Startup Spotlight #194: Pigeon Loans
Startup Spotlight #194: Pigeon Loans
Pigeon Loans is an online platform that allows anyone to create and manage loans with their friends and family.
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I got the chance to speak with Kaben Clauson, co-founder and COO of Pigeon Loans, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.
Kaben Clauson draws on a diverse array of life experiences gathered from growing up in unique places such as Alaska and South Africa. As a veteran startup founder, Clauson is a world-class marketer when it comes to building community-based products. With his unique history of understanding the problems that affect social groups, he is able to identify tech trends that have the potential to improve people's lives. With Pigeon Loans, Clauson is building tools to help one of the oldest problems facing humans: managing money and relationships.
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Startup Spotlight: Pigeon Loans
Problem: Loans between friends, family, and people in our communities are consistently plagued by awkwardness and lack of tracking. Millions of Americans want to help in the form of a loan but are worried about how it will affect their relationships.
Market: In the United States alone, there are over $200B in interpersonal loans made each year. We’re going after the roughly $125B in loans that are over $1000 in size.
Solution: Pigeon Loans is a platform that makes it easier for anyone to create and manage loans with their friends and family. In less than 10 minutes, you can create a promissory note, payment plan, and set up reminders.
Team: Led by Brian Bristol, CTO, having built innovative technologies at both Pinterest and Intuit, and Kaben Clauson, COO, accumulating years of successful founder experience leading consumer-based products seen on CNBC and Yahoo Finance, our team is uniquely built to make Pigeon Loans a success.
Recent Success:
Clauson: In my career, I’ve learned the power of storytelling. In this age of information overload, it can be incredibly difficult to cut through the noise when marketing a new product. In 2020, I found that the news media was starved for good storytelling around the issues facing people during the pandemic. I was able to successfully convince TV news stations across the country to feature us by first thinking about the stories that would resonate with their audience.
To get press, we didn’t make our company the story. Instead, we made our users the story. This type of PR pitch actually worked time and time again. We generated hundreds of thousands of app downloads and got some of our biggest customers from the news.
Recent Struggle:
Clauson: I’ve been bad at hiring for and managing my teammates who own the marketing function at startups. I consistently missed the assignment by hiring the ‘most creative’ people I know. The challenge was always taking that creative spark and turning it into a long-term plan.
A great marketer has to operate off of systemic planning that is highly data-driven. Too often I have misled our marketing team by allowing a total lack of focus on a single effort. Make sure you give your marketing team long-term objectives that must be fine-tuned with data and A/B testing.
Founder Advice:
Clauson: You are not your company but your company is you.
We give a lot of advice to entrepreneurs about how to run their companies. I think the first focus for a founder should be having a well-run personal life. You are essentially the manager of yourself. Think of ‘You Inc.’ as the organization that is running your life.
If you have great habits that keep you mentally sharp and physically energized then a lot of the problems you face will be manageable. The founders who fall prey to short-term fixes and have poor habits around sleep, diet, and the mental game will have a hard time building a great company.
Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:
Clauson: Here are three founders you should check out next!
Kyle Sonlin, Founder of Security Token Market: Security Token Group is an organization dedicated to helping foster the digital securities and tokenized securities industry.
Imgesu Cetin, Founder of Defy Trends: Defy Tends is a women-led company that provides traders & investors with AI and data-driven crypto intelligence and education.
Maca Baigorria, Founder of Avocademy: We teach UX/UI design and then help people get great jobs.
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