Show notes

In this episode, Craig and Kevin interview David Selinger, CEO of Deep Sentinel. Deep Sentinel is a new, artificial intelligence home security system that is changing the face of home security. David has an impressive history of working for Amazon, co-founding Redfish, among other accomplishments – but this system is his pride and joy. Imagine having a security system that actually prevents home invasions, at a staggering rate. Imagine a system that a guard is actually monitoring with cameras instead of just an alert being sent to a call station. Listen in as David walks us through why Deep…

Transcript

1164 segments
KEVIN

This is episode number 175 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

CRAIG

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're so glad that you could join us for another episode of The Homeowner Show here from The Homeowner Show studios. How you doing, Kev?

KEVIN

Man, I'm fantastic.

CRAIG

Fantastic-o.

KEVIN

The game's good.

CRAIG

The game's good?

KEVIN

Yeah, the game, you know.

CRAIG

Talking about the national championship?

KEVIN

No, the game. All the— the game. All the games. The game of life. The game of life. The game of life is fantastic. I'm good.

CRAIG

You're finally winning.

Denise

I'm—

KEVIN

well, I don't know about that, but, uh, but I'm good, man. Nothing, nothing crazy to report. Everybody's healthy, everybody's happy around my place. How about you, man? How you doing?

CRAIG

I mean, not everybody is happy at my place.

KEVIN

Okay, why?

CRAIG

So yesterday, my— I was, I was upstairs in the kitchen. Yeah, on the second and a half floor.

KEVIN

Yes.

CRAIG

Which, for those of you that have been listening to the show for a long time, realize that yes, my kitchen is on the second and a half floor. It's a ridiculous kitchen, and we love it anyway, so screw you. Anyway, I was in the kitchen and my son who had forgotten his homework and was being punished by having to clean the fence row.

KEVIN

Oh.

CRAIG

Um, came into the house screaming, and like, he screams sometimes, which is fine, but this was like a blood-curdling scream.

KEVIN

Uh-oh.

CRAIG

And he came into the house screaming, and then all of a sudden the screaming intensified, and I was like, oh my gosh, my son just chopped his finger off. I'm not only gonna have to clean the blood off, but I'm gonna have to find the finger. And you know, so I go downstairs and what's going on? He's like, I got stung in the head.

KEVIN

Oh no.

CRAIG

And I was like, what stung you in the head? I don't know. And so he starts showing me he's got like a hole in his arm and he's got like a hole in his head. And so I was like, okay buddy, like take me outside and show me where this happened. I don't want to. Okay, it's okay. Dad's, dad's with you. Or you know, whatever it is, I'm gonna kill it. Yeah, because that's what good dads do.

KEVIN

Of course.

CRAIG

comes and attacks your kids, you kill it.

KEVIN

You kill it.

CRAIG

Yeah. So I went outside and lo and behold, it was ground hornets.

KEVIN

Oh no.

CRAIG

And so he was like, he was, he was pointing at him. He was like, it was right over there. And as soon as he pointed, like 2 or 3 of them like flew at us. And like he saw them and took off at a dead run. Well, as soon as he turned around, I saw that there was like 2 of them on his back.

KEVIN

Oh no.

CRAIG

And so like, I'm chasing him, he thinks I'm scared, which scares him even more. And so he's flipping out and I'm like, no, stop, you've got them on your back. And so I finally caught up with him because he's a fast little booger.

KEVIN

Yeah.

CRAIG

And like, I had to like manhandle these hornets off of his back and like throw him on the ground and then pick him up and run him inside because they were chasing us. Oh man, I killed them today though.

KEVIN

Well, that's good. There's, you know, There is nothing that is on this earth that I hate worse than wasps, hornets, all the stupid flying stingy things.

CRAIG

No, they're the absolute—

KEVIN

they are of the devil. Yeah, well, we were— it's weird. We were at, uh, at my sister's house for Christmas, and my brother looks down and just like shakes his hand, and he's like, I don't know, that was weird.

CRAIG

What?

KEVIN

He looked down and he had a barb in his—

CRAIG

Oh my gosh.

KEVIN

In his hand. He didn't even realize he got stung. Of course it swelled up and everything. It's just like, all you stinging things.

CRAIG

Oh yeah, man.

KEVIN

I like them.

CRAIG

Well, and like, I don't know if I've ever shared the pictures on our, uh, social media with, with this particular channel, um, but like, if I get— like, here's what always happens with me is it's always the face.

KEVIN

Oh yeah.

CRAIG

Every time it's the face for me, and I swell up and I look like Sloth from The Goonies.

