Dan Price's Wage Deception

A story about how Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, manipulated his public image through a $70,000 minimum wage announcement while hiding serious allegations.

Sam Parr wrote an article in 2015 titled "Dan Price, the Gravity Payments CEO paying everyone $70,000, is full of shit." The story revealed three main issues:

1. Prior to raising everyone's salary to $70,000, Price was paying himself $1.1 million at a company only doing $16 million in revenue. This was significant because his brother (co-founder) was suing him for paying himself too much money. The brother had a profit share agreement, but there were no profits because Dan was taking such a high salary.

2. Price was accused of serious domestic violence. His ex-wife gave a TED talk describing how he allegedly punched her in the stomach, slapped her face, and waterboarded her. She had to lock herself in a car because she feared for her life.

3. While claiming to hate attention, Price actively sought it. He would run ads promoting his story about reducing his salary, and later his employees were manipulated into gifting him a Tesla, which went viral. He also secured $50,000 speaking gigs and a $500,000 book deal from the publicity.

As Shaan added, "Anytime somebody really goes out of their way to tell you how virtuous they are, you could pretty much take it to the bank that they are overcompensating for something."