CEO OF THE WEEK:

Founder & CEO Fredrick Hutson shares his journey on how he went from ex-con to technology entrepreneur who is fulfilling a need in the inefficient prison system.

Frederick Hudson was only 23 when he was incarcerated for the distribution of Marijuana. He served a four year sentence and during that time the idea of Pigeonly  was born. A low-cost communication and financial services platform that makes it easy for people to support their incarcerated loved ones. Launched in 2012, Pigeonly has been able to become one of the largest affordable communication providers whose mission is to keep inmates and their families connected with average savings of 40-60% compared to other companies. We had the pleasure of catching up with Hutson and his story is beyond phenomenal.

Nosey Nay: Fredrick, so did you create Pigeonly solely off of your experience of being incarcerated? 

Fredrick Hutson: Yes, it was always expensive to call home. It was always difficult to stay in touch. When you have such a vast majority population that’s incarcerated -that lives in a purely analog world or mostly analog world - it gets really hard for people to maintain communication. Our goal was to become that bridge between digital and analog to make it as easy as possible. There is a lot of people affected by or come across being in the criminal justice system, there’s over 2 million people in prisons and over 13 million people arrested every year. 

N.N. : Can you tell me about the development of Pigeonly? 

F. H. : At first, I didn’t have any prior experience with technology. I had a brand and sold that business prior to being incarcerated so it was a learning process for me getting into technology and how to build a technology based business. I spent a lot of time reading and talking to people to try to catch up. And being released from prison, I was behind in a lot of ways especially with everything that was going on in the world. It just took a lot of time talking and getting different mentors and receiving feedback. The first version was very basic, but it was able to do the one thing we wanted it to do. Upload and send photos. Then we just continued to build from that. Once we had the product on the market we focused on the fundamentals of the business. 

N.N. : Were you already thinking about a tech start-up during the time you were incarcerated? 

F.H. : No, not at all. I wasn’t thinking about any particular business in general. It was more so, I knew I wanted to create my own opportunity rather than rely on someone to give me an opportunity. That was really my main motivation. 

N.N. : How did you go about discovering that there was a demand in this field? 

F.H. : It was really from seeing, as well as, experiencing how difficult it can be. I really built the company out of my own experience. A real problem needed to be solved and that’s were I placed my focus. Especially because I understood it . 

N.N. : What can we expect from Pigeonly in 2019? 

F.H. : A few things that we are tackling now is continuing to organize criminal justice data that can be used for the benefit of the community in general. Helping people to find their loved ones, how to deal with things like bail, and how to find an attorney etc. Just helping people overall. Secondly, making it easier to for individual to send money to their loved ones without paying fees. That’s one of our core values, making it easy and low-cost to keep in touch. We see the direct correlation between an inmate that is able to maintain support from the outside world and they’re almost two times more likely to be successful. And those are the things we’re most focused on. 

Hutson has managed to create an amazing tech venture that targets a need within the criminal justice system. He’s bridging a gap with advancements in technology that will help the success rates & statistics of life during and after prison.

Keep Up With Fredrick Hutson on Instagram click here

Also, be sure to visit www.pigeonly.com