Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley

Auren Hoffman (00:00.661) Hello, fellow data nerds. guest today is Garrett Langley. Garrett is the CEO and founder of Flock Safety. Flock manufactures hardware like license plate, recognition cameras, drones, and video surveillance equipment, as well as software used by law enforcement agencies. Earlier this year, Flock raised $275 million and around that value the company at $7.5 billion. Garrett previously co-founded Experience, a live events platform acquired by Cox for $200 million.

And he's co-founded the car subscription startup Clutch. Garrett, welcome to World of DaaS.

Garrett Langley (00:33.664) Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Auren Hoffman (00:35.901) I'm super excited to dive in. Now, what is like data in the data landscape for like law enforcement? Like what's the state of it?

Garrett Langley (00:44.811) Yeah, it's messy and old. So I mean, I'll give you a good perspective and I won't name the city because I won't give them too hard of a time. But this is let's call it a top 100 city in terms of population in America. And as of two years ago, they were running entirely on prim and majority on paper. imagine you're a police department, file cabinets. I mean, so it's funny.

Auren Hoffman (00:47.657) You

Auren Hoffman (01:02.879) Yep. Majority on paper. Like in the folders, like putting it in the file folders. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Old school.

Garrett Langley (01:13.589) Yeah, was like you would have thought the cloud, maybe that's debatable and it's deeply debatable. Like in a case like Maryland, it was illegal to operate our business in the cloud as of three years ago. Illegal. Not poorly adopted, illegal.

Auren Hoffman (01:28.019) Yeah, illegal.

And was it illegal because like they were just kind of technology laggers? Was it illegal because somebody was trying to do some sort of capture or some sort of other vendor was doing capture? Like what was the reason why it's illegal? Someone just hadn't gotten around to it.

Garrett Langley (01:43.55) Yeah. mean, regulatory capture is the most articulate answer. I think the gray area definition was there was a lack of clarity on whether or not the cloud or on-prem was safer. Now, I think that's laughable because I think it's hard to argue that Amazon, Google, Microsoft, pick your cloud provider. They're going to have the best safety in the world compared to, you

an IT department at a local city, that's really hard to imagine. at a hard work, just scale. They can afford it.

Auren Hoffman (02:18.579) Yeah, you see all these IT departments that get, you know, ransomware and other types of things that happen to them at the local level.

Garrett Langley (02:25.964) Yeah. so, to the sense in the local government side, much of the business is much of our customers exhibit. Most of their data practices is on-prem. I think the last city to go kind of digital happened a few years ago, like I mentioned, and that was a major city that was still running on paper. And so, yeah, I mean, to give you a sense of scale, imagine you call 911 and you want to build a criminal investigation and a detective has to go through filing cabinets. don't even think about AI. We actually get stuff digital first.

Auren Hoffman (02:55.893) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and even when they do go digital, it's not like these data sets are connected. Like they may have to go to tons of different data sets. They may not know where the data is. They may not have access to all the data, et cetera.

Garrett Langley (02:55.969) So it's pretty wild.

Garrett Langley (03:09.792) that is spot on and conflated with the issue that, you know, criminals don't really respect or think about where cities and counties start and stop. And so there's no interconnected tissue from city to city, county to county, state to state. There's a little bit of work that the FBI tries to do, but that's pretty light and sparse. It's an opt in system. It's not a required system. And so you wind up, you know, you could have quite a record in

Auren Hoffman (03:21.3) Yep.

Garrett Langley (03:40.054) San Francisco, but drive three hours south and you're a nobody. You got a clean record.

Auren Hoffman (03:44.853) Yep. Yeah. And I assume criminals are, you know, they're, it's not like they're making it easy to, you know, not like they're keeping the name, the exact same everywhere they go. And they've got some sort of opsec that they're trying to do to, to make these, make it a little bit harder to connect these databases. I assume, right.

Garrett Langley (04:05.128) Yeah, no, I mean, think the best way to think about it is we appropriately have this thing called the Constitution that limits what we want our government to do. Criminals don't have to care. There's no rules for them. And so one of the kind of the challenges that our customers face on the local government side is they have a lot of good rules they have to follow. Actually makes their job a lot harder. Because to your point, criminals will change IDs, they'll change aliases, they'll change vehicles, they'll change everything about themselves to the city.

But we have to care about things like privacy and surveillance as we think about kind of the impact we have on local government.

Auren Hoffman (04:44.021) I mean, like I've seen even like, I have a lot of friends in law enforcement and married into law enforcement. And I've seen like where people like get like the tapes from like prison or something that they're going through. And it was literally a tape recorder, like, and they're actually pressing on the tape recorder. Like how far away are we from like, you know, how, how far are we from like, could, you know, today you would think you should put all that on the cloud. You should be able to search it for, you know, with text.

Garrett Langley (05:01.131) then.

Auren Hoffman (05:13.72) it should only, if they're, if they're talking about things that you're not supposed to hear, it should automatically bleep those out. Right. like how, how far are we from like just the basic tech stuff?

Garrett Langley (05:14.195) So.

Garrett Langley (05:26.315) Pretty far. So we're trying to get there. And I think we've got compelling products that get our customers there. And there's that old saying, right, like, the futures here are just unevenly distributed. I think that's the case. But I mean, if you look at the average city, it is closer to MS DOS than it is, you know, Windows XP. And I'm gonna say like Windows XP is what you're describing, which would be a more simplistic user interface of

Auren Hoffman (05:27.636) Okay.

Auren Hoffman (05:51.326) Yeah, yep.

Garrett Langley (05:56.392) I sort of go in as a detective and say, tell me everything we know about Joe, that doesn't exist. Now we have a product that does that and it's fairly well adopted, but by no means are we at 100 % penetration.

Auren Hoffman (06:12.639) When I have seen like certain investigators and that can be on the federal side or sometimes on the state or local side and they're looking up databases, it's like the tab world. Like they have like hundreds of tabs they have to go between. it's like, it's usually some, it's not like the investigator who knows how to do it, but there's like some specialists in the office who's just really good at like navigating all these weird tabs and databases.

Garrett Langley (06:38.216) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (06:39.689) Somehow they have the right to get into certain things, but they don't have the right to get into others. And I imagine, and they have to like copy it into like some text file and then go back to the other tab. And of course they have this tiny little machine that like with a tiny monitor. So they don't even have like two windows next to each other. Like, is that, am I describing what's normal?

Garrett Langley (06:52.009) And.

Garrett Langley (06:56.872) It's spot on. mean, I'll give you, I'll give you like a really good example of like one of the breaks in the system. So there's a database that we subscribe to called NCIC. It's the, it's kind of the FBI's database of outstanding warrants, stolen cars, missing persons, like all the things that you would find interesting. That database, if you want to call it that more of a CSV file gets updated like once a day. So you've got like a huge, you have a huge issue to begin with, right? Which like, this is not real time.

Auren Hoffman (07:25.747) Yeah. mean, that's not, that's actually way better than I thought. yeah. Okay.

Garrett Langley (07:26.686) This is it. Well, hold on, gets worse. But there's no guarantee of data integrity. And so one of the bigger issues that I don't have a great answer for is let's say you report your car stolen, that was a rental car. So Hertz calls it in. And then a week later, actually Hertz found the car.

that car is gonna sit as a stolen vehicle probably forever. Because Hertz doesn't have necessarily that incentive to call it in and it's no longer stolen. The local agency then would have to call it into the FBI and say, actually we can mark it as it's not stolen.

Auren Hoffman (08:07.914) so I could be driving a rental car and I get pulled over as a stolen car or something like that. And it's like legit.

