William Leonard
Hey, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I’m William Leonard, your host, and investor with Valor Ventures, a leading seed-stage venture capital firm here in Atlanta, Georgia. Today I’m excited to sit down with two founders, not from Atlanta, but actually from the Indianapolis area. Lisa Mitchell and Marlin Jackson of Pulse Analytix. Welcome to the podcast.
Marlin Jackson
Thanks for having us, William.
William Leonard
Awesome. Would love to have you all just kick it off and give our listeners a 30-second rundown about what Pulse Analytix is.
Marlin Jackson
Yeah, Pulse Analytix is a civic engagement and oversight platform that empowers citizens to create transparency, and accountability within policing. The empowerment comes with a technology that acts as an impartial witness, during interactions with law enforcement, whether positive or negative, having this technology that acts as an impartial witness to document exactly what is taking place during this interaction to shed light on what type of interactions are occurring within society- between police and citizens. And at the same time, the oversight comes into play with the advocacy group user, who has the ability to subscribe to the data analysis, feed, and dashboard to be able to see exactly within our community, whether it be the NAACP, ACLU, what is transpiring so that we can advocate with accuracy. And all this is in an effort to create transparency so that we can actually have accountability within policing. Police agencies have the opportunity to be a part of the solution as well, with case management software. If they want to sign up, how the case management software [works], when these reports are filed, they can receive them, and then manage them within a workflow internally within the police agency. So it’s not just outside of the police agency creating transparency and accountability, but equipping them internally with the tools to be able to do so as well within the precinct.
William Leonard
Awesome. I love that rundown Marlin and we’re certainly going to dive into more about the software solution here. But you and Lisa are seasoned entrepreneurs, I would love for you all to really educate our listeners on your background and how you first came together as a team to start this business. Lisa, talk to us a little bit about your story to entrepreneurship and hear how you met Marlin?
Lisa Mitchell
I kind of thought of being an entrepreneur for a while and it won the battle. I have a traditional beginning of a corporate career. I was in telecom operations for almost 18 years and had small businesses while I was doing that as well because I like to do all the things at all the time so had some retail storefronts and things like that, and really got it got exposed to and fell in love with technology through helping to launch a couple of businesses with other founders. It really has been a perfect opportunity to meld my passion for solving big problems through technology. My last couple of projects have been Corporate Social Responsibility platforms, working with Marlin on a nonprofit Edtech platform that we’ve launched, and then most recently here with Pulse Analytix. It’s just my way of using what lights me up to help technology stand in the space of big problems and hopefully make things better than I found them. That’s kind of what drives me just as an entrepreneur is just wanting to play a role in solving something that’s causing other people pain.
William Leonard
Awesome. And Marlin, I’ll let you go ahead and explain your background a little bit.
Marlin Jackson
I’m a former professional athlete. I played five years with the Indianapolis Colts and one year with the Philadelphia Eagles. Transitioning outside of the National Football League, I had already started the Fight For Life Foundation. I founded that organization but then turned it into a full-fledged 501(c)(3), and my passion for entrepreneurship stems from my experience as an underserved youth growing up in poverty, growing up in household dysfunction, and community dysfunction as well. I became really rooted in social impact and being able to create social impact through business, which led me to entrepreneurship, then also just wanting to control my own destiny, wanting to control my time, and being able to do that through entrepreneurship, while also making a social impact. My work was the Fight For Life Foundation and underserved youth through social-emotional learning stems from my experience as an underserved youth, what I’ve done in single-family, affordable housing, the Revive Property Group LLC, because I grew up not having quality housing and then with Pulse Analytix. It came about during the pandemic, looking at what Lisa and I have done with the Building Dreams platform, the Edtech platform, and looking at what we’re doing with the engagement of students, and the oversight of admins and parents within that platform, and then seeing that applicability with the concept within policing and citizen relations. Obviously, with George Floyd in 2020, things came to a tipping point, where it just became like, “How can we continue to sit back and not do anything?” Where we continue to see these videos and these images and as a black man, I know this personally from friends and acquaintances that have had these experiences with law enforcement, where it’s not been about protecting and serving, but it’s been about enforcement. You continue to see a lack of accountability and you see no transparency. Lisa came with me and we have been talking about doing things in the corporate world, when it came to behavior health, we were looking at a couple of other things in juvenile justice. Lisa saw the applicability of what we’re doing with building drones and data analysis, and now we can apply that to police and citizen relations. She brought the idea and immediately it was like a spark to a flame that lit a fuse. We just immediately saw the tangible nature and applicability of this right now, in society, the need for something like this where we continue to see these types of interactions primarily within black and brown communities, but then we don’t see anything occurring that brings justice to these incidents. Our passion was fueled by that and seeing what we had already done with building dreams and then transitioning and reimagining that same concept, but to empower and engage citizens, and then to have the oversight from advocacy groups and attorneys, to also possibly include police agencies, but all in an effort to create accountability. Accountability could be having an officer fired, it can be having officers recognized for positive interactions, as well as having officers referred to training, but something actually has to occur when we see officers with misconduct.
