To Be of Service - Two Year Anniversary Reflection
Photo credit: Jason Okuma
I can’t believe it has already been two years since I founded Brainitch. I appreciate everyone who has been following our progress. It’s been an exciting roller coaster ride figuring out our product/market fit and dealing with “Founder’s Dilemma.”
A lot has happened in the last two years, but if you haven’t heard me pitch or network at an event, you probably don’t know my story.
I’ve always moved to the beat of my own drum. I love music and when I was old enough, I started going to concerts and festivals. Being the youngest of three boys, got me into a lot of trouble. I had easier access to new music, movies, and books.
My middle brother introduced me to coding HTML so I could build my own websites. After our first lesson, I was hooked. I began reading all kinds of books on web development and Photoshop. During junior high, I began to TA a high school level summer class on Macs and Multimedia. In high school, I continued my passion for hacking, but developed a stronger passion for making movies and storytelling. I am very self-aware and enjoy journaling about my experiences.
About six years ago, while I was studying at USC, I was at a music festival with my girlfriend and fraternity brother. It was a super hot day and we should have been drinking more water. I’ll never forget being in the middle of a 20,000-person crowd, looking over at my buddy and realizing something was wrong. I touched his arm which was cold and clammy. Suddenly, he dropped to the ground.
What was I supposed to do?
I had two options: Squeeze my way out of this massive crowd to find help or carry him out of there. Luckily, the people behind us had water and I was able to nurse him back to a safe body temperature. My Boy Scout and Red Cross training came in handy that day, but not everyone is as lucky as we were. This was not the first time I had witnessed an emergency at an event, it was just the first time it happened to someone close to me.
Flash forward four years...
(Two years ago if you are keeping track)
I was struggling to get into Hollywood as an assistant to a producer or director. I really wanted to skip all the underpaid jobs everyone is “required” to go through in order to get to the top, like working in a mailroom or the front desk. I wanted to produce my own movies and TV shows, but that’s close to impossible as a “no name.”
I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, so I went back to my old journals to see if anything popped out as an unaddressed need. I came across the story of that day at the music festival and started researching. There were tons of news articles of overdoses and safety concerns at events, but I still couldn’t find anyone addressing the issue with new technology.
This was around the time when Bluetooth Low Energy beacons were entering the market, so with my tech and creative background I began designing my own solution for a mesh network, which I later patented.
Why should anyone call out to 911 when private events have their own security and medical teams on standby? Expediting response times can increase the chances of saving a life, but a localized communication system needs to be deployed.
After researching more, I went to my dad for advice. He told me to write up an Executive Summary, so I did. He approved, but wanted me to get validation from my target audience. I discovered there was an International Music Festival Conference coming up in a couple of weeks in Austin, so I used my credit card points to get a hotel room and my parents’ mileage points to get a flight.
With a two week deadline where I needed to be prepared with a convincing story and materials, I set out to make a logo, explainer video, website, and business cards. Brainitch.com was a domain I had registered back in 2007 because it was a cool name and available. I flew into Austin the day the event started, dropped off my bags at my hotel and headed into the conference.
My first business conference ever!
One of the panels was already in session, so I decided to go browse the vendors and try out my pitch. Luckily the third vendor I talked to was Allen Cook at TourTech. Allen provides IT solutions for large events and I’ll never forget the drawn out conversation we had. It was a beautiful sight: two nerds discussing the lack of safety technology at festivals, the advantages of mesh networking, and random cool hardware.
After the three days at the conference, I left head up high with a ton of constructive feedback and industry contacts. I had something people needed.
Now I had to build a team.
Time was on my side and things fell into place as if I had planned them. I reached out to an old friend who put me in touch with someone who introduced me to a super smart MIT EECS graduate. After a few more conversations we got started.
The original idea was to offer a white label mobile solution with an emergency response system as the main feature for music festivals. I saw a lack in creativity and innovation in festival apps, so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to sell festivals on a better app with a potentially life saving feature.
We were able to soft launch at SnowBall Music Festival 2014 in Denver, Colorado. This was the first music festival to use Bluetooth low energy beacons. A few weeks later, SXSW used them and made headlines. Our soft deployment was a huge learning experience that taught us how beacons worked in a real-world scenario.
In December of 2014, I spoke on a panel called “All Roads Lead to Better WiFi” at the International Music Festival Conference. Brainitch was also the official Bluetooth Solutions Provider for the conference and we designed a Scavenger Hunt with Estimote beacons.
During the conference I talked to more potential customers and quickly realized that it was going to be close to impossible to convince festivals to leave their current mobile developer for Brainitch.
Before this year’s SXSW, I pivoted the company, rebranding it from a creative technology firm to a full-spectrum public safety technology company. I decided to integrate an emergency response system with existing business apps rather than spend time and money growth hacking our own.
After returning from SXSW with my head up high, I was faced with some difficult news. My consulting CTO told me that he couldn’t continue on and to find someone with more experience in public safety.
What followed was a short depression...
Imagine networking like a champ, constantly getting positive feedback and high fives, and collecting valuable contacts, to come home to bad news. The only person on your team who can build your vision has lost interest in the project.
I went on a mission to find another CTO.
I attended more technical meetups and reached out to my vast network asking people if they wanted to quit their job to work for me. I even hosted a LA Mesh Network meetup group at my loft.
Then I learned about FounderDating.com and, no, it’s not what you think. It’s actually a site for finding a mentor or co-founder. My only three search terms: mobile, social impact, and location: Los Angeles. From 50 results I ended up messaging five candidates and Barbara Bickham was one who responded a few days later. After multiple successful conversations and meetings, Barbara came onto the team in June of this year.
Since then, we have been developing an industrial strength localized communication platform. We have been collecting valuable feedback from potential clients, which has swayed me to change the focus of our company from a “full-spectrum public safety technology company” to a “connected technology company.” This means we have been focusing more on the guest services solution instead of dedicating ourselves to safety to reduce our liability out the gate.
The reason behind this is that special events have not updated their technology as fully as they could. Disaster can strike when technology fails or when the event operators can’t respond in a reasonable time during a medical emergency. By implementing our solution, we provide real-time communications between attendees and local responders. This not only helps speed response time, but it also reduces overall liability.
I am grateful to have Barbara on the Brainitch team as a Co-Founder and CTO. Together, we are unstoppable, and we’re building a powerful product that businesses need and consumers will love and easily use in an emergency. We believe that if we can’t build a product for the worse case scenario, then there is no point in building it at all. We are full of passion and are driven by our mission to protect and serve humanity.
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