Garrett Langley (08:13.098) Yeah, and it's because none of these systems talk to each other. And so one of the things that it's actually super annoying. One of the things that we push more as like a policy or it's kind of like a implementation is like, hey, you got to check like three different systems before you pull someone over. And that's what leads to human error because like all it takes is one person to kind of skip a step and you're pulling over the wrong person.

Auren Hoffman (08:16.845) interesting. That's annoying.

Auren Hoffman (08:30.355) Yeah.

Yeah.

Garrett Langley (08:38.558) And that's where I think there's a gap in kind of how data flows today amongst local to federal to state agencies. It was like someone knew that car wasn't stolen. It just didn't get propagated through the system.

Auren Hoffman (08:49.877) How do these like long-term disease share data? Because it's both like, there's like a data, you know, there's a data integrity problem. There's also just a problem with joining the data. Of course, like there's different levels of sharing. like certain people may not have access to certain types of data. like, how does this, and I'm so assured like you're in one database or you commit fraud against one thing and how does it all get like joined?

Garrett Langley (09:18.217) So there's, yeah, there's probably four layers of data sharing that you can talk about. The first is the default is nothing. The default is like actually nothing gets shared. And that's one of the reasons why it's so easy to be a criminal in America is because there's very little data driven or technology driven kind of collaboration. Let's call it level one, which has been in existence now for probably a decade is email, which I know sounds very silly, but like it is very popular where

Auren Hoffman (09:19.647) Or does it?

Garrett Langley (09:47.625) I'm working a case and I'll send out a bulletin to all nearby agencies via email. Here's a PDF about the case, right? Here's the person who's wanted. Here's all the information I have. And that's like pretty, pretty good, but obviously slow and

Auren Hoffman (10:00.149) Or it's like this type of car, it's a silver Toyota. We got like a very, partial plate. We have these other types of things. There's a guy with red hair or something, you know, in the car.

Garrett Langley (10:12.689) Yes, it's literally a PDF. kind of third level, which is gaining up some momentum is things like Slack or GroupMe or WhatsApp, where it's now introducing some level of real time to it. And so there's some very successful Slack groups.

Auren Hoffman (10:15.797) Okay.

Auren Hoffman (10:28.885) Mm-hmm.

This is like a private chat group of cops in different cities that are like helping each other out and stuff. Okay.

Garrett Langley (10:37.958) Yeah, no, I think it's in, was it might've been Hartford, Connecticut. I think they still use Slack and they've got a bunch of nearby agencies, officers, detectives, they're all in this big Slack group and there's, know, a narcotics group, there's a vehicular crime group and like, it's actually a good job. And I think the issue you run into there is like Slack wasn't built for law enforcement. And so there are certain data.

Auren Hoffman (10:53.659) That's cool. Okay.

Auren Hoffman (11:02.375) Yeah, there's like weird data retention issues. Like you might be sharing things that are sensitive, right?

Garrett Langley (11:05.96) And you might be sharing these with someone who like, like, and might be being stored in a way that's actually not appropriate, but like, so there's Slack. And then there's a product that we've built called Nova, which I'd say is, you know, a more sophisticated version of that, where it is truly collaboration at a case level, where I can build an investigation. I can integrate, you know, my jail record data, my criminal record data, open source, intelligent, kind of all the data you have access to.

And then when I click on the button, it's like, I actually want to share this from San Francisco PD to Oakland. And it just gets shared. And I can see the entire work stream, Flock manages kind of the Sieges.

Auren Hoffman (11:43.509) And you can even see who opens it, who like, cause like every once in a you have like a investigator maybe does something bad with the data so you could see, like, Joe looked at the data and he wasn't supposed to or something or whatever.

Garrett Langley (11:55.239) Well, yeah, there's an audit trail. And then I think where we get excited about it is it also opens up an ability for private businesses to collaborate as well. Because if you look at one of the issues that's kind of plagued Northern California and parts of the country is this organized retail crime kind of phenomena. And it's one of the safest crimes to commit. And like, well, if you're a major retailer, you can't arrest anyone, right? So how do you actually work with local law enforcement?

Auren Hoffman (11:57.919) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (12:19.733) But you have cameras.

Garrett Langley (12:22.951) You have cameras, have data, you have investigators, you have all this information, and today you PDF it, put it in a zip file, whatever it may be, and now with like Nova, you can actually collaborate with private entities and local government.

Auren Hoffman (12:24.927) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (12:39.061) And I assume people have cameras too, right? Some of them can contribute or how does that work? How do the cameras get contributed to law enforcement if you want to contribute them to law enforcement?

Garrett Langley (12:48.1) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (12:52.039) Yeah, so in a place like San Francisco, we'll keep picking on San Francisco because they're a great partner of ours and I think they're having bit of a, not a bit of a, they're having a really, Mayor Larry's doing a great job pushing a no crime allowed, which I think is the right approach, obviously, I'm biased. So like in San Francisco, you can literally inside of flocks, oh, no way, he's great. I think he's doing wonderful things for the city. So in the case of local businesses, homeowners,

Auren Hoffman (12:57.044) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (13:07.935) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (13:11.913) He's been a guest on this podcast as well. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (13:21.998) You can register your camera inside a flock and you can do one of two things. You can say, I just want the city to know I have a camera and I'm like open to helping, but I want that to be an ad hoc relationship. You have to ask me for help. I'm not just gonna give it to you.

Auren Hoffman (13:35.379) Right, right. So if there's a crime, then I could then decide if I want to help.

Garrett Langley (13:39.31) Yep, yep. And then there's another layer of sharing where you're like, you know what, I just want the city to have access 24 seven to the camera. I don't want to have to be asked. And so you think about if you're a major retailer and you're covering a private parking lot. Yeah, it's not your home. It's literally a parking lot. And so we see that the business community tends to just provide kind of carte blanche access to the cameras and private individuals say, hey, why don't you just let me know if you need help?

Auren Hoffman (13:48.308) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (13:52.053) Those are the cameras I don't walk naked in front of, by the way.

Garrett Langley (14:06.862) and I'm happy to participate, but I kind of want to be asked. I don't want to just have you access to my front yard at any time to local local authorities.

Auren Hoffman (14:14.037) Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Where are we? Like, I mean, you know, the drone stuff you're doing super cool, right? To be able to like follow, just like follow someone who does something right quickly. Like I imagine like that will help allow us to find a lot of criminals and apprehend them. Where are we going in the drone world? Like, how do we start seeing that?

Garrett Langley (14:26.576) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (14:38.331) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (14:42.648) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (14:43.893) long term.

Garrett Langley (14:46.116) Yeah, so I think the first thing I'd say is on the drone side, the hero story and the one that everyone jumps to is definitely, let's go chase bad guys, which has multiple societal benefits. Like high speed pursuits are one of the most dangerous things that happen in a city. It's dangerous for law enforcement, dangerous for innocent civilians, dangerous for the criminals. Like it's not good for anyone. So like that's a no brainer use case, which we see day in and day out.

Auren Hoffman (14:55.252) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (15:01.205) Super dangerous, yeah.

Yeah, for the criminal. Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (15:13.286) I think what I get more excited about longer term is the impact it has to fire an EMS as well. So you think about this today, like one of our most successful case studies in a place like Vacaville is related to fire, not crime. As you know, in Northern California, forest fires and fires in general are a huge problem. Imagine if you could have within 30 seconds eyes on a fire that this is actually roaring and it's about to get out of control versus this is actually a false alarm.

Auren Hoffman (15:27.027) Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (15:38.739) Yep.

Yeah, that'd be really helpful.

