đď¸ Engineering the Safe City: Conviction, Scrutiny, and the Fight to Make Crime Obsolete w/ Garrett Langley, Founder & CEO, Flock Safety
Built from Atlanta to thousands of cities, Garrett shares how Flock scales under pressure, earns trust, and keeps shipping toward a future where safety is an equalizer, not a privilege.
Listen on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music
Host Ian Hathaway interviews Garrett Langley, founder and CEO of Flock Safety, about building public safety technology with a mission to eliminate crime. Langley traces his Atlanta upbringing, his early computer repair business, lessons from his fatherâs relationship-driven sales approach, and his early career successes, including the acquisitions of Firethorn and Experience. After a post-exit identity crisis, he prioritized building with the right team and launched Flock after neighborhood break-ins revealed law enforcement needed actionable license plate data. He describes early traction, Y Combinator struggles, near-pivot moments, media-driven go-to-market, and a difficult fundraise amid skepticism about Atlanta, hardware, and law enforcement. They cover rapid scaling, new products, privacy and regulation debates, immigration-enforcement concerns, Atlanta ecosystem advantages, the Thriving Cities Fund, explicit culture-building, and the personal support system sustaining his leadership.
Show Notes:
(02:28) Burden of Responsibility
(06:47) Atlanta Roots and Early Hustle
(12:19) Two Big Exits and Crisis
(15:35) Flock Origin Story
(20:59) YC Breakthrough and Media
(23:19) Series B Near Miss
(26:23) Scaling Innovation and Vision
(29:45) Fatherhood and What Matters
(30:36) Safety As A Right
(31:31) Scrutiny And Tradeoffs
(38:13 Building In Atlanta
(40:18) Diamonds In The Rough
(42:13) Thriving Cities Fund
(44:50) Writing Culture Down
(51:12) Legacy And Safe Cities
(53:22) Beyond The Bio with Garrett Langley
â Host: Ian Hathway - Co-Founder & Managing Partner, FOVC
â Guests: Garrett Langley - Founder & CEO, Flock
Produced by Spellbinder Media. Executive Produced by Bridge Five Ventures. Copyright Šď¸2026, Bridge Five Ventures, LLC, All rights reserved.
Listen & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or at outsiderinc.substack.com.
AI-Generated Transcript
Garrett Langley: In an environment where hundreds of thousands of kids donât feel safe Theyâre not gonna go to school, theyâre not gonna get a job , theyâre not gonna start a company, and so I guess itâs that conviction that if we are successful, everyone has a chance to be prosperous, and it doesnât matter where you were born. If everyone has that equal level of safety, we all have a chance to dream for what we might be able to do.
Ian Hathaway: Welcome to another episode of Outsider Inc. Iâm your host, Ian Hathaway. Todayâs guest is Garrett Langley, founder and CEO of Flock Safety, one of the most consequential and closely watched technology companies being built in America today
Flock builds public safety technology, including license plate recognition cameras, drones, gunshot detection, and real-time intelligence tools used by cities, law enforcement agencies, businesses, schools, and neighborhoods across the country Its mission is as ambitious as it [00:01:00] is provocative: to eliminate crime.
Garrettâs story is also a distinctly Atlanta story. He grew up in a city known for institutions like Coca-Cola, Home Depot, UPS, and Delta Airlines, not necessarily as a place where venture-backed startups were the obvious path.
But after Georgia Tech and a career that included two significant exits before he was 30, Garrett found himself searching for work that felt like more than another conventional win. With Flock, he found it.
Today, Flock operates in more than six thousand cities across forty-nine states, was recently valued at eight point four billion dollars, and by Garrettâs own estimate, helped solve or clear more than a million crimes per year
Itâs a company that has grown far beyond what many investors thought was possible, in a category that sits at the center of some of the hardest questions in technology: safety, privacy , policing, trust, and civil liberties. In this conversation, weâll talk about how Garrett discovered entrepreneurship, what early [00:02:00] success did and did not solve for him, and how Flock grew from solving local problems into a national public safety platform. Weâll get into the realities of building hardware and software for one of the most scrutinized categories in tech, the weight of the responsibility that comes with that scale, and what it means to build a company of this magnitude from Atlanta.
Garrett, welcome to Outsider Inc
Garrett Langley: thanks for having me. Itâs good to see you
Ian Hathaway: Thank you for being here.
Itâs, great to see you as well. Iâm excited to get into the full story of your journey in a moment, but Iâd like to kick things off on a more philosophical note first. Most founders are driven by ambition or a sense of purpose, this thing they wanna build, this problem they wanna solve, and I know thatâs true for you too, but youâve also described running Flock as something different.
You said at times it doesnât feel like an honor so much as a burden and a responsibility. And when you think about what Flock [00:03:00] has become, technology that communities and law enforcement agencies in thousands of cities now depend on every day, that framing makes a lot of sense. So I wanna start there.
What does it feel like to carry that kind of responsibility rather than simply being driven by it?
Garrett Langley: really good question, and I the thing that I try to focus on, and we talk about internally as well. It is a privilege and a choice. I choose every day to take that burden on and so do my colleagues. Weâve got two thousand or so people at the company, and they could go work at a SaaS company that helps salespeople close more deals.
Thereâs nothing wrong with that. Itâs just the consequences are close to zero for screwing that up. And there are certain people in this world, and I guess I put myself in that bucket, who just... Thatâs not enough. Itâs not enough. I want to have a bigger impact on peopleâs lives. I want to have a bigger impact on my kidsâ lives, on my [00:04:00] community, and I think some people, when they have that calling, they choose to run for office, And you look at some of the most successful political figures in our history, and they werenât career-long politicians. They were people that had this burning desire to do more than maybe you and I have wanted to do in terms of impact and influence. I just happen to have it agree with electrical engineering.
Technology is my avenue to that impact. But I think to your point there are plenty of days when you go, âMan, is this worth it?â To have this many people not like what you do for a living. And I spend a lot of time with elected officials, and they deal with the same consequences. Think about like, being a governor or being a mayor of a small, medium, large city, and thatâs not a long-term livelihood.
So youâre doing it most likely because you actually want to help people. And if you think about the most successful mayor in [00:05:00] America today is Mayor Lurie. He had the highest approval rating. Heâs in the low seventies. That means if he went and met four people, one of them still thinks heâs garbage.
And if you think about the average mayor is in the fifties, best case, forties. That means if you walk into a room and half the room thinks youâre doing a horrible job. Thatâs crazy, right? When you were a founder, imagine if half of your company thought you were a horrible CEO.