KEVIN

Well, it's— y'all, it's awesome. It's awesome.

CRAIG

And everyone's like, can you breathe? Are you okay? I'm like, I'm fine, I'm fine. I look like an idiot.

KEVIN

Yeah. Oh, it's, it's really great, actually. We should share some of those pictures of how ugly you can become.

CRAIG

It's, it's, it's really impressive.

KEVIN

Yeah, it is.

CRAIG

So, but on a completely unrelated note, uh-huh, we're talking about home security tonight.

KEVIN

Yeah, yeah, we are. I— this is, uh, this is gonna be an interesting episode because I think that we're gonna be talking about home security in a way that we're not used to. Yeah. Right?

CRAIG

I, I absolutely. I think, I think this is a game changer. We've, we've had this, this interview scheduled for a while. I've been, I've, I've actually been excited about it. Our, our guest has actually been on Eric G's show before.

KEVIN

Yeah.

CRAIG

So I, I was able to listen to the interview and, and, you know, get a few, few pointers from the, the master interviewer over there. Yeah. Caroline.

KEVIN

Yeah. Absolutely.

Denise

Yeah.

CRAIG

Um, so, but anyway, we got, we got Dave Sellinger, right? From Deep Sentinel.

Denise

That's right.

CRAIG

Am I saying— did I get it all right?

Denise

You did. I just realized as you were saying, I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't send you the pronunciation. Usually I try to go out of my way to do that, but you nailed it. It's Dave Sellinger, just like, uh, J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye. So look at that.

CRAIG

See that, Kev?

Denise

Thumbs up.

CRAIG

It's like I'm a professional.

KEVIN

Wow.

CRAIG

Like I knew what I'm doing, man.

KEVIN

You know, I mean I mean, they're gonna know now because I'm gloating, but even a blind squirrel, right? Even a blind squirrel, man.

CRAIG

Every once in a while.

KEVIN

Every once in a while. Well, yeah, man, we're, we're glad that you're here. Uh, so let's just do this for a minute. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

CRAIG

Um, I don't, I don't actually— don't think that's fair.

KEVIN

What?

CRAIG

Because like, I know a little bit about his, his backstory.

KEVIN

Okay.

CRAIG

Like, I, I want to— like, I know about— I know a little bit about the Amazon days.

KEVIN

Okay.

CRAIG

I know a little bit about the Redfin days.

KEVIN

Okay.

CRAIG

I wanna hear about that.

KEVIN

Okay. Well, okay. So let's do this. Tell us all the wonderful, amazing things about yourself that you probably don't just blurt out to everybody. Give us all the juicy details. Tell us who you are and how you got into home security even to begin with.

Denise

Sure. So, again, happy to be here. My background, I'm a technologist. I grew up programming computers in the '80s, which was a great way to make friends, by the way, in high school.

CRAIG

All those cool D&D clubs.

Denise

I mean it. No, I mean, I'm still friends with both of them. I'm serious. Yeah, no, so I grew up in Southern Oregon, a little town called Grants Pass. I actually lived in a suburb of Grants Pass, for those of you who don't know it, Grants Pass has a— had a whopping total population of 15,000, and I grew up in a suburb called Merlin that had a population of 375, you know, plus or minus 3 or 4. And I was fortunate enough to get to go to Stanford. My folks were really supportive of letting me learn about computers. And for those of the listeners that are younger, you'll, you'll not be familiar with this, this method of learning, but I used to have to go to this place called the library in

Denise

order to learn. I taught myself to program when I was 6 by checking out books from the local county library.

CRAIG

Nice.

Denise

Then, like I said, went to Stanford. I dropped out, started a couple of companies during the first dot-com, went back and finished my degree while I was a partner at a coffee company called Dutch Bros, which is a sweet coffee company. It's based in Oregon. They were on— the CEO there is a friend of mine, and he was on Undercover Boss. So if you don't know Dutch Bros, you should watch the Undercover Boss episode because it's awesome.

CRAIG

We just got our first Dutch Bros here.

Denise

No, you didn't. Really?

CRAIG

Yeah, yeah. It's— Kev, it's on 20 on 20.

KEVIN

What?

Denise

Yeah.

KEVIN

Like, that's close.

CRAIG

I know.

KEVIN

Okay. Well, I'm not a huge coffee drinker, but I'll go. I'm all in.

Denise

Go. Get a Kahlua kicker if you can for your intro, and then dial it back from there after you get the first one. They actually just went public. this year too. I'm really stoked for them. I'm still friends with the founder there. Then I graduated, got to go to Amazon. Amazon recruited me to go run their first AI machine learning team, which was, I mean, out of the blue. I really don't know how they picked me to do that, but I was stoked that they did. It became the foundation of my career.

