About Us
Our Co-Founders
Victor and Matt began as top consultants at McKinsey, where they witnessed the power of customer loyalty programs and immediately understood why large companies pay millions of dollars to create them. They had a vision: make the power of a Fortune 500 customer loyalty program accessible to local businesses. Fivestars has gone from two guys in a garage to serving thousands of businesses across the country. In October 2021, Fivestars was acquired by global payments leader, SumUp.
Our Values
Our values remind us that how we work is just as important as what we work on.
Shared Humility
We each contribute our unique talents and with shared humility, we acknowledge that we rely on others for our success. We celebrate success and learn from failure as a team.
Warrior Spirit
After they coded the initial product, Vic and Matt pounded the pavement day and night to get the company’s first 100 sales. Sometimes we must buckle down, be “warriors,” and outwork the competition to bring the company to another level.
Authentic Relationships
We bring our authentic selves to work. That means not just showing our “good” side to each other but also revealing the places where we struggle. When we relate authentically, we build bonds of trust and support that make it possible to take risks.
Joy Every Day
When we live out our value daily, we find joy every day. If you ask Victor what he means by joy, it’s a very nuanced definition: joy emerges from a sense of belonging and fulfillment that is deep and meaningful, and it’s something that can be experienced during times of both struggle and success.
Leadership
Victor Ho
Co-Founder and CEO
Victor co-founded Fivestars following his work at McKinsey & Company, where he helped build out loyalty and customer engagement strategies for premiere Fortune 50 brands. He started his career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and holds three degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, where he triple majored in Industrial Engineering, Rhetoric, and Business Administration. Victor has an insatiable love for sour candy, and can’t resist those tasty green apple things.
Matt Doka
Co-Founder and CTO
Matt has led technology at Fivestars since its founding, spearheaded the company's transformation into a payments company, and drives ongoing business development and payments strategy. Before Fivestars, he volunteered with TechnoServe in Uganda, was a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company, and an analyst at AVM, a 32-year old global macro hedge fund. Matt graduated from UPenn's Management and Technology program as a Ben Franklin and Joseph Wharton scholar, where he earned dual degrees in Engineering and Finance. He loves skiing and backpacking, and he grills a killer steak.
Chris Luo
SVP of Marketing
Chris has scaled marketing and inside sales teams at multiple technology companies from pre-IPO to global scale. Previously, he was the Global Head of SMB Marketing at Facebook, where he drove small business adoption for Facebook Ads and Pages and built a team of over 20 marketers and 200 inside sales reps. Chris’ tech career began at Vonage, where he grew inside sales to over 500 reps by IPO. He went on to lead Acquisition Marketing for Google in Asia-Pacific. Chris is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard and received his MBA from The Wharton School, where he was a Palmer Scholar. In his spare time, you’ll find him training for marathons, exploring the city with his wife, Lynn, and coaching his son's soccer team.
David King
COO
David is a seasoned operations leader who has scaled large teams in customer care, technical support, inside sales, collections, and procurement. He brings an extensive background in Six Sigma methodologies and a passion for high quality service. Prior to Fivestars, David held senior-level positions in the telecom, healthcare, retail, and financial industries – most recently as a VP & GM at Cass Information Systems. A University of Florida graduate, David is an avid runner residing in Jacksonville Beach, FL with his 3 miniature schnauzers and wife Amanda.
Gracie Binder
VP of Operations
Gracie is a founding employee at Fivestars and was the company’s first outside hire. She spent her first year in sales, helping to build out the company’s early network of local businesses. She moved on to product marketing and PR and developing content for internal teams and merchants. Over the last eight years, she built and scaled Fivestars’s merchant support and experience teams. Gracie moved to the Bay Area from Seattle to study Finance at Santa Clara University and get involved with early stage tech startups. When Gracie's not working, she can be found playing video games or cuddling with her dog, Winnie the Pooch.
Shannon Reidy Nichols
VP of Sales
Shannon has a passion for sales leadership and has built large inside, outside, and enterprise sales teams. Most recently before Fivestars, she was the B2B Sales Director for eCommerce platform leader, Wayfair. There she collaboratively led, developed, and implemented sales process and operational initiatives transforming the inside sales organization into a robust, outbound model. She has been asked to present in conferences promoting allyship and women in technology and is currently on the Fivestars Thrive committee, where she promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion for the company. Proudly raised on the South Side of Chicago, Shannon moved to Boston 10 years ago, where she has officially transitioned to be a New England sports fan and currently resides with her wife Emily and daughter Finley.
Yoni De Beule
VP of Product
Yoni loves to build products that solve user needs. Early in his career, he was the principal designer for one of Europe’s leading digital agencies. After delivering award-winning innovations in e-commerce and mobile design he moved on to help connect people with great local businesses at Yelp. As Head of Design at Yelp, he grew mobile app usage to 30 million monthly active users by launching mobile reviews, mobile ordering, and restaurant reservations. He then joined Fivestars where he’s excited to empower small businesses in a rapidly changing landscape. In his free time, he dabbles in film photography, and he satisfies his need for speed as an SCCA race car driver.