GYFT
Founders: Vinny Lingham, CJ MacDonald, & Mark Levitt
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Year Founded: 2012
Year Romulus Invested: 2012
Gyft is a digital gift card platform that enables users to shed their bulky wallets and manage their gift cards in one convenient digital location. Users can upload, send, and redeem gift cards from their phones. Gyft is seamlessly integrated with Facebook to make sending gift cards both convenient and fun.
Gyft was acquired by First Data Corporation (NYSE: FDE) in 2014.
The Gyft-Romulus story:
Krishna initially met Vinny through African business circles when Romulus was contemplating launching an Africa-focused vehicle, and Vinny became an advisor to the nascent Romulus Africa. “Vinny has always been a face of software entrepreneurship from Africa, and it was a no-brainer to back him when he launched Gyft,” says Krishna. He was still happy with that decision 2 years later when the company successfully sold to First Data.
Romulus value in action: Audacious. Gyft attacked the mobile payments space at a time when large technology companies were launching their mobile wallets; despite the competition, the company aggressively built a great business that First Data quickly acquired.