William Leonard
I love how the software solution is recommending an actionable next step. As you said, the officer could face disciplinary measures, or they can even face positive reinforcement from good things that they’ve done because we know not all police officers are bad apples. But there’s certainly at least some that are out there that are making a bad name for all law enforcement agencies. I’m curious, it’s no secret that relations between communities that are disenfranchised and even communities that aren’t disenfranchised, are seeing deteriorating relations between law enforcement agencies and the people within those communities. I would love for you to educate our listeners on really how Pulse is breaking down this long-standing rift between these two groups that really should be acting like one, but how is it practically working to solve some of the issues between these two parties here?
Lisa Mitchell
While part of the mission with Pulse is to really empower and allow people to have their voice heard and in regards to what the technology does, it acts as an impartial witness. In so many incidents, there’s a disempowerment of the citizen where there’s an authority figure and disempowerment to the citizen and they don’t have a voice. There’s no way to capture their side of the story. While departments are more readily embracing things like body cameras and measures of transparency, we’re still reliant on them to decide what gets shown or released or made public and what doesn’t. That level of transparency is not complete and it is not impartial. It constantly puts citizens at a disadvantage. With the technology with Pulse, what it allows to do is to give kind of the citizens’ point of view, and the citizens voice in interaction from an unbiased standpoint, in a secure way where there is true transparency. That is really kind of the cornerstone of what provides the opportunity for advocacy, for justice, for just greater justice to be done in general, because we’re actually seen and that there are two points of view if there’s bodycam footage, and citizen provided footage through Pulse, great, right? That’s an even more complete version of the story. That’s really what we’re aiming to do is just provide an unbiased level of documentation from the citizen point of view that is readily available and able to work on behalf of citizens’ rights and justice.
Marlin Jackson
And if I could just add just a little bit to that explanation by Lisa there, I say it’s a conduit that is a bridge builder that takes it from the engagement or the street level, and then relays that information to the appropriate resources on the other end. So as Lisa said, you can have that transparency and see exactly what happened, and to include multiple stakeholders internally within the police agency, so that we’re all on the same page. Now, it’s not about do we know that this officer had these many counts of misconduct? We’re all on the same page and now it’s up to us to actually hold that officer accountable and take action. Another layer beyond that is including the advocacy groups. If I’m subscribing to the data analysis feed, and I can see that this precinct has had 50 counts of excessive force but none of those officers had disciplinary action, maybe I can go to the media, or maybe I can go to the legal system because now I have the same information. I’m not dependent upon the law enforcement agency to provide me with this critical information. I can see clearly and I can advocate more accurately because I am in tune with what’s going on within the society with police and citizen interactions. A conduit and a bridge builder.
William Leonard
Yeah, I love that. I love that illustration there. You’re a conduit and a bridge-builder, to something that really hasn’t had much transparency historically. Police institutions and government agencies are not the most tech-savvy organizations out there. You all are really working to provide them with a revamped technological infrastructure. Can you speak to how important it is to have more technology in these departments, and really what that technology and software is going to enable a community benefit here for the people that the police agencies are serving?
