He Learned to Code While Living in His Car

Jason Wolfe is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father disappeared when he was six. His mother, who was on welfare, became too ill to raise him and his two siblings, and he grew up at the Milton Hershey School, which he credits with instilling loyalty, integrity and discipline.

After college, his girlfriend ended their living arrangement and he was left without a home. He was recovering from spinal surgery and moved into his car with little food. He told Entrepreneur magazine that he did not know where he was going to go or what he was going to do.

What he did have was time and a library card. Borrowing books from the local library, he taught himself to code. His first website, Directcertificate.com, sold paper gift certificates online and gradually gained traction.

About two years later he moved to plastic gift cards and in 2003 bought the GiftCards.com domain for more than 40,000 dollars. By the time of the 2014 article, the company reported 110 million dollars in revenue the previous year and had 100 employees. He also started a spin-off, GiftYa.com, a digital gifting service.

Wolfe has put part of his success back into giving. He has made three mission trips to Haiti and started a You Gift, We Gift initiative, in which he and his nine-year-old son travelled in an RV to deliver presents to children in need. He said that entrepreneurs, when they become successful, have to give back. At the time of the article he was 45.