While juggling engineering studies with being captain of the football team, Taran Lent was also running a company that allowed college students to use pre-paid cards in college-town eateries, something absolutely new in the late 90s. Forgoing offers at big consulting firms to go all in on his business, he ended up building enterprise-wide payment processing systems that were ahead of their time and ultimately, for the most part, paid off. Find out how somtimes you just need to pay attention to see how you can make things better and more efficient.
Guest Taran Lent, Dartmouth '96, knew he wanted to study engineering, even if he didn't see himself becoming an engineering. Learning how to scope a problem, build a toolkit of tactics and encyclopedia of methodologies, and solve real-world problems appealed to him. As he juggled the coursework and his role as captain of the varsity football team, he found a way to put the engineering mindset to action: He approached a slew of Hanover-area eateries—including the old favorites EBA's, Panda House, Lou's—and built a system that allowed college students to use pre-paid cards in college town eateries, something absolutely new in the late 90s. When corporate recruiting found him with a number of offers at the big consulting firms, he decided to turn them down and to go all in on his business.
In time, the business grew beyond Hanover to other campuses and Taran's company also took over Dartmouth College’s on-campus card system. When he realized he could solve problems at scale, he ended up building enterprise-wide payment processing systems that were ahead of their time and that ultimately paid off.
In this episode, find out from Taran how somtimes you just need to pay attention to see how you can make things better and more efficient...on today's ROADS TAKEN with met....on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Taran Lent has been building and operating payment technology companies his entire professional career from the Hanover Green Card back in the day to his current role as Vice President of Product Development at Transact Campus. When he's not processing your tuition payments, he enjoys windsurfing and spending time with his wife and two kids and extended family in Texas.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Taran Lent: There was a moment where I had to have a really hard conversation with my dad. Hey, I'm not going to take any of those job offers. I'm going to go stay with this little startup company. And my dad said, are you sure? He said, you went to this great college. You got this degree, you have all these job offers. And I said, “Dad, I'm not qualified to consult anybody on anything.”
Leslie Jennings Rowley: While juggling engineering studies with being captain of the football team to ran land was also running a company out of his dorm room that allowed college students to use prepaid cards for meals in college town, eateries, just as they did in the dining halls, something absolutely new in the late 90s. Foregoing offers at big consulting firms to go all in on his business, he ended up building enterprise wide payment processing systems that were ahead of their time and ultimately, for the most part, paid off. Find out how sometimes you just need to pay attention to see how you can make things better and more efficient on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
So I'm here today with Taran Lent and we are going to talk about paying dues and getting the payouts and what you learn along the way. So, Taran, we start this the same way every time: When we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
TL: That's a great question. I think my blood ran green from the day I arrived on the Hanover plains. You know, I grew up in Colorado. I love the mountains. I love skiing. So when I came to Dartmouth, it just resonated with me…you know, the Connecticut River Valley and the green mountains. So I felt at home in Hanover from the day I arrived and obviously the Dartmouth Outing Club trip, just to kick off the experience just..
LJR: Which is where we met
TL: ..Where you and I met. And it was just, I couldn't imagine a better, more adventurous start to college. So I felt at home and I felt very comfortable there. I got off to a great start. You know, my freshman year roommates became fast friends. And in fact, Sean Mogan, who was my roommate and we, you know, we're still best friends to this day and best man at each other's weddings.
And I arrived on campus early, before a lot of other people did because I was an athlete. I played football at Dartmouth all four years and was captain my senior year. And so I kind of was just thrust into a pretty busy schedule, you know, early on, but loved it. So I just was there and I was excited to learn.
I was excited to be surrounded by a bunch of talented students. Interesting people. I had no idea who I wanted to be, but I just knew I was in the right place.
LJR: Yeah. And so you found your place not only on the fields, but within engineering.
TL: The beginning that I wanted to do engineering, I just always loved math and I loved applied science. And to me, engineering more than anything was about solving problems and kind of solving problems without being resourceful, not, you know, kind of solving them without boundary. And, and I knew that that was gonna, I knew I was going to do engineering from the day I arrived on campus. I didn't know for sure I'd be an engineer, but I knew I wanted an engineering degree.
LJR: Right. So as you were getting ready to leave, what did it feel like your options were at that point?
TL: I think my story is pretty interesting here. You might recall that when I was an undergraduate, I had started a company called the Hanover Green Card, and that was the service where we recruited all the merchants in town. Panda House, EBA’s, Lou’s. And we made it so students could spend money off campus. And, you know, we made it easy to get money from home from mom and dad. And it's kind of a ridiculous story. You know, we, we had no technology at the time. We did it all with paper slips. And so people don't know, but I was doing engineering.
