Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about the process of zeroing in on AppArmor.

Chris Sinkinson: We often joke that if you want to start a business, you don’t need a great idea; you need ten great ideas because nine of them are probably going to fail. You might get one that actually works out and ends up being really good. That was certainly our situation.

We had a lot of ideas that we thought had tons of potential. We put legitimate effort into them, but some were definitely easier than others. So the AppArmor product worked because public safety was an emerging area. The other products that like an e-book app and a newspaper app were in markets that were more difficult, whereas public safety seemed to be really taking off as we were bringing this new technology. This was back in 2011. I think the App Store was then only about a year and a half old – it had launched in 2009. So, there was certainly a lot more interest and traction at that point when we talked to people about apps. So, I think that the saying is a rising tide lifts all boats.

Sramana Mitra: What is the public safety app?

Chris Sinkinson: On a university or college campus, you’ve these security poles that have a blue light on the top of them. So if you feel unsafe, you can go up to the pole and press the button. It’s like a panic button and it connects you with the campus security or the campus police department. So you can get assistance.

At our school, my brother David was on the campus safety working group as part of a member of the campus community. They were tasked with making sure the campus was safe. They found that about 30% of the blue light poles weren’t functioning anymore. They were broken or had bad wiring or people had tampered with them. So it was a bit of a crisis.

The genesis of the idea was, my brother David was in the meeting and said, “What if my brother Chris builds an app that is the mobile blue light?” So the blue light, but an app in your pocket. So the concept was really simple. It was an app. When you pressed it, it would connect you with campus security and it would also relay your location.

The first question you get asked when you phone for help is, “What’s the problem?” The second question is, “Where are you?” So we were answering that “Where are you” question automatically. Well, the person who was calling was explaining the first question, which was what was wrong.

It was actually increasing the speed at which campus security could respond to an incident. What was interesting is people would say to us, “Well, why not just call 911?” The reality is when you’re on a university campus, the campus police department or the campus safety team is going to respond in minutes. Whereas if you call 911, you’re going to get the police force that is looking after the entire community and their response time is going to be much slower, maybe five minutes or more. It’s about response time and it was tailoring that solution for the campus.

Sramana Mitra: Was the geolocation technology at Twilio?

Chris Sinkinson: Yes, that was very important. Obviously as smartphones came out, they just had that GPS capability baked right in. Most often, it worked well because it was outdoor and we were trying to mimic those blue light poles. We didn’t have to worry about indoor location, which is still kind of a mess, but it worked out extremely well with the geolocation.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor
1 2 3 4 5 6 7