EverQuote, Inc. (EVER): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

When you look at the digital insurance landscape, can EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) truly sustain its explosive growth, especially after delivering a record third quarter 2025 revenue of $173.9 million and a net income surge of 63%?

Honestly, the numbers-like the $645 million in revenue over the last twelve months-suggest a company successfully transforming its marketplace model by embedding artificial intelligence (AI) to become a more valuable growth partner for carriers.

This isn't just a simple lead-generation story anymore; it's a strategic shift toward a $1 billion annual revenue target, so understanding its history, ownership, and how it defintely makes money is critical for your investment decision.

EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) History

You're looking for the foundational story of EverQuote, Inc. (EVER), the online insurance marketplace that's become a major player by simplifying a complex process. Honestly, the company's history is a great example of a smart pivot, moving from a niche ad-tech idea to a public, multi-product platform focused on artificial intelligence (AI).

The direct takeaway is that EverQuote's success stems from its 2011 shift to a consumer-facing insurance marketplace, a move that culminated in a successful 2018 IPO and a current transformation into an AI-powered growth partner for insurance carriers.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

The online insurance marketplace, EverQuote, was established in 2011, though the underlying technology company, initially named AdHarmonics, began in 2008.

Original location

The company started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a hub for technology and data-driven businesses.

Founding team members

The core founding team included Seth Birnbaum and Tomas Revesz, who met while studying at MIT.

Initial capital/funding

In 2011, EverQuote secured $3.1 million in seed funding, which was critical for developing the initial online insurance platform and starting operations.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

Given Company's Transformative Moments

The company's trajectory has been shaped by three major shifts that took it from a concept to a public market leader. The first was the initial pivot itself-recognizing the value of a direct-to-consumer insurance comparison model over pure ad-tech.

The second big moment was the 2018 IPO. Going public provided the capital needed to scale its Variable Marketing Dollars (VMD) and aggressively expand the marketplace. It also introduced the rigor of public reporting, which defintely helped sharpen their focus on profitability and efficiency.

The most recent and ongoing transformation is the shift toward becoming a multi-product, AI-powered solutions provider. This is a move away from being just a lead generation vendor. It's a smart strategic decision to deepen relationships with insurance carriers by offering better-performing referrals and bigger traffic scale.

• Q3 2025 Performance: This transformation is already showing results, with Q3 2025 total revenue growing 20% year-over-year to $173.9 million.
• Profitability Surge: GAAP net income for Q3 2025 increased 63% to $18.9 million, showing operational leverage from the technology investments.
• AI-Driven Strategy: Management is embedding machine learning and AI broadly to optimize the consumer-to-insurer matching process, aiming for greater personalization and efficiency.
• Market Confidence: As of November 10, 2025, the company's stock closed at $26.45, reflecting market confidence in the new strategy and financial performance.

This focus on AI and profitability is the foundation for their next big goal: reaching $1 billion in annual revenue within the next two to three years. For a deeper dive into the company's guiding principles, you can review their Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of EverQuote, Inc. (EVER).

EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) Ownership Structure

EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ, meaning its ownership is distributed among a diverse group of institutional investors, company insiders, and the general public. This structure dictates that while the leadership team sets the strategy, major decisions are defintely influenced by the large institutional holders who control a significant block of the shares.

Given Company's Current Status

EverQuote is a public entity, trading under the ticker EVER on the NASDAQ Global Market. This status requires high transparency through regular filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is how we get a clear picture of who is steering the ship and who owns the stock.

As of late 2025, the company's market capitalization stood at approximately $835 million, based on roughly 36 million shares outstanding as of September 30, 2025. This valuation reflects the company's strong Q3 2025 performance, which saw total revenue hit $173.9 million.

To understand the core strategy, you should also review the company's long-term goals: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of EverQuote, Inc. (EVER).

Given Company's Ownership Breakdown

The company's stock is largely held by institutional money managers, but insiders still retain a substantial stake, keeping their interests closely aligned with shareholder returns. Here's the quick math on the breakdown of ownership percentages for EverQuote, Inc. based on recent 2025 fiscal year data:

Given Company's Leadership

The leadership team is a mix of long-tenured veterans and seasoned executives from the technology and financial sectors, providing a stable hand for the marketplace's growth.