How would you be motivated to go to work? The only way you could be motivated is if you actually believe what youâre doing is good for the world.
Ian Hathaway: Yeah.
Garrett Langley: Thatâs how I feel about it, at the bottom of my gut, of my heart, I believe that everyone has a right to be safe, and I donât think it should be a privilege.
I think everyone should have the same level of safety in America, and a lot of people disagree with, how Iâm doing it, and my big pushback is Iâm doing something, though.â I welcome other people to do other things, but you canât just complain on the sidelines. gotta go do it.
Go run for office, go build a company, too. itâs a consequential topic because it impacts [00:06:00] millions of people every single day
Ian Hathaway: I appreciate you sharing that perspective. Obviously, if youâre gonna do something impactful in this world, youâre gonna ruffle some feathers. right? Itâs interesting you brought up politicians including governors. Actually, the last guest on the show was Governor Jared Polis from Colorado.
Although he was a very successful entrepreneur before the age of 30 , as you were as well he had this through line of public service, studied politics in undergrad and had been on school boards and actually founded a couple charter schools in Colorado before he ran for office.
The through line for you, I see, is this larger sense of responsibility. This mission to improve the world. I think weâre gonna see that as we navigate your journey in this episode. But before we do that, Iâd like to go back to the beginning. You grew up in Atlanta Westminster Schools, then Georgia Tech.
The Atlanta you grew up in wasnât exactly the startup hub that it is today. It was [00:07:00] Coca-Cola, Home Depot, UPS, legacy institutions. You said before that you had no idea people even started companies, that when you were young, you assumed that everyone went to work for someone else, and yet somewhere along the way, you figured it out.
Something sparked. You were just a kid when you started your first computer repair business, and your mom really became your first employee, driving you around to clientsâ houses because you werenât old enough to get there yourself. So before you knew what startups were, where do you think that instinct came from?
That instinct to solve a problem, sell the solution, and turn it into something that people would pay for
Garrett Langley: To your point, right? You look at Atlanta even today, the last IPO of true materiality, which like led to more companies getting started, was ISS in 1999.
The last IPO for Atlanta. Now, thereâs been other technology companies that have gone public but not that led to other [00:08:00] ecosystems where you develop this mafia or this new group of entrepreneurs, this new cohort of investors,
so like Atlanta, we still have a long ways to go. But I do think to your point, if you go to a T-ball game and you survey all the parents what they do, youâre right. They work at Coca-Cola, they work at Home Depot. They would work at SunTrust or Wachovia. Like they, they have normal jobs, right?
Thatâs what most people do. The concept of an entrepreneur was and still is not a common thing, and my assumption was that everyone just got real jobs. go to high school, you go to college, you get a real job. Both of my parents worked pretty much at the same company their entire professional careers.
And I think for me, like early on my brother and I were expected to either play sports or work in the summer, starting in sixth grade. And so I tried the whole like mow peopleâs grass thing â cause I wasnât that into sports. Quickly realized didnât actually like mowing grass [00:09:00] that much.
I donât wanna mow grasses. donât wanna babysit. That wasnât something that was gonna make sense as a 13-year-old but I loved computers. I really loved computers. And what I noticed is that like when Iâd go to my friendâs house, their parents would ask me to help fix their computer. Set up a Wi-Fi network, which, back in, was that guess 1999, 2000, that was like a big deal to get Wi-Fi. And had the spark of well, instead of doing this for free for my friendâs parents, what if I just started charging people?
And so a bit of like I had to create my own job to avoid mowing grasses all summer and was fortunate that I liked people, I liked technology and there was quite a bit of demand
for an at-home type service.
Ian Hathaway: well, So this is like a good lesson here, right? Youâre following your nose, but you are a product of your environment. Whatâs going on around you does affect you. I know your parents, both of them, you mentioned were a part of your foundation that, your mom in that literal sense, and your dad, as I understand it, spent his career in field [00:10:00] sales selling industrial rollers.
I know before youâve talked about how everything you learned about managing customers, managing employees, managing relationships was through him. So Iâm curious what you learned by watching him. Was it how he built trust, how he handled rejection, how he stayed close to customers over time? Or what parts of his approach still show up in the way that you lead today?
Garrett Langley: what makes him really unique is he genuinely cares about people. And if you think about the polar opposite of that whatâs the most transactional sales experience youâve had? Maybe buying a car. They know Iâm here to buy a car. I know that theyâre here to sell me a car.
Thereâs no relationship that needs to be built. Iâm just gonna try to get the best price, and youâre gonna try to sell me the most things that have higher margin. Thereâs financing and thereâs no even space to have a relationship. And, my dad was selling rollers, right?
Literally to keep the factory running. Yet I think he [00:11:00] genuinely cared for people and viewed sales not as a means to make money, but as a means to meet more people. so when your North Star is not Iâm just trying to hit my number this quarter, but what a cool thing.
I get paid to meet interesting new people and talk to them and get to know them. I think people can read that. Iâm not as far on that spectrum as I wish I was like him, but when I meet customers, when I meet potential employees, I try to channel that genuine sense of what a cool thing that I get paid to meet people.
for me, Thatâs probably the most interesting thing of what my dad was able to kind of instill in me is this if you donât approach the relationship from one of genuine curiosity and genuine interest in their life and their goals and their needs, you just wind up looking like a car salesman, and that I think that motif has existed for a long time for a reason.
Ian Hathaway: Thatâs a great take. I agree. Obviously building my business that way, but also as hosting this platform. This will be our [00:12:00] 28th episode, and I was reluctant to do this, honestly, but I see this as part of my mission is to tell these founder stories, and I just feel so lucky that I get to meet these people, learn about their lives, and then share those highlights through their own words with our listeners.
So can definitely relate to that. And following opportunity. And so right out of high school, you connect with a group of Georgia Tech alumni who had already taken a company public and were starting another one, a mobile commerce startup called Firethorn. You join as their fifth employee, where you essentially get this masterclass upfront, in how to build a company before you ever tried to build one yourself.
That company gets acquired by Qualcomm for over $200 million. Next, you go on to co-found Experience, a mobile platform that let fans upgrade their seats and access VIP experiences at live events. That gets acquired by Cox Enterprises for over $200 million. Youâre still in your 20s. [00:13:00] By any measure, you had made it, right?
But youâve described that as a sort of quarter-life crisis. You hit goals that youâd set for yourself earlier than you had ever expected, and instead of satisfaction, you felt a little bit lost. Now, we have heard this repeatedly from guests on Outsider Inc., this identity crisis that sets in after an exit where suddenly youâre no longer this founder of the company and youâre not quite sure who you are anymore or what you wanna do.
