Flock Safety

\Before launching Flock, I had built two companies in entirely different fields: mobile ticketing and vehicle subscription. I had been an entrepreneur since I was in school, and I knew my skills lay in business-building, but when thinking about what I would do next, I kept landing on a conviction to do something that tangibly changed communities. At the same time, my metro Atlanta neighborhood was targeted by a rash of property crimes – home and vehicle break ins.  Our neighbors reported the crime to local law enforcement, only to learn that there were very limited avenues to investigate. In fact, due to a lack of investigative evidence, over 80% of property crime is never solved.There was a clear gap in the market, left unfilled by ineffectual alarm systems and expensive, outdated traditional security cameras. As an electrical engineer, I was able to envision an affordable, elegant solution to solving crime that would bring together communities, businesses and law enforcement in the mission of improving safety. \My belief was simple: With the right team, technology, and policies, we could actually not only solve, but eliminate crime. I recruited two former colleagues who I trusted and who shared my vision for building better communities, and we jumped into building Flock.

From the moment we started Flock Safety, we had an incredibly clear, boldly audacious mission. This wouldn’t be a company that focused on nice-to-haves, or that helped other businesses cut costs or generate leads. We provide a life-or-death product, a mission-critical system for cities, that dramatically changes a community for the better. I viewed leading this company as a privilege, but also a real burden and responsibility. In the early days, when considering a partner that would help us build this kind of generational company, we saw Y Combinator as the organization that could dramatically increase the odds of our vision coming true. It hit home during YC when we heard that we had helped police in our hometown of Atlanta solve the first crime with Flock Safety devices. We knew from that moment that this idea was not just an abstraction — Flock was going to work. Throughout YC, the founding team is guided to build their company at as face a pace as is possible, as speed is an undeniable competitive advantage. When Demo Day was over, after we had booked meetings with investors and were well on our way to our first fundraising round, YC set the tone for scaling Flock doggedly, purposefully, and with consistent velocity, for years to come.