I was doing football practice. In my free time, I was riding around on a bike, collecting sales slips from merchants, entering them into a computer, paying the merchants and doing that. So I had a little business that we ran, you know, for a couple of years there and you know, it grew, it started with, you know, 40 card holders and 10 merchants.
And in our second year of operation, we had, you know, over a thousand card holders and 60 merchants, and we did, you know, 2- or 300,000 transactions. And so I was spending all my time, collecting paper slips. And so that's why maybe a lot of people didn't see me junior and senior.
LJR: You were busy.
TL: I was doing computer science and engineering. You know, one of the things that we did is we built this transaction system. We built the terminals that we put on the counters of the merchants. We built a system and would process the transactions and pay the merchants. And so when I graduated, what was the really interesting moment was, you know, I graduated with honors and engineering. Was heavily recruited by McKinsey and Bain and Anthony Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting, I guess it was, and had some really great job offers. And there was a moment where I had to have a really hard conversation with my dad. My dad, who had really helped—my mom and dad, but my, primarily my dad—the conversations with of, Hey, I'm not going to take any of those job offers. I'm going to go stay with this little startup company. And we didn't have that much money in the bank. And I couldn't pay myself. I paid myself enough to pay for rent and, you know, basic living. And my dad said, are you sure? He said, you went to this great college, you got this degree, you have all these job offers.
And, and I said, dad, I'm not qualified to consult anybody on anything. And I said, if I go run this business, even if it fails, at least I'll be more qualified to consult somebody on how to operate a business. And he kind of agreed with that logic and he was supportive. And so I declined all my job offers and I stayed in Hanover and kept working on, you know, the business plan around Hanover Green Card and how we could grow it and expand it to other schools.
And so what was great for me is when I graduated, I stayed in the community. And I got to see the, you know, the Dartmouth community from a different perspective as a resident of the community versus a student. And I really enjoyed that, that period of period of time.
LJR: Yeah. Can we go back for a second Taran? And so when you started your sentence by saying, I had to have this hard conversation, I actually thought you were going to say with yourself. But by the time you got to your dad, it sounded like you, sounds like you had already had that hard conversation with yourself, or maybe it wasn't so hard. Was it really coming from a place of like lack of, I don't really feel like I'm ready for these things or was it more in your heart of, I just have to see if this is going to work? What, what was it that got you to that, to be able to have that conversation with your dad?
TL: One of the great traits that all entrepreneurs have is they're naive, right. If I knew how hard it was going to be and what it was going to take, I would never, ever have done it. And the reality was I was already committed.
You know, we already, you know, there was there's myself and another Dartmouth alum that we are doing this and we. We had committed and we couldn't turn back. You know, we, people were relying on us. We had customers, we had merchants that dependent on it. We had students, you know, customers that depended on it.
That's what's great is sometimes when you're young and you have no responsibility and no burden. You can do something like that and you're committed and you can't turn back and you have no choice, but to see it through. So I don't think I had the luxury of the internal conversation really, that train had left the station, you know, years before.
And it was really just telling my dad that, Hey, look, I'm doing this. And I hope you still love me.
LJR: Yeah. So there you are in Hanover. Most of us have left you, but you were developing this community and a different kind of relationship with the college as a client almost. Right? So walk us through those first few years and then what happens with the business.
TL: Yeah, so I, you know, it was great. It almost felt like it was a good psychological transition. I didn't have to go, you know, kind of a, a hard cut from Dartmouth. We graduated. I got an apartment in Norwich, Vermont across the river. I came to campus every day. I developed a lot of friendships with, 97s and 98s. I learned about that there's this whole parallel universe with Tuck and other graduate students. And so I got kind of plugged into that whole social community. One of the things I did that was really fun is I also became the color commentator for Dartmouth football on the radio station.
And that was a really great way to stay connected with the school and the football program. And so I got to travel to all the away games. I'm pretty sure that I might have a record. I think I went to 80 consecutive Dartmouth football games, either as a player or as a radio commentator. And even that was fun to see. You know, the, the team from a different perspective to be up in the press box. And, and obviously I still have friends on the team and it was, it was fun to cheer them on. And obviously that next year they had a perfect season. They went 10 and 0, which was a really nice historic accomplishment, but that was just a really fun time of life.
I had graduated. I was living on my own, was making enough money that I could at least survive and, pay for the basics. And we were building a business and it was a really fun four years, to kind of enjoy Dartmouth from that.