Marlin Jackson
Well, the powerful technology that it is literally an invisible web, like in the connectivity, in the efficiency with the relaying, and sharing of information. If we just look at that point right thereof relaying and sharing information to have everyone on the same page, as I said earlier, internally, within the police agency. Every stakeholder, whether it be an officer on the street, a lieutenant, a captain, the chief, they’re all on the same page. And then just a workflow, though, that’s easy to manage some of the things that the pushback that we received early was like, “Wow, this is going to increase the volume of complaints that we receive.” And our pushback was like, “Yeah, it’s going to increase the volume, but it’s going to make it more efficient and effective for you to be able to manage them because you’re going to be able to see within your workflow exactly where you are. You’re going to have the data analysis to show you exactly what type of incidents are we seeing occur out on the street level. Where are these incidents within our work queue, right?” The efficiency of technology and then even just a level of customer service with the automatic automated notifications now as a citizen, I’m gonna feel like my voice is being heard because I’m receiving updates and notifications on the status of my incident report. It’s not just me filing a report and then I don’t hear anything else about it, I am in the loop from the beginning to the end when we find a resolution. In that entire circle of documenting the incident, and then finding resolution, everybody with all the different stakeholders is included in the management of the information, the sharing of the information from beginning to end.
Lisa Mitchell
We built this with law enforcement, with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, as we dug deep into their processes, their workflow, their current technology, what pain they were feeling, what made it harder for them to provide a better level of customer service. We really listened and understood what they’re working with. The processes and the technology vary from department to department or agency to agency. The common problem is, yes, we have general orders, and we have standards, but it’s really, really hard to keep track of everything. We don’t have flags when officers reach the desired threshold. We don’t have an easy way to provide data on our activity or outcomes. We don’t have an easy way to communicate and they express you know if we know what’s going on, and we have the right communication in our chain of command, we can mediate with success 90% of the complaints that we get from citizens in real-time. But there’s this lag in this process and this inefficiency that’s really hindering that customer relations experience that could be really positive for all the parties because the technology and the timeliness aren’t there. That’s what we’ve really built into this solution is bridging that gap. And frankly, when it comes to the data side of it, that’s not an easy process. We’re talking Excel spreadsheets, we’re talking paper files, it really is kind of, in many cases, an archaic and inefficient way to produce data. With the amount of legislation and the specific legislation that’s being mandated from the federal and local level, in many places, not providing that data and not having that transparency is not going to be an option. It’s not going to be acceptable any longer. They’re going to be forced to have systems and mechanisms and technologies in place that allow them to meet those reporting requirements. That’s part of what Pulse does as well. It’s kind of a perfect storm and timing of both huge need and a legal mandate in many cases and departments that are finding themselves ill-equipped are going to be able to fix that problem with Pulse.
William Leonard
I think that the pushback that Marlin was speaking of increased the reported volume, what Pulse is really serving as a tool to streamline those reports. I think you mentioned this briefly just now, but how are these reports being handled? Is it primarily paper base or they’re primarily archaic, technical infrastructures in place? What is the backbone of the workflows that most agencies are leveraging right now and how long does it take to process some of these reports on average?
Lisa Mitchell
It really varies from what we found from the agencies that we’ve been interviewing and working with and doing discovery with. One department had literal, like paper files, specifically around police behavior and infractions, and things like that, and had also just disclosed that when there was a turnover in power that the files, for lack of a better description, were set on fire. We have some very rudimentary archaic paper files. And then there’s some standard software that a lot of the bigger agencies use that have capabilities to do reporting, but they’re not easy to use. They aren’t configured really in a way that makes them really usable and there’s not a lot of data visualization or analytics around just the raw numbers. They aren’t really numbers that can be used or data that’s being put to use in a way that’s most meaningful. It’s kind of across the board as far as sophistication goes, but as far as leveraging it to actually make it usable data that then creates outcomes and behaviors and change. It’s not really been leveraged that way in a lot of places from what we’ve seen.