CRAIG

Yeah.

Denise

I ran that for a couple of years. I then started a company called Redfin, which is a a real estate company that's now publicly traded. I started another AI company, and then about 6, 7 years ago, I left that company. I'd grown it to about $50 million in sales, and then I left. I took that as an opportunity to go back to my roots. My roots, to me, again, are that just geeky computer programming stuff. The timing could not have been better because there was this new type of AI that had just been invented called deep learning. And so I started digging into that and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. We've been reading about AI in the news for 20, 30

Denise

years about how it's going to change the world. And this is the first time that the technology actually catches up with all the promises that we see on the news. And so I started looking at different businesses I could start. And then as coincidence would have it, my neighbor had a home invasion. at that precise time. And I was exposed because of that.

KEVIN

Congratulations, man. That's fantastic. Well, I'm just kidding. Totally kidding. Congratulations. It's like this epiphany of your career happened at the extreme demise of your neighbor.

CRAIG

He's okay.

KEVIN

He's okay.

Denise

Okay, good. But yeah, I mean, It was unfortunate circumstances, but it's those extreme type of circumstances that force you to really think about things.

KEVIN

Sure.

Denise

I own a home. I had just moved into this neighborhood maybe 2 or 3 years prior to that, and so I'd installed an alarm. I'd installed cameras. In fact, our whole neighborhood has these very expensive camera systems that are between $3,000 and $5,000, $10,000. They're very, very expensive. And so the fact that this happened, even though she had an alarm and had cameras, my, my aha moment happened when, you know, we pulled together the neighborhood watch, we invite the local police officer to come, and he tells us, you know, this happened. And I, being the glorious technologist that I am, raised my hand and said, hey, she has an alarm, she has cameras, how come

Denise

that didn't stop it? And the cop looks me in the eye, just turns and like, Dead stares me in the eyes and said, "Well, you're the technologist. What the hell did you expect the cameras or the alarm to do? The alarm wasn't armed, and what did you want the cameras to do? Jump out and stop this from happening." And that was that was this moment where I just realized that I had been lulled by all the marketing and and just kind of general expectations of homeownership, and that's one of the things that you do, and it protects you. And I realized, holy smokes! It doesn't. Here, this person has the best of the best and the worst of

Denise

the worst happened to her. Again, thank goodness she's safe and recovered, but very, very serious situation. I started trying to figure out how could I actually solve that problem? How could I have prevented that? How could I have, instead of having this video where she has 5 minutes of these guys outside of her house preparing to break in and then ultimately going inside and then coming out like an hour or 2 later, All you have is pictures of guys with masks on. You can't do anything with that. The police couldn't do anything with it. And it made me feel really helpless. And I came to realize that if only we could have prevented it earlier, if only we could have used those same cameras, but instead of it being a dumb recording device, turn it into

Denise

true crime prevention, actually deliver on the promise of stopping crimes. So that was, that was really the impetus for starting this company. The company's called Deep Sentinel. And that's what we do. We intervene in crimes really early in the cycle, and 99.9% of the time we stop them before anything bad happens.

KEVIN

Wow. So, so what— okay, so you're— what we're talking about here is, I mean, traditional— we— I think most people at this point understand the traditional home security, right? It's a— it's the keypad on the wall, it's the, the alarm system, it's the, even the, you know, the window sensors, the video cameras, the whole bit. I think we get it. And you can even simply safe this thing to death by just installing all this stuff wireless, but yourself, you know, because you're smart and you know where to put things. And so like, all of a sudden, we, again, we feel very much like we've done something here.

CRAIG

So—

Denise

That's exactly how I felt. Right up until I realized that it was the wrong something.

KEVIN

Sure.

Denise

That is 100% right.

KEVIN

Yeah. So I guess, I guess I've got kind of a twofold question. We'll start here. Where, where is the breakdown in that? How does that not wind up keeping you safe like you think it's supposed to? I mean, she did everything she thought that she was supposed to do, and yet still the worst thing happened. So where is the breakdown? And why is that traditionally not working today?

Denise

So I, I can answer that in two kind of chunks. The first chunk is let's look at the alarm system, the sensors, the door sensors, the window sensors, the keypad, and what happens when that goes off. Well, when that, when that goes off, that signal gets routed to a call center, and that call center then calls you or your sister or your, your, your best friend and then calls the police, and, and, and then the police are supposed to come. What I didn't realize was that when they call the police What they do is they call the police and they say, hey, I have an open door at 123 Main Street. And again, kind of put yourself in the shoes of a police officer. All right, cool. I thought I signed up to go stop crimes, but apparently I respond to open

Denise

door calls.

