Tatango

(Post: English)
"When Derek Johnson was a fraternity brother at the University of Washington, he noticed his house had a hard time getting bill reminders and party updates to its members, try as it might with e-mail, phone trees, and Facebook."

So the fraternity set up a simple Web site to allow its members to send text messages to the entire group.

The service caught on quickly, and Johnson, who transferred to the University of Houston to study entrepreneurship, decided to turn the service into a business.

He dropped out of the business program and launched Tatango in late 2007, offering the service for free.

In 2009, he began charging users a monthly fee of $20 to $200 depending on the number of texts sent, and now has about 10,000 registered users.

The Bellingham native says his five-employee company, which has raised a total of about $500,000 from friends and family and the Bellingham Angel Group, became cash-flow positive in September.

He started a second business, five-employee social media consulting firm Derek Media, this summer, after getting requests from companies for help using social media as a promotion tool.

INFO:
The Company: Tatango
What It Does: Group text messaging platform
Founder: Derek Johnson, 24
Based: Bellingham, Wash.

Source: BusinessWeek