William Leonard
Really pivoting here a little bit. Both of y’all have come from different career paths to build multiple businesses. I’m curious, Lisa and Marlin, can you talk through your previous career experiences and how they’ve helped shape your outlook on building a startup like Pulse Analytix?
Lisa Mitchell
I think for me the biggest kind of lessons learned is I don’t do well in an environment where there’s complacency. In my corporate career, I got things streamlined to the point where I really only had to work about two hours a day and while I should still be doing that, for sake of ease, there’s no fulfillment there. That’s like one of the things I’ve discovered throughout is I need something that’s challenging. I need something that’s fast-paced. I need something that is purpose-driven and impactful. I think I will put up with an extreme amount of uncertainty, and risk, and on some days straight pain, if the impact in the positive purpose is significant enough to me and drives me enough, and for me that has manifested in a number of ways, whether it’s getting corporations to be better corporate citizens, and look at social responsibility, whether it’s equipping, and disrupting, and being innovative in the education space, which again, talk about pushing a big boulder up a steep hill. Education is ripe for innovation, but it’s also very, very difficult, especially when you’re not just dealing with standards and metrics, but you’re dealing with the kind of hearts, souls, and wellness of kids. That’s a less tangible thing, although the results are very real and very positive and tangible. Here with Pulse, I get asked a lot, I mean let’s just call it what it is, I’m a middle-aged, suburban, white woman from a small farm town in Ohio. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to some people why I care about this, right? But this is not a demographic issue. This is a human issue and this injustice and this systemic inequality is something that impacts everyone, no matter what your background is, and no matter what your current status is. For me, as long as the purpose is bigger than the pain, I can put up with a lot of pain and a lot of challenges. And in the startup space, as you know, it is a difficult space, and it’s not one that everyone can thrive in. Frankly, it’s not one that everyone should be in because it is a test of endurance on a daily basis, especially when you’re not just doing something fun and flashy like a mark tech product or a social media platform. When you’re building technology for big, important painful issues, it just kind of even exasperates the challenge. And so I think for me, it’s learning that endurance is important and has been a lesson that has been repeatedly taught to me throughout my career so far.
Marlin Jackson
I’ll start. For me, the most important lessons that I’ve learned is just understanding your why first and foremost, and understand what your passion stems from, and everything that I’ve done and been successful at, I’ve been extremely passionate about it. My why has always driven me to succeed within that endeavor, whether it be in the National Football League, or even on the collegiate level at the University of Michigan, and I was always fueled by this desire to be the best and to just do things differently than what I experienced growing up as a child. With the Fight For Life Foundation, rooted again why my passion stems from literally being one of the children that I now serve. So understanding the pain and experience of those that I’m serving through business is extremely important for me, because that is kind of what motivates you when things get difficult, it helps you push through, and you may not want to get up and put in the effort and energy that you need to succeed that day, that’ll drive you forward. I will say work ethic, my ability to have a strong work ethic and to continue to apply myself each and every day, in spite of the obstacles that we face with entrepreneurship, the ability to persevere and to move forward, in spite of difficulty has been something that I’ve been doing my entire life. It’s been a part of the fabric of, again the National Football League with the Colts, things didn’t come easy. Even with the Fight For Life Foundation, starting a nonprofit organization from scratch is difficult. And then transitioning into an Edtech platform and taking about six to seven years to be able to do so, it took a lot of mental fortitude to continue to stay along the path and to stick to it. Back to my experience in the National Football League, my career ended because of injuries. I had a string of three seasons, where I had torn my right ACL rehab, came back the following season tore my left ACL rehab transition to Philadelphia, and tore my Achilles tendon. Just a methodical nature, to sit back into rehab and to go in each and every day, and then set the small, incremental goals, and then work towards those small, incremental goals and see the benefits of that, then be back at 100% but then fall down a ladder again, but get back up again, and climb the ladder again, that developed the mindset and that mindset is embedded into everything that I do with business. And then finally, just the power of teamwork realizing that you can’t accomplish anything great alone. It took Fight For Life to take off when Lisa came along, right? And it’s a collaboration of someone else that thinks outside of the box and that is creative. I think big but Lisa was one of the first people that challenged me like, “You’re not thinking big enough.” Like what a lot of people around me were thinking and not any disrespect to anybody that I’ve worked with within the past but you know, they were comfortable. They didn’t necessarily capture the vision. They didn’t challenge me to think bigger and more boldly but getting the right teammates, getting the right people along helps to bring out the best of what’s in you, or helps you see more of what it is that you’ve originally had a vision for. Understanding that I’m not going to do it alone, and everything that’s occurred with Fight For Life, there’s been different teammates along the way that have contributed to the success of the overall vision coming to life. Passion, understanding your why, work ethic, and then teamwork, I would say are the things that I’ve taken from my past life.