KEVIN

Hmm.

Denise

And it turns out that that's exactly the problem. 98% of calls to police departments from alarm companies are false alarms. 98% of them are false alarms.

KEVIN

Wow.

Denise

Right. Imagine you pick up the phone and call 911. They yell at you for calling false alarm if you call one time, call 911 and do a false alarm. But alarm companies have somehow finagled their way into this where they get away with it at 98%. The Department of Justice has done studies about this, the guys at Freakonomics. And what it results in is police don't want to respond. So they've passed laws that state that police departments do not have to respond to burglar alarms, period, full stop.

KEVIN

So they literally just don't have to respond at all?

Denise

In most— most Americans live in a city where the city council and the police department have gotten together and said, we just don't— we're not required to respond. If we can, maybe we will. Sometimes we will. But in general, it's taking us away from real calls, right? Like, there could be somebody that's actually hurt. There could be somebody that is needing assistance. And even if they respond to a false alarm, you're putting in— and we've seen this especially in the last couple years— you're putting an officer and potentially the wrong citizens in harm's way, right? You could be sending an armed officer who has a weapon drawn to a home where the only people there are you and your kids. You don't want that either.

KEVIN

No.

Denise

Just because your garage door blew open at 2 o'clock in the morning.

KEVIN

Right.

Denise

That's not why I bought this system, right? So that's number one, is that it doesn't deliver the promise on the alarm side just because it's not functional. And it turns out those open door sensor technology, that's like 30-year-old technology. And certainly in the '80s it was sweet, but I mean, it's not the '80s anymore. Cameras are kind of a problem on the other end. They don't do anything proactively necessarily, so unless you're sitting there looking at every alert on your phone, which I promise you, A, you aren't doing, and B, if you are, you're crazy. And so what cops have there is if you go to the detective and you say, show me your drawer, they'll have this drawer

Denise

full of USB sticks from families that have been burglarized, had their package stolen, had their car burglarized, had their catalytic converter stolen, had their shed broken into, had their car rummaged through. All these different things that they didn't find out until a day later or 3 days later when somebody posts on social media and says, hey, my car got broken into. Did yours? Oh my gosh, I went and looked back. And then they post on the internet and they say, this guy got caught. They didn't get caught. Their thumb drive got stuck in a drawer and thrown away. And so again, you just don't have prevention. You don't have crimes actually stopping. You have recordings of people committing crimes. In fact, it's gotten so bad. that like

Denise

video doorbells— burglars, if they know you have a video doorbell, they won't avoid it anymore. They'll go up to it and ring it not once, not twice, 3 times, 4 times, 5 times to make sure you're not there and you're not paying attention. Because if they ring your video doorbell 3 times and you don't respond, that's like, that's like signing over a short-term lease for your house to this guy. Like, I can just move in, hang out, take as much of your stuff out, park my car in your garage, And you're not even paying attention.

KEVIN

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I guess I haven't thought of it that way, but the reality of it is, I mean, because, because here's the problem, right? I mean, for most people, they do not go in and deactivate notifications on their phone.

Denise

For—

KEVIN

I mean, they, they get pissed off at them and they're like, look, I don't want that notification, I don't want that notification, I don't want that notification. Or they want it less and they don't go, they don't go change it. So they just get all these notifications and they, they, they look at 2 of them, right? They look at text message notifications and they look at Facebook notifications. That's it, right? If it's a notification, other than that, like, it does not matter. And now I, I'm, I mean, the really angry ones look at Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. And both of them are really angry.

CRAIG

That's right.

KEVIN

Right.

CRAIG

Uh-huh.

KEVIN

But so like, we, we have a, uh, we have, we have a, a door system, like, like a lock system at our, at our house where, uh, when, when someone unlocks or locks the door, then I get a notification on my phone. Okay. Now I will tell you this, I notice every single time because it comes through on my watch as well, but almost every time I justify it. Almost every time I justify it going, my wife's at home, she just let the dog out, or something of that nature.

CRAIG

You ignore it.

Denise

Right?

KEVIN

I, I do. I, I mean, I notice it, but I ignore it. I don't— every time my, my door opens, I don't call my wife and go, did you just walk out the door? Like, she would divorce me if that happened, right? Like, stop calling. I just turned the freaking notification off by now, right? And that's part of the issue because people aren't looking at their notifications. And so they, they buy this sweet Ring doorbell or, you know, whatever it is that, that ties into their SimpliSafe, and they never, they never look at it. They don't care. Right?

