Russell Simmons on Building the Prepaid RushCard

About eight years ago, we’d been thinking about doing prepaid phone cards. Then I had an “aha” moment: Why wouldn’t a prepaid card work for other things? If you don’t have a card, you can’t rent a car, you can’t buy stuff on the Internet. You’re locked out of the American dream. That led us to create RushCard.

I took the idea to American Express; I showed it to everyone. No one understood it. I almost gave the idea away because building out a whole business seemed like a burden. I ended up being partners with David Rosenberg, who owns billions of dollars of debt with Unifund [his collection agency]. His company reaches people who need this service, but it was hard to get them to convert. There were no synergies with that business. None. So we had to market to everyone.