Jayme Mendal, the Chief Executive Officer, is the one driving the day-to-day operations and strategic direction, reporting to the Board of Directors. His compensation package for the period was valued at around $5.73 million.

The core executive team, as of November 2025, includes:

• Jayme Mendal: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President.
• Joseph Sanborn: Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Treasurer.
• David Blundin: Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board.
• David Brainard: Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
• Hunter Ingram: Chief Commercial Officer.
• Eric Terada: Chief Growth Officer, leading consumer acquisition teams.
• Jesse Wolf: Chief Product Officer, overseeing product vision and strategy.

This group has an average tenure of about five years, which is solid stability in the fast-moving tech space.

EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) Mission and Values

EverQuote, Inc.'s core purpose is to simplify the historically complex process of buying insurance for consumers while simultaneously serving as an essential, high-growth partner for insurance providers. This dual focus is rooted in a culture that prizes data-driven execution and entrepreneurial tenacity.

For you, the financially-literate decision-maker, understanding this mission is crucial: it shows the company is positioned to capitalize on the secular shift of insurance shopping to digital channels, a market where an estimated $146 billion was spent on customer acquisition in 2019 alone, a figure that continues to grow.

EverQuote, Inc.'s Core Purpose

Official Mission Statement

The company's mission is clear: to empower consumers to save time and money by simplifying complex insurance decisions. They achieve this by leveraging their proprietary data and technology platform to create a seamless and transparent online marketplace for auto, home, renters, and life insurance.

• Empower Consumers: Provide tools for confident, informed insurance choices.
• Simplify Decisions: Use technology to reduce friction in the shopping process.
• Connect Providers: Match consumers with relevant options from a broad network of carriers and agents.

Vision Statement

EverQuote, Inc. operates with a two-pronged vision, but the one most cited in investor materials focuses on their business-to-business (B2B) role: to be the leading growth partner for property and casualty (P&C) insurance providers. This vision is being realized through strong financial performance, like the Q3 2025 total revenue of $173.9 million, which was an increase of 20% year-over-year.

Their vision is about transforming from a simple lead generation vendor into a multi-product, AI-powered solutions provider. This transition is already yielding results; their Q3 2025 Adjusted EBITDA was a record $25.1 million, up 33% from the prior year.

EverQuote, Inc. Core Values

The company's culture, often represented by their goat mascot, is built on five core values that dictate how they execute their mission. This is where the rubber meets the road on strategy.

• Tenacity: Be a tenacious entrepreneur with grit and fire, impatient to change the industry.
• Impact: Be obsessed with execution, focusing on consistent execution over mere effort.
• Bootstrapping: Value speed to unit profitability and build the business under its own power.
• Heart: Have fun working together and foster a respectful, inclusive environment.
• Data-centricity: Root all discussions and decisions in data, following the north star of getting the consumer protected.

Here's the quick math: The focus on 'Bootstrapping' and 'Data-centricity' is why analysts forecast a full-year 2025 Earnings Per Share (EPS) of around $0.72, reflecting a profitable, disciplined growth model. For a deeper dive into the numbers behind this operational efficiency, you should be Breaking Down EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

EverQuote, Inc. Slogan/Tagline

The company does not use a singular, ubiquitous tagline like some consumer brands, but their core marketing message to consumers emphasizes speed and convenience: 'The fast, free, and easy way to shop for insurance.' For their provider customers, the message is 'Meet Your Agency's All-In-One Growth Partner,' highlighting their B2B value proposition. This dual-message approach is defintely a strategic choice, reflecting their marketplace model.

EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) How It Works

EverQuote, Inc. operates as a leading online insurance marketplace that acts as a sophisticated, results-driven intermediary, connecting high-intent insurance shoppers directly with a vast network of insurance providers, including both national carriers and local agents. The company is actively transforming from a traditional lead generation vendor into a multi-product, AI-powered profitable growth solutions partner for the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry.

