Anna Redmond 10:51
Yeah, so the drive was always there. I think I just felt this fascination with entrepreneurship. And it’s this interesting dynamic. And I’ll say this about venture, when the entrepreneur needs the venture capitalists, it’s sort of the relationship is the venture capitalists kind of leading and an entrepreneur is sort of following a little bit, and then very quickly, that reverses right? When you have a big success. It’s the entrepreneur that wins big and the venture capitalist wins, but not quite as big. So it’s an interesting power dynamic. And I think everyone that sees it as like, man, I want to be the entrepreneur with a huge win.
So you know, I decided that I wanted to take the leap and was kind of looking for the right opportunity. Before that I had exited venture, gotten married, had my first child, and spent two years studying acupuncture. So I had those quarter-life things of exploring. And I think that kind of set me up to be in the right risk-taking mindset and meet the right co-founder. We launched HIPPO Reads with this vision to really bring academia into business. And the way that we did that is we created thought leadership platforms for Fortune 500s. And in many cases, we connected them with academics working on research that supports the thesis of the business, and helped them publish and get PR for their articles.
And we ran with that for about six years, leading up into the pandemic, by which point PR had shifted, there was a difference in how people were consuming that kind of content. And we sort of saw the writing on the wall, made a business shift and brought in a new leader. And that kind of left me back at the starting gate in terms of do I want to go build a new business or not? Yeah.
John Corcoran 12:50
And you actually wrote an article in Fast Company about why you chose to bootstrap HIPPO Reads, instead of investing, you’d actually you’d been in venture capital. So take us through that. Why’d you decide to bootstrap it?
Anna Redmond 13:08
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I learned in venture is you want to come in with a strong story. And with HIPPO Reads, it felt like there was so much we could do on our own, that it was easier and simpler and smarter, kind of to reverse it and to go build it, create the need, bring on the customers and then decide, hey, are we good as we are? Or do we need to go raise money to take this to the next level? And so I think that’s what I was really trying to say with the article that, especially for people that have never built a business before. The first thought now tends to be okay, I need to get investors and raise money. And it’s certainly harder to do it the other way around. But I think you retain so much more control over your own destiny.
John Corcoran 13:54
So let’s get to Braav. Braav came about because you had a friend who unfortunately was going through some kind of personal security situation, and you were never a good place to be at having to help a friend find a security guard, but you found that you had to call around to different security offices. And here it is. I don’t know what year it was. But, you know, it was the point where you shouldn’t have to do that. Right.
Anna Redmond 14:22
Yeah, I mean, so super close friend was going through a really ugly divorce and hearing about it, I was so worried for her and I was like, man, I want to surprise her with like just get someone there, a human being that can take her through this very difficult and challenging moment of her life and be there to make it better or safer and give her confidence. And at that moment, I was like, man, this has to be easy because I know that I can book a photographer online and they could have a nail technician come to my house in an hour. I can, you know, we can go book DoorDash, or an Uber, it’s so simple. And I looked and looked and within security is the interesting thing.
And by this point, I’ve spent years in the space. It really is an industry that has not focused on the customer service technology that’s transformed other industries. And they’ve been tech forward when it relates to security technology, when it relates to cameras and lasers and tasers. And you know, how do you secure the perimeter and what does access control look like? But the communication with clients has really been in a very problematic state. And what’s interesting is that, you know, this was true, gosh, four or five years ago, and it’s equally true today that I talked to so many security buyers, both on the consumer and on the business side who say, you know, if I have an urgent security need, I have to be on the phone or personal assistant has to be on the phone, trying to reach someone that could possibly fill that need.
And that really launched us. I think that was the first insight that really informed what we’re building at Braav. And then as I began to learn more and dig and understand the landscape, the secondary insight, which now informs how we’ve shaped our products, is that it’s also complicated and confusing in addition to the fact that it’s hard to get security. And so we think of ourselves as the easy button for security. If you’re a buyer, and you don’t really know, do I need two guards? Or 20? Do I need an access control system? Or do I just need to lock the door? You can come to us and we can help make sense of all of that seamlessly and fractionally.
John Corcoran 16:51
And that’s one of the pieces that you offer as a fractional chief security officer type of role. And it’s not just for, you know, the spouse who’s going through an ugly divorce. But it’s also obviously going after companies which have more ongoing security needs.
