EvoShare works with companies in the Bay Area and beyond to help customers get the most out of their purchases. The company partners with local businesses and quality online vendors, helping them expand their customer base by enabling certain customers to use part of what they spend toward their retirement earnings or student loan repayment. Read more in this Partner Spotlight interview with co-founder Eugeny Prudchyenko.
What was the inspiration behind starting EvoShare?
Driven by a deep desire to create something that was socially conscious, my business partner and I came to the United States in 2015 from the Ukraine to explore the market and see what Americans cared about. EvoShare’s co-founder Daniil Tseytlonok and I flew out here and that was it; we got here, plugged ourselves into the community and realized that people wanted to contribute to charities but didn’t feel like they could. So we came up with the idea of creating a sophisticated marketing tool with a charitable aspect built in.
But this initial model ended up failing terribly, and in search of clarity I ended up driving to Lake Tahoe. On the way, I came across a Prudential billboard saying that “the best donation is a donation into your retirement” and that’s when it hit me. It was like a light bulb went off. We threw out our original platform and four months later debuted the new model that takes a part of a user’s commercial spending and puts it toward their retirement savings or student loan repayment.
How does EvoShare work?
Simply put, EvoShare is a cash-back platform that enables users to use a portion of what they spend to pay off a student loan or boost their retirement earnings. The businesses we partner with set a percentage of cash-back for our users to earn, and we send our network of customers to their locations or websites. Our goal is to expand and maintain our ecosystem of businesses, customers, and employers all supporting one another. Be it allowing users to direct us to partner with their favorite businesses or connecting financial advisors with inquisitive EvoShare users, we’re all about getting everyone involved in EvoShare to help give back to their communities.
How has EvoShare grown since its beginnings, coming to the United States with virtually no prior connections?
EvoShare has grown and continues to grow because we’ve created something that is in people’s best interests. People are very busy and value their time – so if it’s not in their interest, they won’t help. But because the benefit EvoShare offers is so obvious, people want to be involved and they reach out to us. Our mission-driven growth has made us able to partner with and follow leads with big companies like eBay, Wal-Mart, Target, Expedia, Groupon and many more. We want to grow by creating value for the local businesses we partner with, helping these companies offer our solution to their customers and educating everyone on how to be more financially savvy.
Why was the San Francisco Bay Area the ideal place for EvoShare to start?
Even though Dan and I had founded a successful startup in Ukraine, San Francisco was very compelling because of its reputation for helping startups. So it was very natural for us to move to the Bay Area. People here are also very open minded, and catch on to ideas very quickly. The passion for helping others that runs throughout the Bay Area also attracted me. I see what people can do here, and we want to be focused on those people and communities. Most importantly, the Bay Area is home to many great companies that are pioneering the tools of the future, and with EvoShare’s innovating how people spend and how they think about spending, it wouldn’t have made sense for us to start anywhere else.