# Flock Safety Founder and CEO Garrett Langley at Semafor World Economy
# Semafor Events — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kyzhCWZrRg

Garrett, thanks so much for joining us
today. Thanks for having me. I want to,
you know, I want to jump in. I feel like
most Americans
had not heard of Flock until that Super
Bowl ad. Yeah. Uh, which you didn't put
on. Correct. And which which was maybe a
flash point for reasons that you
couldn't fully control, but it did
highlight for me anyways this real
tension that most Americans, whether
you're in a major city or suburbia,
face. You want safety, you want
security, but you're also terrified
about some sort of dystopian panopticon
world where you're constantly
surveilled. Can you sort of briefly,
first of all, lay out what Flock is for
those of the audience who don't know,
but also then walk us through why you
think it's okay to compromise, it seems
like a little bit of privacy for some
more safety.
Yeah, for sure. So, Garrett started a
company called Flock. Um, we keep people
and assets safe. Um, what that means is
we have a network of sensors, cameras,
audio devices, drones that we develop
here in America, and then we have this
thing called Flock OS that integrates
them together. That's an orchestration
layer. And so, we can protect one site
to a thousand. And easiest example would
be let's say for for whatever reason,
it's your choice, that if an F-150 came
onto your facility between the hours of
midnight and 8:00 a.m.
you would not like that. You can
actually just tell Flock that's not
okay. Drone would automatically launch,
we'd detect it. It's a literally
security at scale.
The challenge with that then is like,
well,
you're indefinitely making a trade-off
between privacy and efficacy or safety.
And I think for me, the the way I look
at it is if you look at two countries
that are maybe a step ahead of us in
this debate, you have a place like South
Africa. Uh, South Africa has 600,000
private security guards.
More than their police or military
combined.
And so, if you're affluent in South
Africa, it's actually very safe. You
have a 9-ft wall, you have security
guards. It's a beautiful place to live
if you haven't been there.
And if you're not affluent, crime is the
cost of being alive. You can't afford to
be safe. Now, if you if you compare that
to place like Tokyo, Tokyo has 37
million people,
just a couple dozen homicides a year.
And whether you go to work at 2:00 a.m.
or at 10:00 a.m.,
you're safe. In fairness, Japanese jail
does have a lot to do with that crime
rate. It is not
Uh that's actually there's no data to
back that up. All data shows that the
only reason people don't commit crime is
if they believe they will get caught.
Interesting.
The efficacy has nothing to do with
penalty. Because if you got to imagine,
the average criminal is making a Boolean
decision in life. Will I get caught? And
there's there's 50-plus years of
research that proves penalties don't
count. But so if you look at the
difference, like Tokyo has chosen to
make safety
a right.
South Africa has made it a privilege.
And in America, we're somewhere in the
middle. Because I think if you look at
some cities, let's go to a place like
Memphis,
it's a very tough city to live in right
now.
Crime is high, clearance rates are low.
It's really tough.
Clearance rates for non-law enforcement,
meaning how many cases actually get
solved.
Yeah. So the whole reason I started the
company is if you Everybody want to
guess? If you kill someone in America,
the national average is about a 50%
likelihood of getting caught.
Can you imagine that? You guys are all
in business. Like 50% odds are pretty
good. So a lot of people take their flip
their coin. Stealing a car, 80% chance
of getting away with it.
And that's how you guys, correct me if
I'm wrong, started with license plate
readers, right? And and you do you do
lay out this case and we had one of your
big investors, David Ulevitch from from
Andreessen on our podcast a few weeks
ago, who who laid out this vision of
basically like start with that basic
building block. If you people aren't
caught stealing cars, they will graduate
to more and more crime.
Yep.
And then at the same time, I mean,
obviously, I think SF is maybe a perfect
example of this tension between a desire
for privacy and historically a
crime-struck,
recently crime-ridden town. Maybe not so
recently.