Honestly, it's a high-tech matching service for a massive, complex market.

EverQuote, Inc.'s Product/Service Portfolio

The business model centers on two primary revenue streams: consumer referrals to carriers and agents, and advertising services. The core value is delivered through a technology platform that qualifies consumer demand and directs it to the most relevant provider, primarily across the automotive and home insurance verticals.

EverQuote, Inc.'s Operational Framework

The operational process is a tight, data-driven flywheel that starts with consumer acquisition and ends with a profitable match for the insurance provider. This system is what drives the Variable Marketing Dollars (VMD) which hit a record $50.1 million in Q3 2025.

• Consumer Acquisition: EverQuote uses a broad range of online and offline channels to capture high-intent insurance shoppers, often through proprietary websites and performance marketing.
• Data Enrichment and Scoring: Proprietary data science and machine learning models (the AI-powered platform) score each consumer inquiry (or lead) based on the probability of conversion, policy value, and carrier fit. This is the core intellectual property.
• Marketplace Matching: The platform instantly matches the scored consumer inquiry with the most relevant insurance providers from its network-carriers and agents-who bid or pay a fixed price for the referral.
• Revenue Generation: The company primarily earns revenue on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-lead (CPL) basis, meaning they get paid when a consumer clicks on a quote or is transferred as a qualified lead. Revenue growth was primarily driven by stronger enterprise carrier spend, which was up over 27% year-over-year in Q3 2025.

The shift from simple lead-gen to a growth solutions partner means we are defintely seeing a focus on higher-quality, higher-value referrals. You can read more about the company's long-term goals here: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of EverQuote, Inc. (EVER).

EverQuote, Inc.'s Strategic Advantages

The company's competitive edge is built on its deep integration of technology and data, which creates a network effect: more consumer traffic attracts more carriers, and more carriers improve consumer choice, which attracts more traffic. This is a classic marketplace dynamic.

• AI-Driven Efficiency: Embedding machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) across the marketplace to improve ad spend efficiency and lead quality, which is key to their goal of achieving 20% annual revenue growth and a 20% Adjusted EBITDA margin long-term.
• Data and Scale Advantage: Operating a massive marketplace provides a proprietary data set on consumer intent and carrier performance, which is a barrier to entry for smaller competitors.
• Financial Trajectory: Strong execution has led to an expected full year 2025 annual growth in revenues of approximately 35% and annual growth in Adjusted EBITDA of over 55%, demonstrating significant operating leverage.
• Carrier Partner Status: The company has evolved to become the number one customer acquisition partner in their channel for a major national carrier, signifying deep, trusted integration beyond transactional lead sales.

EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) How It Makes Money

EverQuote, Inc. operates as a leading online insurance marketplace, connecting consumers actively shopping for insurance with a vast network of insurance providers, including carriers and agents. The company primarily makes money by selling qualified consumer referrals (leads) and clicks to these providers, essentially acting as a high-efficiency digital customer acquisition engine for the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry.

EverQuote's Revenue Breakdown

You can see immediately that EverQuote's revenue is heavily concentrated in one area, which is a risk but also a sign of market dominance. Here's the quick math on the third quarter of 2025 (Q3 2025) revenue of $173.9 million, which was a record for the company.

The Automotive Insurance vertical generated $157.6 million in Q3 2025, showing it remains the core growth driver, increasing by 21% year-over-year. The Home and Renters segment, while smaller at $16.3 million, is still growing at a solid 15% clip, which shows some diversification is happening, but it's defintely a long-term project.

Business Economics

The core of EverQuote's business economics is the Variable Marketing Margin (VMM), which is a crucial metric for a marketplace model like this. It measures the revenue remaining after subtracting Variable Marketing Dollars (VMD), which are the costs to acquire the consumer traffic (e.g., search engine marketing, social media ads). Simply put, VMM is the profit generated from the traffic before operating expenses.