Garrett Langley (15:43.161) So to me, it's more of thinking about thrones as just a camera that can fly. And so like, where would you want a camera? Well, and I do. And it moves.

Auren Hoffman (15:47.701) Yeah. And you could get there quickly too. Right. If you don't have traffic or you have, know, if there's tree in the road or what, you know, there might be a lot of scenarios where it could be hard to get to there.

Garrett Langley (15:59.555) Yeah. And so for us, we look at that and go, you know, people are expensive. People are very valuable. We should always try to use technology where we can and use humans where we think there is a need for a kind of subjective component to it. And so when I think about that use case, every 911 call, whether it's fire, EMS or safety should deploy the drone first. And that's what we're seeing, you know, in places like San Francisco, places like Elk Grove, Vacaville,

That's what we're seeing already.

Auren Hoffman (16:33.439) There's this public perception of crime that's not always related to actual crime. How do those things move in tandem and how do those things change behavior for both the crime fighters and also the people committing crime?

Garrett Langley (16:45.486) and.

Garrett Langley (16:50.5) Yeah, there's some interesting research on the topic because I think as a kind of outsider, my previous assumption was we should just dramatically increase the penalties. And like these are logical people and therefore they will make a logical decision and they don't want to go to jail for 100 years. The data shows there's just no correlation between the severity of penalty and the likelihood of a crime happening. The only...

Auren Hoffman (17:05.608) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (17:15.285) Sorry, just to double click on that, like I used to live in San Francisco and I know in San Francisco there are many streets where one side of the street is federal and the other side is San Francisco County. And then on the southern side, one side is San Francisco and the other side is San Mateo County. And I've seen stats where like the cars get broken into on the San Francisco side, but not on the federal side. So these are like, they seem like smart criminals. Like they know it's better to do there, right?

Garrett Langley (17:25.795) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (17:36.536) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (17:40.548) They know the likelihood of being held accountable. And that's been the issue in San Francisco.

Auren Hoffman (17:45.653) Okay, so not necessarily the penalty, just the likelihood of getting caught is the key thing, not the penalty. Okay, so any punishment would have been, it's really the fact that they weren't getting punished at all, not that the punishment itself needs to be more severe.

Garrett Langley (17:49.86) Yeah, and so what you saw in San Francisco for the longest time, enough.

Garrett Langley (18:00.142) because whether it's a year or five years or 10 years, you're making a Boolean decision, I'm not gonna get caught, therefore I'm gonna do it, versus I am gonna get caught. So you look at some of the counties and cities we work with, where we've had multiple years of 100 % clearance rate, which means like there's a 100 % chance you're getting caught if you hurt someone, and violence in those communities is down dramatically, because you're just not gonna do it there. And you even saw this, I don't know, we highlighted a...

Auren Hoffman (18:03.389) Yeah, you don't like any of them. Yeah.

Correct, correct, okay, okay.

Auren Hoffman (18:18.57) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (18:22.259) Yeah, yeah, yeah, makes sense, of course. Yeah, yeah.

Garrett Langley (18:29.972) podcast recently where a fairly famous criminal in the Bay Area was like, he's out of the game. He's like, it's too hard between the license plate readers, the cameras, the drones. It's just, it's not working anymore. The economics aren't profitable. He's going to go get a job, I hope. Like that seems like he's a capitalist. He just chose to be a criminal instead of, you know, like you and me and build companies. But so I look at that and I'm like, Mayor Lurie is doing the right thing in San Francisco highlighting, you know, that he had a post last night.

Auren Hoffman (18:40.997) Yeah, great. Good, good, good. Go do something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, great, great. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Garrett Langley (18:59.232) on some of the ATV takeover stuff, and it's gonna work. Yeah, it's this new, it's not necessarily too new, but it's called a street takeover where they kind of block all four intersections and just do donuts on other ATVs or tricked out vehicles and they bring a bunch of guns and it's a show of bravado in my opinion. It winds up being obviously a huge pain in the butt for citizens who want to just get from point A to point B.

Auren Hoffman (19:03.295) What's the ATV Takeover? What's that?

Auren Hoffman (19:27.861) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (19:27.928) It also winds up being dangerous because gangs treat it as a bit of a rivalry, like who can do the most impressive take-downs? But it's a huge annoyance. so Mayor Lurie did a good job last night. He posted like, yeah, a gang does it. It's not like you and me calling like, hey man, let's go do some donuts. It's like a recruitment tool to get younger kids. Every single major city has this in the summers. And it's a huge nuisance.

Auren Hoffman (19:39.177) Whoa, the gang is doing it. The gang will go.

Auren Hoffman (19:44.965) got it. Okay. Okay. And this happens in San Francisco, like in Hunter's Point or someplace like that in San Francisco or whatever. Okay.

Garrett Langley (19:57.451) And so was pretty smart. The mayor did a press conference and said, you know, here are four ATVs we just recovered. Those people are now in jail. We also own their vehicles. So like maybe the bigger issue is not even necessarily the going to jail. It's that we've stolen, we've taken possession of your ATV. And my guess is that he does that one or two more times. And I think takeovers are gonna go away. And it will happen. And the cool thing is like we had a recent.

Auren Hoffman (20:11.038) Bap.

Auren Hoffman (20:19.285) That would be amazing. Okay, that's awesome. Great. So it's kind of simple. Like you do a crime, like there's a consequence. Even if the consequences isn't like, don't need to have three strikes, you're out. Like any consequence is key. Yes.

Garrett Langley (20:32.579) Do you have kids? Okay, it's the same with kids. Whether they're in timeout for five minutes or five days doesn't matter. It's the fact that like there was a repercussion for a poor decision leads to a behavioral change over time. And that's to me very consistent in what you see in cities.

Auren Hoffman (20:44.701) Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (20:53.139) Interesting. Now, when I lived in San Francisco and my car got broken into, I never once reported to the police. It was just like too big of a hassle. So do we have a sense of like the percentage of crimes that are not reported or under reported?

Garrett Langley (21:07.83) Yeah, it's an alarming number is how I describe it. And it is to your point in San Francisco.

Auren Hoffman (21:13.705) Obviously, if there was a murder, I would be definitely reporting it.

Garrett Langley (21:16.674) That's not consistent though. like if you look at, you know, one of the more interesting things that we do is gunshot detection. And so one of the reasons why gunshot detection is such an important product for major cities is the sheer number of gun violence that goes unreported. And so we had a...

Auren Hoffman (21:36.499) Yeah, I guess if I heard a gun, I probably wouldn't call the cops unless it was threatening me specifically or something. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (21:39.682) No

Exactly. And most people don't just shoot guns in the air for fun. Obviously that is like a, you know, it's not, that's a thing, but it's not that common. It's like we had a crazy case in Wichita, Kansas, where it was to your point, it was a homicide, had gone completely unreported. And the only reason why Wichita knew it happened is they have a gunshot detection. So they not only knew that it happened, they knew the exact time it happened, they knew the exact location within 50 feet. And they were able to dispatch an officer within seconds.

Auren Hoffman (21:46.602) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (22:12.338) wow.

Garrett Langley (22:12.788) no one ever called 911. And so look, that's obviously one example, but it's pretty consistent that in communities that feel like calling 911 is ineffective, like your experience in San Francisco, the reported crime is dramatically lower than the actual crime, but it is community community that's different. Like I think that if you lived in maybe a different city, you might call every single time your car is stolen, but clearly San Francisco had some work to do for you.

Auren Hoffman (22:17.631) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (22:26.334) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (22:39.285) And my car was stolen, I'd be calling it, my car broken into. It's like one of those things like, do you really want to like deal with the hassle of spending like two hours filling out paperwork and everything? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, kind of depends on, depends on what's going on there.

