—starting from scratch and developing a multi-million dollar business using their brain, creativity, and intuition. Christopher has launched a few new companies recently in the finance and also mobile applications industry which you can read about in his Forbes interview. He’s also giving a few talks about start-ups and entrepreneurship which I’m sure will be valuable to anybody in the online technology or digital marketing space. We’re certain that whatever he’s working on we will hear about it in the future in a big way.
Success Coach, Business Development Consultant, Strategist,Blogger, Traveller, Motivational Writer & Speaker