• Pricing Model: EverQuote operates on a pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-lead (PPL) model, where insurance providers bid for consumer traffic or qualified leads.
• Variable Marketing Dollars (VMD): In Q3 2025, VMD reached $50.1 million, representing the cost of acquiring the consumer traffic that generated the revenue.
• Variable Marketing Margin (VMM): The VMM was 28.8% for Q3 2025, meaning for every dollar of revenue, nearly 29 cents remained after paying for the traffic.
• Strategic Shift: The company is actively transitioning from a simple lead generation vendor to a multi-product, AI-powered growth solutions partner for carriers. This is a smart move, as it embeds them deeper into the carrier's customer acquisition strategy and can increase the value per customer.

The entire model hinges on their data science platform's ability to match high-intent consumers with the right providers at a price that ensures a healthy VMM. That's the whole ballgame for a marketplace.

EverQuote's Financial Performance

For a seasoned analyst, the Q3 2025 results show a company that has found its path to profitable growth after a challenging period. The focus has shifted from pure top-line growth to efficiency and margin expansion.

• Adjusted EBITDA: This metric surged 33% year-over-year to a record $25.1 million in Q3 2025, demonstrating significant operating leverage. The associated margin expanded to 14.4%.
• Net Income: GAAP Net Income hit a record of $18.9 million in Q3 2025, a massive 63% increase from the prior year period. This is a clear sign of profitable scaling.
• Cash Position: EverQuote ended Q3 2025 with a strong balance sheet, holding $145.8 million in cash and cash equivalents, and importantly, no debt.
• Full-Year Outlook: Based on the midpoint of the Q4 2025 guidance, the company expects full-year 2025 revenue growth of approximately 35% and annual Adjusted EBITDA growth of over 55%. That's a strong Rule of 40 performance.

The significant growth in both revenue and profitability, especially the 55%+ Adjusted EBITDA growth for the full year 2025, suggests that the investments in AI and technology are starting to deliver meaningful operational efficiency. For a deeper dive into the balance sheet and cash flow, you should check out Breaking Down EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) Market Position & Future Outlook

EverQuote, Inc. is strategically positioned as a high-growth, technology-first player in the insurance lead generation market, leveraging its proprietary AI platform to drive efficiency and strong margins. The company's future outlook is tied to its aggressive push to become the leading growth partner for Property & Casualty (P&C) providers, targeting an ambitious $1 billion in annual revenue by 2027.

You're seeing a clear pivot here: less reliance on raw volume and more on high-quality, AI-optimized referrals that convert better for carriers, which is defintely the right move for sustainable profitability. The company's cash and cash equivalents stood at $146 million as of September 30, 2025, providing a strong balance sheet for these strategic investments.

Competitive Landscape

The online insurance marketplace is fragmented, but EverQuote's focus on auto insurance lead quality gives it a distinct edge against broader comparison sites and agent-led platforms. Its trailing twelve-month (TTM) revenue as of September 30, 2025, was approximately $645 million, placing it as a significant, specialized player in the segment.

Here's the quick math on the competitive dynamic: while SelectQuote, Inc.'s fiscal year 2025 revenue guidance of up to $1.525 billion shows its scale in the Senior/Life space, EverQuote's strength is in its technology moat for the high-volume P&C market.

Opportunities & Challenges

The core of EverQuote's strategy is to capture market share through superior technology, but this path isn't without significant hurdles from well-funded competitors and market volatility. You need to weigh the potential for margin expansion against the inherent risks of dependency and rising marketing costs.

Industry Position

EverQuote is solidifying its position as a specialized, high-margin technology vendor within the broader InsurTech space, moving away from being a simple lead aggregator. The company's Q3 2025 Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 14.4%, demonstrating operational leverage from its AI investments.

• Focus on P&C: The Automotive vertical remains the engine, generating $157.6 million in Q3 2025 revenue.
• Technology Moat: Proprietary Machine Learning platform optimizes ad spend and maximizes revenue per quote request.
• Growth Trajectory: Analysts project a strong 2025, with expected earnings per share (EPS) of $1.19.

The real story is the transition from a volume business to a value business, which is critical for long-term investor returns. For a deeper dive into the numbers, check out Breaking Down EverQuote, Inc. (EVER) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.