Denise

I mean, that, that what you're saying is 100% right. Right? I mean, in, in, in the data statistics world, we call that signal-to-noise ratio. And when your signal-to-noise ratio is so bad like that, just like what the police are dealing with, When 98% of the calls are false alarms, you continue to feel good maybe about it, but you don't make that cognitive connection that, hey, the right thing's not happening here.

CRAIG

Yeah. And to your point, David, like when you're, when you're saying like, even with the cameras and everything else that like, you know, the USB sticks just get thrown in the drawer. I mean, like, I'm beginning to see this more and more as as people become frustrated with becoming victims of, of burglary and vandalism, because you'll see them post their videos on social media into like different groups and be like, hey, just, you know, be on the lookout because this person's out doing this, that, and the other to different homes in our neighborhood. And if you know this person, be sure and let everybody know who it is. And, you know, everyone hates it, but no one narcs. And, you know, I've rarely

CRAIG

seen an instance where that actually has any result in finding the person or getting them caught or deterring them.

Denise

Every once in a while, you'll get a license plate or like they'll post a face of somebody that the police already know. Yeah, but it's, it's very rare. And I think the problem with very rare too is that we're looking like at a neighborhood. As much as I love my neighbors, I don't care about my neighborhood. What I care about is my house and my property and my kids and my wife.

KEVIN

Right.

Denise

And statistics, okay, so 10% of them get caught. I don't care about 10%. What I care about is 100% of those 3 individuals and myself too, every once in a while. But, but that was, again, just that, that was a part of this, this eye-opening moment for me that There has to be something better. And, you know, one of the things that I found that could tick off some of the listeners here is, you know, who has it better is rich people, like super, super wealthy people have guards outside their house all day long.

CRAIG

Physical people on the property, right?

Denise

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't have this problem. They— because they are able to intervene when somebody walks up, they intervene within a couple of seconds if there is a problem. They do call the police and the police respond immediately because you're like, hey, I've got this guy standing here who won't leave and he's harassing us. Oh, cool. That's a call that a cop can respond to. They know what they're getting into. They're getting a description of the suspect. They know they can prioritize it so that if they have a more important call, they can go to that. But if they don't, they know to respond to this. And guaranteed, they're going to go to that before they get a call for an open door or an open window.

KEVIN

Yeah. I mean, you wind up— you're talking about this drawer full of things. there, there comes a point which these, these police stations, they don't, they don't care about the drawer anymore, right? They can't sort through all of those things.

CRAIG

No.

KEVIN

There's no way, there's no way for them to really seek justice on those things. And so it's, you know, it's kind of one of those deals where, where you, you have a situation to where it's like, there is, there is only one way out of this. and I need you to take care of it. And this person is going, well, I don't— I got a lot of other things that are in front of you, a lot of things that are more important to you. Like, on the way to come to your house to check out that little video camera system that you had, I passed— you know, I had to stop at 3 wrecks, and

KEVIN

there were, you know, there was a, an actual crime being committed somewhere.

Denise

And honestly— And you want me to see If I can find this white guy that's 5'8 wearing a black hoodie.

KEVIN

Yeah, good luck.

Denise

On it.

KEVIN

Right?

Denise

Like, I got it. I got my mission. I will be right back.

KEVIN

Oh, you want me to get out of my vehicle and chase them? I mean, no offense. My brother-in-law is a cop, and he's probably one of the ones that would get out and chase. But like, seriously, I just—

Denise

it's— I mean, you have no identifying traits. There's no way to know for sure what this is. It's just a waste. Honestly, it's a waste of time. And as a taxpayer, You know, as a friend, you can realize, gosh, we're setting up my friends for failure. And as a taxpayer, you say, oh, do I really want to spend my tax money on having officers chase down these super low-quality leads with a low probability of any sort of success and at the same time, you know, expose themselves to risk and danger and not make society better? And so, you know, in all different possible ways, my realization was, That your initial question, tell me why this doesn't work, the answer is

Denise

everything. Everything that possibly could be wrong with our current system is wrong. But the good news is we can fix it, right? I mean, and that's why I started the company, was I realized that there was a way to fix this. But it's so broken. I mean, I'm at the point where I use my alarm only to tell if we left the doors or windows open at night. Because I want to have my doors and windows closed and locked. But I don't want my police department to respond to that. I don't want to put my family in danger. I don't want to— I don't want to use it for what I thought it was going to be used for

Denise

when I bought it.

CRAIG

Yeah.