Tell us a little bit about what that moment felt like for you.
Garrett Langley: So I met Tripp and Derek and Ben when I was 18. And my whole vantage was like, I wanna be these guys, right? I wanna start a company and I wanna sell it. And then you do it.
And there is a, a common saying, but I think it rings true, which is if you are so focused on the end goal and cruise past the experience, youâre gonna be kinda bummed out when you get there. And taking for granted [00:14:00] that experience left me at a point to when we were at the conclusion and we no longer owned the company, right?
We had sold the business. I was a free agent. I have no idea what to do with my life now. Do I wanna go do this again? Is that gonna be fun? Will it be fun to literally do the exact same thing for 10 more years? That feels kinda crazy. And went through this very fascinating life discovery of what it is that actually makes one happy.
And interviewed at big companies like a Home Depot and Coca-Cola. Never thought about being an investor, which is kind of interesting. That never crossed my mind. Knew I wanted to work, put my hands on something. And what I wound up realizing was I donât like sports, but we built a business in sports.
I could care less about financial services, but we built a company, in fintech. What made those businesses fun was the people.
Genuinely loved spending time with the people that we were building the company with. And that was the eureka light bulb, the whole joy for [00:15:00] me of being an entrepreneur is having control over who I get to work with, who I spend, 100 hours a week with.
And so very quickly realized like, yes, I-- Itâs not that I want to go start another company, itâs that I wanna have control over who I spend time with, and the only way to do that professionally is actually to start a company. So I called Paige and Matt and was like, âI donât care what we build. Very open to lots of ideas, but the three of us should build a company together.â
And obviously hindsightâs 20/20 on this one. It was a good team. It was the right people. But that was this aha for me, was realizing that I cared really deeply about people versus product or market.
Ian Hathaway: That carries us into the Flock origin. Your uncle, who youâve described as a close mentor, basically said, âDonât go build another dopey business,â think you said that in your own way. wanna do something with meaning, and I wanna do it with the right people. And I like this idea of building something that youâd be proud of to spend maybe the rest of your life on building.
I know that you [00:16:00] tested a bunch of ideas, and then something maybe sort of random happens. Your neighborhood gets hit by an organized crew breaking into cars. You go to the police, theyâre basically hopeless and maybe even apathetic to what had happened. But youâre an engineer, and so instead of just accepting that, you start asking why.
You start asking questions. Eventually, you learn what the police really needed was a license plate, something concrete enough for an investigation to move forward. So you and your co-founders go back to your dining room table, tear apart some old Android phones, solder together a battery and solar panel, and essentially start building the first Flock camera by hand. Take us back there from that search for the next business the night your neighborhood got hit, and the moment that you felt compelled to start building something that could help lots of people
Garrett Langley: I think every entrepreneur has their why. And like I [00:17:00] said, my why was the team. And so Paige and Matt and I knew we were gonna do a business together. we had a bunch of ideas. And, Matt is really passionate about music, and so he wanted to do something in music, and I reminded him that, no one actually makes money in music. And Spotify is like the one out of a million startups.
We should pick a market where people spend money. Paigeâs father was a orthopedic surgeon, and so we spent a lot of time looking at medical equipment, med tech built some prototypes.
Itâs like we had all of these prototypes being developed, right? We did build a music app. We built this physical therapy device. then, out of all of those, to your point, there was this one idea of what if we could build a camera that actually solved crime? And in my experience at Experience, thatâs probably maybe shouldâve picked a better name for the company we said, âOh, weâre gonna go build a company focused on sports.â And it took us probably 12 [00:18:00] months from that to a paying customer. And I would call that not that uncommon of finding product market fit. You gotta go understand your customer. Like, Thereâs plenty of examples, Figma included, where itâs like it just takes a long time in that kind of journey and customer discovery.
But at Flock, we had this idea. I have the email that I sent to Matt and Paige framed in my office: idea for neighborhood safety. we built that, and we had our first paying customer the same day. From the idea that I sent that email, we cold called, got a paying customer, and then about two months later, we had our first success from a product perspective.
We had our first arrest. And in hindsight I try to tell other entrepreneurs that I meet, as someone who has started three companies now, that is not normal.â It is normally really painful , to go find repeatable revenue. And Gary Tan, who was my first institutional investor he made the joke like, âMan, you have product market fit for the world.â
Everyone wants to be safe And youâve built a product that actually makes people safer. TAMâs not our problem. Like I know we got a lot of [00:19:00] other problems in this business. I donât think TAM is the problem. We did not wanna be a hardware company.
We did not wanna be in public. Like we didnât want any of this. But the idea made so much sense because if you think about it, every existing product related to safety is focused on you as an individual But when your neighborâs home gets broken into, your sense of safety goes down. Yet every single safety product was for your home, your apartment, your self, when the actual problem was a community problem.
And so I think the secret that we held quite closely was realizing that you needed to move way past the house. You needed to move to the neighborhood. You needed to move to the city. You had to make the impact there. Because in an environment where safety solutions are only built for the individual, safety has been a privilege, not a right. Because if you can afford a gate, you buy it. If you can afford a security guard, you buy it. Those are [00:20:00] privileges. And our whole thesis was if you focus on the community, it becomes an equalizer. Everyone has the same level of safety, and ideally, itâs a very high level. And that gets my blood pumping pretty fast, that is something worth building
Ian Hathaway: Well, I wanna double click on that and especially, something worth building. When we started out, you said privilege and choice. You just referenced privilege. I wanna talk about a choice you made, I heard the stories about that initial customer, DeKalb County detective calls you up, you went on the five oâclock news, like what an amazing way to reach customers
Garrett Langley: people should use local news more often. Itâs a really good channel.
Ian Hathaway: free media, right? free advertising. But itâs a difference to go from, âHey, we helped solve a crime,â and, âHey, we have, potentially some early customers and a unique way of reaching people.â Thereâs a big leap between that and deciding to go build a scalable solution around this problem.
So what made you so sure, that this was a leap worth taking?
Garrett Langley: We wound [00:21:00] up doing Y Combinator, and when we got into Y Combinator, we had one paying customer. We did not have a crime solved. So we were at, letâs call it 3,000 of ARR, and I think we had this goal of we wanna get $300,000 of ARR or something. YC does a good job of pushing you to see how hard you can go in 90 days. And nothing was working. The camera didnât really work that well. It kinda worked, but none of us had built a consumer-grade electronic before.
hadnât touched a circuit board in more than a decade. Matt had never done firmware, and he was trying to do all this stuff on firmware on the edge, and this is before AI was a thing. This is back when we called it machine learning.
