When you sell dollar bills for eighty cents, you're going to make a lot of friends.
As a relatively new player to the nation's innovation economy, Chicago tends to be vocal about its entrepreneurial wins. So how has Raise - one of the city's fastest growing startups with 28 straight months of revenue growth - been able to thrive so quietly?
"That's the million dollar question," laughed CEO and Founder George Bousis.
In nearly every piece on Raise - an easy-to-use marketplace for buying and selling gift cards - the company's "low profile" plays like a narrative thread. (For example, Raise is probably one of the only startups ever to be covered by TechCrunch that doesn't trumpet this fact by repackaging the piece on its site; in fact, they don't even have a Press link).
"Basically, we don't want to talk about it, we want to be about it," said Bousis. "We're motivated by our consumers and building something bigger and better every day."
Though the site's emphasis on execution over self-promotion mirrors its CEO's sensibilities, Raise's commitment to telling the product's story rather than its own started with a rebrand.
The company originally launched in 2010 as CouponTrade, a platform for reselling online coupons and deals. After a year plus of testing, steady growth, and figuring out the ins-and-outs of his business, Bousis decided to refine the company's message and focus primarily on the Gift Card space, a $115 billion industry.
"From day one, our mission statement has always been 'give yourself a raise,'" said Bousis. "On our site, people sell unused and unwanted gift cards for cash or they buy gift cards at 15-16% less than they're actually worth. We needed the brand to match this positive result."
So Bousis set out to secure the only domain that made sense for the message and began negotiating with the individual that was sqautting on www.raise.com. After several months of back-and-forth, Bousis had the domain, and - eight weeks after that - had re-launched as Raise.
"Rebranding was the best decision we've ever made as a company. After the launch, we saw a dramatic change in the office. Just defining what we stood for and being clear about helping others was huge for our culture," said Bousis.
The operation that prefers a quiet approach was now able to be loud about the brand. And the users were ready to listen.
Explained Bousis, "when you sell dollar bills for eighty cents, you're going to make a lot of friends."
These friends have resulted in month after month of double-digit growth and an expanding staff; Raise has added over 50 employees this year, bringing its total to 100+ in its River North location. Raise is also looking to continue this momentum through the launch of its native mobile app within the next couple of weeks.
"We've spent several months building and testing this app," said Bousis. "We want people to think about us before shopping for anything and mobile will help us achieve that. I'm excited to share this app with our users."
Whereas Raise has always been ready-and-willing to share features and good news with its users - for Bousis, the startup's users are the "epicenter of its universe" - this level of external sharing is new for the company.
Said Bousis, "the curtain's starting to come off so that we can tap into talent across the country that will help accelerate growth."
And when Raise's growth does accelerate, you'll see it before you hear about it.
