How It Began - Stampgate
Making life easier through innovation, technology and charity
The year was 2003. Eight-year-old Tyler Bruber came home from school with a smudged stamp on his hand. Tyler’s parents Laurie and Jay couldn’t make out what it read, so they called Tyler’s school to inquire and were told: “Tyler needs money in his lunch account.”
Laurie and Jay were floored. Kids had to walk around all day with a stamp advertising that they were out of money? And then parents had to interpret a smudged stamp in order to take action? Laurie turned to Jay and pointed out: “You own a technology and payment processing company. It feels like I should be able to go online, see what Tyler ate and make a payment.”
The Brubers’ next thought echoes the origin stories of so many successful business ventures: There has to be a better way.
The rest, as they say, is history. Or perhaps more accurately, it’s history as well as present and future – a multi-decade story propelled forward by an unparalleled blend of award-winning technological innovation and laser focus on the people behind that technology.
“Stampgate” opened up the story’s second chapter. In 2003 Jay Bruber was already the CEO of Persolvent, a company specializing in payment technology and credit card processing. Established in 2000, Persolvent was highly respected for its private label software that made it much easier for eCommerce sites to accept funds from customers. Today we take for granted how simple it is to click and pay when we shop online (perhaps too simple for the sake of our wallets), but Persolvent was incredibly forward-thinking when it came to disrupting the eCommerce industry.
The hand stamp fueled disruption in another industry. Inspired by a dual desire to eliminate stigma around account balances for students and reduce payment headaches for schools and parents, Jay and the Persolvent team evolved their payment processing technology and pursued partnerships to facilitate their expansion into the education sector across the US.
Today, Persolvent’s payment technology serves more than 14,000 K-12 schools across the US, and lunch money was just the beginning. Their payment software is also increasingly in demand to facilitate payments for fees and activities at schools. Their newest brand Eleyo has allowed Persolvent to serve an even broader need: Of the 25 largest school districts in Minnesota, 22 of them now use Eleyo to run their before- and after-school programs and their community education programs, and Eleyo is expanding rapidly across the United States.
Now Persolvent is expanding into the higher education market. Persolvent has signed an agreement with CBORD enabling 275 colleges and universities to come on board in 2020 including Auburn, M.I.T., and Notre Dame.
Chapter three started in 2008, driven by another observed problem-solving opportunity. In spite of Persolvent’s technologically advanced payment processing software, they were still cutting and mailing paper checks to several of their vendors, including their external legal and accounting teams. It occurred to Jay and his colleagues that the legal industry (both vendors and clients) could save time and circumvent logistical barriers by streamlining the payment process. The result: ClientPay, a pioneering solution that adapted Persolvent’s technology for use not just by legal firms but across the professional services industry, allowing businesses to easily invoice clients and receive payments. ClientPay improves cash flow, reduces write-offs, saves money, and “allows businesses to operate better and more efficiently,” says Jay.
A decade later, Persolvent has strong and evolving partnerships with Thomson Reuters, Aderant, Rippe & Kingston, Deltek, LexisNexis and more. The professional services division is as critical to Persolvent’s success as the education/enrichment division, and Persolvent is still sought out for their ecommerce solutions. They’ve remained true to their original mission of making life easier through innovation and technology. ClientPay has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Tekne award for Impact on Industry and the 2018 SIIA CODiE award for Best Financial Technology Solution.
And while the awards are very much appreciated, if you ask Jay there’s another accolade that is equally – if not more – reflective of why Persolvent has had enduring success: Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work.”
Persolvent isn’t only a trailblazer in its continual elevation and refinement of payment technologies. It’s also a trailblazer in its approach to the people building and supporting that technology.
Case in point: Jay and his team have a proven process for hiring the best talent – and they don’t hire based on experience.
In fact, experience isn’t even second on the list of priorities.
Or third.
Instead, they look at culture fit first. If that’s a match, the discussion moves on to where a candidate has gone above and beyond in previous roles, where they’ve made a difference. It doesn’t even matter what industry they were in. “If you get past that gate, then we start talking about passion,” says Jay.
“You can’t manage passion, but you can manage the activities people do that they can get passionate about” explains Jay, and passion is what elevates work from checking boxes to disrupting industries.
“Passion is what elevates work from checking boxes to disrupting industries.”
In fact, Jay is so committed to leveraging passion at Persolvent that they’ve formalized – and quantified – passion in a way that only a science-based company could. Before a candidate is hired, they’re asked what activities sparked passion in their last three to four jobs. “We want to know: What activities were you so passionate about doing that your employer wouldn’t even have had to pay you for them?” Then Persolvent plays matchmaker between a high-potential candidate and a curated role inspired by those activities.