Heâd never done that. So the camera wasnât really working.
Paige and I were outbounding all these neighborhoods and man, was that first customer just a total fluke. The week before demo day, we had gotten to twenty one thousand dollars of ARR. So we had, letâs call it five customers. And I was like, âMaybe we should pivot the company. Maybe we should do [00:22:00] consumer. This isnât working, guys.â And To your point, that week we solved our first crime We go on the 5 oâclock news and it starts to work. And Iâll never forget, we were debating how are we gonna raise money for this company, because I knew that if we were gonna build a successful company, we were gonna have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, right?
If you look at every other hardware company before us, you donât do it on ten million dollars, and like , youâre also not gonna raise $100 in Atlanta. Thatâs not happening. There isnât a single investor in Atlanta thatâs gonna underwrite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a single company.
Itâs just like thatâs not the market that I live in. So no, it wasnât obvious. We were like days away from just totally pivoting the company. We were gonna be embarrassed going into demo day with such little traction, no real product success. We had very little to show for ourselves and then got very lucky that when we needed it most, we had that success.
We had a very unique go-to-market motion that people didnât believe was gonna work and scale, and we were like the 5 oâclock [00:23:00] news is on every night in every city in America.â And now, weâre Covered in the media, probably a couple hundred times a day. That is still our dominant channel.
Ian Hathaway: Yeah, for better or worse, right?
Garrett Langley: Exactly. Yeah.
Ian Hathaway: So things werenât working, then they started working. You caught a break. ARR is climbing. From a few thousand to seven million in recurring revenue in just a short amount of time. Then youâre going out to raise your Series B and face another setback.
Most VCs wonât even take a meeting with you. Too many strikes against you, right? Atlanta, hardware, law enforcement, no thanks. And youâre down to just a few months of runway. Employees who believed in you enough to leave great jobs are counting on you, and only a couple people inside of the company knew how close you were to the edge.
That experience feels quintessentially outsider to me, knowing that youâre building something important while much of the market canât [00:24:00] see it yet or wonât validate it. So just walk us through how dark it actually got for you during that time period and how Flock survived.
Garrett Langley: Itâs funny because we have such selective memories. Iâve deleted that entire chapter out of my normal brain. I only remember the good stuff.
And Iâm thankful to have a very supporting wife who reminds me of the bad stuff, because when I have a bad day, sheâll be like was it as bad as that day?â Iâm like thatâs a good point. No, it wasnât that bad.â So no, but it was pretty scary, right? I had made a bet the company type decision to enter into the law enforcement market, which, is not a market that VCs have crowded.
The last company to go public in that space was back in 2005. This is now, 2020. No one thought government was a good market. No one thought Atlanta was a good market, hardware was a good market. Our growth was really strong, and that was probably the weirdest part to me is, we had gone from one million to seven million of ARR in a single year.
Nowadays maybe thatâs not [00:25:00] fast, but that was really fast at the time. And itâs no one liked the company. It was not fun. Paige and I sat down in our office. We shared an office at the time and just pulled up a spreadsheet and weâre like, âWe have to dramatically change burn.
We need to cut staff, we need to stop everything thatâs not working, and just like really narrow the focus.â But I do think when companies go through that type of shock, when you do get to the other side, you tend to be a lot stronger. Itâs not fun to think about, but I also think this is why who you work with matters so much.
Because man, it was tough, but doing it with someone other than Paige and Matt wouldâve been a million times worse. âCause at least I knew the three of us were gonna figure it out. Like worst case, we go back to just three of us in a garage, But we didnât. It took us probably a year to bounce back.
We cut staff pretty dramatically. But I kept traveling and selling. This guy Bailey kept doing the same. And eventually, like the results got too good for people to ignore. So we were able to [00:26:00] kinda keep growth going despite the setbacks. And eventually, we were able to get our Series C done and start to really go after the market that I knew we could.
So it just kinda took a year off the companyâs, where I thought we couldâve been. So in hindsight, itâs not that bad
Ian Hathaway: I think if you have a good team and family and friends of support and you just keep going, You can get to the other side. You did. Obviously, Flock is a dramatically different company today from the one that almost ran out of money. Tens of thousands of cameras across the country serving thousands of cities, a million crimes cleared a year. I know youâre very specific on saying crimes cleared rather than crimes solved. Drones arriving on scene faster than a patrol car ever could, and a new product called Nova that knits together law enforcement records with public data in ways that would have seemed like science fiction not too long ago.
And going along with that, an eight point four billion dollar valuation with what you [00:27:00] described as, a hundred billion of opportunities still to go. So my question is, what does it actually take to keep innovating at that pace while also scaling a company of this size? And maybe what part of the future roadmap excites you the most right now?
Garrett Langley: One of our early employees, whoâs One of our first engineers, he had asked me the question not too long ago, â It must be kind of fun now. Like, weâre like a bigger company. We have more people.
We have more resources. Youâve probably taken like a step back, right?â And I was like, âJohn I feel like Iâm working harder than ever.â every single time we decide to launch a new product, enter a new market, the expectations just go up. The pressure just goes up. Maybe it gets easier at some point, but it seems to me that things actually just get harder and your goals just get bigger.
for me, The thing thatâs continued to be the grounding truth is the support network that Iâm very privileged to [00:28:00] have between my family, my coworkers, our investors. And I think for me, I got , this conviction that if weâre successful, this is gonna sound way bigger than maybe I should say the American dream will continue. And I know that sounds crazy, but let me provide an alternative version of history. In an environment where hundreds of thousands of kids donât feel safe Theyâre not gonna go to school, theyâre not gonna get a job, theyâre not gonna start a company, theyâre not gonna progress their livelihood above their parents.
And that is effectively the beauty of what makes America a great place , to live, is that thereâs this core belief that you can do better than your parents. You can live a bigger, fuller life. And if you look at other countries that have failed to maintain that, safety is one of the first things that goes.
Because once you lose safety, you lose that economic development, you lose that thought of mobility, because youâre just worried about freaking being [00:29:00] safe. And thatâs a lot more important than whether you have a job or whether the job is better than your parents or worse than your parents or whether youâre providing for your family.
And so I guess itâs that conviction that if we are successful, everyone has a chance to be prosperous, and it doesnât matter where you were born. Like whether youâre in one part of a city or another, one city or the other, if everyone has that equal level of safety, we all have a chance to dream for what we might be able to do.