Garrett Langley (22:42.301) broken a tube.

Garrett Langley (22:47.541) waiting for a detective for insurance and you're like,

Garrett Langley (22:53.909) Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's a pretty significant number though.

Auren Hoffman (22:58.965) In my anecdotal discussions, I don't have good data on this, but my anecdotal discussions with lots of people, seems that home break-ins seem to be on the rise in America, home invasions. People sometimes are in their home when people are coming to steal things. Sometimes they're not in their home. Is that true? you know, these are, let's say, very wealthy people. These are very wealthy homes.

Garrett Langley (23:21.643) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (23:27.413) So I guess people are trying to find, I don't know, jewelry or watches or some sort of like very sensible items or something like that. Is this true? Is this actually happening?

Garrett Langley (23:35.734) then

Garrett Langley (23:39.393) So crime in general is going down, but there's two things that are two, four other forces that are going against that trend that make us feel less safe. So the first is just information. Like the flow of information is dramatically faster, right? Or is it gonna be faster today than it was 10 years ago? Between social media, the internet, that didn't exist, right? And so you didn't hear about things. The second thing is

Auren Hoffman (23:42.898) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (24:10.242) our expectations of safety continue to go up every single day. And so you go to maybe the safest, one of the safest cities in America, you go to a place like Atherton. One home break in a year is enough to cause pitchforks to come out. Now, they don't have that same expectation in Memphis, but eventually Memphis will.

Auren Hoffman (24:30.965) But I would say when I lived in San Francisco, there were home break-ins that happened pretty regularly, like someone going to garage and stealing a bike or something like that. And it was often, you know, homeless guy or like some random, you know, random thieves or something. When, now that I live in Northern Virginia, like I probably have eight or nine friends that have had a home break-in, very, very professional, like super, super like taking out the cameras before they go in there.

Garrett Langley (24:38.069) Yes.

Garrett Langley (24:45.121) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (24:55.969) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (24:59.285) Very, very like, like it's almost like Mission Impossible style coming in and trying to get their stuff there. So it does seem like the professionalism has gone up.

Garrett Langley (25:01.215) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (25:06.945) Yeah. And that has definitely changed. And so there is a very accurate, although recently politicized narrative on the sophistication of criminals. And what you're describing is very accurate. I'm good friends with a sheriff in Virginia, maybe it's your county. And they have a huge problem on their hands because what these organized South American gangs are doing is using

Auren Hoffman (25:32.009) Yeah, these are like chilling gangs on stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (25:33.588) They're using drones, they're using illegal drones that they've removed ADS-B. the law enforcement, no one has any idea the drones are in the air. They'll fly the drone, they'll check out your house, and then they will go hit. And like, I could, if you wanted to, we could go down a deep rabbit hole of like, these groups are very sophisticated, and it is a capitalistic activity for them. This isn't like, because they're mad at you.

Auren Hoffman (25:55.317) Why is it so hard to catch these guys? Like, why is it like, it just seems like, I mean, I got eight or nine friends. This is not like, this is not one anecdote like that have happened to have had three on the same block that I've got broken into. Like, why is this like so hard to catch?

Garrett Langley (26:03.273) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (26:11.839) Yeah, mean, the shortest answer would be they have better technology. Like they're more equipped, they're better funded than what your local police department probably has access to. I think the second one is regulatory issues. If you want to pick on the drone was an example, a policy that we are fighting very hard to adjust is that local government has zero ability to protect the airspace.

Auren Hoffman (26:16.105) Yeah, okay, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (26:24.693) That's probably true.

Garrett Langley (26:38.792) And so in an ideal world, if you talk to the sheriff, as I've talked to him about this, his big push to the federal government is like, why is it that I can use a gun on the ground, but I can't use some other type of weapon to take down a drone in the air? Who is expected, when that drone is operating in his airspace, and I'd argue it's his airspace, who are we expecting is going to protect your house from that drone? The FAA is currently being asked to do that, and that is clearly not their mandate.

Auren Hoffman (27:01.727) Yeah.

Yeah. Plus, mean, is like taking out, digging down a drone is not an easy thing to do. you can't like shooting a drone with a bullet would be very, very difficult. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can maybe take it down with like an electromagnetic thing or something. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (27:12.416) We're not gonna shoot it, yeah. We're not gonna use it with traditional bullets. And so yeah, we look at that and we go like that's clearly just where regulation is blocking technology from solving a problem. And this is a good example where the bad guys don't have to follow the rules, but the good guys do. And so I've got a sheriff who's like, Garrett, I'd have to take a shotgun out there and just shoot the thing.

Auren Hoffman (27:39.253) Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (27:40.287) But I don't want to break the law. My job is to enforce the law, not break it. It's a bit of a chicken and an egg there. We've to get the regulation to open up so we can go build technology for them.

Auren Hoffman (27:51.085) What are some other like crime statistics that aren't that are either misunderstood or kind of run against conventional wisdom?

Garrett Langley (27:58.228) Yeah, I mean, I'll give you two. One is a fascinating problem in kind of the supply chain world. So you've got these Eastern European gangs, quite sophisticated, right? And if you look at the way 3PLs work in moving products across the country from kind of getting them into port, whether it's Oakland or LA or Savannah, then moving them through, you have these groups that will go in and they will buy.

a legitimate freight forwarder, right? As a company has been around maybe for 20 years and they're gonna provide a credible multiple for this small business owner, they will then turn the company illegal and start stealing 20 foot containers of product, millions and millions of dollars of product, they'll make a couple million dollars and then just literally walk away, turn the company off, disappear. And it creates this like really weird incentive.

Auren Hoffman (28:45.171) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (28:54.517) And they bought the company for a couple hundred thousand bucks. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Got it.

Garrett Langley (28:57.119) couple hundred thousand bucks, a million bucks, know, they'll clean house and it creates this problem where there's an incentive misalignment where everyone wants the problem to go away but no one is actually either sophisticated enough or incentivized enough to solve it because everyone has insurance. And I think it's one of the most fascinating problems we're faced with right now because it's continuing to grow.

it's causing a problem for major retailers in America, but no one has a great solution yet. So that's like one that I find quite interesting that like we're trying to work on with, you

Auren Hoffman (29:33.577) I mean, this has been happening for years. Like if you ever see the movie Donnie Brosco, one of my favorite movies there, they're out there like basically a heist thing, you know, trucks all the time and stuff like that. Maybe in those cases, they have to like go with guns and take the truck or something. And then you. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (29:46.046) Yeah, this is like a silent crime. Like no one ever knows that crime has been committed until it's months, weeks afterwards. And the traceability of the product, actually can't figure out where things went wrong. The other one that I think is really interesting that we're working on quite aggressively is, if you look at nationwide, generally speaking, you've got about a 50-50 chance getting away with murder. A little bit north of 50%, like 60%. Yeah, it's about 60 % chance of getting away with murder.

Auren Hoffman (29:58.089) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (30:11.093) Wait, what? It's that high?

Wait, what? I thought it was really low. I thought most murders are solved.

Garrett Langley (30:15.454) Um, yeah. No, no, no, it's very easy. No, no, murders are not soft. it's a 40 % clearance rate as a national average on average. Yeah, so that's pretty bad, right? That's why Flock exists. It seems unacceptable. Yeah, it's literally the only crime we can't undo.

