How This 30-Year-Old Went From Managing His Family's Grocery Business To Raising $147 Million

From a young age, George Bousis was being groomed to take over the family business, a grocery store started by his Greek-immigrant parents in 1987, the year Bousis was born. Bousis’ father worked 24/7. As kids, Bousis and his siblings would visit their dad at the South-side Chicago store on weekends, but they also had to bag groceries or work the cash register.

Raise Marketplace

At the age of 18, Bousis joined the family business, which was already very succeeding at the time, full time as a technology and innovation manager. In his role, Bousis was looking to develop a gift card and loyalty program for his family’s grocery business. During his research, he found that nearly 10% of all gift cards go unused each year, totaling billions of dollars, and thought there must be a better way to make sure these dollars don’t go to waste.

As a result, Bousis launched the Raise Marketplace in 2013, to help those who have unwanted gift cards take control and get cash for their cards. Since then, the company has evolved from a marketplace into a retail payments company, raised $147 million from notable investors as Accel, NEA and PayPal, generated more than $1 billion in card sales and saved its members more than $140 million to date. We met to discuss about entrepreneurship:

Omri Barzilay: George, you didn't come with the conventional background, as a young solo-founder without an engineering experience, how were you able to raise your seed round?

George Bousis: As a child and up until I decided to go all in on Raise to pursue my entrepreneurial aspirations, I was working in our family grocery business. There, I led technology, loyalty and engagement. Prior to working full-time in the family business, I was a professional e-sports gamer and played on professional teams many times traveling all over the country for tournaments.

I've always been passionate about technology. I was exposed to it from a young age and was further interested in the hardware side of it at the time. This allowed me to better understand systems, hardware and IT complexities, which were valuable in my time at our family business. I had also wanted to pursue an engineering degree in college, but with my original plans of working in the family business, I thought a focus in business and management would be more applicable at the time.

Barzilay: How do people use Raise today?

Bousis: Raise is a payments company that saves consumers money when they make purchases with discounted gift cards. Consumers can shop online or through the Raise mobile app to purchase a gift card, sold at a discount by the seller, which is instantly delivered and can be redeemed by either entering the code online or by showing the barcode on their phone in-store. Users never have to worry about forgetting their gift cards at home, since they’re all accessible through the Raise Mobile Wallet app.

Barzilay: Who helped your success along the way?

Bousis: My family, especially my mother, is at the very core and the biggest reason for my success. That goes without saying that our investors and our amazing team are the ones that made it all happen and work long and hard to make Raise a huge success. But without mom taking that first chance, this may have never even happened. I'm also thankful for our incredible board members, my many mentors throughout this journey and our friends whom have continuously been so supportive.

Barzilay: What's the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?

Bousis: There are many lessons I've learned along the way and most come in trial and error and making mistakes but above all, you can't be scared or have fear. There are so many unknowns when building a business, and you have to be both willing and able to make mistakes and an attitude as well as the ambition to move on and learn. Sharing those mistakes, owning up to our faults and the lessons we've learned have been the biggest motivator for myself and reasons for much of my own personal growth.

Barzilay: You also act as an angel investor, investing in more than 30 startups to date. What's your investment methodology and in which companies have you invested recently?

Bousis: It all starts with the founder and their vision. I'm a big fan of thinking big, but being conscious of the steps it's going to take to be successful. The founders who are willing to invest in their customer, think long term, are willing to make difficult decisions, think of continuous value creation, constantly innovate and can attract / hire top talent will be successful in anything they do. They may not get it right on the first try, or even the second or third, but eventually they will find a way.

It's the perseverance, their character and the values they have that sets them apart. It's also a relationship game, meaning you have to go into an investment with an open mind knowing that most might not work out or can fail. But that relationship with the founder and the willingness to make a bet on them early has paid huge dividends for investors in the long term when they are successful. Some of my recent investments include Hacker1ne, the Catch Co, HomeChef, WUU, Yup, ScriptDash, and HouseParty. My recent exits are Cruise and Paribus.