LJR: And the business was booming.
TL: Yeah. The business was booming. I became known as the Hanover Green Card guy, which I wouldn't say was the most flattering nickname, but what was interesting is what happened with Dartmouth College. You know, we, we were just this off-campus program and Dartmouth College came to us one day and they had a problem. They had a long-time administrator who ran the on-campus start with card program that did all the dining on campus and the doors and laundry, vending, copy. She retired and what they realized is that she had done everything in her head. There was no, nothing documented in terms of process, procedures. Nobody knew how to operate the system. So Dartmouth kind of came to us in a pinch and said, Hey, can you guys help us run the on-campus program? And I was like, well, maybe. And we, I went to some training school to figure out how the system works and, and they said, as long as you're going to run the off campus program, why don't we merge off campus so it's not some separate thing? Let's just make it part of the Dartmouth Card. So students can use it both on campus and around campus.
And so we kind of stumbled into this opportunity where we became, you know, we were managing this big enterprise system for Dartmouth College and we added this whole new dimension of the program, letting students use it, you know, kind of in the community, which we thought was great because it makes the community part of the college experience, which— especially with a quaint college town like Hanover—was a great thing.
And that's really when the light bulb went off. We said, Hey, this is a model that we can actually scale and take to other colleges. And that's really what we were spending our time on. So, you know, we were in our early twenties and then we had to learn how to raise money. Of course, we didn't know how to do that.
And we started talking to investors and angel investors and VCs. And I remember one time we took an investor to the Hanover Inn to have a serious meeting, and I ordered a drink and I was still getting carded.
LJR: This is a business meeting, could you not?
TL: Did not impress the investors, but we were ultimately able to raise some money and we took our idea and we grew it to more colleges. If you kind of fast forward, we ultimately grew it to about 300 universities across the country. And we sold the business in 1999 and, and it was kind of neat that it actually had worked out, you know, there's no, you know,
At that point my dad came back to me. And so that was, that turned out to be a pretty good decision for him.
LJR: Right. Exactly, but you couldn't stay out of that industry, right? So talk us through the next steps for you.
TL: So, yeah. So it turns out that I'm kind of a one-trick pony.
LJR: No. You’re a color commentator. You're an enterprise systems developer. You have lots of things. You're a dad, you're in everything.
TL: But at this point I need, I need more friends like you. That makes me feel pretty good. You know, what, what it is is, you know, again, you just kind of stumble from one thing to the next, like, I, you know, I can't say I had some master plant, you know. We sold our company to a company called Student Advantage.
Student Advantage was a pretty small company. It actually was, the CEO and founder was another Dartmouth alum. Ray Sozzi. And we were a small little company there, but we, we built that. And that was a, that was an interesting, that was a college kind of marketing company. The idea was pretty simple. It was kind of like AARP for college students: You know you pay an annual fee, you get this membership card, and you get discounts nationally with, you know, airline companies, Amtrak, bookstores.
And we took this little idea and we grew it to about a million students, you know, nationwide. And it became kind of this national student membership and we grew the company to about 500 people. We took it public on the NASDAQ. This is kind of in the late nineties. And we thought we were on top of the world and doing all these amazing things and…
Then, you know, then the internet bubble came along and burst and we weren't really an internet company per se, but we kind of got caught up in that and I call it the most expensive MBA, you know, that you can have. Right. Because ultimately what happened is the company was overleveraged and we couldn't survive the bursting of the bubble.
And it was a really great education, like it was a really tough time because it was the first big failure I would say. But what I realized is how much you learn when things don't go right. You know, you kind of learn, especially in business that, you know, you gotta always stay close to fundamentals.
There's certain, no matter how crazy the world's getting and how they're valuing things, you need a business that can organically sustain itself. And because the world can change in an instant. Right. And I think that was a really, really valuable lesson that I carried with me into my next business, which, was another college kind of payments-focused company.
But to answer your question about why I kept doing it, so these things kind of led one thing led to the next, but for me, what I really love about what I do is I'm helping colleges operate and educate more efficiently. And this is something you can kind of feel good about, like helping the education system perform better is something that it's kind of a worthwhile thing to focus your energy on.
The other thing that I love about it is just, I've never lost the rhythm of college. College has a rhythm to it. It's got a cycle of renewal, you know, you have your semesters and your quarters, you've got your holiday breaks. And so I feel like I've never got out of the college rhythm and I just enjoy that.
