About Derek

Derek Johnson is the 25 year old CEO of text message marketing startup Tatango.com.

Derek Johnson founded Tatango.com in 2007. Initially started as a way for his Fraternity to communicate with his Fraternity brothers, Tatango.com has grown to the leader in its industry.

A dropout of the University of Houston Entrepreneurial program, Derek has raised half a million dollars in investments for the company from private investors and the Bellingham Angel Group. Tatango.com has done over 50 million messages since its launch, servicing all types of groups such as businesses, college organizations, churches, athletic teams, political campaigns and non-profit groups.

Derek and the Tatango.com team have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, Mashable, TechCrunch, PC World, LifeHacker and other national publications.

History

Derek was born in 1984, in New York, NY to Simon and Cynthia Johnson. In 1990, both Derek’s parents decided that they wanted to leave the hustle and bustle of New York behind and move West to a more  family oriented place. The family decided on a small town up the in the Northwest corner of Washington, almost touching the Canadian border, called Bellingham. Derek enrolled in first grade at Lowell Elementary School when the family arrived in Bellingham and within a few years, the entrepreneurship bug started to bite. In second grade, Derek was caught selling candy to students during their  breaks, forcing the principal to call a parent, teacher conference to discuss Derek’s disruptive, entrepreneurship behavior.

This incident didn’t stop Derek from pursuing his entrepreneurial ventures though. Throughout his elementary and middle school years, Derek was always selling something, doing odd jobs for neighbors and setting up lemonade stands when not in school. Derek attended  Sehome High School and during the summer after his Sophomore year, with his parents leaving for an extended trip during the summer, they forced him to find a “real” job that would keep him busy and most importantly out of trouble while they were gone. Derek found a job on the outskirts of town at a wood processing plant, thinking driving forklifts, back-hoes all summer long would be a blast. He was dead wrong, but learned very quickly that he wasn’t born to work for someone else, he needed to be calling the shots. After his Sophomore summer working at the wood processing plant, Derek started his own company called Johnson Labor.

Johnson Labor’s business model was simple, Derek took any kind of job that was available to him, including painting, landscaping, babysitting, cleaning, etc. and he would charge an hourly rate for his time. This worked well until the jobs started pilling up faster than Derek could work. So with the increase in demand for his services, Derek set out hiring teenagers from his high school to work alongside him. As demand continued to grow, Derek shifted his efforts from actually doing the labor to a more managerial position focused on hiring new staff to keep up with the growth and managing the tens of projects he had going around town at any one instance.

This business continued on even as Derek enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle, nearly two hours away. Spending a good portion of his time driving back and forth between Seattle and Bellingham, Derek decided that he needed someone in Bellingham to manage the company. As luck has it, the company had become more and more focused on landscaping projects over the last couple of years and during one of these landscaping projects, Derek had met someone that had just been laid off from another local landscaping company.

This person helped run the company while Derek was enrolled at the University, helping grow it to one of the premier landscaping companies in Bellingham. During University, Derek pledged to Delta Upsilon Fraternity, and focused on majoring in Construction Management. Unfortunately Derek’s grades took a turn for the worse as he was constantly juggling managing a business two hours away from school and spending more time partying with his Fraternity brothers than hitting the books. With his low grade point average, both the Construction Management and the Business schools denied him entrance into their programs. Derek was stuck with two options, applying to the finance program, which didn’t have any grade point requirements or to drop out of school. Derek took the second option and dropped out of the University of Washington at the end of his Sophomore year.

After the disappointment at the University of Washington, Derek decided to sell the landscaping company to the person that had been helping run it for the last two years. After selling the company, Derek moved into his parent’s guesthouse and didn’t do much expect party, drink and hang out with friends for the next four months. After four months his parents came to him with an ultimatum… They told him he either had to move out of their house or go back to school, and since school was paid for by his parents, he decided to go back to school. This time he enrolled at a school with an entrepreneurship program, which happened to be all the way in Houston, Texas.

Derek arrived in Houston and spent the next year studying entrepreneurship at the Wolff Center For Entrepreneurship at the University of Houston an exclusive program that only accepted thirty students into the program a year. During his time at the program, Derek was having a drink with one his Sorority friends and she was explaining the troubles she was having communicating with all of her Sorority sisters for meetings, emergencies, etc. This is where the idea for Tatango.com was generated. For the next few months, Derek and his childhood friend, Matt Pelo, who was attending San Diego State University, worked virtually on developing a plan to launch the company. That summer, Matt joined Derek in Houston as they continued to develop Tatango.com. During this time, both father’s flew out to meet the boys and after seeing the product, they became the first investors in the company.

At the end of the summer, both Derek and Matt decided to put University on-hold and move back to Bellingham, Washington to once again live with their parents as they worked on Tatango. During this time, they setup shop in Derek’s parent’s basement with a few computers and some borrowed tables and chairs.

To be continued….

Press

Derek has been featured in numerous online publication, magazines, books and radio shows. If you are part of the press and would like to talk to Derek, please contact him by the information below.

Speaking Events

Derek has spoken at over 50 universities, high schools, conferences and industry events. To schedule Derek for your speaking event, please contact him by the information below.

Contact Derek

Feel free to drop Derek a note at anytime.

Email: djohnson [at] tatango.com
Skype: thederekjohnson
Phone: 206.334.4012