#4: Tagan Horton

I was working with a women's savings club and really seeing the manual process
behind it. And then after leaving that experience becoming an entrepreneur myself,
I began to see a lot of the similarities between the women in Senegal and the
experiences that I had as well as other black founders had. And so for me,
Founders Get Funds was really the first tech idea that I put out into the world in
which I wanted to digitize Savings Clubs not only to provide greater access to
resources to women like those of Montaugh Feminault and women like me,
but also to connect those communities so that they could build businesses together.
- Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial We are telling the stories of its
entrepreneurs and those supporting them
Welcome to the lay of the land podcast where we're exploring what people are
building in Cleveland and we're coming to you live from Cleveland today's episode
will actually be a little bit different our aim from the start has been to tell
the authentic story of entrepreneurs and builders and and those supporting them in
Cleveland and today will actually be sharing Tegan's story in the spirit of that and
in the context of a year that has been challenging and full of reflection for many
of us. I love sharing stories and learning more about the land, but I will be
waning off the show as a co -host over the next few episodes. Please don't worry,
my fellow cartographer Jeff will lead the show towards new discoveries you don't want
to miss. - Yeah, thank you, Tegan. This podcast has been a journey in and of
itself, and I have truly enjoyed collaborating with you to create this show that the
folks here in Cleveland are already receptive of and given us great feedback about,
and I'm excited to keep sharing the stories going forward. - The response from the
land has been amazing, and the stories of entrepreneurship here are just as much
about building something impactful as it is about putting out fires. Certainly a lot
of fires that we've encountered and as a city notorious for having our own
particular set of river fires that are known for, but lots of fires to put out for
sure. Yeah, 13 times the Kayuga River was on fire, but Cleveland always balances
back. And so will I. Though I won't be a co -host on Layland, I look forward to
continuing to collaborate with Jeff. Yeah, the Cleveland jokes aside, in order to end
your time on the Layland podcast in the right way, this episode will be a
conversation where the audience gets to learn more about you. So with that, please
enjoy taking story.
So, like we explore with most of the guests that we have on, I'd love for you
taken to just tell us a little bit more about your own entrepreneurial journey and
where and why that journey intersected with Cleveland. Sure, Jeff, and I am happy it
intersected with Cleveland. I got to meet you, which has been super cool. But I
would say that my entrepreneurship journey is best I've in three major events that
happened in my life. When I was 16, I really wanted to travel.
And so like the super cool person I am, I created PowerPoint presentation to share
with my parents, asking them if I could travel to Ghana with global leadership
adventures. And I will say that they were a little reluctant at first,
but they were eventually very supportive as well as the rest of my family as they
helped me fund the trip. So I got to spend two weeks in an area known as Gita
Ghana off the Volta River, working with a local NGO,
Dream Big Ghana. For me, that was really my first time dealing with a piecemeal
solution, something that is scalable and repeatable as I, along with other high
school students, were building compost toilets. And these were pretty large structures
made out of cement and bricks that we were making from scratch. There was not any
electricity. We were mixing cement with shovels, laying bricks and letting them dry
in the sun, dipping water from the wells. But in addition to that, the community we
were working with was supplying half of the materials. So I think that it was a
very collaborative opportunity as well as knowing that different groups came to
DreamBitGana throughout the summers in order to continue to add more compost toilets
to the area. And on the last days, getting to actually interact with people that
would be using the compost toilets that we bought and knowing that it would be able
to reduce disease that actually causes death for a lot of children, I was really
inspired by solutions like that in which it seems like something small,
but you're really working to solve a very large, complex problem. That really led to
me wanting to study international studies in college. During my college search,
I did a few accepted students days. But one in particular was at Spelman College.
