Fil-Am Millionaire Travels World to Help Others
Jared Bray, ABS-CBN North America News Bureau
Posted at 02/04/16 12:45 PM
PROVO, Utah – After selling his mobile app to Snapchat for $54 million, a 26-year-old Filipino American is taking his family on a tour around the world, while helping others at each stop.
While Garrett Gee played soccer at Brigham Young University, he got the ball rolling on a mobile app called Scan.
“It seemed like a really fun project to build an app on my own,” he said. “So Scan started as a side project, and then, it turned out to be something pretty special.”
It was so special that it got the attention of Snapchat.
The social networking company contacted Gee and ended up buying Scan, which allows users to automatically scan bar codes, QR codes, and NFC tags without the push of a button, for $54 million.
That left Gee and his family with a decision to make: settle down or travel the world.
They chose the latter.
“We created the Bucket List Family,” Gee said. “It’s a little YouTube show and Instagram account. And then we took off for an adventure around the world, and we’re halfway through and still going.”
But their trip isn’t just about collecting photos of far-off places. At each destination, the family looks for opportunities to help others who are less fortunate.
“We’ll find some anonymous way to help another family in need or anonymously give back to others,” Gee said.
So far, the Bucket List Family has experienced Thailand, Tonga, Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore. Soon, they’ll make their way to the Philippines.
“Hopefully this year in 2016,” Gee said. “Visit the Philippines with my siblings. There’s six of us, so it’d be a really cool opportunity for us to just kind of do a tour of where our ancestors and parents came from.”
In the meantime, Gee said he’ll continue to enjoy quality time with his wife, Jessica, and two children, Dorothy and Manila.
“I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to be with my children and spend so much time with them,” he said.
Read more on Balitang America.