Auren Hoffman (30:22.345) Really? I didn't know that. I didn't know is that low. Okay. That's terrible. my gosh. Okay. Obviously, that's the worst crimes. That's the number one worst crime. That's the number one thing I want to solve was that I want to have I want to have a 99 % chance of solving the murder. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (30:42.941) It should be 100 % chance. Like if you kill someone, you should be held accountable. What's just as alarming is if you don't hurt someone, you have about an 85 % chance of getting away with it. So nonviolent crime has about an 85 % get away with. a, yeah, like if I steal your car, I have an 85 % chance of getting away with it.

Auren Hoffman (30:57.737) for that particular crime.

Yeah. But I assume like someone who steals a car steals a car all the time or something. And so if you have 85 % chance, then it's like 15 % chance of, of getting like, you, you, you run those numbers enough. Like there's a high likelihood you will eventually get caught or something. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas I imagine you don't commit a murder every day or something, you know, it's something. Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (31:14.459) you eventually get caught.

Garrett Langley (31:21.405) I sure hope not. That seems like a very poor way to live your life. But the thing that I ask is, well, why is there even a difference to begin with? Because it must just be effort then. And then if it's effort, the question I then ask is like, to your first point, how do we get violent crime from a 40 % to a 99 %? And then how do we get nonviolent crime from a 15 % to a 99 %? Because there really shouldn't be a delta outside of effort.

Auren Hoffman (31:42.612) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (31:47.125) Yeah.

Well, there's, mean, it does make sense that there should be a Delta, right? I mean, you would put, I mean, you should be putting most of your resources to solve murders, to stop murders, to stop, you know, if there's serious violent crime or, you know, other types of things that are anything dealing with a gun or something like that, you're probably going to be more serious about.

Garrett Langley (31:55.004) You put more energy into it.

Garrett Langley (32:07.942) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (32:11.26) And I think the thing that I think about is if one of the benefits of this AI revolution happening is we move to a world of abundance, abundance of resources, abundance of intellect, that to me seems like one of the better things that could happen for society is that actually all crimes are treated equal. Because typically speaking, people don't just kill someone. It's actually a progression of you commit a nonviolent crime that typically escalates to violence.

Auren Hoffman (32:20.02) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (32:40.223) Yeah, I mean, really, it does depend. I know that like, I know that like if you commit a fraud, right, let's say you commit some sort of fraud and you're stealing money or something like that. I mean, if you, if you, you steal less than a million dollars, like the federal government is not going to be involved in looking at your fraud and they have a lot more resources. Right. So, you know, you'd probably have to steal at least a few million before the federal government's going to get involved.

Garrett Langley (32:58.204) No.

Yeah.

Garrett Langley (33:04.784) gets involved.

Auren Hoffman (33:05.653) maybe have to steal a million before the state and then otherwise you're at the local or something. So it makes sense. Obviously the federal government just says way more resources, the quality of the people is super high. If you have an AUSA, they're just going to be just like a baller. Some of local prosecutors are amazing, but they just don't have the resources. They may not have the other kind of ability to deal with a sophisticated case.

Garrett Langley (33:33.212) Yeah. But no, so I mean, I, so I think to your point, I just think people are genuinely always shocked at how low clearance rates are in America and how easy it is. It's scary, right? And you obviously are a data guy. You know that there's a, you know, that there's a standard deviation there too, which means in some places it's in the teens. It's really bad because

Auren Hoffman (33:43.433) Yeah, that 40 % is shocking to me. had no, and I'm a fairly knowledgeable person. I had no idea it was that low.

Auren Hoffman (33:58.589) It's really low. Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (34:01.382) But I mean, it's so rare for a city or county to have 100 % clearance rate on violent crime that I can think of only probably.

one place, maybe two.

Auren Hoffman (34:17.013) Yeah, a hundred does seem like almost an unreasonable number, but like let's get in the nineties. Like that seems like something that we should be able to aim for and get, you know.

Garrett Langley (34:21.819) Yeah. But most cities when they get into the 60s and 70s start to do a of applause tour. I think it should be really high. I think it should be really high.

Auren Hoffman (34:31.785) Yeah. Yeah. What now? Now there are there is different places around the world have different levels of baseline surveillance. So I in London, you know, they're famous for the CCTV in Dubai. They have this like camera system everywhere. They've got all these different sensors. Obviously, China's kind of, you know, certain places trying to the kind of more extreme surveillance model like how

Garrett Langley (34:46.255) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (35:00.671) How do you think the Americans are going to be okay with having a little bit more surveillance? What's important, what's not? How do we think about those things?

Garrett Langley (35:02.373) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (35:06.213) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (35:10.064) Yeah, why I always would first premise that no one elected me the police chief of America or president. So I will share, I'll share flocks point of view. There's really two ends of the spectrum that you described. There is the Chinese and less Dubai, but let's put China and Dubai together, which is like a bordering totalitarian regime, which is controlling crime with

fear and censorship and persecution. I don't think that's going to go very well in America. We have this thing called the Constitution. We're going to stick to that. In Dubai, yeah. There's a gradation there. There's a...

Auren Hoffman (35:45.075) Yeah. And I would say there's China, then Dubai. There's a gradation, right? Because Dubai, is more freedoms. But my friends who live there say, look, I know the government is listening to my calls. Like, that's the quid pro quo. Like, I live in safety, but the government gets to listen to my calls. But it's completely safe when I walk around. I'm signing up for I moved here for that trade. Right?

Garrett Langley (35:59.407) That's the trade-off.

Garrett Langley (36:09.467) And if you commit a crime, they can just deport you. They get out of our country, we don't want you. They don't want you. And so let's put that on the very far right, and to your point, let's go China to the far far far right, you've got to buy right before that. And then if you go all the way the other spectrum, I won't pick on any certain countries, but there are certain countries where it's clear law and order has evaporated from their community.

Auren Hoffman (36:12.253) Yeah, they can deport you. They could do whatever they want with you. Right. They could. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (36:31.902) Nothing. have no capabilities to do anything. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (36:34.939) And their GDPs are in depression, their economies are dead, and no one wants to live there. I think there's like a massive gray area that I think if FLOC is successful, we allow local communities to pick where they want to end up.

Auren Hoffman (36:50.771) you could end up, got it, and then people could opt into those if they choose to, yeah.

Garrett Langley (36:54.267) And so you look at it and I'll pick on certain places. There are certain cities who've chosen to not prioritize safety and that's their choice. And I don't live there and you don't have to choose to live there and they're gonna have more crime. And then you go look at what San Francisco has been doing recently and clearly Mayor Lurie and before him, the prior mayor.

has pushed that city closer towards we wanna put significant law and order in place. And I think that's gonna pay off for it. But I think what's important to me is to your earlier point, we have the benefit in this country of local governments having a choice. And that's great. And I think for me, obviously I prioritize law and order. I think like we have rules in place as a society and we should respect those rules and we should debate them fiercely and we should elect people to write those laws and kind of...

Auren Hoffman (37:35.733) Tons of experiments, you're right, right.

Garrett Langley (37:51.444) ask our police departments to enforce them. But for me, it's somewhere in the middle. And I think the best case possible is at the state and local level, those elected officials get to pick how aggressive or how unaggressive they want to be for their constituents, because every city is a little different.

Auren Hoffman (38:07.445) When I meet people in law enforcement, cops, FBI agents, other types of folks, they are mired in paperwork. They're just constantly doing paperwork. They're constantly complaining. People I know who have been in these jobs for a while say the burden has increased over time. They want to be out there fighting crime. They want to be out there solving crimes. They want to be able to help. They're preventing crimes.

