Dan Price, the celebrated entrepreneur and Founder and CEO of Gravity Payments, has once again taken a pay cut as the company seeks to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Saturday, March 28, Price took to Twitter to announce his decision to take a 100% pay cut while insisting the company would not lay off any of its employees.
“5 years ago, I cut my CEO pay from $1.1 million to $70k so I could pay all my employees at least $70k. That’s not good enough anymore. Today I cut my pay to $0. I’m committed to laying off zero of our employees. It’s not much, but it’s what I can do. We’ll get through this together,” read a tweet by the boss.
This is not the first time Price has taken a pay cut. In 2015, the entrepreneur took a $1.1 million (KSh 11 million) to $70K (KSh 700,000) pay cut so that he could pay each of his employees at least $70K (KSh 700,000).
Asked what pushed him to make such a decision, Dan Price said he did not want his close to 200 employees struggling to meet basic needs.
He would further disclose that the business grew after the pay hike, which he attributed to motivated staff who served clients better.
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Price started Gravity Payments from his university dorm room when he was just 19 years old. He shaped Gravity around a different set of values not normally seen in the workplace—honesty, transparency, and responsibility.
The CEO has always shown disdain for modern corporations’ quest to amass wealth when they are not adequately taking care of their employees.
“The selfishness that’s promoted in capitalism cannot succeed. It has not been a way of creating value for society, but it’s a way of consolidating and capturing wealth and power for very few people at the cost of many,” Price told Forbes in a previous interview.
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