Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: David Stone, CEO of CashStar (Part 1)

Whether you love them or hate them, gift cards have found a place for themselves in our society. Employers use them as rewards and consumers give them to friends and family members for birthdays, graduations, even weddings, especially when they don’t know exactly what to buy. CashStar, based in Portland, Maine, has come up with a simpler, more secure way for people to send gift cards:  the e-gift card. Given the popularity of shopping online, the introduction of an e-gift card seems like the next logical step.

Sramana Mitra: Hi David. We want to start with some context. Our audience is not totally familiar with you or Cashstar. So, let’s start with some of your background as well as the background of Cashstar, and we’ll take it from there.

Dave Stone: Sounds great. I’m delighted to be doing this. How far back do you want me to go?

SM: A little bit about where you’ve traveled. I know you’ve traveled quite a path through the payment industry, I suppose, is a way to put it, or gift card industry.

DS: You know, interestingly enough, I actually studied international relations in Boston, and I have a graduate degree in international relations. I worked for the government twice. I worked at the State Department in correctional research service, and quickly decided that I was too creative, passionate and high energy a person to work in a slow paced environment. I wanted to do public service and give back. I suppose, in my small way, I’m doing that today.

I got job at American Express when I was 23 years old and spent 14 years there, primarily as an entrepreneur, if you will. I developed lots new products and services. I built the Asia-Pacific business when it was a very small business in the payments world. I spent a lot of time traveling from the subcontinent all the way down to the Pacific rim, New Zealand and all those countries, helping to introduce credit cards and payment systems in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s … early innovator in payments.

I think in terms of relevance for this, when I was 25 years old, I created the second universal pre-paid product in the world. The first was a traveler’s check. I wonder if you remember that product.

SM: Oh, yes. I use it at some point in my life … depends on where I’m going.

DS: Exactly. This [second product] was the American Express Gift Cheque, which was created in 1985 and grew to $100 million in sales in quick order because of its popularity as a gifting product. I also realized that I had a real high affinity with and for all things tech early on in my career, and I drank from the tech water fountain that was emerging in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I wrote my first business plan for American Express on a typewriter, so that tells you how things have changed.

My real entrepreneurial career began in 1996 when I worked for my first startup as head of marketing and sales for an Internet search company. 1996 was pretty early days for the Internet.

SM: This was still in Boston?

DS: This was still in Boston. I had lived all over the world with American Express, but this was still in the Boston area. I remember visioning … I had to literally tell people what the Internet was and dial up my PC — my big PC –with a modem to get on the Internet. Most people thought I was crazy. So, it was a pretty interesting time as an early adopter of things in the high-tech world.

Since that time, I’ve been involved in or led several startups and also worked for some innovative tech companies. I also spent time as an entrepreneur in residence at a VC in the Boston area.

SM: Can you give us a quick roundup of what kinds of companies you’ve been involved in or led? And what sector have you mostly been working in as far as Internet startups are concerned?

DS: Yes. Most of them — there’ve been about five or six; some of them I created on my own — but most of them straddled the world of loyalty payments and digital. They ranged anywhere from infrastructure companies in the smart card space to micro payments to creating a loyalty solution for Major League Baseball and the Boston Red Sox.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: David Stone, CEO of CashStar
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