Garrett Langley (38:18.564) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (38:30.403) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (38:35.829) How do we change it? Like, what can we do? Is is AI, can AI do the paperwork for them? And obviously these, these paperwork things that they have to do are not like terrible ideas. They're all, they're all put in place for like a good reason for safety or for accountability or for other types of things. So how do we make it so they can actually do their jobs more?

Garrett Langley (38:37.923) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (38:54.541) Yeah, we are pushing a concept that's a little bit different than pure AI. We would call it more amplified intelligence. I think in certain parts of our economy, we just want humans completely out of it. That makes sense, like totally fine. I think when it comes to public safety, I think we want humans pretty involved still. I don't think we want to, I think you think about the dystopian fears of something like Minority Report isn't that they actually had a higher success rate.

Auren Hoffman (39:12.746) for sure.

Garrett Langley (39:22.649) it's that it was this artificial intelligence that was making decisions. It was this black box of like, why does this pre-cock believe that I'm about to commit a crime? And so when we think about it, are you serious? Oh, it's a great, it's a wonderful movie and an interesting kind of debate on what's better for society. we look at that and go, no, artificial intelligence isn't the right answer. It's amplified intelligence where I want a human at the start of the process.

Auren Hoffman (39:31.014) It's a great movie. So I highly recommend like I've met people recently haven't seen Minority Reports an amazing movie. Yeah. Yeah

Garrett Langley (39:51.161) That might be someone calling 911 because they're a victim of a crime. They're seeing something bad happening. I want AI, our employee intelligence, to take over, build the investigation, write the report, do the busy work. But I want to human again at the end, making a subjective call on what's right and wrong. I don't think we want to replace that part of what makes us human. And I think to your point on the policy writing and all the legwork, that to me has got to go away.

We want cops in the streets. We want cops being parts of a community and not sitting behind a desk That to me is not the answer

Auren Hoffman (40:28.073) Now your company is in some ways both Bits and Adams. Everyone talks about how much easier it is to start a Bits company in the US than an Adams company. And you're doing manufacturing in the US. You're doing all these things. You're building things in the US. Walk us through what it's like to, and you kind of have to, like you have to manufacture in US for many things because what you're doing is sensitive. Like, you you can't just like...

Garrett Langley (40:34.103) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (40:50.893) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (40:55.711) take the random components from China and stuff like that, walk us through what it's like to being like set up manufacturing in the US.

Garrett Langley (40:59.458) Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (41:04.633) I mean, think it's easier today than, so I started the company eight years ago or so. Eight years ago, it was very uphill battle, particularly with investors, because every investor wants to put you in a bucket and they're like, okay, Garrett, are you a software company? Well, kind of. Or are you a hardware company? Well, kind of. Are you an AI company? Well, kind of. Are you an operational company? Like, are you a field services? Well, kind of have to do it all. And for most investors, that's just too many weird strikes.

Auren Hoffman (41:21.14) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (41:29.31) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Garrett Langley (41:33.826) because each of those presents significant risk. Like being good at software, hard. Being good at hardware, hard. Being good at manufacturing, also hard. Field services, the kind of list goes down. So that was painful. I mean, we spent hundreds of millions of dollars at this point, close to a billion dollars now investing to make this business even a possibility. I think I'm, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (41:56.511) When I see companies like you, I mean, there's like, you you guys, right? There's Flock, there's Anderol, which is very similar, right? Except for a different market. You've seen this like massive success of Flock, Anderol and some others. Like, so I imagine it's like way easier to raise money today just because people have seen that success, right?

Garrett Langley (42:01.495) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (42:07.725) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (42:11.928) It is, yeah, yeah, someone else has done it. But I think we're lucky. I went through YC and wound up coming back to Atlanta. And part of the reason is why I went back to Atlanta and in Georgia in particular is it is a very pro business state. Like it is easier to build this kind of a company in Georgia than other states. Like we have policies that promote manufacturing for engineering. There's a talent workforce that like wants to do this kind of work.

Auren Hoffman (42:26.879) Yes.

Auren Hoffman (42:40.009) Yep. Also, there are a lot of factories. There's a lot of car manufacturers and other types of things in Georgia. Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (42:40.662) And that, like, so many of those things were right.

I mean, you look at Rivian, look at Hyundai, like there's a reason why they're building in Georgia.

Auren Hoffman (42:52.966) Give us some other sense of just by the way. I love Atlanta. It's one of my favorite cities. I think it's an incredible place. It seems like a lot of super smart people are there. Give us a sense of like why you guys like Atlanta. I know you're from there, but why you like Atlanta so much?

Garrett Langley (42:59.544) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (43:08.408) Yeah, I mean, if you look at the higher ed system in Atlanta, in metro Atlanta, I've got SCAD, so Savannah College of Art and Design, from a design perspective. I've got Kennesaw State and Georgia State as incredible places to recruit sales talent. From Emory, I can recruit great attorneys and business people. From Georgia Tech, I can recruit great engineers. You've got Morehouse, have Agnes Scott. Like the list goes down.

Auren Hoffman (43:17.343) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (43:21.449) You're George Attack, right? Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (43:29.802) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (43:33.363) Yeah. Of course you got Georgia like not that far away a couple hours away, right?

Garrett Langley (43:36.523) Joe, don't I, know, we don't, we don't recruit. We do recruit from UGA. I like to give it a hard time. Yeah, they're a little farther away, but yeah. So you look at it just like incredible talent pool. And then you combine that. And obviously this doesn't benefit Flock, but benefit to my prior businesses. You combine that with a surprising number of Fortune 500 companies that are headquartered in Atlanta. And you just forget that like we've got Home Depot, we have UPS, we have Delta, we have Fiserv. We used to have Truett, we have Truist.

Auren Hoffman (43:40.639) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (43:45.471) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (43:56.437) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (44:04.035) by the way, it's the biggest city in the Southeast, right? So, I mean, just like, so you can recruit, you're not just recruiting from Georgia, you can recruit from Tennessee, you recruit from Mississippi, you can recruit from Alabama, you can recruit from places in Florida, can recruit from South Carolina, right?

Garrett Langley (44:06.423) Yes.

Garrett Langley (44:16.235) Yeah. Well, and then you combine that with an incredibly low cost of living where you can pay someone, you know, a low six figure salary and they're going to put two kids through school and have a nice house that's safe. And it's like, that's not, that's a, that's that's a really unique combination where, you know, the benefit that it makes for a place like flock is

Auren Hoffman (44:32.659) Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And a decent school district. Yeah.

Yeah.

Garrett Langley (44:45.799) our retention numbers are through the roof for our employees. And I obviously think we're a great place to work, don't get me wrong, but like it's just people don't job hop as much. They just want, they want to get a great career. They want to work really hard and they want to focus on building a family too. You can kind of get your cake and eat it too.

Auren Hoffman (44:48.831) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (44:55.027) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (45:00.723) What other things I like about Atlanta is, you know, you mentioned universities there. Those are a few things I really like about Atlanta is one, it's just like the airport super connected, right? It's obviously the biggest airport in America. You can get anywhere from there. So if like you live in Austin, like you often have to, it's like harder to get places from Austin, right? You don't have like a major airport. Easy, you can get places, like, but like.

Garrett Langley (45:10.134) airport.

Garrett Langley (45:18.334) Yep, or DC. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (45:23.029) But like, yeah, but Austin, it's just like the airport's just not as connected, right? Like you have to go to Dallas to get the connected one if you live in Austin or something, right? And then the second thing about Atlanta is, well, it's good weather, right? Like, it's maybe one of the best weather places in America. It's great. You can, it's easy to go outside. It's a nice place. And then, and then the third is it's actually like a fun city. It's a really, really, really fun city. So if you're a 28 year old, a 25 year old, like

Garrett Langley (45:30.272) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (45:35.381) Yeah, yeah.

