Today we’d like to introduce you to Jerome Myers.
Hi Jerome, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
In my mid-twenties, I successfully landed a public speaking role. It was a dream job. There was a lot of travel, which was perfect for a guy in his mid-twenties. Soon, I was Platinum Medallion on Delta; this is back when Platinum was the highest level, and the purchase of a coach ticket almost always resulted in an immediate upgrade to first-class. Like I said, a dream job for a guy in his twenties.
Four years later, I was married and traveling 46 weeks out of the year it became less of a dream and more of a burden. I took a job as a sales director for Quest Telecom in Atlanta GA, and two years later accepted my first product role with BellSouth Long Distance. I’ve been in product pretty much ever since.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road has been filled with learnings. I have been fortunate to associate with many very bright people and learn from them. There are always turns in the road and sometimes forks when you must decide which way to go. The most important step was getting on the road in the first place. For me, that started with going after that first public speaking job. With no professional public speaking experience, I had little chance. But had I not walked through the door, I would have had no chance.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Prepaid2Cash is a company whose app allows users to exchange gift cards and prepaid cards for cash. Merchant gift cards and prepaid cards like Visa, MasterCard, and American Express make great gifts and represent a growing $200B+ industry in the US alone. However, according to a 2023 Credit Summit report, two-thirds of people in the US say they have unused gift cards totaling an estimated $21 Billion in unused value. There are many reasons for this. People forget it may not be in proximity of the merchant, or it may not be a place where the recipient shops. Prepaid2Cash was started to solve these problems and give people greater flexibility and control over these financial assets.
Prepaid2Cash has solved a real-life problem and has done so in a way that protects against fraud and money laundering. We have a Know Your Customer (KYC) identity verification process for our customers and have put in place very robust systems and processes to guard against these issues. We have a simple business model that requires very complex systems and processes to execute.
Most importantly, we are not stopping here. My role as Chief Product Officer is to identify more problems to solve for our customers and work with our technology team to build the roadmap and deliver. As an example, our research has revealed digital gift card giving to be an archaic process. People largely prefer giving and receiving physical gift cards over digital gift cards. This is because the digital gift card experience has fallen extremely short of what should be possible. Prepaid2Cash aims to solve this by offering a transcendent digital gift card giving and receiving experience that simply doesn’t exist today. From a product perspective we are far from done. There is much more to come.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out.
Decide what you want to do and do it. The most difficult part of a career is deciding what you want to do. Once you decide, then it is simply a matter of finding the path and the people who can get you there. Indecision regarding the “what” makes the “how” question impossible to answer. Inability or unwillingness to decide places one in a Robert Frost poem, where “way leads onto way.”
Make a decision and be willing to fail, having given it your all. Even in failure, the experience will become a highly valued key to future success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.prepaid2cash.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prepaid2cash
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Prepaid2Cash
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Prepaid2Cash
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV5_8Aa9AdofEDoQBd4Nw9w
