CEO who says revenue soared when he raised minimum wage to £50k receives Tesla from employees

A CEO from Seattle has been gifted a Tesla from employees after he slashed his own salary to bump theirs up to a minimum of £50,000 ($70,000).

Dan Price, the founder of credit card processing company Gravity Payments, started his business around six years ago – with a minimum wage of £25,000 ($35,000).

As the company continued to thrive, Dan cut his own £720,000 ($1 million) salary to ensure his 120 members of staff had a sufficient income to look after themselves. Dan told Indy100, “I realized the market rate wages on the low end was unlivable for our employees and they are the ones that create the value of the company so the change was 100 per cent necessary.”

In return, staff members did something rather extraordinary to express their gratitude – and bought their boss a Tesla. Dan said, “ It was an unbelievably generous act on their part and shows how lucky I am to work with them.”

Dan is open to raising salaries again in the future. “We want to not only have more raises but also hire more people so that we can provide better work-life balance as well”, he told Indy100.

Dan started Gravity Payments from his university dorm room at the age of 19. According to his website, the CEO discovered his “lifelong mission” when he discovered “small business owners were being taken advantage of by their credit card processors.”

He told Entrepreneur Magazine, “I never intended to make a lot of money, or really any. I was really upset at this industry for the way they were treating my clients, and I just wanted to blow the whole thing up.”