A letter from the founder.

Hi, I’m Mike.

By training I’m an engineer. I spent most of two decades in Silicon Valley: Y Combinator startups, leading Android at ClassDojo, which reaches 45 million kids across most of America’s elementary schools, and building on-device AI for heart health at AliveCor, where the machine’s output gets checked because lives depend on it. That habit of trust-but-verify runs through everything Tagaste ships.

Then I struck out on my own, building AI for business communication. It was clever. It even won an award. But I never signed a customer, and honestly, I never really tried. Something in me knew I was chasing vanity, and I spent those years quieting the anxiety in ways I’m not proud of.

In 2018, I nearly died. I put it all down, and for a few years I did the things the near-death made non-negotiable: I made art, I stayed home with my kids, I walked into the Church.

Tagaste is what I came back to build.

Tagaste is named for a small town in North Africa. It is where St. Augustine was born, and where his mother, Monica, spent years praying for a son who wanted nothing to do with it. She didn’t lecture him into the faith. She stayed close, and she wept to God instead of at her son, and God did the rest in His own time. That story is the company’s thesis: give love a form the beloved will actually receive, then leave them free.

Today we are building the largest structured record of Catholic parish life in the world, an AI receptionist that answers parish phones, and tools that read bulletins and keep parish websites current. It is the boring, load-bearing work of parish operations. We think the most reverent thing AI can do for the Church right now is answer the phone and get the Mass times right.

You should know the motive, since you’d wonder anyway. Tagaste is a business. It needs to work as one, and I want the money and the mission pointed in the same direction. A priest once gave me two words for ambition: magnanimity and humility. Build big because the work is good. Keep the credit pointed at the Giver.

Tagaste is small and founder-led, and I think that works in your favor. There is no sales department and no phone tree. When you write, the reply comes from someone who built the thing you’re asking about. If you run a parish and any of this sounds like your Tuesday, I’d like to talk.

Gratefully,
Mike Chang
Founder, Tagaste Labs · Danville, California
[email protected]