Anna Redmond 17:07
Exactly. And in fact, most of our clients right now are businesses. And we anticipate bringing on more consumer clients, mainly because there’s so much crossover. And I’ll give you an example. We had a company reach out to us with a last-minute hostile termination. And they really at the 11th hour decided they felt uncomfortable enough, some set of circumstances that occurred and they needed security. We had four hours notice basically, and within four hours, we were able to staff not just security for their office, but also for the home of one of the senior people at the company who they had identified as needing that extra support. And so you know, clearly that was a business need. But that was a very personal experience, because he had someone in front of his home, who wrote a really, really lovely set of feedback for us in terms of how that made him feel how there was basically a sea level change and the comfort. And so the offer and the option for him next time when he needs personal security is to want to come back to that same trusted provider.
John Corcoran 18:17
Now, I’m curious. Normally, when you have an idea or concept for a new business idea, one of the best things to do is just go out and talk to potential customers and ask them about their needs. But in the case of security, you can’t exactly call up companies and individuals and say, how do you do your security? Like, it just doesn’t seem like something that people are going to be talking about? So how did you get into that conversation? How did you even investigate? Like, what are the pain points in this industry? How can I help
Anna Redmond 18:48
You would be surprised. First I think people were much more willing to talk and they were willing to talk because their pain points were so dramatic. I talked to so many people that basically signaled, look, there is a product market mismatch between what’s out there and what I want to buy. And what I think I want to buy doesn’t seem to exist. And that bit that didn’t seem to exist for them was, you know, how do I even figure out what I need? Can you make that piece really easy and simple for me?
And then can you make it really easy and simple for me to get it? And when we looked at the landscape, we saw, you know, companies over here who were very happy to sell you camera systems, but someone would show up and be like, okay, what kind of camera system? Where do you want me to put the cameras? Do you want them to have talk downs or not? How many frames a second do you want? How often do you want them to be erased? And the client was sort of like, really overwhelmed like, I don’t know, like I think I need more information than that. And the same sort of is true for guards or for any sort of other monitoring. So what we ultimately wanted to do in our conversations is understand, the thing that we asked the most that I think really yielded great insight is, you know, what do you want? Like, if we could give you anything, what is it that you’d want to have? And that’s what helped us figure out how to build.
John Corcoran 20:15
Yeah. Now one of the things and why we originally connected was the idea of integrating AI into the platform. And that’s one thing that you’ve been really focused on, I actually interviewed Dave Selinger. A while back, who’s the founder of a company called Deep Sentinel, that was using AI to identify through security. And so it’s really an area that is ripe for opportunity and to improve outcomes. So talk a little bit about some of the different ways in which you’re integrating AI into the platform.
Anna Redmond 20:51
Sure, so I think I’m a massive AI fan, in general, for my personal life, right? I think I shared with you, I’m constantly like, what keeps me up at night is the fact that I’m probably not using AI enough. And like, man, there’s a tool out there somewhere that would make this so much easier and faster. So my husband constantly sees me scrolling Twitter for like, oh, and flagging all of these AI cases. But I think what’s interesting to me is sometimes the simplest uses can be really impactful. And a case in point for that is the reporting that security officers will do for clients. And typically, that looks like you know, if nothing’s happening, you know, did a perimeter check, everything’s fine, walked around the building, everything’s fine. And then if something has happened, and it’s not always some big crazy thing, it can be like, you know, a light bulb in the hallway on the third floor is broken, called maintenance to let them know, or showed up and found broken beer bottles by the back door, you know, swept up what I could put in a ticket for, you know, whatever, the sort of usual stuff. And the thing that’s really interesting about this is that folks that are in security, can have incredible security backgrounds can be absolutely 150%, the most qualified person for the job that’s needed. But at the same time can both dislike report writing, and, you know, not be fantastic at it. And when I say not fantastic, that’s, you know, potentially some spelling or grammar errors, potentially some formatting that looks wonky, that’s not their core skill set. And that’s not really what they’re trained to do. So what we’re experimenting with in our new app that’s launching is allowing security guards to just speak into the phone and allow them to dictate exactly what they want to report on. And then feeding all of that back through ChatGPT, or something similar, and then having them okay what it spits out. And what we’re finding is that it’s such an easy transformation, and then take something that could be, you know, a little convoluted, not really looking sharp into a really fantastic looking report instantly, that’s easier for the customer to read and looks more professional. So I’m really excited about that. I think the other piece that we’re building is a conversation with post orders in natural language. And what that means is, so post orders are what it sounds like, it’s what the security professionals are supposed to do when they’re at a post. And it outlines everything.
John Corcoran 23:35
The route they walk or something.
