UH trio launches epic start-up

American merchants lose as much as $190 billion per year from credit card fraud, much of it from online shopping, according to a Forbes report.

Three UH alumni have started a company, Epic One, aimed at eliminating credit card fraud through their start-up.

Epic One created a technology that will store all your credit card information on your secure cloud account that can only be accessed via a secure Epic One biometric card in order to avoid, and possibly eliminate, credit card fraud.

“The company has really evolved from an original idea that put your payment cards into the cloud and every user had one card that represented their cloud wallet,” said William Gomez Jr., Epic One’s co-founder and CEO.

“When this concept was introduced to the founders, it evolved into a credit card fraud solution. The inspiration really came from all the things being put into the cloud, and I asked, ‘Why not credit cards?'”

Gomez graduated from UH with a degree in chemical engineering in 2009. At first, he didn’t see himself as an entrepreneur.

“Personally, I had no desire to be an entrepreneur until my brother came up with a completely unrelated idea when we were at UH. At that point, I realized I wanted to contribute to society instead of just going to work every day,” Gomez said.

His brother Oscar Gomez, who is currently attending UH, is no stranger to the world of entrepreneurship.

“The story goes back to me getting into startups during my sophomore year (as) my brother was getting into his chemical engineering career,” said Oscar, a computer science senior.

Oscar said things started to come together when they were ready to build a prototype from an idea his brother had, which led to a sample application that simulates credit card transactions.

William and Oscar met Epic One’s CMO, Ripp Motion, at a UH CEO meeting of aspiring entrepreneurs as the company’s wheels began to turn.

“When we introduced the idea to Ripp, he instantly saw the potential the company had and wanted to join since that day,” William said.

Motion graduated from UH’s Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship with a degree in entrepreneurship and a second BBA in marketing.

“(I’m) passionate about implementing marketing and business development strategies for technology startups,” Motion said. “(I’ve) worked for several business accelerators, including the University of Houston’s RED Labs and Houston Technology Center’s Ignition Program.”

This month, Epic One has been invited to attend the 2013 Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, alongside Tony Hawk for the Tony Hawk Foundation, the CEO of Evernote, representatives from Google Ventures, Prezi, PayPal, Wall Street Journal and UH alumnus Matt Mullenweg of WordPress, according to the Summit’s website.

The Web Summit is Europe’s largest technology-industry conference and is centered on Internet technology. As one of 10 U.S. companies chosen to attend the Summit from a pool of 3,000 U.S. applicants, according to a press release, Epic One will be competing to win 500,000 euros ($676,000).

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