Grant Burgess had it pretty good after graduating college in 2008. He had landed a job at Google's Boston office, where he started out working on the company's small business solutions team. But after moving up to become a relationship manager for Google's agency business development team and reaching his fourth year, he realized he wasn't finding a lot of meaning at work.
"It was just not the place for me to be a happy, healthy person," Burgess said.
So after quitting, Burgess decided to do some soul-searching and bought a one-way ticket to New Zealand. From there, a serendipitous meeting led him to work for his first actual startup. Then, eventually, he came back to the U.S. to start his own.
The Boston startup is called Forward.gift, and it operates on a very basic principal: gratitude. The idea, Burgess said, is if you feel grateful for someone in your life, you can go to his startup's website to email them a gift, free of cost.
The gifts come in the form of vouchers for free items at local businesses, such as a free coffee at Commonwealth Cambridge. New users start out with one free gift, and if they sign up for Forward's newsletter, they are given five new free gifts to give out every month. Participating businesses, which cover the cost of the vouchers, currently include Fajitas & 'Ritas, Gracenote Coffee, Kwench Juice Café, Beacon Hill Athletic Clubs and Pawsh Dog Boutique, among others.
"The best thing you can do is express gratitude to others and we don't do it enough," said Burgess, who added that he did a lot of research into positive psychology. "We’re in a culture where we’re always in it for ourselves. I think there's a huge gap between the way we’re meant to be and the way we actually act, and I think that everyone wants to be happy."
When I used Forward to send a free coffee voucher to my wife one day in October, it seemed to have the desired effect Burgess is looking for. "You made me happy-cry," my wife told me an instant message after getting the email.
"The best thing you can do is express gratitude to others and we don't do it enough."
Burgess said the idea for Forward came after he worked for GenieWallet, the startup he joined in New Zealand. Like Forward, GenieWallet operated in the small business space, and its main appeal was giving people dollar rewards for shopping at local businesses. One of the things you could do with your GenieWallet rewards balance was gift some or all of it to your friends. From that, Burgess had his eureka moment: "What if there's nothing in it for us but the point of giving a gift?"
"That opened up the pay-it-forward model" for his startup," Burgess added.
Forward is still in its early stages and completely bootstrapped so far, Burgess said. One way he's aiming to raise awareness of his website is by designating Sunday, Nov. 20, as "Boston Gratitude Day" and holding an hour-long gathering at noon at Boston Common, where there will be live music and apple cider donuts.
With consumers paying nothing to send gifts to friends, family and colleagues, there's the inevitable question of "how can it all be free?" The way Burgess describes it, the way Forward can eventually make money is by becoming a word-of-mouth marketing service for small businesses. While bringing in revenue isn't his goal right now, small businesses could eventually pay to offer free vouchers that consumers can give away as a way to get people in the door.
For now, Burgess said, his main goals are to test the how consumers use the site and to get more local businesses on board.