William Leonard
I think that’s an excellent insight from both of you there. I think you touched on something interesting here, Marlin, teamwork, and really team-building. We have a lot of listeners here on our podcast, and some have multiple co-founders, some are solo co-founders, looking for other co-founders to join them and continue building. My question to both of you is how do you build a team, you have an infrastructure in place, you have a framework, but you want somebody who is out there or who is going to help you join, and really build something special with you? How do you go about finding somebody that is equally as passionate as you are? Are there any practical tips, any advice that you all can share with somebody to an early-stage founder right now, who is by himself or by herself looking to bring on an energetic cohesive team member?
Lisa Mitchell
I think what’s interesting and kind of looking at the different ventures that Marlin and I have been part of, and seeing how our teams have kind of evolved over our time together, I think, for us, one of the reasons just as co-founders that we work is that we are able and we create space for each other to have a really honest conversation. I get excited sometimes, I mistake things, I will miscredit things, and that’s just me being exciting. I appreciate the times that Marlin and I can have those conversations where he can express how he feels and same with me like I can say, “Hey, that didn’t feel right.” Or “Let’s get right on this messaging or that feedback where other people would get offended or defensive, right?” Like I think we have a special ability to be able to just talk about the important things, have the tough conversations, and that’s whether we’re talking with each other, whether we’re strategizing about where the conversations we need to have with other people involved in our business and it’s tough, and it’s uncomfortable, but I think being able to have that space where you can both just listen, and we always joke that it’s kind of an ego-free operation. Like you’ve got to just put the ego aside and listen for understanding, which is something that I think is really important when you’re building a team. Do you have the ability to have tough conversations? Do you have the ability to receive feedback without being defensive or without it going into a negative tone? And I think, one of the things we’ve had success with is watching people, and by that, I mean lots of people want to say that they’re in your mission and they’re supportive and they’re aligned, and they’re involved for the same reason in a selfless way, but what we have the ability to do, I think, as a team and independently is to really just watch the behavior in the action and see is this a cohesive package? Like, are the actions supporting the words and is that serving the bigger mission? Being discerning, I think, is something that’s really important as you’re building a team because everybody’s got their own reasons for being interested in your project? Sometimes that’s been really great alignment and sometimes that’s not an alignment and the sooner you can discern, “Is that fit genuine?” “Is that passion really aligned?” The quicker you can kind of help filter out maybe who is the best fit for your team and who maybe isn’t the best fit. I don’t know, Marlin’s great with the team, that’s the one thing he does, I think, better than anybody is put great teams together.
