With GiftYa sending a gift is fast, personalized, can never be lost or stolen, and available for almost any local or national merchant in the USA. GiftYa is the thought that counts. Founder/CEO Jason Wolfe tells you how in this episode.
Transcription:
You're dialed right into tech vibe radio this Wednesday night. This is Jonathan Kersting and this is Audrey Russo. We have new stranger to not just tech vibrate you, but the Pittsburgh technology council. It's great to have Jason Wolfe in the house. It's awesome to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Good to have you back in the studio. It's been awhile. That's been a while. Yeah, I think maybe a couple of years. I think the last time, we were kind of talking about, you just took over with being the uh, the uh, chairman of the board of the PTC, but we thought it was pretty cool and it's awesome. It's been, we love having somebody with your business building and technology perspective. I love to be here at this facility. We're in right here. Our Huntington podcast studio. Absolutely. We love it. Awesome. It's good stuff.
It's great place for things going on in PTC. Yeah, I'm just happy to be a part. Right. So we're going to jump in. So you've got this relatively new company, but not that new that you've built. So give us, give us a little bit about what that is. So, um, we sold a company called giftcards.com back in 2016 we had about a hundred 120 employees and we're in green tree and the gift card product being in that space for as long as we were, I knew it was kind of broken. I mean, there was, there's issue with gift issues with gift cards, as you may know or think about it as I, as I bring these things up, right. You know, there's, there's lots, I mean, you, you lose your gift card, right? I always find it between the Christians of my couch, it's lost for a while and I paint it.
You got your wallets about three inches thick plastics that you don't use, right? Absolutely. One of the things most of the listeners probably don't realize is that there's about 3,200 tons of gift cards will single use gift cards. I'll just go on land 3,200 years, hundred tons. Visualize that. That's a lot of plastic plastic that's out there that's not, you know, that's being uh, wasted in destroying our environment and not totally used. Right. I totally used, I mean that's, look, we made money when people didn't use their card. And so that's another problem. How many cards have like five bucks left on them that are so important. Then that money goes somewhere at some point, right? It goes to companies like giftcards.com exactly. [inaudible]
I make say that [inaudible] Jasper, we offered a great product, a gift cards.com and it's a great company in black Hawk is a great company. But I also saw that there was a flaw in the product itself. Right. And so I realized that there was nobody doing anything about it. And so in 2016 when we sold the company, we kept about 25 people and we started to engineer what's called gifted today. Exactly. And gift you a sort of like Venmo of gifting. And a lot of people say, well why don't you just send a Venmo, right? It's, it's easier just to Venmo somebody's money cause then there's not as cool as gifted, personal, personalized. Personalized. Exactly right. So with gift Joe, when you, you know Jonathan, I get you a gift. You have four Starbucks. All I need is your cell phone number and I can text you a gift.
You it takes literally 10 seconds. Okay. It's personalized and you put a video on there and whatever. And then when you get the gift J you basically just click on it, enter in your visa or MasterCard number and then debit card to the bank. Yeah. From your debit card. And then now that's in your account. Now that's tied to to Starbucks. And when you go to Starbucks, cause you forgot that I got it for you forgot to swipe your card and then you get a text message. Hey Jason, got you. And you're like, Hey, I forgot. Oh that's cool. Yeah. And it's all from your debit card or your credit card that you assign it. So working on credit now and to be, you know, transparent here, I mean gift Joe is still kind of in a beta stage. We launched it about a year ago. And, and unlike all the other companies that built the other companies were running down the road, we're driving down the road, slapping on the doors, putting the tires on when the windshield wipers on.
We're just trying to go this time we kind of tried to plan it first. Wow. It's revolutionary. We're trying to get out of the box. So, uh, no. So we, we basically took some of the engineers. We had a PR in prior companies, so we use the same folks that we've worked with for years and uh, we architected it and we put some of these metrics in place so we can see what's it cost to acquire a cousin customer, how much is a customer worth to us? All of these metrics that become very valuable as you build a company we're trying to put up front. So we know, okay, cost me $10 to acquire a customer and it's going to be, each customer we've brought on this past year is going to generate X dollars for us. And you know, the usage of the product is a little more difficult here.
Let's fix that now. And so we're going through that. We're at the very end of it. We need to bring on visa credit. When we were talking about visa cards, we have visa debit, we have MasterCard credit and debit. So we need to get visa credit. That's one of our items on our all your little checklist on your plan, on your plan. Right. So right now if people want to get a gift to can they, they can't [inaudible] we are integrated with visa, MasterCard. Like I said, we have about 10,000 locations that are tied into visa, MasterCard through our partnership. And when I say visa, MasterCard, I mean it took me 1058 days to get a partnership with visa. I'm talking like 58. Yeah, it's like three years, 360 70 emails, 55 phone calls and five trips to the San Francisco. Wow. Not that I was counting.
No, not at all. I uh, but it was difficult. When I say a partnership, it means that they have gotten behind our business model and they have allowed us to have access to their APS, which is not easy to do. I was going to say it. That's a big deal. Very big deal. Prior to that, we are integrated with plaid, which is the same company that was is behind Venmo. The same technology has to be on Venmo. The differences, if Audrey gets a gift from me and she's connecting her visa card, we know directly when that visa card was used at that merchant location within milliseconds, what's traceable. Now it's quicker and it's direct. It's right there. With plaid, we essentially have to have you log to gift you with your bank account, your username and passcode. Then we have to spread them out. To do that.