And if you think about what we do, students are awesome because they're tech savvy, they're early adopters. Colleges are open to new ideas. And so you can take new ideas and you can bring them to critical mass really quickly. And this little college ecosystem that's there and students are dealing with mobile and there, you know, there's payments involved. And there's kind of this convergence of all these cool technologies that we read about kind of in the greater world. But, you know, you can combine it all to bring, you know, create experiences for college students. So I think you make a difference. So I've really never had a reason to look elsewhere.
So I've just kind of said, Hey, what am I going to do next? It's in this space. And you know, and it's one thing that's led to the next.
LJR: Yeah. And where you are now, Taran, is it a company that you helped build or have you joined something else that was established?
TL: So the next part of the story is, in 2003, this light bulb went off for me because if you think about how this was all working, every college had this transaction system on the ground, on the campus and they had people that were operating it. I said, is that really the most efficient model that really makes sense for every school to have their own system and their own team. And I looked at how banking works and that's not how banking works in banking. There's three or four big national data processors that power the entire credit card system.
And I said, why wouldn't we do that same thing for universities? Why wouldn't we have a big platform in the cloud? The cloud wasn't even a term. This is in 2003, but we said, Oh, you're not on the ground. And that was the idea. And so I started a company in 2003 called CardSmith and that was the idea. And we said, can we build a system in the cloud that could serve all the colleges in the country so that schools don't have to have all these systems. And so, you know, can we create an economy of scale? And so we built this system and we got our first handful of clients and it actually worked and we found out there was a market for it because when you do it that way you can do it for less than you can do it better. And we were able to centralize a lot of the functions.
And so, you know, schools could focus their resources on their core mission while we were helping to provide this service to their campus. We grew that company from 2003 to 2014, and we grew it to about 400 colleges across the country. And then we sold that company in 2014 to a company called Blackboard, which is a big online learning company.
And they also had a similar business. We had been kind of moving up the food chain. And we were starting to steal a lot of their big customers and they came to us and wave the white flag and said, Hey, why don't we join forces? And so in 2014, we sold our company to Blackboard and I worked at Blackboard from 2014.
And then we, just about a year ago, the business unit that I ran at Blackboard got spun out. We got acquired by a private equity company, and we got spun out and the name of that company I'm with now is Transact. And Transact does a lot of the same things. We provide systems to colleges to help manage their operations and manage all the transactions happen everyday on campus.
The other business that we got into that's pretty interesting is we do online tuition payment processing. So we're the nation's largest processor of online tuition payments. So if you have a student in school and you go to a website and need to look at your student bill and pay it online, we do that.
And we do that for about 1300 institutions across the country. What's funny about the story is how could I have imagined that when I signed up Panda House for this crazy idea that we had, that it would lead all these years later to creating and managing enterprise software for a big chunk of the higher education.
LJR: Yeah, you couldn't. So there was a little bit of, there was no business plan, but there's kind of a, let's see where this goes, which as you said, you kind of need that naivete as a young person. Like, well, it'll just it'll turn into something. He might not have seen how big it can be.
TL: And I would give Dartmouth a lot of credit because if you go back to the comment I made earlier, I knew I wanted to do engineering as a major, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be an engineer. I think I knew I wanted to be in business. And I think I knew that engineering would give me the skills to solve problems, whatever they were. And I would say it's served me incredibly well. It’s just that problem-solving methodology. When you are building companies and you're running teams, there's always challenges.
And the question is, Hey, what is your methodology to understand the problem, break it down and, you know, come up with solutions that are going to work. So I think back to it all the time, I think of the different labs that we did in engineering and, and the projects my classmates and I worked on, I think that really prepared me well for, you know, the career and the career path I ended up going down.
Yeah, that story is my story. Sounds good. The way I told it, what I will, what I didn't share with you is there were moments along the way where I was not sure I made the right choice. So when I saw my friends in investment banking or in consulting, reaching really incredible levels of success at that point, it was still a grind for me.
You know, there being, there was a lot of times in my career where I was just barely getting by economically and it was quite common for me to pay my employees more than I was able to pay myself and life was hard. And then I would look at some of my Dartmouth friends that had been really successful—there's doctors or lawyers or whatever—and say, did I really make the right choice?
Did I, am I really taking advantage of my education and my talent? And so there was a lot of self-doubt at different points along the way. And the one thing I'll tell you by the way is this is when it's really important to have a great partner in your life. So my wife I think believed in me it's certain chemo it's more than I believed in myself and she supported me and she said, it's okay; we have all we need. And that let me kind of continue down the path. But I will say being, you know, graduating from Dartmouth and seeing what everybody's doing, you don't always know for sure. Hey, did I really make the right choice?
