George Bousis

George Bousis
Born (1987-04-22) April 22, 1987
Alma mater DePaul University
Parent(s) Eleni Bousis (mother)
Dimitrious 'Jimmy' Bousis (father)

George Bousis (born April 22, 1987) is an entrepreneur currently based in Chicago, IL.[1] He is founder of Raise.com, a gift card buyback online marketplace.

Early life

Bousis was born to Greek-immigrant parents Eleni and Dimitris Bousis in 1987.[2] He was ‘being groomed’ to take over the family business - a grocery store on Chicago’s south side, Cermak Fresh Market - from a young age.[3][4][5]

While not publicly stated, Bousis is presented to have a good relationship with his parents, his mother specifically, as she has a stake in his Raise.com business.[6]

As a child, he was a ‘professional computer gamer,’ with sponsors which he indicates gave him at least some of the seed money for Raise.[7][8][9][10]

Education

Bousis attended DePaul University, graduating in 2010 with a double major Bachelor of Science in Business and Managerial Economics.

He also attended St. John's northwestern military academy and graduated in 2006. [11]

Entrepreneurship

The idea for Raise.com came out of research for the family business in 2010, as Bousis was researching ways to build customer loyalty and found the gift card to be a “great form of loyalty because it gives you the chance to lock in the value or those funds for the customer and get them to come back and spend those dollars in your stores.” [5]

Raise.com grew out of a prior marketplace Bousis worked on, called CouponTrade, started in 2010 and co-founded by Bradley Wasz. Raise.com was founded in 2013.[12][13]

His first ventures into the gift card marketplace were purely experiments, where he functioned at a loss, buying gift cards at full price and then selling them online to ‘understand the liquidity of the market.’ This was not a maintainable model and eventually he ran out of money. His first investors in Raise.com were his mother, himself and Jeff Cantalupo, raising $600K.[9]

Bousis has yet to publicly comment on the profitability of Raise.com, usually indicating relative profit, for example, pointing to "ongoing growth" and use by "'hundreds of thousands' of customers [who] have bought or sold gift cards." [14][15]

Bousis was named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 in January 2015.[16]

Raise.com was named a potential 'unicorn' in August 2015 by the New York Times.[17]

References

  1. ↑ "George D. Bousis on Twitter". Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  2. ↑ Leadership100. "George Bousis Chosen by Forbes 30 Under 30". www.l100.org. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  3. ↑ "George Bousis, LinkedIn".
  4. ↑ "George Bousis (Raise)". www.startupgrind.com. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  5. 1 2 Rogers, Bruce. "George Bousis' Raise Creates Cash System For Gift Cards". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  6. ↑ "6 Tech Entrepreneurs Share What They Learned From Mom". ABC News. 2016-05-08. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  7. ↑ "This Startup is Turning Unused Gift Cards into Profits". Inc. 2015-05-29. Retrieved 2016-09-26.
  8. ↑ "Meet the gift card guru George Bousis #ccb20s". Crain's Chicago Business. Retrieved 2016-09-26.
  9. 1 2 "This Startup is Turning Unused Gift Cards into Profits". Inc. 2015-05-29. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  10. ↑ "Cooler by the Lake – Raise Founder George Bousis (full video)". Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  11. ↑ "George Bousis - Founder, CEO @ Raise Marketplace | crunchbase". www.crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  12. ↑ Bertoni, Steven. "Gift Card Marketplace Raise Snags $56 MM Series B: Valuation Tops $500 MM". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-09-26.
  13. ↑ Perez, Sarah. "Gift Card Marketplace Raise.com Gives Itself A Raise With $18.1 Million In New Funding". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-09-26.
  14. ↑ Perez, Sarah. "Raise.com's New App Lets You Buy Discounted Gift Cards To Instantly Save While Shopping". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-09-26.
  15. ↑ Perez, Sarah. "Gift Card Marketplaces Raise Grabs $56 Million From NEA And Others". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-09-26.
  16. ↑ Bertoni, Steven. "George Bousis, 27 - pg.4 Forbes". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  17. ↑ Times, The New York. "50 Companies That May Be the Next Start-Up Unicorns". Retrieved 2016-09-26.
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