KEVIN

And so you all of a sudden, you got a lot of equipment that really holds very little value to you, even though you bought it to protect all of the things that are most valuable to you. And on top of that, you know, let's talk to our friend Micah here who goes, oh, it's just one more thing that's connected to the internet, right?

Denise

Yep.

KEVIN

Just one more reason for someone to hack into your house, one more reason for someone to, you know, to do— to steal your identity, right? It's just one more opportunity, especially these wireless ones, these home, you know, do-it-yourself, you know, systems. Um, they're not hardwired to anything. Um, I, I just— I, I agree. I see that there's a lot of things here that are roadblocks in actually doing what that thing said it was supposed to do. So, in steps David here, and you go, my neighbor just got screwed. I'm not okay with it, and I'm gonna fix it. So, where did that journey begin with you?

Denise

Yeah. So, again, I looked at wealthy— I looked at who doesn't have this problem, right? So, I looked at some of the wealthy folks and how they solve the problem. My local PD pointed me into the direction of some ways that they would love it to be solved, which again looks like the stuff that super wealthy people have, which is have a guard or maybe have a guard in a neighborhood watch the cameras for their 5 neighbors or something like that. All of them were so cost prohibitive, just literally starting at thousands of dollars a month. Fundamentally cost-prohibitive. That was when I realized, from a technology perspective, I started watching these guards. I watched what they were

Denise

doing. Not surprising, it was a lot of— what was the bubble bash, right?— and sleeping on the job.

KEVIN

Oh, yeah.

Denise

I realized, holy smokes, 90% of their time is wasted. They're just sitting there doing nothing. Then, when they are looking at stuff, most of the things they're looking at are like the alerts you get on your phone. They're not that useful. And so I realized that this deep learning AI technology that I'd been looking at could make that effective and cost-effective, meaning that the AI could be the one doing most of the monitoring of the cameras, and then the AI could then point the guards only to the right cameras at the right time. And then if we combine that with really good two-way audio training and then some little magic AI in the background, I

Denise

could make it so that guards were intervening in potential crimes within seconds. That's what Deep Sentinel does. If you come to my house, within about 3 seconds of entering my property, my cameras are running, the AI is streaming it. It's identified that there's a person that's entered my property. The AI has already filtered that out and identified that, and it's sending it to a guard. Within 10 seconds, if you're doing something suspicious, that guard is speaking out at you over 100-decibel speakers saying, excuse me, could you please stop what you're doing? I need you to leave the property. I need you to identify yourself. If you're unable to do that, it will escalate the situation

Denise

and ultimately call the police. And what we've found is that by, by being so incredibly quick, again, total of 10 to 15 seconds usually between entering the property and then getting an intervention from a guard, That fundamentally changes the equation for these criminals. 99% of them, the wild majority of them, look up at the camera in astonishment and run away. I remember the very first time we got Deep Sentinel working. We built a couple prototypes, and it was this most rewarding moment where we spent lots of money and lots of time with this thesis that If we do this and we do it early, we're going to be able to stop crime. That first time was just like, oh my gosh, are you kidding me? It really worked. That's amazing. Now I wake up every single morning

Denise

to between 25, 30, sometimes 35 crimes that we stopped last night. Wow. That's awesome. It's getting to the point that it's very repeatable. We figured out that combination of technology and humans together. So that we're able to stop everything from package theft and the simple stuff to the more serious stuff. We've stopped assaults, we've stopped physical battery, and everything in between.

CRAIG

What do you think it is about that? From what I'm gathering what you're saying, it's like it's a voice coming out of the camera that's saying like, hey, what are you doing on this property? Identify yourself. What do you think it is about that that's different from, you know, just like the incessant blaring of a horn that deters them more?

Denise

Yeah, so that's a great point. We do use a horn and alarm sometimes. We use sirens sometimes as part of the mix. What we've realized is 2 things. One is that the majority of criminals don't want to get caught. Not surprisingly, whether you think they're smart or they're not so smart, they don't want to get caught. Like, getting caught is not the goal here.

CRAIG

Mm-hmm.

Denise

The difference between hearing a siren is more like hearing a car alarm go off. I didn't get caught. It's just some annoying sound here, whereas when you hear, hey, this is from Deep Sentinel Security. I see you there. Can you please tell me what you're doing? Most of the time, they believe that's a person. Sometimes we hear, oh, you're a robot. Screw you. I'm going to continue. You say, actually, miss, I'm not a robot. Please look up at the camera and identify yourself. I need some identification immediately. That's kind of the dimension that we found was that if we make it increasingly personal, hey, you, mister with the silly-looking black hoodie, I see you. No, I

Denise

saw you hide behind the trash can. I still know that you're there. Just because I can't see you on the camera right now, I watched you walk behind the trash can, idiot. I'm going to call the cops. I mean, that's literally— I'm kind of joking a little bit, but that's literally kind of how it goes, right?