Marlin Jackson
Thank you, Lisa. But as I was taking notes, as you were talking, collecting my thoughts, I wrote down, “Just get into spaces that are in alignment with what you want to accomplish.” Like understanding what is the objective? Where do I want to go? Where do I want to be? And how am I going to get there, but then what spaces where might those other people be that can go along the journey with me, and then begin to be open to networking, and building relationships? I think organically, you start to gravitate towards those other individuals, and you’ll have those interactions that spark. Lisa and I, I think it was a LinkedIn message. And then it was having coffee at Starbucks, it started off as one thing that led to something else but it was then the networking, and then starting to build the relationship, where we organically started to see this synergy, philosophically, the alignment, and then building on that relationship, we began to be open, to be honest, to be vulnerable, which has built a level of trust and security where we can provide constructive criticism and not be offended. I am accustomed to that because constructive criticism is a critical component of athletics, like you may give up a play, you may be in the wrong coverage, you may miss a tackle, you may be misaligned and your coach and your teammates, they’re going to give you constructive criticism, but it’s to bring the best out of you. But when people can understand that and work together and put the ego to the side, you can build this level of vulnerability and honesty, where I’m willing to share exactly how I feel. And then we’re all on the same page and then together, we go into spaces and scenarios and situations, and we’re able to read others, as well. We can come back and we can discuss, what did you feel about this? How did you feel about that, and have that sounding board because we can’t make decisions solely based upon our own perception? We are in the weeds, and we’ve missed things a number of times. It always helps to have that counterbalance to bring forth that level of balance that we all need. To sum it up, get into spaces that are in alignment with what you want to accomplish, be open to networking, build relationships, you organically see who is in alignment with what you want to accomplish. And then from there, be open, be honest, be vulnerable, and build trust, and maintain that trust within the relationship.
William Leonard
I think that’s great advice from both of you there. Hopefully, our listeners can take some actionable steps based on that feedback there. As we wrap up this episode here, now, what does success look like for Pulse Analytix for the rest of 2021? What are some of the goals you want to accomplish? Can you kind of give our listeners an overview of your success frame for this year?
Lisa Mitchell
I think for Pulse, really the success is seeing the concept come to fruition, and getting it in the hands of citizens making it easy to start empowering citizens, building trust with the community, building our strategic partnerships with the advocacy groups, and really just starting to allow people to utilize the benefit of the technology. This year, I think a mission that’s critical for us is to build trust. Because we’re dealing with a population that’s afraid, we’re dealing with people that have experienced a lot of trauma, we’re dealing with a lot of uncertainty, and our role in this with what we’re doing, it doesn’t matter how good the technology is if people don’t trust that we’re going to be a good steward of what they’re engaging in and what they’re providing with us and if we can start showing positive impacts. I think mission-critical from a brand standpoint and from a technology standpoint is building relationships and creating trust in a way that not only encourages people to engage with the technology but to know that something good is going to come from doing so and from providing their interactions with us. Trust is mission-critical. There’s a whole lot of tactical stuff that needs to happen. But I think foundationally, trust-building is really mission-critical for 2021 for us.
Marlin Jackson
Just to add a few quick points onto that, I’ll just say, 1) secure funding, 2) build out the technology, and then 3) focus on establishing our partnership with the NAACP here locally in Indianapolis, so that we can then connect with the ACLU, but then even more important expand nationally with the partnership with NAACP, and then by the end of the year, going into 2022, to launch a pilot with the customer of the NAACP, to put this out into the community, start to collect data, relay that data to the advocacy group, and then start to put the pressure on police agencies to create accountability and adopt this new system.
William Leonard
Awesome, awesome. And with that Marlin and Lisa, this has been an excellent conversation that I think our listeners will find a lot of insight and valuable knowledge from. I’m really excited that you all were able to join me today. I’m really eager to watch you all continue to build Pulse Analytix, not only this year but for the years to come. I look forward to keeping in touch and seeing some big news coming out of the business soon.
Marlin Jackson
Awesome. Thank you, William.
Lisa Mitchell
Thank you for that conversation, William.
William Leonard
Thank you both. Take care.
Lisa
Thank you for listening to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. You know, we’re not just a podcast, we’re a community, and we’d love to see you at one of our digital or physical events, go to valor.VC and sign up for an event that makes sense for you. We have events for founders and the investors who back them. Another event you might enjoy is Startup Runway. The Startup Runway Foundation is a Valor organization that provides $10,000 grants to founders who are women or people of color building next-generation software products. Applications are free and we’d love to hear from you at startuprunway.org. And as always, thank you so much to the organizations that make this podcast possible. Not only Valor Ventures, but also Write2Market, a tech marketing and PR agency in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Startup Runway Foundation and Atlanta Tech Park Valley’s headquarters, and also headquarters for over 100 local entrepreneurs, building global businesses. See you next week. Please bookmark the podcast and join us.