And I can remember listening to our song, "The Choice to Change the world and
honestly feeling very emotional being surrounded by other black women and knowing the
goals that I had for myself. It seemed as if I had no other choice but Spelman
because I did want to change the world and it seemed to be a place curated
especially for me. And so I came international studies major at Spelman and began on
a trajectory, thinking that maybe I would go into nonprofits, I spent some time at
a few nonprofits working in fundraising, did some donor research, did some canvassing,
did a little bit of marketing here and there. But I found that nonprofits weren't
where I wanted to grow. It was missing a lot of the thought leadership that I
wanted as I saw But it was a lot more about curating resources really separate from
the problem. And so I kind of ventured more towards policy work.
And so I had some really great opportunities. I spent a summer at Princeton studying
international policy and really seeing what a master's program looked like there,
meeting with ambassadors, learning more about the foreign service. But really what
that experience taught me was how to use numbers and statistics to really back up a
lot of the problems that I was passionate about. And it also taught me that I
didn't want to be an ambassador. It's like, once again, it was kind of missing that
thought leadership that I wanted to have really focusing on defining problems and
designing tailored solutions. So moving along to what I really think was a shift in
my mindset was spending a semester abroad in Dakar,
Senegal, and I was studying economic development and taking courses in economic
development, but I was also interning with a local woman's rotating credit and
savings Association, or Savings Club, Montaigne Feminault. And that organization was
very unique in that it was a Savings Club, which is a community banking format that
is often done between family and friends. But this group was all women,
all founders, and there were over 200 of them. So I had the amazing opportunity of
working with the president and seeing women pal into her home every Wednesday to
contribute their savings to their individual clubs and go up to the accountants that
had these giant binders with everyone's name, literally checking off names for months
and months back. And what I wanted to do as I kind of created this internship for
myself, I wanted to really get to know the women and learn their stories.
And as I was learning their stories, I met women that started with maybe a couple
items of inventory, save with the club, receive their payout from the club,
and then invest in their business. And over time, grow from having that couple items
of inventory to having their own shop in their neighborhood. And so I really wanted
to get their stories out there and help raise money for them as they had a pretty
low cost for a lot of their businesses. But you can't do that, raising US dollars
in Senegal, or
- Oh, a small technicality. - Yeah, just, you know, a little regulation there. But
also the women didn't have bank accounts. So if I did have it in their currency
safer, I didn't necessarily know how I would transfer it to them. And so I did
leave feeling a little discouraged, but I was also very empowered by
entrepreneurship's ability to build communities. And I think that really carried with
me as I continued through my next phase of life. That is a journey that took you
all over the world. What is it that, you know, with that newfound inspiration that
brought you to Cleveland? Yes. So leaving Senegal, I was discouraged,
but I was still very passionate about that problem, and I continue to work with
different organizations such as Allianz -François. They had their first women's culture
and leadership trip in Senegal, and that allowed me to work under an executive
director who was clearly very entrepreneurial as she was leading this first ever
initiative at the organization. And after my internship, She wanted to branch out and
start her own business. And for me, I was excited to lend my expertise that I kind
of had grown over the years, really starting from high school yearbook to all those
internships, to even the internship I had with her. I offered to build a website
and help her rebrand. And she in turn offered to pay me, which was like mind like
to me at the time. But it was the first glimpse of me really starting to realize
my value. And so that led to me starting my digital marketing agency,
the Tagan Experience. Right around that time, I was applying for Venture for America.
And I remember my selection day, actually, I met a woman named Gloria Ware,
who gave me her business card. We had a great conversation, gave me her business
card, and it was like, you know, if you ever end up in Ohio, give me a call.