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

I mean, you make it a little personal. Maybe you can use humor sometimes, as ridiculous as that may seem in crime prevention. We had some guy, what was it he said? He said, I'm a banana. So we said, hey, can you identify yourself? We need you off this property. He said, I am a banana. And we said, okay, Mr. Banana. I am an orange and I need you, Mr. Banana, to leave. And he's like, banana, banana out. And he walked away, you know? And it— there's a bunch of psychology involved there. But again, at the end of the day, most people don't want huge conflict and to get caught for whatever it is that they're doing.

KEVIN

Right.

Denise

They would rather just go next door, go home, try again another time, but not continue on with what it is that I'm doing where I'm gonna get caught.

KEVIN

Yeah, because the whole problem there is getting seen, right? They— their whole goal is to not be seen. And so a horn— I, I'm just— I'm thinking out loud here. I'm thinking a horn, that's auditory, that's not visual. And so they're still going, yeah, but you still can't see me. And as long as I get away before someone hears the siren, decides to just go, oh, it's like that car alarm, right, in the mall parking lot.

Denise

That's it. That's exactly right. I mean, Kevin, you nailed it, right? I mean, what we do when we call the police, right? So we had one situation where we had this guy, he shows up, he doesn't have a shirt on, he's covered in tattoos, and he starts banging on the door really loud at one of our customers. And we intervene, we call the customer, he's like, oh my gosh, that's, that's someone I know. I'm really scared. I'm inside. I am armed, and I need him to go away. That translated, right? We communicated with him. We were able to describe him. What happened next is really what these criminals are afraid of. We then called the police and said, I have a white male, 5'8,

Denise

no shirt on, covered in tattoos at this address, and I have an armed individual on the inside who is the homeowner, and they're scared for their lives. The guy with the tattoos was in handcuffs in 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

KEVIN

Wow.

CRAIG

Wow.

Denise

2 minutes and 15 seconds. And because— and that's because when we called the police, when we described the crime, we described the individual, we described his location. That's a call that every cop that you know, your brother, can get in his car and accomplish his mission, why he became a cop, immediately, because he has all the information he needs to be successful and deliver on serving and protecting. A big part of that is that description of the suspect. Criminals know that if I can just disappear right now, I'm gone. There are tons of tattooed guys without a shirt on, but if it's right now, it's within 15 seconds, it's within 2 minutes, there's only one and you're going to be in handcuffs, buddy.

KEVIN

Yeah. Going back to that mall parking lot thing, I mean, it's like you hear the, you hear the alarm and it's just that annoying person that pressed the wrong button, right? They press the wrong button and now their alarm's going off, right? What are you, a moron?

Denise

How many times have you done that? They're in Cheesecake Factory having a ball, right?

KEVIN

Exactly, exactly. And everybody's going, is that your car? No. Is that your car? No, it's not my car. My sound— my car sounds different than that. Mine's a Mercedes sound. That sounds different than the BMW sound. No, they're all the same. But If you could literally say, no, I saw someone that looked like this walking away from that car and now it's blaring, that changes things.

Denise

Yeah, for sure.

KEVIN

It literally changes things, right? I mean, I don't know if you remember this. I remember, um, I was walking, you know, West Texas, little town West Texas is where I grew up. Uh, your town was a little bit bigger than mine. And, um, I, I went to, uh, I went to the big city, uh, went to Lubbock. Texas. And, um, we were walking through a parking lot and there was, uh, there was a sports car. I don't even remember what it was. I was, I was a young kid. So it was a sports car and it said, please step away from the vehicle. And I was like, what the heck? And I remember walking back over to it and it said, please step away from the vehicle or I will call the police. And I

KEVIN

started running. Because—

Denise

was it black and it had red lights that went around the edges and it self-identified as Kit?

KEVIN

As Kit? Yeah.

CRAIG

No.

KEVIN

Yeah. No, it wasn't. But it was the weirdest thing. Like, they— I, I don't know if you remember, but for a little while, there were these alarm companies for cars that in these high-end cars, they were putting voice activated stuff in there saying things to get people to walk away. And I think it was a lot different for those vehicles than ones that just have these brake sensors on them. And so I, I hear what you're saying. So are you, are you telling me that—

CRAIG

Yeah.

KEVIN

Okay, so Deep Sentinel has some sort of a, a hub where there are literally people watching cameras, and as soon as something crazy happens, it pops up on their screen. They can get on the microphone and literally see these people and talk to them, and that's That is not AI. That's real people talking through, through the alarm system. Is that what I'm hearing?

