A few years ago two young entrepreneurs created a startup with a mission to save lives.<\/p>\n
Working quietly, without fanfare, they developed a technical solution that does just that.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an emergency response data platform that connects critical data from over 350 million devices to thousands of emergency communications centers. When seconds count, the more data available to the public safety personnel managing the emergency, the better the chances are that the right rescue team will arrive quickly enough and with the right situational awareness to save a life.<\/p>\n
The company is\u00a0RapidSOS<\/a>, and I want to tell you about it for a couple of reasons.\u00a0\u00a0First, because of what it\u2019s doing to save people\u2019s lives day in and day out. Also, because it shows the kind of success that an organization can achieve when grounded on a noble purpose.<\/p>\n Out of a scare, an idea<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It all began in 2012 when\u00a0Michael Martin<\/a>, today the CEO of RapidSOS, noticed he was being followed as he was walking home late at night. That scare made him realize that in most emergencies there is no easy way to get out your phone, call 911, and have a verbal conversation about what is happening. Michael set out to Harvard to build a business to solve this challenge. There, he co-founded RapidSOS with\u00a0Nicholas Horelik<\/a>, a Ph.D. from MIT who is now the company\u2019s CTO.<\/p>\n If Martin ever had a doubt about his purpose, another difficult event the following year assured him he was chasing a serious problem. His father had fallen from the roof of the family\u2019s home and was unable to reach 911 from his smartphone. It wasn\u2019t until Martin\u2019s mother came home and called 911 from their landline that help was able to arrive.<\/p>\n The root of the problem is that 911 was built in the 1960s for a voice centric-world, making it unable to meet the needs of a data-centric world in which calls are most often initiated on wireless devices.<\/p>\n The following summer, while Horelik led a small team working on the technology at the\u00a0Harvard Innovation Lab<\/a>, Martin borrowed a car and took off for a 3,500-mile trip to meet with several hundred 911 centers across the country. What he learned by talking to nearly 5,000 first-responders became instrumental in the development of the technology.\u00a0\u00a0Which is why humbly he says the technology was built in partnership with 911.<\/p>\n Seconds save lives<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n For a company whose mission is to build transformative technologies that saves lives, I\u2019d say the numbers speak for themselves.<\/p>\n Today, the RapidSOS emergency response data platform provides life-saving data to 4,700 emergency communications centers, covering more than 90% of the U.S. population, and helping first responders manage over 250-million emergencies a year.<\/p>\n The company has raised more than $100 million in equity capital and has launched its platform in other countries.<\/p>\n Other challenges solved<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n And that\u2019s not all.<\/p>\n While working on its platform, RapidSOS has been able to solve problems that puzzled emergency authorities for years.<\/p>\n Take the challenges with home security alarms, as an example.<\/p>\n According to a recent Harvard\u00a0study<\/a>, the legacy 911 infrastructure makes it difficult for operators to gather enough information from monitoring center operators to triage and prioritize alarm company calls. This leads to long processing times and a proliferation of false alarms. Up to 90 to 99% of all security alarms are false, according to the\u00a0study<\/a>.<\/p>\n Home security provider\u00a0Cove<\/a>\u00a0became the first of its kind to appreciate the advantages of the RapidSOS platform and recently became\u00a0certified<\/a>\u00a0as RapidSOS Ready.\u00a0\u00a0I expect other alarm companies will be interested in a solution that allows them to provide a timelier and more accurate response time to their customer\u2019s emergencies.<\/p>\n The power of purpose<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Purpose alone is not a predictor of success. But having a noble purpose empowers a company by attracting and retaining talented individuals who can lead it to success.<\/p>\n It certainly attracted me.\u00a0\u00a0When Martin first approached me about serving on the RapidSOS advisory board, I not only immediately accepted, I also became an investor. And like me, a group of top-notch professionals, including three former leaders of the FCC, are helping RapidSOS navigate today\u2019s difficult business, technological, and regulatory environments so it can succeed.<\/p>\n People these days want to work for companies that have a noble purpose and are making a difference in society. By the way, if you are one of them and would like to be a part of RapidSOS, take a look at the current\u00a0openings<\/a>.<\/p>\n After many years in the corporate C-Suite and working with promising young startups on innovative projects, nowadays I really enjoy being on the other side of the table, working with and investing in startups. As I consider opportunities, one of the things I look for is the company\u2019s purpose. To me that\u2019s one of the key criteria.\u00a0\u00a0RapidSOS is a perfect example. Its noble purpose attracted people from diverse backgrounds to its employee, advisor, and investor ranks. Driven by a common mission, they are making amazing progress in saving peoples lives.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t think of a more noble purpose than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1998,"template":"","publication":[20],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/1997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=1997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}