Flock Safety
December 10, 2018
The public safety operating system
“Homeowners throughout the Bay Area and in other U.S. cities are turning to license plate readers as a next line of defense against property crime.”
Today, we are pleased to share that Bedrock has led a $10 Million Series A-1 financing round in Flock Safety, alongside participation from our friends at Matrix Partners, Founders Fund, Initialized, and Y Combinator.
Much of what passes for “security” today is actually just “security theater” — countermeasures to danger that are intended to provide the feeling of security while doing little to actually solve crime. Today, state of the art security in many neighborhoods across America equates to plastering stickers and signs referencing alarm systems anywhere and everywhere… even if said alarm systems don’t actually exist. Similarly, the safety promised by in-home security cameras is often illusory. While CSI: Miami leads us to believe otherwise, it’s usually not possible to identify a criminal based on facial recognition alone; thus in-home footage is often worthless when it comes to solving crime. What you need is a license plate number… and that’s where Flock Safety comes in.
Using its proprietary computer vision algorithm, Flock Safety is the first security-as-a-service solution that empowers neighborhoods to both deter and solve crime. In the less than two years since the company was founded, Flock Safety’s license plate reading technology has already helped to solve over 300 crimes in neighborhoods across the country. Given how stretched most police departments are, they historically have been unable to clear more than 80 percent of non-violent burglaries and motor-vehicle theft due to lack of evidence. Flock Safety will meaningfully impact that percentage in the years to come.
Flock Safety’s value proposition for neighborhoods is unique. Rather than paying tens of thousands of dollars for legacy cameras that simply capture footage, Homeowners Associations pay an affordable yearly fee for Flock Safety’s continuously improving crime solving software. The company takes privacy seriously. Neighborhoods own their own data, and when a crime occurs, the Homeowners Association can opt in to share Flock-captured data with the relevant law enforcement agency. All data is deleted after 30 days, and neighborhood residents can opt to be placed on Flock’s SafeList, or have their vehicle removed entirely from any Flock footage.
In our Bedrock Founding Letter, we noted that hardware is a sector ripe for narrative violations. While there’s an obvious hardware component to the business, Flock Safety is special for two key reasons. First, the vast majority of Flock Safety’s revenue over time is software subscription. This means that the team is focused on improving software constantly and pushing via remote update. This allows them to avoid the constant hardware upgrade game that most hardware companies must play to keep growing revenue. Second, as a business that is selling to neighborhoods vs. individual homeowners or consumers, Flock Safety will reach massive scale whilst producing an order of magnitude fewer devices than a consumer hardware business has to. Indeed, all of Flock Safety’s production is done at their Atlanta headquarters, resulting in dramatically reduced operational complexity vs. most hardware businesses we’ve seen.
Real security without the theatrics. Safety without compromising privacy. Affordability without compromising efficacy. Founders Garrett Langley, Matt Feury, and the fast-growing Flock Safety team have solved a complex and powerful equation. With over 300,000 neighborhood Homeowners Associations in the US alone, we at Bedrock believe Flock Safety is poised to eliminate non-violent crime in tens of thousands of neighborhoods over the years to come.
Sending best vibes.