Do you think that
when you are balancing that tension
between people wanting safe
neighborhoods and at the same time not
wanting to be surveilled,
David wrote this thought piece about how
SF has has done a lot with your
technology. Do you think that's a
scalable model? Do you think that every
city in America feels the same way about
this? No, and I think that's the whole
point is one of the beautiful parts
about America, unlike other countries,
is this is a both a challenge and a
benefit. If you go to a place like the
UK, there's about 45 police departments,
45 municipalities. The France has two.
In America, we have 18,000
separate law enforcement organizations.
Which means we have 18,000 local
governments that make a choice of what
laws they do and do not want to
societally enforce. And so jaywalking is
my favorite joke, no one enforces it.
Some cities choose not to enforce
immigration. Some cities choose not to
enforce drugs.
It's really none of our business. Our
point of view is that laws should be
enforced,
but every local municipality should have
control over what laws they task their
local law enforcement to enforce.
This is an argument that others have
made, right? That we are we make the
tools, it's up to people how they want
to use them.
Um and I I say this because part of the
controversy around your company is
you don't, as far as I understand, work
with the federal government.
Right. But
the federal government, specifically
ICE, can co-opt or ask your local law
enforcement partners for data that they
then have been accused of, or maybe
substantiated of,
they can then use in immigration raids.
Yeah. Which is a controversial, very
divisive topic. Have you had
conversations with the federal
government about, "Hey, maybe can we not
use our products for this?" No, cuz I
don't I don't think it's my position to
have that conversation. So you go pick
your let's keep keep talking about San
Francisco. Sure. You go to a place like
San Francisco, and I would bet, and I
haven't done this, but I would bet if
you walked through City Hall or the
police headquarters, Mhm.
there are federal agents in that
building because they collaborate,
because local law enforcement is not
effectively tasked to solve things like
human trafficking, large-scale
interdiction cases like drug
trafficking. They rely on their
partners. Now, in a place like
California,
they are very clear they do not want
immigration to be enforced.
And I think that's their choice. But I
think that's a conversation that Mayor
London Breed and Governor Newsom would
need to have with the current
administration.
see
you want to step out of that. And again,
this is an argument that technology
companies made time and time again.
Microsoft made a similar argument around
their services in in Israel. Other big
tech companies have said, "We just make
the products and we absolve ourselves."
And
Well, but I would I would challenge you
there because we do a lot more than
that. Right? So So we look at it and go,
"What are the ways this can get abused?"
So how do we drive accountability to the
system?
guardrails around, let's say, a jilted
lover looking at his ex-fiancé and
following them around using your
technology? Yeah, so here is a good one.
So before Flock, this type of law
enforcement data was stored in
perpetuity.
I think that's a massive failure of like
risk avoidance. And so we store the data
for 30 days. How did you arrive at that
number? 30 days?
Yeah. Good Goldilocks. And then if you
push that further, we actually promote
city councils, state legislators to
write law that says this can be stored
for this long. So in Washington, they
have a law. Virginia has a law. Georgia
has a law. California has a law that
mandates data retention.
Are you in all 50 states? Yes. Which was
the easiest to sort of sell your What
was the easiest sell for you? What was
sort of Where did you start? California.
California. Okay. Yeah. And why was
that? Just scale?
I think there's there's a few things
that are unique about California. Um
one, they have a crime problem.
Um which is not You can go look up the
data. And then two, they're more apt to
adopt new approaches. Like if you look
at law enforcement, maybe some of this
room wanted to be a law enforcement when
they were kids. Most likely your kids
will not go in public service.
It is a field that has been tarnished
reputationally, for better or for worse,
but it has happened. And so enrollment
numbers are down. So technology winds up
being the only choice. And California
has one of the most challenged law
enforcement industries or agencies in
terms of just general enrollment.
Yeah.
I I want to go back to the the idea of
of
being a maker of tools and not a decider
of tools. Because there was a moment, a
long moment from call it 1990s all the
way through maybe this election where a
lot of the Valley, and you're based in
Georgia, but you're obviously a tech
company,
um believed that there was some sort of
societal mission to do good. And in
doing that, as you do, but in doing that
they they imposed a certain value set on
their end users. Anthropic still does
this today. We will not serve our
service for this purpose, that purpose,
the other purpose.