It's ridiculous. You have to scrape your account, waiting to see the transaction and then four hours later we'll send you a notice that you can give to you. So the user experience is not the best, but we want it to launch with something so we can start ganging metrics, right. Getting some chat. So today, can people go to gift and participant? Sure. Yeah. Okay. We have a, again, like I said, we have probably over a million merchants on there, uh, through the relationship with plaid. Uh, through the relationship with visa, MasterCard, we've got about 10,000 locations. Maybe about a thousand are adding every day. Yeah, every day. It's impressive. We're actually doing a launch. We should do something about this because we're going to do a Pittsburgh official launch here probably in March with a PR firm with most likely a burger company here that has agreed to work with us.
And we're going to have media and we're going to have an event and it's going to be our official launch of Pittsburgh. You got tell him, you said there's burgers. Let's go and we're going to give a milkshake away. Jonathan and I bring our mobile apps. We'll do that. I would love to have that. I didn't want to make, no, I like the way Audrey thinks on this one here. This is kind of exciting. I want like an official launch really resonates for me is the fact that it is not Venmo and it is actually something personal. And so that I can have say, Jonathan, here's two tickets to the rolling stones. I bought them for you and here's how you would them. Pretty excited to go to the stones. The way we're going in the rolling stones. You guys, anyone's listening. Um, we're doing a go fund me.
We are exactly the rolling stones tickets can't afford $1,000 for a ticket and we sure love the stone. So what are the other cool things Audrey has that if you bought him the tickets for the rolling stones with gift JIA, you could log in and see when he used them. When you get a gift card, you can't tell somebody. You just never know for that matter what's actually you log in and I could see exactly what he uses it, how much is he using and I could pick him and I can actually have an interaction with the person I bought a gift for. Oh, that's cool. I actually wish you could do this with savings bonds. Yeah. Cause I had a phenomenal with savings bonds. I found a box from my daughter's bat mitzvah. Oh my. With three savings bonds. And what'd you do? Can we buy tickets with them once you get them right now they can.
You can put on so stone tickets, they were actually like a receipt and then I had to create, sort of convert them into a bond and I never converted them. They was stuck inside of our envelope. You call the bank on that or what do you do? I have to call, I mean the U S they're probably sitting in a sheep and then somewhere somewhere in some federal. Right. But the point is the money was paid. Someone bought her the gap and then it's not the niece. Exactly like Molly went to college because of the heat. Well I was calculating the compounded interest and I thought these are worth something. Like we used a couple stones still get interest on those. Well they match, they mature over time. Right. So then they mature at X over. Did you tell Molly [inaudible] are all stuck in a couple extra bucks here?
I mean the point is there's applicability in terms of other kinds of instruments. I'm sensing a company called bond coming out pretty soon that will be taken care of. Audrey, this is a great point because with gift cards they historically will be just reversed back to the company or to whoever the program manager is and there's a big revenue generator for that for people not claiming that. How many people only use part of it? So I think it depends on what kind of product you're looking at. Like a brand card or a visa card. The birthday call, that breakage is a little bit different. With a, with a visa card, I'd say probably a seven or 8%. Okay. With the brand cards higher, you know, probably 12 13% I liked not having a card. I love that idea. Yeah. And there's no breakage. Like there is no such thing as an unused card with a gift yet you're going to use your visa card, you are going to spend it.
Exactly. And the idea then that that person knows that you've used it and you get a message after you use it to remind you, so it's like, it's like the gift that gives a little more. That's right after you've given it. Well, we're hopeful. We'll see what happens. Jonathan, if I give Jonathan a gift card for something like a coffee shop, he goes into the coffee shop and he pays for it automatically. They say, wait, you have a gift card? Do you have a gift card on here? What do you mean gift your card? You swipe your card, your visa card. You'll then get a text message from us because we're going to be seeing that transactions at Starbucks and you're going to say, wait a second. You literally, honestly, I had a, I went to burger Tory the other day. Somebody got me a gift.
You and I, and I gave my credit card to the, to the waitress. She went to swipe it. I was sitting at my table. I got a text message before she came back with a bill that I got to get. That's cool. Now. That's cool, but that's only when we're connected with visa, MasterCard and we're working through this. It's gonna take some time. We're excited about Pittsburgh. We're going to Cincinnati next and then Chicago, Cincinnati. We have about a hundred merchants signed up already and we're just going to keep going across the country. Sort of like the GrubHub model. Jason, you are the best. [inaudible]
we need a hundred more of you here in Pittsburgh doing what you're doing because you're making little insane. That's the way we love it. I'm glad you have a plan for this company though. Jonathan's great to be here. Likewise, Jason [inaudible]. Jason Wolf from gifted, gifted.com yes. Check it out and the counts. The thought that counts. I know. It's the thought that counts. I love it. It's everyone's tagline. That's right. Thank you, Audrey. Thank you. Thanks Jason. I'll do another tech vibe under our belt just to remind everybody. If you ever Jones and for more tech bog, you don't have to tune in on Wednesday night. Just go to your favorite podcast channel. You can download to your heart's content. Last time I checked. I think we have close to 2000 interviews hanging out there, so, so many great stories like Jason's just remind you, go to, go to iTunes, go to Spotify, go to Google, play wherever you get your podcasts. Keep downloading tech five. It makes us feel good. Anyhow, we're taking a for taking off right now and we'll see you next Wednesday. This is Jonathan. First name. This is Audrey Russo from the Pittsburgh technology council. Learn more about us@pghtech.org.