And me, like, you know, world traveler, living in Atlanta, I'm like, yeah,
when I get to Ohio, I'll give you a call, like, not seeing that in the plan at
all. But as I continued through the Venture for America Fellowship, you know, after
getting accepted And really having a long match experience, it came down to really
two choices. One would lead me into New Orleans, and it was along the same vein
kind of of things that I had been doing, working with nonprofits. And then there
was this opportunity to go to Cleveland, work at a tech startup that was working
with sporting teams and venues. There's nothing that could have seen further from
what would be next in my path, just knowing myself. However,
Group Maddox had a really innovative solution in my eyes that I was excited to be
a part of. I really wanted the opportunity to learn how to make money. I mean, I
had been working at nonprofits, working in the public sector, and it was a time for
me to make this And especially stemming from my experiences in Senegal and also
becoming an entrepreneur myself, I knew that tech solutions were going to have the
scalability to bring that impact I wanted to see for the communities I wanted to
cater to. Yeah. So with your time at Groomatics, how did that influence how you
thought about your own all endeavors at the taken experience and ultimately what what
you ended up starting with with founders get funds can you tell us a little bit
about your takeaways from from being at a startup and you know it sounds like you
may have learned what you what you needed to about building something but yeah I'd
love to hear your perspective on all of that. Yes I mean you've had your fair
share of experiences start up so I'm sure you know that it can be quite the
learning experience. And for me, I was coming on as the first account manager at
Groupmatics. And so that was a great opportunity for me to engage with clients.
I think I enjoy communicating with people. So that was something I really loved
about the job and having the opportunity to grow a million dollar account, something
that, you know, I hadn't been in that position before. But again, coming on as the
first account manager, there was a lot of space to grow. It was really my first
time putting on this tech innovation strategist hat that I think I've grown into as
there's a lot of opportunities to suggest and implement processes, whether internally
for our team or even within the ways that we engage with clients through our
chatbot or the way that we engaged touch points, and it was a great opportunity to
see the company do the greatest day in sales history, but then also to be along
for the ride as the NBA shut down and we saw revenue fall to zero.
We spent a good chunk of time, about 10 weeks, focusing on an all -in -one solution
for virtual events, something that I had I'm pretty familiar with through founders
get funds at the time and that allowed me to really put on my digital marketing
hat that I had from the taken experience at the time and really lead in creating a
strategy for our social media as well as creating content and really thinking about
the messaging from the beginning. I think that that was really the point in which I
started to open my eyes to really see the full lifecycle of product design to
development to how marketing really relies on the success of those processes.
So overall, I would say that it was a learning experience from top to bottom. And,
you know, unfortunately, an acquisition fell through and my furlough became permanent.
But I enjoyed every bit of it as well as the knowledge that I take away now as a
self -proclaimed tech innovation strategist. Yeah. So, you mentioned founders get funds
a few times. Can you tell us just what that is exactly? Yes, founders get funds is
a podcast and newsletter, really combating misinformation targeted at founders building
businesses from the ground up. And it has looked like a lot of different things
over the past year. Yeah, what kind of motivated you to start that?
It really stemmed from that experience in Senegal. So again,
I was working with a women's savings club and really seeing the manual process
behind it. And then after leaving that experience becoming an entrepreneur myself,
I began to see a lot of the similarities between the women in Senegal and the
experiences that I had as well as other black founders had. And so for me,
Founders Get Funds was really the first tech idea that I put out into the world in
which I wanted to digitize savings clubs, not only to provide or access to resources
to women like those of Montaigne -Familion and women like me,
but also to connect those communities so that they could build businesses together.
And how have you gone about building that community? I know it's grown a bit over
the past while here, but how has that been? Yeah, it's definitely been a journey.
I started with the survey, just following your usual startup vibes,
and it taught me what I knew. Black women didn't have access to a lot of funding.
They were self -funding their business, and through further research, I found that
over 90 % of black businesses were self -funded, as well as only 100 ,000 of the 2
million black businesses having employees. And so that survey was, it was helpful,
but it wasn't giving me the information I wanted. So I created a Facebook group and
it was cool. I got, you know, people to join. I saw that there was an interest in
the topic, but I was still not getting the feedback I needed to start to provide
what I thought would be a useful solution. So, I decided to launch a podcast of
Founders Kid Fun's The Podcast. Never done anything like it before, really, and the
first guest was actually Angel Washington, someone I met at the Gathering of Black
Women in Cleveland, and it was actually pretty easy. You're a natural.