And that was actually quite popular with
with the public. You know, it it it
backfired, but it it it engendered a lot
of goodwill where people were actually
rooting for these trillion-dollar
corporations, they're rooting for
billionaires.
Tech has a PR problem now. People don't
like Big Tech, and it seems like people
should love your product. People should
be up They should be dancing through the
streets going, "Amazing. My
neighborhoods are safer. I feel better."
They're not. Don't you think you would
benefit, even from a sales and marketing
perspective, if you were to say, "You
know what? No, we don't want our
technology to be used in ice raids or or
for, you know, the ends of the federal
government here."
Yeah, I mean, to me it's very confusing
that
people are comfortable giving local law
enforcement deadly weapons, a gun,
[snorts] a Taser, yet they're afraid to
give them the tools to keep us safe. The
tools meaning your technology.
Yeah. And there's We're not alone.
There's other people that that do what
we do, but it is I do find it to be a
very interesting debate. I think the
difference is, cuz I imagine everyone in
this room has a cell phone. And so if I
was a decent computer programmer, or
some decent, I could build a tool today
using mobile device networks, I
advertising, and the fact that you use
Google Maps and Uber and Waze, and I
could pinpoint your exact location
within down to a few feet 24 hours a
day. I think there are services that
actually do that.
Yes. And we're not afraid of that
because we can't see it.
But when you can see a camera,
it's something to point at when you're
mad. And so I think the issue is not
that people dislike our my company, it's
that they are mad,
and they need somewhere to point. And
they're mad at the current federal
administration because we didn't have
this problem 2 years ago, we didn't have
this problem a year ago. This is a
current thing and
it'll move past.
So Transfix, have you thought about
working with the federal government at
all? Do you have partnerships with them
at that level?
We don't I mean, no because I think for
us there's 18,000 cities to go after. We
got plenty of work to How many cities
are you in now?
Just over 5 or 6,000.
What is the Like what is the TAM here? I
imagine Actually in an ideal world
people just stop needing to pay for your
product. That would be lovely. You want
great. I would like to live in that
world. I'd like for my kids to live in
that world. But what is the TAM? No, I
mean you look at it this way. What is
the price you'd be willing to pay to be
safe?
I don't know. Like how much a year would
you be willing to pay? How much do you
pay for Netflix? Like Netflix?
I have no idea. I think I'm a terrible
financial reporter.
Netflix is like $50 a month.
pay $100,000 a year to guarantee my
safety. You wouldn't pay that. Yeah, I
don't think you'd pay that much. I think
you might want to, but you The way we
think about the TAM is well, there's
however many hundreds of millions of
people in America.
What is the cost of being safe? What is
the price we're willing to pay? And for
us it's very important that that doesn't
become a privatized privilege. We
believe safety should be up there with
clean water, safe roads. It should be
something that every American has the
benefit of. Let's switch gears for a
little bit. Um,
you guys obviously are focused only on
America. And one of the products that
you you do put out and you offer is our
drones.
Um,
and and I ask I I want to sort of
pick your brain a little bit. We we are
in the midst of a conflict with Iran.
Maybe it's subsided, maybe it's not, we
don't know.
[clears throat]
But it's highlighted a real asymmetry in
how we respond to drone attacks. The
Shahed drones that they feel, these are
taking lessons that they've learned in
Ukraine. You deal with drones, you make
drones, you you think about drones all
the time.
Um, what do we need to do in the US,
right, for our sort of national defense
purposes? What are the things you've
learned about building these devices or
these products that you think are
applicable to war, to defending
ourselves here? you guys. Yeah, I mean I
think the the thing for me is
we tend to only talk about the end of
the supply chain and not the start of
the supply chain. Okay. So, we want a
drone that's built in America,
manufactured in America, that has a
supply chain that has, you know, it
looks like it's made in America.