So I know that sounds a little bit crazy, but thatâs actually the conviction I have, and itâs what allows me to keep going every day. And like weâre 10 years in, and I can see another 10 years ahead of me, and I have a roadmap for the things I wanna go build, and itâs exciting. Itâs Itâs a really, really fun space to be in.
Ian Hathaway: Donât think thatâs crazy at all. I really appreciate That perspective. Thereâs something you said in particular about providing your kids a better life. Iâm a father of three. I know you are as well. I heard you give an interview recently as a quick sidebar about you love making breakfast for your kids every day and that [00:30:00] sort of thing, and thatâs also my job.
I do the morning routine and take my kids to school, and I never miss that. But I grew up pretty modest in rural Ohio kind of place that got leveled by globalization, and I feel like Iâm often defining a better life as material means. But youâre saying it in a way that I havenât really put at the front of my mind, which is maybe giving a better life is keeping people safe.
âCause if you canât be safe, then you have nothing else.
Garrett Langley: your point, I also grew up with very modest means, but I never felt unsafe .
Ian Hathaway: Yeah, same
Garrett Langley: The sad reality is that there are many cities in this country, many kids who grow up, and thatâs not their reality.
And I think when I look at a lot of the people who disagree with what I do, they grew up like you and me. Safety was never a concern, and it is still not a concern, and thatâs not who Iâm building for. Weâre building for the communities where safety is a problem, and itâs a real, [00:31:00] acute problem.
And I think about parts of Atlanta where I live, itâs pretty normal that thereâs a homicide every single weekend. Thatâs horrible. That shouldnât be the case. That should not be normal and okay.
Ian Hathaway: This is almost hard to say that, I feel like weâve normalized violence in this country to the point where my wife and I, We were living overseas. We came back to the country during COVID, and the number one concern, most people donât believe me when I say this, the number one thing we talked about moving home was fear of safety for our kids.
Garrett Langley: Yep
Ian Hathaway: I do wanna double-click on something. You said people who donât agree with you. Youâve had the success, But your growth has come with a lot of scrutiny. ACLU has been vocal.
Some cities have canceled contracts. Thereâs lawsuits. The use of Flock by immigration enforcement agencies has alarmed some people, and youâve pushed back hard including in an email that several police chiefs publicly criticized.
But youâve also acknowledged that this work does raise genuinely hard questions, right? We hinted at it already [00:32:00] in this episode. One example youâve given in particular is camera placement. If a city has a limited budget, do you put cameras where crime data says they will be most effective, or do you spread them out evenly which is cleaner and more democratic, but maybe less effective?
So how do you lead through this tension? How do you hold the line on your principles when the pressure to maximize effectiveness is constant, the criticism is coming from many directions, and some of it, though not all of it, might be legitimate?
Garrett Langley: The first thing you have to do is you have to bucket the people who disagree with us into two broad buckets, Look at the group like ACLU a ton of respect for them â they challenge us, they push us to be a better company, and they do it in the constructs of the democratic system that has worked for the last couple hundred years.
We spar with them at the legislative level. but what we agree on, though, is that everyone deserves to be [00:33:00] safe and that regulation in this space is actually the most important thing. And now we disagree on some of the nuances of that regulation. For instance, we agree as two different entities that this data should not live forever. It should have a expiration period. We think it should be around 30 days. My customers think it should be a year. ACLU thinks it should be maybe a couple hours or a couple days. But weâre on the same wavelength that this data should exist, and it just has to have an expiration period.
And what weâre gonna do is weâre gonna let the people who were democratically elected to represent their constituents make the final call. It should be somewhere between a couple days and a year. And it is perfectly okay if thatâs different by every city, every county, and every state âcause thatâs actually how our government works in America. So we disagree on some of the nuance, but we agree that people should be safe, and we agree that regulation is good. And so we welcome and support regulation in every single state. I think this year alone, weâve had nine new bills passed. We like some more than others, but we like all of them more than no regulation.
I like that. The group that I struggle with [00:34:00] is the group that just says Flock should not exist And Iâm like, âOkay, what is your alternative solution to the problem? Or do you not agree thereâs a problem?â And that part is the part that I just, I have a hard time reconciling because I just donât think thatâs a very American approach.
Last year alone, we helped return over 10,000 missing peoples. Itâs adults, seniors, kids. You canât debate that. I show you the data. So weâre clearly doing something.
And the ACLUâs point is âLetâs do it better.â And Iâm like, âCool, great.â But the group that just vandalizes the camera youâre now breaking the law. That part I donât have a lot of like energy for relative to , my good colleagues at the ACLU
Ian Hathaway: So then maybe, in a productive way, what would you say that your critics misunderstand the most, and what is it that you would want to say to them here today?
Garrett Langley: This has been tested in court, uneducated critics would say, âOh, this is a violation of the Constitution.â And youâre welcome to have that as a personal [00:35:00] opinion, but again, we have a judicial system thatâs worked for a long time, and in 17 cases alone in the last two years, the implementation of license plate recognition has proved to be fully constitutional. Thatâs one. I think the second is that thereâs this belief that we canât give law enforcement this powerful technology. Theyâll abuse it. And I go, âMan youâre willing to give this person a gun, but you donât wanna give them a camera that reads a license plate?â
What it gets down to though is just a lack of trust . And so when Iâve like really spent time probing these people, it eventually gets down to let me ask you a question.
Do you believe the police chief of your town serves your best interest?â And theyâre like, âNo.â Iâm like, âOkay. Well then, your, problemâs actually not with me. Your problem is with the system. Your problem is with law enforcement in general, and particularly the police chief and the agency that you are supported by, and I actually canât fix that.â
If you grew up thinking the police are out to get you, the [00:36:00] current system is out to get you, yeah Iâm an extension of that then. I am a tool they will use, but thatâs it. the last thing that I would just hit on is, and this is tough, We believe as a company itâs not our job to write laws.
Itâs not our job to pick which laws we think are good and bad. And so for me on a personal level, there are plenty of laws in Georgia that I disagree with, But I vote for a governor, I vote for a lieutenant governor, I vote for attorney general to decide what laws are enforced, what laws are written, and what laws are removed.
I donât think itâs Flockâs job to articulate like, âOh, we donât like that one. We like this one.â And so when the topic of immigration enforcement comes up, Iâm like, âGuys, the company has no opinion on this.â If the state of Texas wants to enforce immigration, they might use Flock, but theyâre gonna go enforce immigration no matter what Flock does.
And thatâs the state of Texasâ choice, Thatâs the cityâs choice. And itâs tough, right? Itâs really tough for my employees to work at a company where theyâre like, âOh I, I donât like that law, [00:37:00] but our, technology is used to enforce it.â
But we canât make that our problem as a company. We need to let the system thatâs worked continue working to refine what as a society we deem illegal or legal.
