A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:02:57 · Pablo Srugo, Ben Rudolph
[00:02:57] S2: That's pretty wild. What is your product? What does your product do? Because again, the fact that you're solving cases, you're also doing wildfires, you touch a lot of different pieces. So what does your product actually do? How did you help solve that case, for example? [00:03:12] S0: Yeah, what we saw when we came to that police department is there's been a proliferation of technology point solutions for all sorts of different types of data collection methodologies, and they weren't able to actually leverage that information to achieve their goals. And in this case with the detectives, they were trying to solve cases. So our technology basically put all this data into one current complete asset. They were able to join other data sets together. When someone commits a crime, you're able to basically request information on that particular time portion, get cellular data. Peregrine's platform puts all that data into a current complete data asset, transforms it, enriches it, and then, provides applications on top of it to enable users to explore and find insight from that information. However, I'd really say that I think of Peregrine's product as fifty percent of its technology. It's that platform that allows you to get insight, build workflows, and do that type of technological work. The other fifty percent of our product is really the way we deploy and the way we partner, and work with our customers. And I think, that symbiosis is what made Peregrine successful in the early days and something that we've tried to hold on to.
00:04:25 · Pablo Srugo, Ben Rudolph
[00:04:25] S2: Maybe to bring it all together, you go to that example where you solved that cold case. Where you helped solve it. As a result of your technology and the service layer and the partnership, and everything, what happens? What are you able to uncover? I don't know if you can talk about that specific example, but that would be ideal. But what can you specifically uncover that maybe before was just not possible to figure out? [00:04:45] S0: Oftentimes when you're trying to solve a case, you're trying to tie a person to a location at a time and place. And in this particular case, they were able to marry a bunch of different cellular records. It's hard to overstate how complex and varied this information is. Think dozens and dozens of Excel files, different time zones, messy data. Being able to connect that all together, visualize it, understand where different phone numbers, people are in relation to, like, geospatially and from a temporal perspective, and marrying that together. And understanding, okay, who is here at this point in time, who is here at that point in time, and just having that information. And understanding the movements of the people involved in the crime is critical to actually moving the case forward.
00:04:45 · Ben Rudolph, Pablo Srugo
[00:04:45] S0: Oftentimes when you're trying to solve a case, you're trying to tie a person to a location at a time and place. And in this particular case, they were able to marry a bunch of different cellular records. It's hard to overstate how complex and varied this information is. Think dozens and dozens of Excel files, different time zones, messy data. Being able to connect that all together, visualize it, understand where different phone numbers, people are in relation to, like, geospatially and from a temporal perspective, and marrying that together. And understanding, okay, who is here at this point in time, who is here at that point in time, and just having that information. And understanding the movements of the people involved in the crime is critical to actually moving the case forward. [00:05:28] S2: Many times I'd say when I talk to founders of companies like this. That are very technical and hyper focused, for example, I talk to somebody in cybersecurity and they're like, yeah, I used to be in the armed forces or I used to be a hacker for IDF, like things like that. I'm looking at your profile, I'm trying to make sense of it. How do you end up here? How do you end up in this company?
00:05:45 · Ben Rudolph, Pablo Srugo
[00:05:45] S0: So my background, I went to Stanford to take a year of science. I spent every summer working at different Silicon Valley companies and I really took away from that experience that I wanted to build technology that had meaningful impact on communities around us. I spent a lot of time working at tech companies where I didn't really believe that that was true and so after school, I went and worked at the UN Refugee Agency. Spent a bunch of time deploying technology in very hard to reach places, solving issues that are similar to the issues that I solve today. Which was the UN Refugee Agency has extremely disparate data and it's very difficult to understand how different interventions are working at different refugee populations. I joined a similar type of company that was deploying technology in hard to reach places, doing data collection in Africa and India. Partnering with governments to have interventions on one. For example, we worked with the Indian government on ensuring adherence to TB drugs and both these experiences, I took away a couple of things from it. But one, it's really difficult and challenging to work with the government. It's slow, it's bureaucratic. [00:06:58] S2: I was gonna say, it's not the obvious place that you then, launchpad for entrepreneurship.
00:06:58 · Pablo Srugo, Ben Rudolph
[00:06:58] S2: I was gonna say, it's not the obvious place that you then, launchpad for entrepreneurship. [00:07:02] S0: Totally, but if you're able to do it and if you're able to partner, and you're able to do it well. I think the impact there is real, and I saw that. And so, what gets me really excited about Peregrine generally is we found this way to partner with our cities, our states, our counties, our federal government to build technology. Best in class technology to the public servants, the folks who often get the worst technology, and give them really great technology to do their jobs better. And so, that is the frame of mind that I've had. We got started in law enforcement. We're building a much bigger platform and much bigger technology than that focused area. [00:07:37] S2: Tell me more about the origin story. How do you go from, you know, building and selling software to governments as part of another company to deciding to start your own thing and specifically Peregrine?
00:07:37 · Pablo Srugo, Ben Rudolph
[00:07:37] S2: Tell me more about the origin story. How do you go from, you know, building and selling software to governments as part of another company to deciding to start your own thing and specifically Peregrine? [00:07:48] S0: Yeah, actually a lot of it goes back to my cofounder. We did gymnastics together in college. Spent a lot of time, twenty, twenty five hours a week. Someone who I felt was a really great partner. We always wanted to start a business together. We had talked about it in college. He had gone and spent time at Volunteer. We were on what I'd call maybe dual tracks, where he was working with different types of government institutions and deploying software in very hard to reach places. And I remember in 2017, we kind of linked up with a very similar perspective on how we could partner with these kinds of important institutions to deliver better outcomes and that's really when we linked up. I moved across the country to come to San Francisco and really got started kind of in the back of my apartment in 2017. [00:08:38] S2: So was that born out of what you were doing? Because the idea is very generic at that point, right? It's like, let's take data together and help law enforcement, for example. Was that kind of the first version of the idea?