Anna Redmond 23:37
The route they walk, the phone numbers, in case of emergencies. Protocols, if an employee’s supposed to check in with a badge, and, you know, huffing and puffing and saying, I swear I have it, but I forgot my badge. I just, I just don’t have it today. You know, I’m Sam, you remember me, right? And so it lays all of that out. And right now, it’s embarrassing, as sometimes it’s just like a digitized document, but I have been to so many prospective client offices and existing client offices where it’s literally in a binder. And if they need it, they grab the binder, hopefully they can find it. And then they flip through it, and they try to scroll and they find whatever it is that they need to remind themselves of. So much easier if that can be input into an AI and they can just use natural language to say, hey, you know, a guy forgot his ID. What are my three steps?
John Corcoran 24:30
Yeah. Not to mention, like, maybe connections. Maybe ChatGPT could look through like, you know, there’s all these different logs and there’s patterns or something like that that emerges. You could maybe see that there. Something is going on here. Like, why is it that every Thursday of the month, there’s beer bottles in the back door? And it turns out is because someone else who was working at the company is going and drinking after their shift or something weird like that?
Anna Redmond 24:55
No, absolutely. And you know, I’ll tell you something else. One of the huge companies, right? When you have hundreds or thousands of employees, there’s a real concern about workplace violence. And one of the, I don’t know if I would say surprising, at least to me, it was surprising. A source of workplace violence, often is a domestic dispute that bleeds over into the workplace. And so those can be very sad, right? A woman had a fight with a boyfriend, now ex-boyfriend, filed a restraining order, and the next day, he shows up to where she’s working with a weapon of some sort. In those cases, the best practice is absolutely that the company needs to check in with all of its employees and alert them that if they filed any restraining orders, they need to let the company know. And the company should be letting the security guards know, so that when someone checks in, if they see it, someone on that list, they can flag it. And if it’s a huge multinational company, right, maybe that list can be pretty big. And it’s not always just restraining orders. It’s just like these individuals, for whatever reason, shouldn’t be here. That’s so much easier to keep track of with AI or with some sort of intelligent interface. And you would be surprised how many of those things end up slipping through the cracks.
John Corcoran 26:22
Letting the ex boyfriend up to the ninth floor when they weren’t supposed to. Right? Yeah.
Anna Redmond 26:28
And I heard a really sad story from one of my advisors where this exact same thing happened where a woman had left her now ex-boyfriend, and had filed a restraining order. But she wasn’t actually an employee, she was a vendor, she was with the vendor that had come onto the property of a company. And, you know, through that chain, that chain got broken, the company had no idea, their security team had no idea. And so they let the boyfriend on, he had a knife. You know, I think there were no fatalities. But it was a really, really dicey, scary incident.
John Corcoran 27:05
When I hear about someone, first of all, kudos to you for starting a company like this, because it is so important. But also part of me thinks, you know, that it would kind of keep me up at night, if I was doing that. Because the consequences are so great. Just by nature of you know, you’re not selling like a you know, widget or something like that, that has no consequence, you’re selling something, you’re helping to provide security. Now, the goal is to make it so much more reliable and dependable and better than the underlying current status quo that we’ve had. But for you, you know, going into this kind of new industry, is there a part of it that kind of keeps you up at night?
Anna Redmond 27:48
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I think about it more than I used to for sure.
John Corcoran 27:54
Well, for one, you’re like hearing these stories, which can keep you up at night.
Anna Redmond 27:58
Yeah, they’re certainly not the stories that are intended to be comforting. I think that I’m the kind of person where I feel better when I know more, if that makes sense, as opposed to less. And so there’s an and it’s interesting, because this actually extends into, you know, I’ll tell you another story. I talked to a client who was interested in doing some workplace violence training. And they had shared that they had done a training like a year, year and a half ago, and the feedback that she gave me, then this was their, their head of HR. She said, it left us all terrified. Because the trainer had really focused on this vision of what will you do if someone’s here, and they’re pointing a gun at you here, and then you have to do XYZ. And there are more stories like this than I would like to acknowledge. And the worst story I’ve heard, in fact, was a company that did a workplace violence training, where they did not warn any of their employees, and they had a team come on, just to see how people would react.
John Corcoran 29:12
In the middle of the training?
Anna Redmond 29:16
There was no training, it was all just, hey, let’s see how people react and then we’ll train them to be better and, and I think they got sued, rightfully so by the way, it’s very alarming. But to come full circle, I think when I started this company I began to go and take lots of classes myself. Classes for civilians, classes for security professionals. And I’m by no means an expert. But I’ve, you know, I think I’ve at least bitten off the first bite of that. And there were some and this was very interesting to me, some that I took that I walked out of feeling better. And I talked to the instructors about that. And the feedback that I heard from them was very interesting. They said you know, look, you have to empower your students to feel like they have learned something and they can succeed. And it’s a complicated balance to strike. And you have to teach in a way that they’re aware that scary things happen. But because they’ve taken this class or had this training, they’re now better able to deal with them. And they have a plan, as opposed to just sort of burying your head in the sand. And that kind of stuck with me. And I think that that’s the vision that I have for our company. But it’s also my personal vision where it’s like, because I’m aware of it, I think I derive a sense of comfort from it, as opposed to just one more thing to be scared of.