Ian Hathaway: Seems like, people are mistrusting a tool, but really theyâre mistrusting the people who are using it, and those are generally elected officials with accountability to public, itâs not about, demonizing a tool, itâs about electing the right people, having a system of accountability where the use of these tools reflect what the public wants.
Garrett Langley: I think what Iâve realized is people have predisposed positions, beliefs about society, about trust, about the government, and theyâre just looking for information to validate that hypothesis.
Theyâre not actually looking for information to inform themselves about whatâs reality. And I get it. Thatâs what the internet has made so easy is to find a group of people that have the same beliefs [00:38:00] as you, and all you hear is the same thing echoing. And itâs hard to figure out what the truth is in that case.
Ian Hathaway: I know itâs tough. I know youâve been in the news a lot lately, and I appreciate your perspective. Thank you for sharing it with us. Iâd like to switch gears if we could. I wanna talk about your hometown.
Youâve been very intentional about not just building in Atlanta, but actively trying to strengthen the founder community there. Youâve talked about the camaraderie thatâs developed among the cityâs, tech founders, the work to convince talented people at the big institutions that itâs okay to leave those companies and start out on the entrepreneurial path.
Youâve deliberately kept Flock in Atlanta, saying it would be disingenuous for you to build the company somewhere else. numerous guests on this show have described the constraints imposed on building big tech companies in these less mature ecosystems. But perhaps [00:39:00] surprising potentially is that itâs what made these companies better, More resilient, creative, and innovative, that perceived weaknesses are actually the strengths. So Iâm curious, has that been true for you? What have been the advantages or disadvantages of building in Atlanta?
Garrett Langley: probably the biggest benefit is how big we could get before anyone knew we existed. we didnât really have a competitor until we were probably 100 million of ARR. If youâre in a place like the Bay Area or New York, Wordâs just gonna get out that th-this companyâs ripping, and someoneâs gonna be like, could probably do that.â
so I think thatâs one. I think the other big advantage is I think if you live in a city like San Francisco or New York, you tend to just like circle around the popular problems.
And I think itâs really hard to find unique problems. And I would say like crime is a pretty unique one.
So you donât wind up building products for startups. You wind up building products for really big companies. Thatâs all we have as a customer base here, right? [00:40:00] Youâre gonna go figure out what are Home Depotâs and Cokeâs and UPSâs problems, Fiserv problems, and NCR problems, not insert our startup.
So I think are the two biggest positives. I think the negatives are, probably quite obvious, being like access to capital, access to talent. But on the flip side, I was having lunch with the founder of Stripe, John Collison. And we were talking about recruiting, and I was like, what are some of the things youâve learned over the years?â
And heâs Garrett, the biggest mistake we made we really only recruited from Stanford for like the first five years. And we realized thereâs some really smart people that didnât go to Stanford.â And Iâm like, â Huh.â Because in the Valley they talk about this, like you have to find these people before theyâre discovered, right?
You have to find these people at the bottom of their intercept with a steep slope. And I guess the positive way to spin that for a place like Atlanta is everyone looks like that? no one has an assumption... Like, early on, we hired a ton of our sales team from Kennesaw State.
And people were like, âWhy are you hiring them from Georgia Tech?â And Iâm [00:41:00] like, âHave you ever met someone from Kennesaw State? Theyâre incredibly smart. Theyâre working their tail off because they went to Kennesaw State, they didnât start their career six feet ahead.
And they actually have a really good sales program. So we hired a lot of kids from there, 21 years old, right out of college. Knew how to sell. They wanted to sell. They worked their butts off. And I think about our first two sales reps, they were with me for five years at the company.
They would have never gotten a job at a, pick your Silicon Valley thing because they went to just a college that no one wouldâve ever heard of in California. But when youâre in Atlanta, Youâre like, âOh, Kennesaw Stateâs great. SCADâs great. Georgia Stateâs great.â that feels like a negative when youâre trying to build a company and recruiting. But then you meet, these special people. Like I think about our first sales leader we hired. Helped us take the company from 5 million of ARR to over 500 million of ARR. You know how rare it is for a sales leader to do that, it never happens.
And you look at this guyâs resume and you go, âThat guyâs not gonna do it.â itâs like apparently he could.
Iâll put that in the middle of a little bit of a negative, a little bit of a positive. Because all you have is diamonds in the rough
Ian Hathaway: I agree with [00:42:00] that. itâs proven out over and over. If you actually look at the data, there are a lot more successful tech companies outside of the Bay Area than inside of it. They just donât have the household brand name associated with it. Sticking with Atlanta, beyond Flock you launched the Thriving Cities Fund.
Youâre putting ten million into small Atlanta businesses, all rooted in this belief that jobs are the bedrock of safe communities. Totally agree. For founders, whoâve come up outside the traditional hubs, giving back to the ecosystem that shaped them seems to come pretty naturally. Itâs something that people talk a lot about on this show.
Itâs a continuing theme. So what are you trying to change about the opportunity structure in Atlanta for founders, for small business owners, and for the next generation of people who might otherwise assume, as you once did, that what you do is you just go get a job instead of starting a company a company?
Garrett Langley: you think about where Flock sits [00:43:00] today , weâre right in the middle of, letâs call it the crime epidemic. And then weâre in the middle of the process, by the time Flockâs involved, a crime has already occurred, which is bad.
That means there is both a criminal and a victim. I donât believe people are evil. I think ninety-nine point nine percent of criminals are good people that have made bad decisions. We would like to make sure that the case gets cleared, but we would prefer crime never happened in the first place. Our goal is not to just solve every crime.
Our goal is to eliminate it from happening. And so to do that, you have to go to the start and say why does someone choose to be a criminal?â And they choose to do that because they need this way to make money. They believe they will get away with it, and it is a profitable venture. So we focus on those two things and say we need to create jobs then that are more profitable and safer.â
And so when I look at Thriving Cities, it stemmed from one of the programs we have in Atlanta is this program called the AT Promise [00:44:00] Centers. Itâs a really good idea. Itâs done really good work for the city. And the thing Iâd point out is what they provide is exactly what weâre trying to do through Thriving Cities, which is more jobs.
So that when youâre thirteen, youâre 15, youâre 18, and youâre making decisions about your life, there is one standing in front of you that says, âYou can go get a good job that pays well, that provides stability.â But if you donât see that, you believe your only choice is crime. I will steal. Iâll break into cars. And so, yeah, itâs something thatâs like really important to us. Iâm a capitalist. I think economic development is the engine that drives our society. You canât do that if youâre not safe. But once you are safe, thatâs, I think, how you stay safe.