And it’s not over once they’re hired. Every quarter, employees go through a review process that includes an account of their contributions over that time period. They’re asked to rank each activity into one of two categories: “Was this activity something you’re passionate about, or not?” For any activity that doesn’t evoke passion, the supervisor’s goal is to get that task off the employee’s plate, using technology, splitting up the task, or reassigning it.
Every job comes with a few dread-worthy tasks. Imagine knowing that those tasks would be evaluated and taken off your plate on a quarterly basis so you can get back to doing what you do – and love – best. Is it any wonder that Persolvent is able to attract, retain and foster top talent?
The relentless pursuit of passion is only part of why Persolvent is a Top Workplace. Persolvent’s culture (that number one item on the hiring list) is driven by authentic adherence to their core values. While many companies post core values on a clichéd poster on the wall, Persolvent walks and talks and lives their core values. They are:
Honesty and Integrity
Excellence
Customer Focused
Passionate (of course!)
Professional
Charitable
Persolvent has concrete evidence that their unique hiring and review processes work – and that the culture and those core values resonate with their team. Persolvent is unflinchingly open to circular feedback at all levels. They use Officevibe, a software platform that uses anonymously submitted employee input to generate an unfiltered picture of how people really feel about working there. Of Officevibe’s thousands of customers across 130+ countries, Persolvent routinely lands in the top 10% based on what employees say.
That feedback loop extends to customers as well. Persolvent’s commitment to agile responsiveness is part of what helps them thrive in the face of competition from larger technology companies. “We have the ability to respond to customer needs without red tape and delay,” says Vince Arnoldi, Persolvent’s president. “We approach all of our customer relationships as collaborative partnerships rather than as vendor/client relationships.” You hear the term “partnership” thrown around a lot in business – kind of like “core values.” But, just as Persolvent lives their core values, they also live their partnerships. To them, partnering means listening, without ego or pretense, to what’s working well and what could be working better. And reacting – quickly.
Those partnerships are of nearly incalculable value for the company. Much of their business is driven by referrals and comarketing. One example: Multinational media conglomerate Thomson Reuters brings their customers to Persolvent because they know those customers will be in good hands with Persolvent. It’s a symbiotic relationship that produces a win for Thomson Reuters’ reputation, a win for Persolvent’s business, and a win for the customers’ need fulfillment. “We’re focused on earning the right to be recommended,” says Jay.
And there’s another win in there, too. When Persolvent succeeds, people all over the world benefit. Persolvent is a deeply charitable company that gives 10% of its pretax profits monthly to causes including Feed My Starving Children; Food for the Poor; Sharing & Caring Hands; Wishes & More; Achieve Services; ChildFund® International, and many more. Persolvent also leverages their technology into a division called Payments for Change, which supports nonprofits and commits 50 cents on every dollar to charity.
Beyond financial support, the team at Persolvent also rolls up their sleeves and puts their time and talent to work. Each year, the team selects service projects to support – and in 2011, Jay Bruber and his daughter Ashley visited the small town of Mutomo, Kenya on a mission trip. This extraordinary place and the people who live there had such an impact on the Brubers that Persolvent has since sponsored several projects there each year, including the construction of a kitchen at a school for children with disabilities; playgrounds at local schools; providing hearing aids for 150 students at a school for the deaf; providing wheelchairs; and building a poultry house.
One of Jay’s favorite projects was when their team installed a large TV with internet and WiFi at a school for orphans with special needs. Back in Minnesota, the Persolvent team was able to stream live video of when the TV was first turned on. “Watching their faces light up as they saw a soccer game on television for the first time is something I will always cherish,” says Jay.
Persolvent also gives every employee an additional week of paid time off to do charity work.
Is there a hard and fast formula for business success? Probably not. But if there were, it might look something like this:
Making life easier for customers, employees and those in need +
Egoless, circular feedback +
Hiring for passion +
Curated job descriptions that capitalize on talent, motivation, and passion +
Mutually beneficial partnerships +
Service to the greater good +
Earning the right to be recommended +
Relentless commitment to continuous improvement and innovation.
That’s Persolvent’s approach in a nutshell. And yet, of course, that’s not the final page in the story, because it’s not in Persolvent’s nature to declare success and close the book. They’re always reevaluating as they go, looking forward and writing the next chapter. Next up: More giving back, more innovation, and global expansion.
