The company decided to pay all employees a minimum salary of 70,000 USD and the end

Immediately after this incident, only two permanent employees left the company (out of 120 people).

Although Price himself had to cut his salary from $ 1 million to equal the $ 70,000 he paid his employees, he was unfortunately dragged into a lawsuit with his business partner and brother, who confirmed that Price is receiving “too high” compensation.

Five years later, Price’s company has maintained an impressive employee loyalty rate of more than 90%, and is still profitable. Pandemic corona hit, messing things up like it did for all of us. The number of transactions for small businesses – which make up the bulk of Gravity’s business – dropped more than 50% overnight. And that’s when the story of this Seattle credit card processor comes to an interesting one.

In a short time, Gravity has lost about half of its revenue, mostly coming from small businesses hit hard by the pandemic.

In early April, Dan Price, one of Gravity’s founders and CEOs, convened 200 employees to attend an emergency meeting via Zoom, which told them the company was burning up to 1.5. million USD in cash per month. Price warned that if the situation continues and no action is taken, the company will quickly run out of cash in just 4 months.

Dan Price

” 80% of the employees agreed to cut their salaries, ” Price said in an interview via Zoom. ” Ten people said they were willing to work for free, and a few dozen people offered to receive only 50% of the salary “.

” When I saw that, I was touched, tears streaming down my eyes ”

Gravity took the staff out of the way, with a bit of tweaking. No employee gets a pay cut more than half, and for those who have made less than $ 100,000, the drop is only 30%.

By July 2020, the company stabilized and began to pay back every employee who sacrificed income for the common good.

In other businesses, the sacrifices of employees for their bosses is rather vague. But it seems that Price has succeeded in building a team that always believes in their mission, and sees their company as a “symphony” of perfect employee-boss coordination. And that’s quite impressive, especially when they work in a financial trading company run by a guy named … “Price”

Reference: BoingBoing