Founder Spotlight: Taylor Nieman (Toucan)

Company name: Toucan

Company blurb: Chrome extension for learning a new language while browsing the web.

Company website: https://jointoucan.com/dashboard/settings

Company headquarters: Los Angeles, CA

Founder’s hometown: Hermosa Beach, CA

Founder fun fact: I played Division 1 volleyball in college.

Why did you decide to start your company? We wanted to help people find a way to learn something new every single day. Instead of trying to compete for time, we intentionally layer on top of existing behaviors like browsing the web.

What is one thing that you want people to know about your company? Toucan is a Google Chrome browser extension that helps people learn a new language as they browse the web. We offer Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese at the moment, and will be releasing Korean and Japanese very soon!

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Yes, even when I was younger, I knew that I wanted to build my own business. I have always been bringing my ideas to life since I was young.

What is one piece of advice you’d like to pass on to new founders? Start as small as possible. The first version of Toucan was so ugly that it was beautiful but we launched it the day we had the idea in order to get feedback from strangers.