The payments and retail industries didn’t transform on their own. They had catalysts. The people bold enough to see the future before others could. Don Kingsborough was one of them.
His career was a series of innovation milestones.
As President of Nintendo of America and the commercialization force behind Atari, he helped shape an era of entertainment. At Worlds of Wonder, he introduced Teddy Ruxpin and Lazer Tag to millions and created the biggest toy sensations of that decade. At PayPal, as VP and GM of Retail, he built the partnerships that brought PayPal into stores and expanded its enterprise retail network. As the founder and CEO of Blackhawk Network, he created the prepaid and gift card platform that democratized access to payments globally through retail networks. As an investor and advisor, he helped founders find their footing and leveraged his expertise and network to help them scale.
But Don’s real legacy isn’t the products he created or the platforms he helped to build. It lives in the people he mentored, the startups he championed and the leaders who carry forward his lessons, often without even realizing how much of Don’s influence is in their own work.
Don had an invisible presence. Once he knew you, he was often the unseen force behind the introductions you needed or the deal that suddenly came together. He worked quietly but always purposefully, moving people and businesses forward without ever needing the spotlight.
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I first met Don in Santa Fe in 2005 at The Lydian Roundtable, an annual gathering my consulting firm, Market Platform Dynamics, hosted. Each year, we brought together 40 to 50 people and their partners for a weekend of conversation about how to start and scale platform businesses. I didn’t know Don personally then, but Blackhawk Network, which he had started four years earlier, was on my radar. As was his long history of innovation. I sent him a cold email invitation, expecting silence. To my surprise (and delight), he accepted.
That email and that weekend began a decades-long relationship. First as an industry colleague, then a client, and later a business partner. As several colleagues have shared, it is hard to imagine not being able to pick up the phone and call him or collaborate on projects.
The shock of his passing has been matched by the outpouring of grief across the industry. A reflection of just how many people he touched.
Don challenged the status quo in two massive industries: retail and payments. He showed how technology could rewire the way money moves and how people would shop and pay. In retail, he understood earlier than most that the point of sale wasn’t a terminal but a platform for growth and trust. In technology, he connected those dots, insisting the future wasn’t siloed but integrated, smarter and faster. He pushed hard for change, seeing around the corner where others could not.
What set Don apart wasn’t only his vision but his presence. He was a telephone and Zoom kind of guy. In an era of emails and texts, he’d rather talk. Better yet, meet you in person. He asked the questions others were too cautious to ask, or maybe didn’t want to know the answer to, while sitting across the physical or virtual table. He inspired people to take risks because he never lost sight of the better outcomes that innovation could drive. He shared his wisdom and inspired confidence because he walked that road for years and years. Sitting across from him, you didn’t just hear his ideas. You felt the conviction that they could, and would, change everything.
I loved hearing stories of how he made things happen. One stands out. He told me about the struggle to get a mass market retailer whose name you would know to carry Lazer Tag. After repeated refusals, he set up a tent in that retailer’s parking lot, hired college students, and gave them Lazer Tags to play with. Shoppers stopped to watch, then walked inside to ask where they could buy the product. Not long after, Lazer Tag was on that store’s shelves. That was Don. Relentless, scrappy and unafraid to prove a point. Undaunted by the first (or even second or third) no.
For me, his legacy is both professional and personal. He leaves us with systems and technologies that have redefined commerce. More importantly, he leaves us with the reminder that change happens when someone has the courage to start it. Even when the journey is hard.
So now, whenever I see lightning, I’ll think of it as a giant game of Lazer Tag. Don out there, still playing, still enjoying every minute. Because that’s what a catalyst does. They ignite what others can’t yet see. They create momentum that outlives them.
And they leave behind not just ideas or inventions, as Don undoubtedly did, but the energy to keep moving an industry, and the people in it, forward.
