a16z Podcast - a16z Podcast: Three Kids, One App, One Love -- The Five-O Story

Episode Date: August 28, 2014

Teenage siblings Ima, Asha and Caleb Christian from Atlanta, Georgia join Ben Horowitz for a discussion about the motivation and origins of their new app, Five-O. In the aftermath of the tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri, the young developers built Five-O as a tool to rate and document interactions -- good and bad -- with the police. Ben and the Five-O team discuss the origins and technical underpinnings of the app. Rapper Nas makes an appearance, offering his own experience with the police, and why efforts like Five-O work towards a solution that both citizens and police should get behind. The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business tax or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. For more details, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures. Hello, we are here on the A16Z podcast with the writers and makers of the 50 app with us. I have, three awesome American teenagers and they unlike most of us when they watched what was happening in Ferguson most people like me sat there read about it got really upset got frustrated and then did nothing but these kids watched it saw what was going on and said like we can do something we're going to build an app that allows citizens to review police officers. And in this way, make the whole policing process much more transparent

and much more like something that will work well in the future. And so we're very excited to have Caleb, Ema, and Asha here. And will it get started? So, Emma. Yes, thank you for having us. Why, what made you want to build 50? Okay. Well, we started developing this app about six months ago, and what really made us decide to start developing it was, you know, it was more so a culmination of everything that was going on in the media at the time. And also we had some family members who had also had some negative interactions with law enforcement, and that's something that had always been on our minds. We talk to our parents often about these issues, and they try to put everything into context for us, and one of the things they really tried to focus. and tell us was to focus on finding solutions. And from there, that's how we decided to

develop an app. We just saw all of ideas on the whiteboard, and we started thinking about every component that could go into an app like this, and that's how we came up with 5-0. Wow. And so, Asha, when you, you know, normally if a family member has a run-in with the police that's negative, that's going to cause more rage than kind of constructive thinking. So how did you get to the point where you said, look, let's take a systematic approach and, you know, try and fix the whole system as opposed to just get mad at a police officer? Right. So our family, all three of us, we've been working on coding and we've been involved in tech since we were in middle school. So we've had a little bit of background in that. We also have close family friends who are police officers. So we know for fact that all of them aren't corrupt. And we don't believe that we don't hate all police officers. and we don't believe that they're all bad.

So we think of ourselves as problem solvers, and we use tech as our medium to solve that problem. We just felt like it was a great problem that was going on throughout the community, and instead of becoming mad, like you said, we just felt that was great for us to channel that into an app and really channel that into determination to get the app out. Great. So we have a real tech audience here on the A16Z podcast.

So Caleb, can you take us through a little? little bit of how you architected the application, what the components are, what tools you used? Well, we used a cloud-based SDK program called appri.io. And some features in the app, we have an incident report where you basically go through and you log what happened and things like that. And then we have, Ashton knows a lot of the functions, but we also have a message board where you can post things that you want to go out to your community. And you can also review cops by their badge number and things like that. So, yeah.

Right. Well, this is Asha. And on the application, we also have features where anyone who lives, well, actually, you don't have to live in that community, but anyone can go and search up the reviews that have been made based on county, zip code, and state. And you can look at all the review descriptions, and you can read about the rating that that county has and just basically get an idea of what the interactions with law enforcement within that area have been.

And we also have a function. that's GPS. So let's say you're traveling and you don't know where you are and it's the middle of the night and you could just open up the phone and click it and you automatically get your address, the address of where you are, and you also see it on a map. So, yeah. Also, we have a know-your-right section of the app and that's for whenever you're in a situation and you're not sure exactly how to handle yourself or you're dealing with law enforcement and you don't know what steps you can take or what rights you have. We have a know-your-right section. So you really just have that information, which is provided from the ACLU at. your fingertips. Wow. So we have a special guest here. The greatest lyricist of all times, Nas just walked into the podcast environment.

And Nas, what do you think about these kids? I think these kids are great and they are coming up with solutions to problems that we don't know what to do. You know, it's like I do also, you know, have

experiences with police you know that weren't so great coming up so you know but then like they say there's some good cops out there too i know some policemen who are really good and i think they should even support this i think the police should um know that this is something that's positive and this is something that's good for the whole community it just makes everything better so uh you kids have been out here now in silicon valley for a day um you had some interesting visits. So, Asha, why don't you tell us about some of the places that she went and what you think? Well, one of the major places we went to today is Facebook, and we just absolutely

loved the environment. It was great, just the way everyone treated us and the way they treated each other. And just, it was, there was some with the energy, the whole vibe at Facebook was just very welcoming and happy, and we just loved it. And I mean, I can literally, I can see myself in that face. It's like Facebook for real, you know? Not just on the internet. Yeah. When we went there, we didn't get to see Mark Zuckerberg, but I mean, that was in