John Corcoran 30:41
That’s good. I guess that allows you to sleep at night. So before we wrap up any other ideas on AI from your Twitter feed or things that you’re going to, you know, put into the platform at some point in the future? Anything else you’re excited about in terms of applications for AI?
Anna Redmond 30:57
Oh, gosh, that’s a good question. I think in terms of our platform, I’m really interested in taking a lot of these chief security officer tasks and using some sort of AI automation, both to decrease client costs and to make the chief security officers jobs easier. I’ll tell you an example of that is today, companies will often do these security assessments at their workspaces that can take hours and hours and can be very expensive.
What we’re exploring building right now is what’s a cheaper version of that that can be done remotely, and there’s a big AI component to looking at camera feeds, analyzing the stack of policies and procedures that they’ve sent. So I think that’s the business use case. And then in terms of the fun use case, you know, I want the AI robot that comes to my house and cleans everything. And I feel like we’re very close to that, right? Like if it can rewrite an article, can’t it talk to the Roomba and be like, hey, Roomba, you missed a spot?
John Corcoran 32:10
Well, the Tesla robot, they released a video a few weeks ago of it folding a t-shirt, so you know, there’s hope.
Anna Redmond 32:18
I’m excited for that. You know, as soon as I have one of those, I’ll be on cloud nine.
John Corcoran 32:23
Me too. There’s loads of people that say it’d be creepy to have some robot guy in the corner, like waiting to power up at three in the morning and do the dishes. But I can’t wait. I can’t wait for that. I have to ask also, kind of related to our discussion previously about your other business. I looked you up on CrunchBase, and no money raised for Braav yet, is that part of the roadmap?
Anna Redmond 32:46
We did, we raised precedes. So we raised a very small amount of money. And it’s funny because we are gearing up for our next raise. And in line with what I said, you know, we’re moving really quickly and loving our progress. And we now have paying customers and so every month I’m like, let’s get a little further before you raise. Let’s just get a little further. So we’re kind of in that boat. But we did. Yeah, we have some fantastic investors, I think for something like this where you are building some tech, that’s a situation where I do think it’s sensible to raise money.
John Corcoran 33:26
Yeah, it becomes necessary, right? Because you have a lot of development costs. Are you excited about going out into those boardrooms or virtual boardrooms if that’s the way it goes these days?
Anna Redmond 33:36
So funny. It depends what story you come in with, right? They always say the worst time to raise money is when you need it. So I’m excited to come in and be like, Look, this is massive. There’s, you know, a billion dollars in revenue that we’re targeting, where there’s all this latent demand. If you come in, you get a piece of it. If you don’t, we’ll make it happen anyway. And more like I’m giving you the opportunity to be a part of this amazing journey.
John Corcoran 34:08
My last question, I’m a big fan of gratitude. I love expressing I love when the guests are able to express gratitude, especially to peers and contemporaries who helped them along the way. Could be co-founders, could be other venture capitalists you work with, could be people from the EO Entrepreneurs Organization community that you’ve connected with. Who would you want to shout out and bank?
Anna Redmond 34:31
I love that question. The first person that pops into my head is really Dave Weiner, who’s one of my advisors, and was my first security industry advisor that I brought on board. An advisor, I think, doesn’t do him enough credit because he just goes above and beyond every day and he was one of the first people that really got engaged with Braav before we had raised it when it was just an idea. And when I had honestly a lot of anxiety about coming into an industry that I didn’t know, I had no military background, no police background, I was just sort of stepping in saying, hey, I think we can do this better. And he loved the vision, supported it, taught me so many things with a lot of patience and grace. You know, he has an amazing security career and does a lot of training in LA County for the LA County Sheriff’s, invited me to sit out on the classes, introduced me and did it with, I think just so much support for what we’re creating. And I really, I think that so much of what we’ve built today, I give him a lot of respect and appreciation for being there for every step.
John Corcoran 35:52
That’s awesome. Anna, where can people go to learn more about you and more about Braav?
Anna Redmond 35:58
Braav.co. B-R-A-A-V.co.
John Corcoran 36:04
Excellent. Thanks so much.
Anna Redmond 36:05
Thank you.
Outro 36:09
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.