But I would say looking back now, I feel really good about the path, but I had self doubts along the way, for sure.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's so, it's so interesting because that word success can be so limiting or our view of it can be so limiting because we often equate it with money and don't actually put into that equation okay, but what are some of those guys giving up to have that money? And the things being given up, do they really mean it's successful?
TL: Right. So I think, and I think my rationalization at some point, which was kind of the key moment was I'm really enjoying what I'm doing. I'm challenged, I'm learning a lot. I have a good work-life balance. You know, I loved it when I was still working at Hanover, I would work really hard, crazy hours, but I would in the early afternoon, oftentimes go jump out and get on my mountain bike, go ride the Appalachian trail, enjoy sunset, football games. Like, yeah, I was like, my life is good. I have enough to get by and so at some point you have to say, Hey, that's what's making me happy. And then if you get success on top of that, then that's just kind of bonus. And so, but those thoughts were definitely going through my mind of, Hey, am I doing the right thing? And look, I did want to make my parents proud, too. You know, that was important to me. And they supported me and they kind of gave me permission to go do this unconventional thing.
By the way, one other story: This is funny about all this. I've never actually applied for a job and I didn't have a resume. And I oftentimes thought to myself, you know, nobody, how many people even know I went to Dartmouth and do they even care I have a Dartmouth degree? Because I've actually never applied for a job or interviewed in my entire career. And so that’s just a funny little quirk of kind of the path that I went down.
LJR: Right. But it doesn't make that experience and that degree, any less valuable that somebody doesn't know it, right?
TL: Absolutely. I mean, again, it's the people, you know, the friends that are rooting for you. And I think with the gift Dartmouth gave to all of us is the passion for self-learning and continuous improvement. And so if you take that away from your college experience, like you're, basically you're going to be successful. It just not, it just may not be the way that your 20 year old self thinks you’re going to be successful.
LJR: Exactly, exactly. Or, or even how you think other people are defining success. But you've been a great success and I love this conversations.
You said, and I think part in jest, that you are a one-trick pony, but you do have a life outside of work. So tell a little bit about kind of what your life has been like. Does football still play in there? I know you have two boys.
TL: No, the, those, those days are long over. I love, I still love the outdoors. So when I was living back East, you know, being from Colorado skiing was just a big part of my life for many, many years. So when I moved to Texas, so obviously skiing is not, there's not pain down here. And so wind surfing became the new activity. It's phenomenal. I just love this idea that you're on a surf board out in the water and the wind. And you're in kind of in commune with nature. Requires some athletic skill, but it also requires some science and knowledge of the wind, which I didn't have any of that when I started. So it was a pretty, pretty rough process to learn. And then obviously we're, we're really focused on just our kids, you know, the sports and activities they're involved in. And, one of the reasons I moved to Texas by the way is my mom and dad retired here. And so this is kinda how we got to become familiar with the community. And it's been really nice to live close to family after all these years. And it'd be close to home and spend time having family dinners each week and all that.
LJR: Yeah. Excellent. Well, these roads, I think you're right. You couldn't have predicted them, but it sounds like you're exactly on path and we'll see where the next phase takes you. It's just, it's been great catching up and hearing your story.
TL: Yeah, I appreciate. It's really great to see you. And I just will say, it's just, it's awesome what you're doing. So I love hearing all the stories and I find it to be inspirational and I'm really proud of what our classmates have done and the impact, all of our friends have had in the world.
It's cool to be part of that. And people say, when you go to Dartmouth, it's not just the education, it's the network you build. And this is really a cool forum that you've created to help kind of bridge this all together in this new way.
LJR: Well, I, I think it's been great, but it also, these are even more global themes that we're hearing that everybody can take a little bit away from it. So thanks so much for sharing and being a part of it.
TL: You're welcome.
LJR: That was Taran Lent, who's been building an operating payment technology companies his entire professional career from the Hanover Green Card back in the day to his current role as vice president of product development at Transact Campus. When he's not processing your tuition payments, he enjoys windsurfing and spending time with his wife and two kids and extended family in Texas. As Taran said, hearing the stories of our classmates has been inspiring. And here's a note for all Dartmouth 96s: check your email and class social accounts for a number of online mini reunion opportunities this spring.
I also want to say that I appreciate all of our listeners, regardless of the roads that brought you here. Please continue to spread the word about the stories you hear on this podcast and send new listeners to RoadsTakenShow.com or to all the podcast platforms to follow us and join me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on more episodes of Roads Taken.