It was honestly because it was a topic that I was living in, And it was something
that I was very passionate about and so, and the podcast just continued to grow
from there. However, as I mentioned, my original goal was to digitize savings clubs.
And so, through some research, I found that there were digital savings clubs. Isuzu
was focused on immigrant communities that are often targeted for high rent prices and
there was a money pool that really helps consumers save up for things like a car.
But no one was really focused on founders, kind of like the model I saw in
Senegal. I decided, you know, there are some applications out there that already
exist that could allow me to create a savings club. And so I kind of created a
tech stack through existing applications and started running savings clubs with
founders that I knew and I'd say that my savings clubs were a little bit different
in that savings clubs work in which individuals come together and they contribute a
fixed amount for a fixed amount of time whether that be weekly or monthly and in a
rotation that pot is given to each individual until everyone receives the hot and
then the process restarts. And so with My Savings Clubs, I was encouraging founders
to save, which was very timely as COVID was hitting around that time.
And so the goal of the Founders Get Fund Savings Clubs was to create an emergency
fund as a safety net for the founders so that they could take loans out from their
savings clubs as needed, whether it be something like COVID -19 or whether it be a
seasonal decline. And the process around that continued to evolve and mature.
I would say that it was successful. Founders were saving, and they were excited
about saving. In addition to that, we were meeting on a weekly basis for business
development purposes. I would bring in different speakers, a lot of them from the
plan to engage with the founders and really teach new things like quick books,
how to apply for a loan, as well as it was an opportunity for us to just meet on
a very personal level. I mean, entrepreneurship is daunting to say the least,
especially in the midst of a pandemic. So it was a great opportunity for us to
build relationships. And I found actually that that relationship building, those
personal conversations, was really the true value of the club.
And so I, I started doing the savings clubs.
And I focused more on really understanding how can I curate more business development
resources for this community that is really combating a lot of toxic relationships as
well as, I guess, traumatic experiences with finances. And so I'd say that I'm still
in the process of finding that solution, but I know that I am more certain about
the problem that I want to solve. Yeah. What are some of the things that you have
learned going through that? And as you you know, things that you can focus on going
forward. What are the learnings that you're taking with you? I think a lot of the
reason to why I am, you know, waning off of the show is that I know that what
founders get funds needs are any business that I am a part of, any initiative group
relationship that I am a part of. What it needs right now is for Tagan's personal
development. And so that looks like a lot of different things. That looks like me
taking time to have deep thought about my personal desires and life long goals,
drinking tea, taking walks, laughing, as well as,
you know, learning a lot more about product design as I know that that is the true
battle in entrepreneurship, as well as learning a lot more about different languages
such as R, such as Python, such as JavaScript, and being a tech innovation
strategist spending time to stay on top of a lot of the things that are going on
in the tech industry as I think that the areas that I was focused on digital
marketing as well as funding, they're evolving quickly, especially with the pandemic
propelling things forward. - Yeah, so with all of that, what do you see yourself
focusing on moving forward as you kind of weighing off the show and focus really on
yourself and these future endeavors? - Yes, I think that I'm really focusing more on
that problem again that I wanna solve. And luckily through this year of just trying
different things, I've kind of found that misinformation is the problem that I'm most
passionate about. And I feel like there are a lot of storytellers out there,
but I want to be a story translator. And for me, that looks like a really bringing
data, marketing and technology together to bring stories to life. - Nice,
that's awesome. - Thanks. - Can you tell us a bit more about your connection to
Cleveland and how you're thinking about that going forward as you work on all those
things? - Throughout the past year with Founders Get Funds and trying a lot of
different things, Jumpstart and particularly Ron Stubblefield, Chris Smith and Gloria
Ware have been super impactful in me getting to the point where I can have these
types of realizations. And so I look forward to really continuing to engage with
them to add value where I can with them as well as continue to benefit from their
advisement. And another person that I was lucky to meet through the Black Women's
Gathering in Cleveland was Anna Richie, and she's working on an amazing project,
the Mezzanine Fund, And it's just giving me an opportunity to really use this tech
innovation strategist hat. And as well as Midtown Cleveland, I just so happened to
move to Millionaires Row, like, who does that?