deal work or anything. But we were just, it was amazing the whole atmosphere like what Asha said. And then in my perspective, it was just like everyone seemed very happy and it seemed like a very nice environment. And when you think about coding, you don't really think about it like how people, like how it looks at Facebook you think about it like someone's leaving way at a computer but it's not that at all it really isn't it's a very fun thing to do and when you can when you learn it and when you wrap your mind around it it's a great thing right it seems as if facebook is bringing the fun to

yeah yeah it's the environment's um very fun so now the app has gotten a lot of press attention and how have you found that you all are actually quite skilled at dealing with the press i must say not being an actual press person myself, but you have great answers. How did you, how long did it take your, how did you go about figuring out how to answer some of these kinds of questions and not have people to get you riled up against the police and things like that? Well, I would say right before our first interview and Ashton and Caleb were both at school, so I had to talk to them on the phone in the car. But before, right before the interview, I was like, we were riding down possible questions. My mom helped me strategize how best to respond to, like, certain

questions. And also, I guess after the first two interviews, we were getting some of the same questions. So it was easy for us to, you know, well, we're probably going to hear these questions. So we should probably just make responses that we're all comfortable with, and we know exactly, like, concisely how to answer them. So I guess just practice it first and then planning. That is pretty awesome. I know executives that aren't that good at that. I'm taking pointers right now. Yeah, we're learning. This is good.

So where do you think the app can go from here? So you've kind of got it out there. People can report on issues. You know, if you kind of go far into the future, what does the, you know, what will the world look like when there's a right amount of communication and transparency? between police and citizens? Well, I feel like ultimately 5-0 is definitely an app that we want all people to be able to use.

We definitely feel like it's got a utility that any person from any age group can take advantage of, just giving a voice and bringing customer service to interactions with law enforcement. In terms of the future, we have gotten emails from people in the UK, Brazil, and the UK, Brazil, and Canada saying that this app would be useful where they live. So we're definitely from there we've been thinking about expanding globally because we feel like there's a global utility to this type of app and all people really want to be able

to take charge of their interactions with law enforcement. Right, and we know that some countries around the world they don't have smartphones. So we're also trying to get that function so it can work with SMS and they can submit their interaction reports through text messaging. so who came up with the name 5-0 well our mom she was a big fan she was a big fan of the show

Hawaii 5-0 and then when we when we presented her with the idea she was like well why don't we just call it 5-0 and then that's where that happened right so yeah now you're playing a little coy and that you know that 5-0 is also like the street term or the rap term for police

yeah I have seen TV shows are like here comes a 5-0 So we all just jumped on to that name after, you know, hearing it. Yeah, it's quirky and cool. So we were like, oh, it's great. All right, very good, very good. You're all in high school now. And this is really a public service application. This is, you know, one of the great things about it is, you know, you didn't do it to make money or you didn't do it to, you know, be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

You did it to make the world better. So how far do you go with the 5-0 app before, you know, and where do you think life takes you with college and everything in front of you? And how do you see it evolving over time just with your own time and what you're going to be able to do? Well, I feel like in terms of, because I'm about, I'm a senior, so I'm about to go off to college. But we try to split our time when we get home to working on the app. but we definitely feel like, I mean, we've had offers from people who say that they're willing to help us on specific portions of the app, people who say, you know, we're willing to help you work on this and we're willing to offer help on this. And we know that there are people who are a lot more skill than we are in certain areas that could help us. So we're thinking of expanding, just expanding the number of people who could help us work on it, like when we go to school and when we go off to college.

I mean, we're hoping that the app can, that we can continue progress with the app. add other people to our group and have them to work on it and rebuild it on the native platforms and change the UI and things like we have a lot of updates for the application that we can use with the proper funding and so we just really want to get

the app up and running to the highest possible a solid product really want to make it solid yeah we do have a fund me for 5-0 so yeah well go ahead go ahead pitch the fund me yeah so if anyone wants to fund us you can go there

I just go search 5O find me should come up go fund me you hear that that's 5O fund me and just search for that and you will be able to help and we're looking forward to also seeing the I guess the open source project

of 5O you guys can put that on GitHub yeah we were just told about GitHub yesterday we didn't really use it before but we really plan on we know those guys if you need any help they'd like to jump in Yeah, so for all you developers out there, look for FIvo on GitHub,

and maybe together we can all make the world a much safer place. Thanks for listening. This has been the A16Z podcast. Special thanks to the 5-0 team, Ema, Asha, Caleb, and our special guest, Nause. One love.