Ian Hathaway: Totally agree. And I love the action that youâre taking to make a difference across that broader spectrum. I wanna ask one more question about your leadership not just in the ecosystem, but within your company. I know that youâve been very open about culture, how [00:45:00] you lead the company, detail-oriented, hands-on. I know your co-founder, Paige, worked on cultural norms, with Ben Horowitz, wrote, one of my favorite books of all time on culture, which is What You Do Is Who You Are. talked about that numerous times on the show. Every new hire gets a 90-day plan instead of a job description.
Just a very unique way of setting culture and beginning that experience for new employees. So for founders in our audience who are starting to scale, what have you learned about making culture explicit before the company gets big enough to potentially distort it?
Garrett Langley: When I was having this conversation with Ben, we were probably 100 people, and they had just invested in the business, and we were adding a lot of people, and he had asked me like, âHowâs the culture at Flock?â And I was like, âOh, Ben, itâs really good.â
And heâs like, âGreat. Can you send it to me?â I was like, âNo, I canât send it to you. Itâs like a feeling. You gotta feel what itâs like to work at Flock.â And heâs like, âThatâs actually not [00:46:00] true. It means you have a very weak culture.â And his point was not that it necessarily has to be weak, but that, that means that the nucleus of this energy is you and Paige The bigger you get, the weaker thatâs actually gonna be because the employees are four layers from you, five layers from you, more than one, which means it decays really fast. So the absence of a written document means that you as an individual are the only source of culture, and thatâs actually not gonna work. And that was, like, tough to hear because I thought Iâd built a pretty cool company at the time.
Andreessen Horowitz had just invested, oh my gosh, and Benâs like, âNo, man, your culture sounds not good.â so we wrote it down and took it to heart. And even to this day, every week, Paige and I walk our new employees through those cultural norms and what it means to be at Flock.
And the whole point we make is that our culture is not good or bad. We donât believe in yelling at Flock. I can think of a lot of really good companies where yelling is quite normal, and thatâs okay. We just donât yell. We have all these things About what we [00:47:00] believe to be true or to be good at Flock, but we remind people, â This doesnât have to be for you but this is how we work.
And every single employee sits through the exact same meeting, signs the exact same cultural norms, and agrees that they will continue to be a shepherder of this culture. And that means actually the energy goes throughout the entire organization. And so we have a lot of beliefs that we think work really well for us.
I donât think they work everywhere. Like if you look at my executive team, three-quarters of them have been with me since we were sub one million ARR.
Thatâs really rare. I think every VC Iâve ever talked to is like, âYou gotta upgrade your exec team every 18 months.â And I just, I havenât
And I think thereâs a lot that we do different, and I think some of it maybe makes us a better company and some of it makes us a worser company.
But the thing that I remind our team is every one of you will probably go on to work at another company. Iâm not hireable, so I gotta go make sure weâre building a company that I love.â
And then I gotta hope That thereâs enough other people in this world that like the way [00:48:00] that I like to work, that they wanna come work here. And so weâve kept a pretty tight, focused culture in that regard.
And while Iâm very receptive to feedback and we evolve the culture for sure, what it never leaves from is a place that Paige and I are really proud to work at
Ian Hathaway: Speaking of people being around you for a long period of time, you built a pretty intentional support system around the realities of running a high-growth company. A lot of it seems, designed to protect your family life from the stress of that job. I know youâve said that the biggest risk to success as a CEO isnât the business, itâs your personal life causing an outsized amount of stress.
Your wife, Megan, has been a constant through all of this. after your experience at Experience you were figuring out what was next , playing a lot of golf, and she encouraged you to go back to building because youâre a builder. On the other hand, she said she also can see when something stressful is going on at work [00:49:00] because you donât sleep and youâre not a lot of fun to be around.
So on that personal note, what does she see in you that your employees and investors might not get to have a window into? And when you look honestly at what it takes to build a company at the scale of Flock with the critics with the breadth of activity, how have you tried to keep that ambition for the company from taking more from your family than it gives back?
Garrett Langley: Iâll maybe answer the last question first and then go backwards. I think in moments in time, and maybe weâre in one of those right now, the company takes way more than it gives back. Nowhere near a balance. And the way my wife and I try to rationalize that is itâs just chapters in a long book. not every chapter is gonna be fun, not every chapter is gonna be happy, not every chapter is gonna be a success. But as long as you like the bookends and you enjoy the characters, itâs gonna be a really good book. so [00:50:00] we try not to get too bogged down on what one individual chapter feels like.
And there are plenty of chapters, like to your description of the series B, thatâs not a chapter that I plan to go reread very often. But she was there with me through it, and she was the one saying y- you will be fine. We will finish this chapter, and you will like the next chapter.â And I think more than anything, she continues to kinda be that eternal optimist that if I work hard enough, if I believe in what Iâm doing, the good guys will win in the long run.
So to go to your original question, I think if you were to survey my average employee base, they would probably articulate that they think I have this endless fountain of optimism. And what I think that they would not understand is that actually stems from my wife. She has what feels like an eternal optimism , for me and what I can accomplish, and thatâs actually where Iâm stealing it from.
âCause I go through my highs and lows, but sheâs the one who kinda keeps me balanced and [00:51:00] focused
Ian Hathaway: Thatâs a nice testament. Thankfully, I feel the same about my wife. I know itâs not easy for anyone. And I know you still got a lot of building, a lot of work to do. But I do kinda wanna end asking about legacy, which seems especially important in this case. The company youâre building from home in Atlanta, itâs now valued at over eight billion dollars.
Weâve talked about the impact. Weâve talked about the numbers. But I donât really get a sense thatâs why youâre in it. So when itâs all said and done, when your kids are old enough to really understand what youâve built and why youâve built it, what do you hope that Flock will have proven about safety, about Atlanta, and about whatâs possible when you build something that actually matters?
Garrett Langley: If we fast-forward some number of years, like five, seven, three on the optimistic side, there will be these cities. [00:52:00] We call them safe cities. And crime will be something talked about like fax machines, where yeah, that, that made sense. That kind of existed.
But no one really talks about it anymore And what I hope they will take away from that is when Iâm criticized by some people, theyâre like, âOh youâve simplified the problem too much. Technology canât actually fix this problem. Technology isnât enough. You canât just solve crime.