And it allowed me to really connect with the city of Midtown that is ever -evolving.
And I look forward to following that journey as well. - Yeah. I mean, I mean,
community really has been a thread, a theme that kind of ties a lot of, I think,
your experiences together to kind of put a bow on it. How has community,
do you think, impacted your journey as an entrepreneur here in Cleveland, but really
across the board? I mean, I think even from the beginning, talking about going to
Ghana and having that support of my family, as well as having the support of the
Spelman community, as well as just different people believing in me from the
Executive Director at Lyons Frances to Gloria Ware giving me her business card to
having that opportunity to move into tech and working at Groupmatics. Engaging with
you here on this podcast, I think that community is what I am,
and I think that's why I and so in love with sharing stories. - That resonates
quite a lot. As you know, our go -to question here at the end of these podcasts
is, you know, to paint a collage of people's favorites and hidden gems throughout
Cleveland. And so, without further ado, what is your favorite hidden gem in
Cleveland? - Honestly, was I were prepared for this question.
So now I'm like, okay, what is the one thing I want to say? You didn't see it
coming. I really didn't. And I'm like that. Then I didn't think this through. The
hidden gem that I want to share about Cleveland. This might sound basic,
but I think that the lake is honestly one of the the best things about Cleveland
is honestly surprising and even in the winter you know seeing it frozen over I
think that it can be very breathtaking and for me I have really found that being
outdoors and taking that time to be outdoors and just a part of my development as
an entrepreneur, my development as a person. And so I would say anyone that's in
Cleveland, take advantage of, you know, the lake, take advantage of the beautiful
scenery that the city has hidden in there. 'Cause people usually don't think,
people don't think about nature when they think of Cleveland. But I think that is
one of the most beautiful parts of the city. - Couldn't agree with you more. You
know, going Obviously, we're going to attempt to continue to collaborate here and
hopefully we'll have you on a bunch more going forward. For anyone that is
interested in connecting with you, questions, follow up, what is the best way for
them to do that outside the scope of the podcast? Of course. You should definitely
follow me on Twitter. I talk way too much on Twitter.
So if you want to know where my brain is, look at my tweets. So you can follow
me at VTagan, T -H -E -T -A -G -A -N. If you want to stay up to date with Founders'
Gift Funds, you can subscribe to our newsletter, www .FoundersGiftFunds .com,
and follow us on LinkedIn at Founders' Gift Funds. Awesome. Any last part and words
here, Tagan? I will say that the land has a lot going on and I look forward to
engaging with this podcast in many ways as a listener, as a sometimes guest,
or just as a friend to you. So it was awesome ride. - It has been really fantastic
and it's been very fun building this with you. And yeah, I'm very excited to see
where it goes, but it's been a pleasure and really appreciate, you know, you coming
on and sharing your story. I think people will really enjoy it. - Yes, thanks for
this opportunity to share my story. I enjoyed the conversation.
- That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on
today's show, so shoot us an email @layoftheland at upside .fm or find us
of the Land, @theTagan, or at Stern Hefe, J -E -F -E. We'll be back here next week
at the same time to map more of the land. If you or someone you know would make
a good guest for our show, please email us or find us on Twitter and let us know.
And if you love our show, please leave a review on iTunes. That goes a long way
in helping us spread the word and continue to help bring high quality guests to the
show. - Jeff and I decided there were a couple of things we wanted to share with
you at the end of the podcast.