Blinds.com Founder Jay Steinfeld. © 2021 Robert Seale/All rights reserved.
Jay Steinfeld, BBA ’76, knows a good thing when he sees it. Such as when he saw the potential of the internet as an online retail space when the technology was still in its infancy. He knew that, despite his disdain for accounting, it would be the key to his future success. Even before it was named for Red McCombs, Jay also knew that the business school at The University of Texas at Austin was a special place.
Jay’s success story is one of legend. After working alongside his late wife, Naomi, in the retail blinds business, he became interested in a new platform called the World Wide Web.
“It was this new thing that nobody really understood yet,” he said. “But then I started thinking that maybe it could be used for selling blinds and draperies online. So, we tried it.”
With just $3,000 of start-up money, Jay and Naomi launched a rudimentary website in 1993. From there, he launched another site, Blinds.com, with revenue reaching over $100 million (and eventually over $1 billion) before being acquired by The Home Depot.
“Everything in life is an experiment,” he said. “The point is to continue to get better and help the people around me get better, too. That’s how I live my life.”
It’s also the motto behind how he gives: Philanthropy is an experiment. Investing time and money in causes he believes in, Jay has developed a diverse giving portfolio. He serves on several boards for organizations, such as Hand-in-Hand, which supports schools in Israel.
Never one to leave his Longhorn roots behind, Jay recently endowed a student seat in the Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center’s Forty Acres Founders Pre-Accelerator Program, which enables students to learn how to start a business from the ground up, including securing seed funding for their company. He has also generously included McCombs in his estate.
“If it weren’t for UT, I wouldn’t have gotten my first job, which was at one of the big eight accounting firms,” he said. “It was my first step toward becoming an entrepreneur, and it made all the difference.”
He also credits his time at the business school with teaching him how to prioritize the important things over distractions.
“At the time [I attended UT], I didn’t know anything about core values. While I was there, I realized there was so much opportunity, so many choices, good and bad,” he said. “It necessitated learning how to prioritize so I could be productive.
That lesson clearly paid off. In 2013 he was ranked globally as one of the Top 60 CEOs on social media, and he regularly churns out insightful articles on effective leadership for Inc. Magazine and CBS Market Watch under the moniker Chief Effective Officer. As far as giving back is concerned, that is just a byproduct of his philosophy that “you are never going to be as good as you can be.”
“I ask myself, ‘How good can I be? What effect can I have at UT?’ and I try to fulfill that,” he said. “By giving an endowment or scholarship, you are actually investing in a whole set of people who just might change the world. How do you not do that?”
To learn more about how to create an endowment or scholarship at Texas McCombs, contact us at donorrelations@mccombs.utexas.edu.
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