Our 1st Stock Gift Post

Welcome to our new blog!

I am Rick, one of the founders of GiveAshare.com.

We thought it would be fitting that our first stock gifts post cover the birth of GiveAshare.com so here goes:

I became very interested in stocks at an early age (I’ll will save this story for another blog post) and in the 80’s, my wife Leslie and I gave one share of Boston Celtics stock as a gift to family and friends. We patted ourselves on the back for our creativity and the recipients loved it!

Light Bulb Turns On

These were the days before discount brokers and before the internet. Buying less than 100 shares was considered an odd-lot so you paid a higher price. All this made it difficult, expensive, and time consuming to give stock as a gift.

In 1988, as we drove to work one day  (we both worked in Finance at Motorola Inc.), it hit us: Others without our expertise would probably love to give stock as a gift, so why don’t we offer this as a service? So we started exploring the idea. As it turns out, the SEC doesn’t allow just anyone to sell shares of stock so we would have to clear some hurdles.

False Start

In 1989, we decided on a business name “Taking Stock” – not as snappy as “GiveAshare” but we were young. Before we committed too much effort, we wanted to test the market to see if there would be any interest. We decided to send out a bunch of flyers that offered one share of Boston Celtics stock with an optional frame. Remember, this was pre-internet.

Guess how many orders we got?

ZERO.

After a few more tries, we decided that we were not very good at marketing so went back to our day jobs.

Fast Forward – 2002

Even with the early failure, I new the idea was a winner. By 2001/2 the stage was set – the internet was thriving and my company MedicaLogic/Medscape was being merged into GE. I didn’t want to work for a big company so this was the kick in the %$* to make something happen.

After many months of effort, we launched www.GiveAshare.com and offered just two companies, MedicaLogic/Medscape (just before the merger) and of course,  Boston Celtics stock. Our expectation was that this would be a fun hobby and supplemental income.  We were thrilled when our first order hit – one share of Boston Celtics stock, someone really likes us!

The Rest is History

Let’s face it, before GiveAshare.com and even now, 99% of the people out there don’t even know that they can easily give stock as a gift but when they stumble across our website, they love the idea.

We now offer over 100 world famous companies that match just about any interest or occasion – from Disney stock to Berkshire Hathaway stock. Over the years the business has exceeded our expectations and we still get a “thrill” by delighting our customers with innovative gifts and superior service.

UPDATE 2023:

GiveAshare continues to flourish as more people learn about us and the thirst grows for both a creative gift and a novel way to improve kids financial literacy.  In addition, there is a movement out there where a growing number of people want to directly own their stock instead of having it held in a brokerage account.  We do that!  All shares we handle are directly registered in the recipients name and part of the Direct Registration System (DRS) in an account at the transfer agent and accessible on the web.  This means the shareholders are on the official shareholder books of the company.

Our stock list now boasts 150 companies and is growing.  Stay tuned for more.