Garrett Langley (45:40.555) No.

Auren Hoffman (45:52.467) It's fun. It's fun to be single there. It's fun to be married there. There's great restaurants. Like it's just a good, you can have a good time there. Like any, any, any major city, would be like at that, you know, at that kind of stage.

Garrett Langley (46:04.884) Yep, totally agree, totally agree.

Auren Hoffman (46:07.669) Why aren't there more companies being started there?

Garrett Langley (46:13.329) If I had the answer to that question, you know, I think the biggest issue is just the...

Lack of successful exits creates a kind of downward spiral.

Auren Hoffman (46:26.239) You have like MailChimp, Cowanley, like you've got some good ones in Atlanta, right?

Garrett Langley (46:30.771) Yeah, but like thing what when's the last what's the last company that went public in Atlanta and had a good IPO?

Auren Hoffman (46:39.029) CNN or something.

Garrett Langley (46:40.717) No, it goes all the way back to ISS, Internet Security Systems. And that was in the late 90s, early 2000s. And that's the issue, right? And so you look at, we've had a couple at bats, and I Mailchimp's a great company, but like, it didn't meant 500 millionaires that had the appetite to go start a company. And if you look at us and you look at OneTrust and Stored and Mailchimp, there are companies and like, none of us are public.

Auren Hoffman (46:45.345) my gosh.

Auren Hoffman (46:49.141) Okay.

Auren Hoffman (47:00.211) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Garrett Langley (47:10.407) And that I think creates a problem.

Auren Hoffman (47:13.365) Okay, interesting. Now, there's been all this like GovTech talk now, there's all this people want to put money into public safety related things. Where do you see the market looking? Like if you had advised other companies that want to go, not to compete against you, but just broadly get into this space, how would you be advising them?

Garrett Langley (47:35.668) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (47:39.869) Yeah, I think that there was, so you mentioned Errol, Trey is a good friend and an investor in Flock through Founders Fund. Yes, I saw that. He's a great guy. the history on Flock, right, our original market was not public safety. It was neighborhoods and still a nice part of our business. And I was contemplating going into law enforcement and Trey was like, don't do it. You know, we tried it at Palantir.

Auren Hoffman (47:49.429) Yeah, he's a mate, also been a guest to World of Dazs, also an amazing guy, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (48:09.203) Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (48:09.779) It's a horrible market. And I was like, Trey, I got customers calling me, to give me money, tell me why. And I don't know if it's like a two by two or probably, you know, like an axi, it's probably an axi of sales cycle and ACV. And so you either have to have like really big ACVs if you want a big sales cycle. But if you get stuck in a quadrant of like low ACV and long sales cycle, you die. And that is generally speaking, local government. Local government takes a very long time to buy.

Auren Hoffman (48:36.127) Yes, selling a local government. Obviously there's like successful companies like OpenGov that have relatively low ACVs and super long sales cycles and they've figured it out somehow.

Garrett Langley (48:44.565) But still took 14 years to get to, you know, 100 million of ARR. So not necessarily, you know, the latest kind of push for fast growth with AI.

Auren Hoffman (48:47.647) Correct, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (48:54.153) Yeah, not the double, not the triple, triple, double, double stuff. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (48:57.397) No, no, or even the like, you know, one to 10 to 100, whatever people expect these days. And so you look at that and you have to really ask yourself, do I just believe I'm gonna have outsized ACVs or am I gonna have undersized sales cycles? And at Flock, we were fortunate that, you know, our sales cycles were really, really fast, you know, under 90 days. And that's the only reason why we've been successful. It's very fast.

Auren Hoffman (49:02.515) Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (49:17.278) Yeah.

By the that's insane. That's insane because like most of the SaaS companies I'm in have like sales cycles longer than that. why, why just, it's just cause it's compelling. Like, or it's just like, they have a problem where like the politician is going to get fired if they don't do something or yeah.

Garrett Langley (49:28.244) Yes.

Garrett Langley (49:35.72) Yeah. The best analogy I've come up with is, so as a CEO, I think about two things, right? Either generating more revenue or saving money. When I get a pitch to save money, I send it to my CFO. I'm like, hey, we should look into this. When I get a pitch that's like, can help drive your growth, I'm like, I'm taking that demo myself. And if I like it, I'm gonna buy it on the spot because I'm measured as a CEO on the growth of my business. For a police chief, revenue growth equates to solving crime.

Auren Hoffman (49:54.398) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (50:05.652) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (50:06.385) And so if you sell some widget that's gonna save his people time, he's like, this is really interesting, thanks for the time. But when you show him a product that within minutes helps him solve crime, he will move mountains to buy that product. And that's what Flock does. Like we go in and we are revenue generating for a city in that regard. And so things just happen faster.

Auren Hoffman (50:21.13) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (50:26.335) You're solving crimes, right? Cause, cause obviously like, and every police you've has like they've got stats on what they have to solve and how those stats work and they've to move the stats, right?

Garrett Langley (50:34.803) He's gonna show up and think about this in the case of, know, maybe an example that's closer at home for you guys. Like, if there goes an unsolved murder in your town in Northern Virginia, that police chief's gonna lose his job over not being able to solve that crime.

Auren Hoffman (50:50.101) There were companies like this in the past, know, shot spot or all these other companies that have been, you know, around, you know, for awhile, um, that didn't grow as fast. had difficulties that they're, you know, is it just cause their product wasn't it? Like, assume at some point, like you have to have a great product here, right? You know, it's like, yeah.

Garrett Langley (51:05.94) It just wasn't as good. The product just wasn't as good. I mean, think that the ShotSpotter product is good example. ShotSpotter in itself is a product that works. It will try and load a gunshot. It will not solve a homicide though. It will give you a data point. And so what we figure out is, well, if you combine gunshot detection with license rate readers and a drone, I know the gunshot happened. I can get a camera on site in 30 seconds and I can track the car.

Auren Hoffman (51:20.145) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (51:27.869) Yeah. Together. Right. Yeah. You got to, you got to launch the drone right away to get there. So you can have eyes in the sky. Right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. By the way, I love that. Like, okay, great. Like, yeah. So we, we got like, you hear a gunshot, like you should have at least one drone, maybe more in the air, like as soon as possible, covering that area, looking for anomalies, looking for things that are going on.

Garrett Langley (51:37.34) So that's a different, like that's a fundamentally, we don't commit to knowing a crime happened. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (51:51.036) Instant.

Auren Hoffman (51:54.943) getting all the license plates in that area, getting all the other people fleeing or whatever else. Yeah, that makes complete sense to me.

Garrett Langley (51:58.471) Yep. And then we're not going and selling, we can tell you a gunshot occurred. That's not actually that interesting. We can say, chief, we will get you to 100 % clearance rate on homicides. That's our commitment to you. And you got to buy all, you know, to buy this whole suite of products. So that's the big difference.

Auren Hoffman (52:10.323) Yeah, yep.

Auren Hoffman (52:16.181) Okay. Interesting. Couple of personal questions. So I'm, I'm obsessed with people's names. Okay. Your last name is Langley, which, know, in many people equate with being a spy and law enforcement and things like that. Do you think your last name has something to do with what you're doing today?

Garrett Langley (52:19.122) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (52:32.915) Man, no. So it's an interesting story. So to your intro, I was fortunate to sell two companies before this. And I wasn't sure if I was gonna work again. And my uncle, who's kind of my closest mentor, said, look, you're good, clearly finding problems and building companies around it. Go build something that's not so dopey. And he kind of looked at the prior businesses I had started, and I think in his eyes, they were dopey. It's the kind of businesses that like, they help people, but they don't really matter.

