Bill Smith (entrepreneur)

Bill Smith (born c. 1985) is an entrepreneur who founded Insight Card Services, the Shipt delivery service and Landing short-term apartment rental platform.

Smith grew up in Birmingham. His father was an agent for Cellular One and his mother worked as a medical transcriptionist. He began making as much as $5,000 a month selling Nextel subscriptions while in high school, and dropped out when he was 16. He founded Insight Card Services in 2009. He sold the business to Green Dot of Austin, Texas in 2013.

With the proceeds from that sale, Smith invested in real estate, bought at auction. In addition to a lot of 33 condominiums he acquired 7 floors of the John Hand Building for a bid of $510,000 in January 2014. He launched Shipt that year out of that space. He held close to a 50% share in the company when it was sold to Target of Minneapolis, Minnesota for $550 million in late 2017.

The next platform Smith tacked was an on-demand home-repair business called Homesie, but it flopped badly in early testing. He turned instead to the market for short-term furnished apartments through Landing.

In October 2020 Smith, as head of the newly-formed Birmingham Economic Development Partners, offered to purchase six parking decks operated by the Birmingham Parking Authority for $40,375,000. The offer was not accepted.

Smith is married and has three children.

References

• Alexander, Alan (July 27, 2016) "Meet an Emerging Influencer of Birmingham: Shipt's Bill Smith" Birmingham Business Journal
• Coker, Angel (October 27, 2020) "Bill Smith talks plans for downtown parking decks if city approves sale." Birmingham Business Journal
• Johnson, Roy S. (February 16, 2021) "Johnson: Parking garages? No sale, but hopefully a vastly improved Birmingham Parking Authority." The Birmingham News
• Feldman, Amy (August 15, 2022) "This High School Dropout Sold Shipt To Target For $550 Million. His Next Startup Could Be Worth Double." Forbes