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Dave and Trina Stone: The promise that shaped a company

by Lauren Street

Ten percent of nothing is nothing. And in April 1991, nothing was about what Dave and Trina Stone had to build a business with. The software, employees, and clients Dave expected to acquire from his former employer were gone. Still, before their new company earned its first dollar, the Stones made a promise: No matter how much or how little they made, they would give 10 percent of every dollar of revenue back to God.

A promise in the wreckage

Dave and Trina met as kids growing up in Sumter, South Carolina and dated throughout high school and college. After graduating and getting married, Dave found work in Arlington, Texas, and Trina reluctantly left her hometown, hoping to one day return. Eight years later, they had three kids, and Dave had built financial portfolio management software for a Dallas-based company.

But in 1990, their lives began to come apart. The company Dave worked for was sold. His salary was cut in half. And the software he’d developed for the company was passed over in favor of a competing product. Then, during all the financial and career instability, their fourth child, Joshua, was stillborn. Trina longed to move back home to South Carolina.

“I was emotionally distraught,” Trina says. “That was the most traumatic period of our married life.”

During that season, Dave was praying alone in his car when he sensed God calling him to stay and build a new business in Arlington that would express God’s character to its employees, clients, and community. But early in their relationship, he’d promised that before mentioning to Trina where he felt God leading him, he would wait for God to move in her heart as well.

“That’s really good news,” Dave remembers thinking. “But you’ve got some heavy lifting with my wife. I’m not going to say anything until you do something in her heart.”

Several months later, Dave’s employer agreed to discuss selling him the financial software he’d built along with some employees and client relationships. But when Dave arrived to sign the documents, a human resources representative handed him termination papers instead.

The next night, Dave and Trina sat together, trying to figure out their next steps. Trina told Dave that, despite longing for home and family, she’d sensed God telling her to remain in Arlington. Their relatives in South Carolina loved them, but their church family in Texas was better positioned to support them through what was coming.

Only then did Dave tell Trina about the business he’d felt God calling him to build the previous year. As they prayed together, they remembered a story from the Bible – Jacob’s promise to God in the desert (Genesis 28).

“Jacob’s on the run after stealing Esau’s birthright,” Dave says, “asleep in the desert, head on a rock, God shows him a vision of prosperity. And Jacob says, ‘If all this is going to come true, I commit to giving 10 percent back to you.’”

God had given Dave and Trina a seemingly ridiculous vision of prosperity in the middle of their desert moment. So they echoed Jacob’s promise.

“That weekend, we made a covenant with God that we’d give 10 percent of our revenue back to him. Not net income, not after tax, not after anything. This is really God’s business,” Dave says. “He owns it.”

Two desks, no clients

Dave and Trina founded First Rate – a wealth-management software company – in April 1991 and set up two desks facing each other in their living room. He focused on sales and technology; she handled operations and accounting. But because the purchase from his previous employer had fallen through, Dave couldn’t rely on the software he’d already built. He had to build it again from scratch.

Dave and Trina’s living room desks in 1991

That setback became one of the most important turns in their story. Forced to start over, Dave rebuilt the mainframe-based software for personal computers and local networks, just as the financial industry was beginning to enter the PC era.

“God knew the timing,” Trina says.

For nine months, no one bought their software. They sold their house for less than they owed and moved into a rat-infested property a friend let them use for the cost of utilities. Forty-five days later, that house unexpectedly sold.

However, the day they got the eviction news, a realtor friend from church called about a lease-to-own house in their old neighborhood – near their children’s school and church community. The rent was about half their previous mortgage.

Just as God promised Trina, their church friends became their family. Friends left bags of groceries on their doorstep, sometimes with money tucked inside. Finally, in January 1992, PNC Bank became First Rate’s first client. They signed a $28,000 contract, and Dave and Trina immediately gave $2,800 to their church.

The remaining money couldn’t support their family for long, so Dave went looking for the next client. Slowly, their client list grew. By the end of 1992, First Rate hired its first employee.

Dave and Trina Stone

Sharing the promise

From the beginning, the Stones wanted generosity to be woven into their company rather than reserved for its owners. They began earmarking money for employee generosity beginning in each employee’s first quarter. The longer employees stay with the company, the more they have to give.

“Business can be a holy encounter with God,” Dave says. “We’re made in the image of God, and it’s a part of God’s heart to be generous.”

As revenue increased, giving 10 percent off the top became more complicated. For Dave and Trina to give what they’d promised, they’d have to pay themselves a salary exponentially larger than they were comfortable with. A mutual friend introduced Dave to Joel Smyer of NCF North Texas, and Dave asked for help determining how they could sustain their commitment.

Over nine years, the Stones worked with their advisors, along with Joel and others from NCF, to develop a structure through which a donated intellectual-property company could be the hub of First Rate’s generosity.

“The ideas we got from NCF have shaped the way we see our business,” Dave says. “This isn’t a Dave and Trina legacy story. This is God’s story with a lot of other people who’ve helped take it forward.”

Carrying the calling abroad

Dave and Trina didn’t only want to build a business that fueled generosity and expressed God’s character in Arlington. They also wanted to bring God’s love to the nations through business. In college, Dave had felt God calling him to Afghanistan.

“I didn’t even know where that was back then,” Dave says. “I knew it was a nation God loves, so I said yes.”

But nothing happened until decades later when Dave met two NGO employees working in Afghanistan and traveled to Kabul – almost exactly 24 years after first hearing the country’s name.

God’s plan was finally coming to fruition, but the Stones were unsure what kind of business to start there. First Rate was thriving back in Arlington. Their first employee had become the head programmer. PNC Bank was still their top client, and Dave’s old employer had even begun using First Rate’s software. But was that the business Dave and Trina were called to build in Afghanistan?

“Afghanistan in 2002 was like going 2,000 years into the past,” Dave says. “They don’t have need for wealth-management software.”

They tried importing American powdered milk. Then sugar. Both ventures failed miserably. Then, God reminded Dave of the skill already in his hands: programming. He hired the brightest computer science students at Kabul University and trained them to start First Rate’s first global office.

Just like their business in Texas, First Rate Kabul thrived, and it’s continued to grow, even through war and political upheaval. Today, First Rate has 15 programmers in Kabul. Those 15 salaries support approximately 300 family members, but the Stones’ favorite part of their work abroad is the personal relationships they’ve built with their international employees.

Those relationships are part of the mission: helping people know there’s a God who loves them and hasn’t forgotten them. Kabul employees also participate in First Rate’s giving program, choosing local organizations to support.

“When we equip people to be generous, there’s something holy in them that comes to the surface,” Dave says.

The Stone family

Today, the Stones have six global offices across Afghanistan, India, Singapore, Chile, and the U.K. where work, relationships, and generosity become expressions of God’s love in their communities. From the very beginning, giving has been a way of remembering who owns it all.

Referencing Deuteronomy 8opens in a new tab, Dave says, “When we get to the land of milk and honey, it’s easy to forget the God who brought us there. We’ll build homes and businesses and say, ‘Look what I’ve done.’ But that’s when we get into trouble. Giving is our way of remembering this is God’s business. It was his idea and his dream.”