But then when you go a step further and
you go, "Okay, well, what about some of
the medium-finished goods? Like a
propeller or a battery?" And you go,
"Okay, well, yeah, we can do that, but
we're not that price competitive." And
then you go a step further and you go to
a simple as something like a bolt, which
might seem
boring to maybe people in this room,
but, you know, our drone probably has
500 discrete parts in it.
It's very hard to find a price
competitive, high-quality bolt. How much
does it cost to make one of your drones?
Bomb is in the tens of thousands of
dollars.
And you sell them for $100,000.
Okay. Some decent margins there.
Yeah, I mean, it's a
Yeah, we're a good company.
Yeah. I mean, I Do you Do you The Shahad
drone costs something like a quarter of
a million dollars to make. We could not,
I assume, make that in the US for that
price.
No, and I think that's the the the the
challenge is it will take the better
part of a decade to be fully vertically
integrated and have a reliable supply
chain. But it's doable. We have the
resources. We actually have the skills,
but it it is a choice we have to make.
have the skills? Do we have enough
skilled workers to do this? I think we
do. At scale? Yeah, because what what is
the jobs will flow. Like if we make the
decision as both either a state or a
country that we want to do this,
there are plenty of people who will grow
into those roles. I think it's a
I think it's a misleading fact when
people complain about or or say, "Oh, we
don't have enough skilled labor." I'm
like, I I actually don't think that's
true. Really?
Even with with what AI will do to the
workforce and the idea that we're going
to need more people, the theory that
we'll need more people in blue-collar
jobs, you think we have enough folks to
do
I I do, and I actually think I don't
know if you saw this, the Lowe's CEO had
a great quote of like they're going to
start also
Was it at Summit for World Economy?
Yeah, he was talking about this thing.
Then I should have seen that. That's
really awkward.
Big big push on on blue collar uh labor
and on training. And I think that's
great. I mean, yeah, there there's a
consensus there that we need more of
that. But I am I am a little bit dubious
that we can actually onshore our supply
chain. We we got rid of this for a
reason, right? It is
better and more effective from a capital
allocation perspective, from a quality
of manufacture perspective, to do
just-in-time, to have a global supply
chain. Um and I'm just sort of leery of
that. The last thing I want to talk
about is to go back to that Super Bowl
ad. Um Amazon obviously walked away from
your partnership after that ad. Were you
Were you surprised or or maybe
disappointed by that decision? I mean,
disappointed, sure. I mean, I've known
Jamie for a long time, probably close to
a decade. Um we started our companies
around the same time. Um but I think the
thing that was confusing to me is the
media portrayed it as some
major revenue impacting event. Neither
company was generating any revenue from
the partnership. If you look at the way
policing works today, if my home gets if
my if let's say my neighbor's house gets
broken into, a cop shows up at my door,
knocks on it, and says, "Can I get your
camera footage?" And now I have a choice
as a private citizen to say, "No." But
uh imagine the audacious nature it would
take to say, "No." You're You're
intimidated, right?
And Jamie and I agree that's not good.
And so, what we had built was
was to have to opt out of sharing that
or opt
the beauty of what we were proposing to
build is a law enforcement officer could
say, "Hey, there was a crime nearby.
Would you like to share
any camera footage you have?" And if you
click no, there's no audit, there's no
accountability, there's no trail. You
just disappear.
And so, it's a real bummer, in my
opinion. Like, we weren't generating
revenue. We think it was just good to
the betterment of society. And
obviously, they received uh pretty
material backlash from their Super Bowl
ad, and they felt like that was
something they needed to do, which
Just very quickly,
cuz we are over time here. Is Is that a
partnership you would ever revisit or
you are considering visiting? Have you
been in talks with them about that?
We've We have a great working
relationship and I'm sure at some point
we will find a way to do something again
together and like we're both two very
large companies focused on keeping
Americans safe and to me it's inevitable
we'll wind up doing something together.
Garrett, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you.