Thatâs not how it works.â And those are people that also have no plan either to fix it, and they argue that the thing is just too big. And what I hope In our success weâre able to show is that just because a problem is complicated doesnât mean the solution has to be complicated. And you look at some of the things facing this country today, crime being one of them We can devise simple solutions.
It doesnât have to be complicated. It can use common sense. And I think if that is what my kids learn, maybe other people learn, that you can pick the [00:53:00] hairiest of societal problems, think about it really hard, get a smart group of people together and commit a decade plus of their life to fixing it, and it can work.
And if we can build that level of optimism, I think we can look at all the problems we face as a community and start knocking them off one by one.
Ian Hathaway: Thatâs a great sentiment. Itâs a nice way to end. Weâre almost out of time, but before I let you go we like to finish with a little segment we call Beyond the Bio, which is just some quick hit questions to go beyond the resume and just dig into what makes you. Sound okay?
Garrett Langley: Yep
Ian Hathaway: Okay . Whatâs a quick piece of advice from a mentor that stuck with you throughout your journey?
Garrett Langley: Team first
Ian Hathaway: Who is an unsung hero in your life and what has been the impact theyâve had on you?
Garrett Langley: my brother, he forces me to have fun. Without him I would never have fun.
Ian Hathaway: Thatâs great. havenât heard that one before. Whoâs someone in the [00:54:00] Atlanta startup community who doesnât get enough credit and deserves a shout-out from you?
Garrett Langley: Oh, okay. Good guy. Scott Voigt runs a company called FullStory. OG, been around a long time. A dear friend and someone I leaned on really heavily the first few years of Flock
Ian Hathaway: Tell us something most people donât know about you, something outside of work. Could be a hobby, a favorite travel spot, a guilty pleasure, or maybe even a hidden talent
Garrett Langley: During COVID, I went vegan for a full year. And I can share, I looked the exact same. I felt better. It was a lot more work, a whole lot more work. But I feel quite strongly That our current food system is killing us and we need to rethink the food we put in our bodies.
Ian Hathaway: So youâre still Vegan?
Garrett Langley: no, I went back
because I was like, âThis takes too much time.â I went back to all the bad stuff âcause it was too much work to be vegan, but I did it for a year.
Ian Hathaway: I feel like it would be too hard for me to give up pizza. Thatâs my guilty pleasure maybe.
Garrett Langley: Cheese is so good
Ian Hathaway: [00:55:00] yeah. What are one or two songs youâd like to add to our Spotify founders playlist? Something that fuels your workday or has inspired you on your journey as an entrepreneur
Garrett Langley: Oh man, The XX, On Hold. Itâs a really good one. Iâve always loved The XX. I saw them for the first time ever at South by Southwest in Austin many, many years ago, and thatâs probably the band Iâve seen the most live. And then this is gonna be, iâm a sucker for like a good pop song. I think every single song that Olivia Rodrigo makes is just like great. Some music makes you cry, some music makes you smile. You kinda gotta have both in your playlist
Ian Hathaway: Great. Weâre gonna add those. What about a book youâd recommend? Maybe something that has been especially valuable on your journey, or maybe one that you think every first-time founder should read as theyâre getting started
Garrett Langley: Thereâs a handful that are worth reading, but itâs worth studying ancient Egypt, and itâs not intuitive why. One of the things that are actually really fascinating, but what I think is more important [00:56:00] is it gives you a new sense for time. â Cause you think about the ancient Egyptians , they existed for thousands of years before the Romans. And we think of Romans as thatâs ancient history , right? Thatâs 2,000 years ago. The Egyptians were there 5,000 years before them. And so when youâre a founder, right?
Youâre like, âMan, I gotta e-every day, I gotta hit my numbers every quarter, every year.â And you think about âOh, I wanna build this generational company.â Americaâs not even that old. Americaâs a couple hundred years old. So you start to understand what were they doing?
Why were they so successful? How could they survive so long as this dominant society?
So I think thatâs like a really understudied, underread ancient history, and Iâve read a bunch of books on it and I think itâs a ton of fun.
Ian Hathaway: I hadnât thought of that perspective. Is there like a specific one that would be the best to kind of dig in on that subject?
Garrett Langley: So thereâs a really good biography on Cleopatra as a starting point. itâs a fun read because Cleopatra had a fascinating life in her short span on this earth. [00:57:00] But it does delve into a bit of the history of Egypt, and if you find that book interesting, youâll naturally jump to what was it like before Cleopatra, a thousand years before, two thousand years before?
What was the first pharaoh like? What was that evolution into pharaohs, into treating them like god-like figures? Thereâs so much to learn and it spans thousands of years.
Ian Hathaway: Itâs amazing. Great one. All right, last question. If you could give one piece of advice to someone whoâs about to start their first company, particularly someone whoâs maybe a bit of an outsider, what would it be?
Garrett Langley: At the end of the day, youâll build a company that no one can ignore. And so donât worry about where youâre based. Donât worry about the ecosystem. Donât worry about investors, because eventually youâll build a company and they will all come to you
Ian Hathaway: I canât think of a better way to end, Garrett. Thank you so much for sharing your time today, your wisdom. I cannot wait to share this episode with our listeners
Garrett Langley: Awesome. Thanks
Ian Hathaway: Thatâs a wrap for todayâs episode of Outsider Inc. A big thank you to Garrett Langley for joining us and sharing his journey and wisdom. What stays [00:58:00] with me most from this conversation isnât the eight point four billion dollar valuation or the six thousand cities or even the million crimes cleared a year.
Itâs the framing. Garrett doesnât talk about Flock as an honor. He talks about it as a burden he chooses to carry every day alongside two thousand people who could be building something far easier Thereâs something deeply inspiring in that. He built in Atlanta because leaving would have been disingenuous.
He went into a market that nearly every investor told him was a mistake, hardware, government, law enforcement, and got within weeks of running out of money before the results got too good to ignore . And underneath all of it is a conviction most founders never have to articulate , that safety isnât a privilege, itâs a right, and without it, the whole American promise of doing better than your parents quietly falls apart For the outsiders listening, donât worry about where youâre based or whoâs writing checks.
Build something [00:59:00] no one can ignore, and eventually theyâll come to you.
If you want more from Outsider Inc., donât forget to subscribe to the platform at outsiderinc.substack.com. Itâs packed with highlights from todayâs episode and bonus insights you wonât wanna miss. You can follow Outsider Inc. on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn at outsiderincpod. You can also follow me on X at IanHathaway.
Outsider Inc. is produced by Spellbinder Media. Weâll be back soon with another fascinating outsider conversation. Until then, thank you so much for listening, and remember, great entrepreneurs can come from anywhere. See you next time.