Recently I was introduced to an exciting new mobile startup based in Bellingham, Washington called
Tatango ( http://tatango.com). I had the opportunity to chat with their CEO and Founder, Derek Johnson, last week to learn more about the company and hear about their future plans.
The company was started just over a year ago under the name NetworkText, and recently re-branded under the name Tatango. (According to a video on their website there is no meaning behind the company name.)
What exactly does Tatango do?
Tatango provides a simple to use service that allows you to send a text or voice message directly from your computer or mobile phone to a group, keeping them connected anytime, anywhere. For example, lets say you had a group of people you wanted to communicate with in a more time sensitive, mobile way than through email. You could certainly grind your way through sending individual text messages or, by signing up to Tatango, you can message everyone with a single effort. Tatango allows any group to collect, manage and mobile message all of their group members both from a computer and mobile phone. And the great thing is that it doesn?t require any special phone and users don?t need to download any software to use the service. As long as you have text messaging, you can use Tatango.
I gave the service a test drive and it is dead simple to use. They have done a great job with the User Interface and even a non-technical Hockey-Mom could figure it out. You set up a group, invite your members and once they join your group, you are able to message them. (This prevents against the dreaded mobile-spam issue.)
It is free to sign up and the basic service is free to use. Tatango makes money by placing 30 character text ads at the bottom of group text messages and 7 second advertisements within voice messages. They also offer a
premium version that is $4.95 per month which provides additional features such as the ability to add keywords. Today the service works across
all major US wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) and Derek tells me that they will be adding International support early next year as well.
The company is doing great ? they raised an undisclosed amount of funding from The
Bellingham Angel Group earlier this year which allowed them to beef up their technology infrastructure, move into some office space, re-design the website and hire a few folks. They now have 6 employees and have had over 5000 groups sign up to use the service. The average group size is 40 and Tatango is now sending about 4 million messages per month across these 5000 groups.
Talking to Derek was very refreshing. He is a young guy (23) and although he admitted some people (guys with $$) have expressed concern about his lack of experience, he is passionate about his company and loves what he is doing. As Derek explained, he didn?t start the company with any grand vision ? he was simply trying to create a more efficient way to communicate with his friends through text messages. Derek and a few buddies spent about 4 months building a prototype and guess what, next thing they knew they had lots of other folks who wanted to use the service as well.
I asked Derek what the next 6 months had in store for him and along with looking for additional capital to stay ahead of the growth, his focus is pretty simple:
1. Get more groups signed up to use the service.
2. Fine-tune his business model so he can get profitable.
3. Continue to add features and functionality to make Tatango even better to use.
Personally I would have loved to use this service lat spring when I was coaching my 6 year old's Tee-Ball team. We had one game during the week and one game every Saturday. If you?re at all familiar with Seattle weather in April and May, you know that it is completely unpredictable. There were at least 4 games when I had to make last minute decisions on whether or not the games were on, and then figure out how I communicate that to 11 other parents. Tatango would have been a perfect solution and I?m sure I?ll find other uses for it as time goes on.
I encourage you to check it out at
tatango.com. It will be fun watching these guys grow.
As a gadget hound and productivity freak, I've tried just about everything over the past 10+ years, both hardware and software. My gadgets have included a Palm IIIe, two Handspring Visors, a Newton 2100, a Newton eMate and a Palm Tungsten E2. They were all nice (some more than others), but each shared deficits of one type or another. 
