It all started a basement. Or a garage. Or a bedroom. Or maybe even a closet. Inauspicious beginnings seem to be a common denominator among many mega success stories in the business world: think Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft. The Lehigh Valley has a link to another one of those astonishing nothing-to-something tales you might read about in Forbes. It’s true that Jared Isaacman wasn’t born in the Valley—and neither was Shift4, his Lehigh County-based payment processing company that’s now worth billions of dollars. But he’s made a home here for himself, his family and his business as he continues to—quite literally—soar to new heights.
Isaacman keeps a relatively low profile in the region. Before he made headlines in 2021 as the commander of SpaceX’s first all-civilian spaceflight, a mission dubbed Inspiration4, many Lehigh Valley residents were likely unaware that a young billionaire lived among them. He doesn’t seek out the spotlight, even though he’s an adventure and adrenaline junkie.
It was a sense of restlessness and wanting more in his teen years that first motivated him to start thinking beyond the usual trappings of adolescence. His older siblings had already moved out of the family home in Somerset County, NJ, when Isaacman was still a student at Ridge High School. “They were out enjoying their lives. I was trapped in high school,” he says.
But, unlike the stereotypical slacker who needs to be pulled out of his parents’ basement, Isaacman’s first real career ambition was launched in that basement. At 16 years old, he left high school to get a GED and secured a job with a credit card processing firm called Merchant Services, Inc. “I was lucky to get hired into an industry that was very immature and had a lot of opportunities for improvement,” says Isaacman.
He wasn’t there long before he left to start his own payments company. He named it United Bank Card because he thought it sounded like something an established financial institution would call itself. Isaacman logged a lot of hours in that New Jersey basement, growing his company. But he realized he was missing one of his first loves: flying. “I had a passion for aviation history, especially World War II,” Isaacman recalls. “I started playing flight simulators as a kid on a computer.” And, like a lot of 1980s kids, he was enamored with the movie Top Gun. In 2004 when Isaacman was about 21 years old, he began taking flying lessons at Lehigh Valley International Airport, which he describes as the perfect setting for an up-and-coming pilot. “You would never want to learn [to fly] in New York or LA where it’s just chaos at all times. Allentown is the perfect balance. It’s a busy airport but it’s not too busy. It gives you a lot of the experiences that I think are important when you’re first learning to fly.”
Isaacman’s passion for aviation was the catalyst for a new endeavor: a civilian air squadron that would perform aerial acrobatics at shows across the country. The Black Diamond Jet Team’s gigs included headlining the Lehigh Valley Airshow in 2013 and 2014. At the same time, Isaacman was working on building up a fleet of fighter jets for what would become Draken International, a contractor that trains pilots for the military and defense industries.
All of that was after Isaacman and a copilot found time in 2009 to set a new world record for flying around the globe in a light jet. And all the while, the payments processing company that would become Shift4 was growing. In 2012, he decided the time had come to cross the border into Pennsylvania. Isaacman chose a spot outside Allentown to relocate. “Selfishly, I was flying out of the Lehigh Valley airport, and I wanted to be closer to the airport.” It also helped that many employees already lived in Pennsylvania. Another plus: “I was already an Eagles fan, so that helped,” he jokes. The company moved in 2012, and Isaacman and his family followed two years later. His wife, Monica, whom he married in 2011, was a former middle school classmate. They rode the same bus, Isaacman says, but didn’t get to know each other until years later, when she was looking for a summer job: “She was really employee 12 at Shift4.” The couple shares two daughters: 10-year-old Mila and 7-year-old Liv.
It’s access to technology and experiences that can change your direction in life.
Shift4, which employs about 600 people in the Lehigh Valley, moved to a bigger space in Upper Saucon Township last year. “It’s been a huge morale boost,” Isaacman says. The company can boast of more than 200,000 customers across nearly a dozen industries, including hospitality, nonprofit, retail and sports and entertainment. There are certainly a number of boldfaced names to be found on that lengthy list of clients, such as Marriott, Burger King and Disney, as well as a number of professional sports teams like the Miami Dolphins and Cleveland Cavaliers. Shift4 provides what it calls an “end-to-end payment ecosystem”; meaning, whether customers are swiping, tapping scanning or clicking around online, Shift4 takes care of the technology, software and hardware to make the process as seamless—and secure—as possible.
If all goes according to plan, Isaacman will be back in space soon. At the time of this interview in November of 2023, Isaacman was hopeful for an April 2024 launch of Polaris Dawn, the first of three missions he will command for SpaceX’s Polaris program. This time around “everything is way more intense. Much bigger objectives,” Isaacman says. The four-person crew will spend five days in space, and, unlike the Inspiration4 mission, the Polaris team will attempt a spacewalk. They’ll also be gathering data and conducting research to better understand how space travel impacts the human body and overall health. Another objective is testing SpaceX’s Starlink laser-based communications, which SpaceX sees as vital for future missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.
Isaacman is aware that a certain segment of the population views this and other dalliances in space as a colossal waste of money. “I certainly think that like 99.9 percent of our resources should be spent on making life better here on Earth, but there should be a small portion of it that is spent on unlocking the secrets of our solar system and our universe,” he says. “It would be absolutely crazy not to. It’d be like looking out on the ocean and saying, ‘I’ll get to it at another point.’ We have to cross the oceans and seas and climb the mountains and explore because we don’t know what we’re going to find.”
And Isaacman certainly is not neglecting some of those bigger needs on Earth, like supporting pediatric patients and their families. Both the Inspiration4 and Polaris missions are mega fundraisers for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Isaacman previously raised money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In October of last year, St. Luke’s University Health Network unveiled the Isaacman Family Children’s Emergency Room at its Children’s Hospital in Fountain Hill. Isaacman says that project was especially important to him in demonstrating to his young daughters the importance of paying it forward to others in the community, especially to those who—through no fault of their own—are dealing with challenging circumstances. “I know I’ve been very lucky in life,” he says. “You don’t get to where I am without a lot of things going right, the ball bouncing your way many times.”
Isaacman likes making the big philanthropic gestures. He says he focuses on ways he can move the needle, rather than smaller efforts that might not have as much of an impact. In 2022 Allentown’s Da Vinci Science Center announced the launch of the Isaacman Next Generation Science Institute. That same year he wrote a 10 million dollar check for a new training center at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Alabama. The center is meant to train the next generation of astronauts, pilots and engineers. “These are experiences kids can’t get at high school or middle school or anywhere else,” Isaacman says. “It’s access to technology and experiences that can change your direction in life.” He would know; he attended space camp there as a child. And it seems like everything turned out OK for him.
Published as “Insight” in the February 2024 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