Auren Hoffman (53:02.281) Yeah, yeah, yeah. If they weren't around, if it didn't exist, it wouldn't really change people's lives. Yeah.

Garrett Langley (53:02.483) They disappeared, no one cares.

doesn't really matter. And so when we started Flock, Paige and Matt and I said, okay, we're only going to build non-dopey businesses. And we looked at a bunch of ideas and Flock's just the one that kind of got product market fit first. And eight years later, here I am solving a lot of crime.

Auren Hoffman (53:22.161) Speaking of businesses, you have a list of startup ideas on your website. Some of them are a little dopey. The number one is in toilets. What's the vision in the toilets?

Garrett Langley (53:24.581) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (53:28.123) Fair.

Garrett Langley (53:34.065) Um, so toilets have not largely changed since the Roman Empire. And I'm not that guy who's going go on a long tangent on the Roman Empire, but largely the Romans developed what we would consider as modern toilets today where you sit down, there's, there's water flowing, there's a sponge. There, we've made some things better. They're less communal today than they used to be. It used to be pretty open air kind of group concept. We've made it little more private, but it hasn't changed. And

Auren Hoffman (53:38.933) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (53:50.303) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (53:55.167) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (54:00.81) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (54:02.191) I think there's a couple companies, one of those is called Throne, which I think is pretty cool. They're trying to introduce kind of a modern take on the biome is like very, we don't track ourselves very well. And what you excrete is actually like a really good indicator of what's going on in your body. So.

Auren Hoffman (54:17.599) Yeah, totally, totally. You should have some sort of like, that should be a really great way of like getting some data or something.

Garrett Langley (54:24.305) So I look at that and I look at like just the ergonomics. There's a handful of things that are just fundamentally wrong with toilets today. And if I can be able to convince my wife that it was a good use of my time, I probably would be in the toilet business, but she felt like crime was better.

Auren Hoffman (54:30.355) Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (54:36.607) Yeah. I mean, at my office, have like, we have like the nice heated one and everything. And it is like, it's definitely like, definitely a pleasure. Like when you're there, you're like, I'm definitely taking longer when I'm there sitting on my phone or whatever. It's very nice.

Garrett Langley (54:41.743) yeah, that's high in Toto.

Garrett Langley (54:51.481) Yes, I agree. I agree.

Auren Hoffman (54:54.069) Alright, couple of more personal courses too. We ask all of our guests, what is a conspiracy theory that you believe?

Garrett Langley (55:00.337) I think paleontology is a joke of a science. I would say I think dinosaurs are real. I think dinosaurs are real. Or let me rephrase that. I think life on Earth has been around for millions of years. But you know, I've got young children in our house, my kids, and I'll read these books and I'm looking at these pictures of dinosaurs and I'm like, this is completely made up. There's no way they knew this dinosaur had this pattern and it had feathers here and had a horn.

Auren Hoffman (55:05.224) Dinosaurs, okay, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (55:11.284) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (55:28.703) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (55:29.742) BS, this is a bunch of people playing science. don't think it's, think it's just so far off from what it probably looks like.

Auren Hoffman (55:39.765) Okay, yeah, I think that's almost certainly true. Yes, yeah, I agree with that. Okay, yeah.

Garrett Langley (55:43.633) uh... debate on the power to the top of is that they would they would be quite a bit but

Auren Hoffman (55:47.797) Okay, all right, that's good to know. We'll have a pie on top of this and we'll be back soon. A last question we ask all of our guests. What conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Garrett Langley (55:58.737) Starting companies. I mean the number of people I see starting a company while in college. They're 18 or 19 I think it's totally ludicrous like you have such a short worldview of like what problems actually matter to society You have no experience and I think most of those kids because they're still kids Would be way better off joining a company that's got product market fit To just get some like and I'm not saying college is better. I actually don't think college is particularly productive

Auren Hoffman (56:03.452) Ha

Auren Hoffman (56:22.249) learning.

Garrett Langley (56:28.497) But I wish more 18 year olds that were thinking about, I wanna go start a company? Do I wanna go to college? But just go join a series B, series C company that's still super small. Like if you join a 200 person company, that is a tiny, tiny company and scale things, you're gonna learn so much so fast. You'll also build a better network. Like to me, I don't get this big push of like, everyone should go start a company. I think entrepreneurship is incredible obviously, but I think there is a right time and place. And I don't think it's when you're 18. I think it's when you're maybe

mid 20s, late 20s, I think is like the ideal window to start a company.

Auren Hoffman (57:02.741) are that many people who are 18 or 22 starting companies? mean, outside of IC?

Garrett Langley (57:05.68) I mean, look, yeah, I I look at my own alma mater, Georgia Tech, which is like very, very focused on trying to drive entrepreneurship for their students. And I think that that's a wasted effort compared to that same energy being applied to like go join companies, like go join earlier stage companies. There's no energy, in my opinion, at the collegiate level, getting students to think about joining venture backed companies.

Auren Hoffman (57:15.54) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (57:33.154) at least in the Southeast, maybe it's different at Stanford, but in the Southeast, like it is hard for me to compete with a Coca-Cola, which feels crazy. Like that feels crazy to me, but those kids who are thinking about a place like Flock and like maybe Flock two years ago, they're gonna want to just go in and building a company because they can go raise a quarter million dollars in a seed round. And I just think that'd be more successful. So your question of like, how do we get better companies in Atlanta? That's probably what I'd push for. It's like.

Go join successful companies that are ramping up and learn there first.

Auren Hoffman (58:04.883) Now I went to Georgia Tech two years ago. I never actually had never been there. I never been to the campus before. Obviously worked with a lot of people from Georgia Tech, but never been to the campus. The campus is awesome. and what I liked about the campus, it's like kind of integrated within the city. I walked there from where I was in the city. you can walk from, know, even the, the super touristy part, like from the Coca-Cola museum, you can walk up to Georgia Tech. and, it's not, you know, it's not that long of a walk.

even from there. I feel like it is kind of like underappreciated. Like I feel like it's not as well known. Why is it so underappreciated?

Garrett Langley (58:48.751) It's a good question, because think on an international scale we probably get more respect than on a domestic scale.

Auren Hoffman (58:55.005) Yeah, a lot. know a lot of international people that went there. Like that's how they ended up in the United States. They came from all over the world to get their masters there or something.

Garrett Langley (58:59.086) Yes.

Garrett Langley (59:03.491) Yeah. Yeah, I wish I had a great answer for you. Because for me, at least, that's the only school I applied to. I didn't even contemplate. I was like, why would I leave Atlanta when it's free to go to Georgia Tech? And then also, benefited me and my wife there too, which makes it even more.

Auren Hoffman (59:11.977) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (59:21.225) I went to a Georgia Georgia Tech football game and while Georgia Tech did not win the football game, it was an awesome experience. Like it was so fun. The stadium was great because it's like it's intimate and it was it was packed. mean completely utterly packed. It was a great it's just a really cool place to be.

Garrett Langley (59:27.438) Yes.

Garrett Langley (59:33.731) Yeah.

Garrett Langley (59:38.741) I agree and it's in downtown Atlanta so it's a pretty fun place to live.

Auren Hoffman (59:40.627) Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, this has been amazing. Thank you, Garrett Langley, for joining us on World of DaaS. I'm connected with you on LinkedIn. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you there. This has been super interesting, as I knew it would be, and a ton of fun.

Garrett Langley (59:44.324) Thank you.

Garrett Langley (59:55.778) Thanks for having me.