In this series, WeWork’s director of digital community selects a WeWork member to get to know better, sharing her fun findings with the rest of the community.
Back in November, Jason Grad told me about his relatively new app Bstow, a painless and easy way to give back to your favorite charities. Since then, the app has been gaining lots of users and attention, so I thought I’d check in and see what he’s up to. The WeWork Chelsea member compares Tel Aviv to Brooklyn, discusses his favorite Middle Eastern breakfast dish, and shares his future plans for Bstow.
Congratulations on your recent funding and acceptance into the Barclays and Techstars FinTech accelerator in Tel Aviv! For those who haven’t heard of your app Bstow before, it’s an app that allows you to round up the change you make on purchases to donate to charity. What inspired you to create Bstow?
While I had my corporate job at Yelp, another project I took on was Yelp’s foundation for the East Coast. I witnessed the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge happen and saw that people could be incentivized to do good. So I started working on something that would allow all charities to build these campaigns in a repeatable and scalable way. I saw people donating to charity to get likes on Facebook and I was thinking, “How do we incentivize people to do good?” It didn’t start out as a round-up platform, but it evolved there.
What’s been the feedback of Bstow users so far?
The feedback has been that it’s really easy to use. People tend to sign up and use it as a “set it and forget it” solution, while others reach out to me and are excited to change charities each month. What I like seeing is that really anyone can use this app, no matter what your income level is—it’s spare change, so we have a diverse set of users right now. They range from students to Gen Xers. And we’re putting together fun campaigns with charities across the U.S., some of which are organized by student groups, some of which are more established and have large teams!
What about nonprofits? Are they excited about Bstow?
We’ve had hundreds of requests for different types of partnerships—from very small to very large nonprofits that want to partner together in various ways. And we’re working on providing as good of a service as possible to all of them, so they can hit goals of people rounding up on a monthly basis. We have some phenomenal campaigns coming up!
Where do you hope to take Bstow next?
Great question. I think there are two problems we could solve. One is that there’s all this round-up technology across the world that’s not built as well as it could be, is non-transparent, and doesn’t give consumers a lot of choice. For instance, “Round up at the register” campaigns are common, but there’s not one global provider. I think we could provide a simple solution to that problem, and replace that round up technology across the world with a cohesive brand. The other problem is on the nonprofit and consumer side: Not having an open tool so any person can send money to any nonprofit, no matter their income level, and any nonprofit can interact with that donor.
What are some of your favorite discoveries lately?
This has been a wonderful change from my usual routine in New York! I go to the beach in Tel Aviv every day very early in the morning and work out. It’s not really a discovery, but it’s super warm. Shakshuka has been pretty amazing. It’s eggs and tomatoes (baked or fried)—a Middle Eastern breakfast dish. There’s a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables here in Israel. I discovered within three days of being here that I cannot eat falafel every day, but Tel Aviv is just fantastic as a city. It has a neighborhood feel—like Brooklyn with better weather and a nicer beach.
Bstow was created in 2015—I last spoke with you in November of 2015—and you’ve grown so much in such a short time. How have you kept up your energy and momentum?
I stick to a regimen of waking up early, working out, and working hard. It’s still very exciting to build the company. We’re still very young, we have a lot of work to do, and I’m still learning every day. The challenges change, but there are still a lot of challenges, probably more than when we originally spoke. I think what drives me personally is building stuff that helps people. So as long as we keep doing that, it will continue to be exciting for me. And it’s fantastic to see more and more money going to charities every month and thinking to myself, “Wow, it’s working!” Our donors started out donating 20 cents, and now we are donating real amounts of money to charity, and that’s really cool.
Photos: Bstow