Dan Price


Dan Price is an American Internet entrepreneur. He is the CEO of the online credit card processing company Gravity Payments, which he started while a student at Seattle Pacific University. He gained recognition after he raised his company’s minimum wage to $70,000, and slashed his wage from $1.1 million to $70,000. He extended the same minimum wage to all employees of ChargeItPro, a company Gravity Payments acquired. In March 2020, Price said that the pay raise has worked well for the company in particular, but he hesitated to call it a full success because income inequality in the broader world has continued to grow.

Career

In 2015, Price accepted a $500,000 book deal to be published at Penguin Random House imprint Viking. The book plans to be a first-person account of the establishment of Gravity Payments and will discuss socially conscious business.

Personal life

Price was raised in rural southwestern Idaho and homeschooled until age 12. He has an older brother, Lucas Price, and a younger brother, Alex Price.
He was raised in a conservative Christian family but is no longer religious.
He married Kristie Colón in 2007 but was divorced in 2012.

Controversy

Lawsuit

On April 24, 2015, a lawsuit was filed against Dan Price by his brother, Lucas Price. The lawsuit claimed that Dan Price was overpaying himself and depriving Lucas Price of benefits he deserves as a minority-shareholder. Dan Price admitted that some of the statements he made about Gravity Payments since raising the minimum wage weren’t true. In July 2016, King County Superior Court Judge Theresa B. Doyle ruled in favor of Dan Price on all counts.

Abuse

On October 28, 2015, Price’s ex-wife, who now goes by Kristie Colón, gave a TEDX talk at University of Kentucky that described her experience with domestic abuse, without explicitly naming Price. Price denied claims of abuse and said the events described never happened and there is no record of a police report being filed. After being threatened with a lawsuit by Price’s representatives, University of Kentucky reversed its decision to release the recording of Colón’s talk. In January 2016, Colón published a blog post standing by her accusation of Price.