Frederick Hutson is an American businessman and founder of Pigeonly, a technology company that enables people to search, find and communicate with an incarcerated loved one. Hutson launched and sold his first business at the age of 19 while on active duty in the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

Early life

Frederick Hutson grew up in Brooklyn, NY with a single mother and three siblings. He moved to

St. Petersburg, Florida St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 258,308, making it the fifth-most populous city in Florida and the second-largest city in the Tampa Bay Area, after Tampa. It is the ...

, where he attended Brandon High School. He then served in the US Air Force where he worked on jet engines at the Nellis Air Force Base as an electrician. During his time in the Air Force he launched and ran several businesses, including a window-tinting business that made about $50,000 when he was 19. He was honorably discharged in 2005 after the base began downsizing, and eventually turned his business efforts to sending marijuana through the parcel companies. The business netted approximately $500,000 annually. Hutson was arrested by the

DEA The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; ) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within the U.S. It is the lead agency for domestic enf ...

, and Hutson served a sentence of 51 months beginning in 2007 at the age of 23, The indictment was for shipping approximately 2 tons of marijuana, accepting

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...

from Mexico and shipping it to Florida. He was released in 2012 to a half-way house.

Pigeonly

While in prison Hutson encountered the difficulty that American inmates have with communicating with their family and friends outside of the institution and developed an idea for delivering communications for individuals residing in prison. After leaving prison he founded a company, Pigeonly, which prints out electronic communications for prisoners and mails them through the postal system to them in order to be better accepted by the prison system. His business venture was accepted in the incubators ''Y Combinator'' and ''NewMe''. The enterprise was cofounded in 2013 with Alfonzo Brooks, whom had employed Hutson during his final year in prison when Hutson was admitted to a work-release program. Hutson currently serves as the company’s CEO. By 2015 the company had forwarded around a million pieces of mail and facilitated about eight million minutes of telephone calls.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hutson, Frederick Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American chief executives American technology company founders People from Brooklyn American art collectors