Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, resigns after sexual assault allegations
The CEO and co-founder of Gravity Payments has resigned after facing charges for allegedly assaulting a 26-year-old woman.
Price famously made headlines after reducing his salary from $1 million to $70,000 to ensure every worker at Gravity Payments earns the same wage ($70,000).
Gravity Payments is a credit card processing and financial services company.
The company was founded in 2004 by brothers Lucas and Dan Price. Its headquarters are in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.
Price has been hailed as a success by Harvard Business School and Inc. magazine, which noted the number of employees at Gravity has doubled while the value of payments that the company processes has gone from $3.8 billion a year to $10.2 billion.
Patrick Bet-David interviews Dan Price
Patrick Bet-David had a virtual sit-down with American Internet Entrepreneur Dan Price.
In this interview they discussed his views on capitalism and why he decided to reduce his wage from $1.1 million to $70,000 in order to pay everyone in his company the same wage.
Price, 38, announced his resignation in a statement on Twitter.
The Chief Operation Officer of Gravity Payments, Tammi Kroll, will be replacing him.
— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) August 18, 2022
In an email to staff, Price wrote:
“Today I resigned as CEO of Gravity Payments, the company I founded 18 years ago. Tammi Kroll, our long-time chief operating officer, has been named the company’s new CEO.”
“My no.1 priority is for our employees to work for the best company in the world but my presence has become a distraction here.”
“I also need to step aside from these duties to focus full time on fighting false accusations made against me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Tammi Kroll, the C.O.O. wrote,
“I thank Dan for his time forming and leading Gravity, and the work he has done for our 20,000 small business clients and our 240 employees. The company supports his decision to step aside. I am grateful for the opportunity to lead Gravity through this new chapter.”
“My No. 1 priority is for our employees to work for the best company in the world, but my presence has become a distraction here,” Price said. “I also need to step aside from these duties to focus full time on fighting false accusations made against me. I’m not going anywhere.”
In the beginning of 2022, Price was charged with misdemeanor assault and reckless driving.
Price had allegedly attempted to kiss a woman following a business meeting and then grabbed her by the throat after she refused.
Following the alleged altercation, Price supposedly began doing “doughnuts” in a parking lot in his Tesla while the woman was still in the vehicle, according to the Seattle Times.
Price pleaded not guilty to the charge in May and has denied wrongdoing.
“Mr. Price respects the legal process and is confident that he will be vindicated in court,” an attorney for Price said.
The Gravity CEO received widespread attention in 2015 after publicly revealing that he would cut his own $1 million salary to $70,000.
The reason for this action was to raise Gravity Payments’ minimum wage to $70,000 within a three-year period, up from $48,000.
The twist?
His initiative to increase employee pay at the corporation arrived around the same time that his older brother, Lucas, accused him in court of overpaying himself and violating his rights as a minority shareholder in the firm.
The court later ruled in Dan Price’s favor.
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In an interview with CBS News at the time, Price called his decision a “sacrifice.”
“I’m so happy how people’s lives are changing, because they deserve it, and they deserve every penny of it,” he said.
“For me to make the sacrifice in the short term, I’d rather this than a vacation home in Palm Springs or the Hamptons. I guarantee that this will pay off.”
Price is an outspoken advocate for workers’ rights and has built a large following on social media.
He has about 800,000 followers on LinkedIn.
Price has faced other allegations of misconduct in his personal life.
In 2015, Bloomberg reported that his ex-wife, Kristie Colon, gave a TEDx talk in which she alleged that he had physically assaulted her. While Colon didn’t name names, it became evident as to who she was referring to…
In the Ted talk, Colon described once locking herself in her car because she was “afraid he was going to body-slam me into the ground again or waterboard me in our upstairs bathroom like he had done before.”
Price responded to Bloomberg and said that the incidents “never happened.”
Could the allegations be true or is this another example of the controversial “Me Too” movement?
What do you think? Tell us your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments below.
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