Denise

That's right. Yeah. So, I mean, we, we have a combination. What, what we've done is we've combined AI and, and humans, but we have guards, um, all, all around the US, um, and around the world to make sure we can cover 24/7. And we, uh, we will get a— your video, if there's something suspicious happening, it will get to that guard in under 10 seconds.

KEVIN

Wow.

Denise

And they're able to respond immediately. They have a special console that's designed to help them walk through what are the different types of interventions, how do I respond to this, how do I get a hold of police quickly, what are the people that normally go through this property, for example, just to make sure that we're not intervening on the wrong people, just all kinds of information. So literally, again, in seconds, they're fully informed on the situation. That's the job of the AI. filters events, but then also informs the guards of the situation, and then they're able to respond. That way, when we call the police, same thing, right? It's not an automated call to the police. It's not a fully uninformed call to the police. Hi, this is

Denise

Denise from ADT again. I have that window open again.

CRAIG

Yeah.

Denise

Do you want to respond? No, you still don't? Okay. Again, it's just a fundamentally different thing. We are amped up, frankly, when we call the police because it's a real situation. We have a full description of suspect, full description description of any history, full description of the location, the crime, and we are able to really request a response from first responders. Along those same lines, having people also allows us to do things like we have a whole series of people that this past winter, they had bad storms. We had slip falls all the time. People that walked out on their front porch, slipped, fell, hurt their hip. We had a woman who broke her hip. And we were able to call

Denise

paramedics for them. And it's just, it's, again, it's kind of what you would think about. I like to describe this to my guards when I'm training them. What would you want your best next-door neighbor to do if they saw this same thing?

KEVIN

Mm-hmm.

Denise

And that's really what we're able to deliver. And by using the AI, we make it much more effective and much more cost-effective to the point where Deep Sentinel costs about like what a mobile phone plan costs.

CRAIG

Okay.

KEVIN

So, so I definitely want to get there.

CRAIG

Yeah.

KEVIN

But I got a couple of questions first because that price is super important with all of this.

CRAIG

And it's all about Kevin, David.

KEVIN

So what is? If you hadn't figured that out yet, everything is the answer to your question.

Denise

Everything.

KEVIN

Every— I don't, I don't— this is not a question. I don't know what we're— why are we still talking about this?

CRAIG

I don't know why I'm here.

KEVIN

Yeah. He's getting on Kevin. Yes. Well, you are wearing a Texas A&M jacket anyway. Um, so, uh, so when, when you see all of this, like, what— I, I understand all of the functionality, or at least a lot of the functionality, based on how that's different, uh, well, how what y'all are doing is different versus the traditional ADT or whatever, right? Um, how does the setup differ? Like, you, you mentioned the sensors, you mentioned, you said they're, they're not very good sensors, and they're, you know, are you What kind of cameras? Where are you placing the cameras? How many of them are there? Is there a keypad? How do I disarm this thing? Can you just give me

KEVIN

the functionality of it all?

Denise

Yeah, sure. That's, that's a great question, right? So how does this kind of manifest itself? So at the center of everything we do is cameras. Everything we do is vision-based. Um, we don't have any sensors that we integrate with other than cameras right now. Um, the cameras that we work with, we have our own cameras, and then we have We also support third-party cameras. We're pretty broad on that front. We do— we have a DIY kit for people who want to install their own wireless cameras. We also have professional installers all across the country, and they'll do either wireless or wired cameras. But at the center of that is— sorry— is a camera system. I'll answer a little bit

Denise

more about our own wireless cameras because those are kind of a little bit of our bread and butter. That's where we came from. We built our own cameras first. And those are— I'll show it here for those of you that are watching live, but I'll describe it to the folks that are just listening on the podcast. Those are a traditional wireless camera. There's no wires connected to it. It has a battery that lasts about 2.5 or 3 months. It's got a 104-decibel speaker. It's got red LED light rings. It's designed to look a little bit intimidating. It's not, you know, a soft-looking blend-into-the-background type camera. It has a red ring at the top, which is around the speaker, and then it has a second ring, which is

Denise

the camera and the sensors. This would go— on my home, I have maybe around 10 of them. The average home has about 3. I'm the CEO of the company, right? So, I have to have a couple of extras just because I am, right?

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

In my smaller world, I'm kind of like Kevin, right? That's kind of the way that I like to look at it. And so most people have one on the front door, the back door, and then like the garage. That would be an average homeowner. We also protect businesses and warehouses where we have 25 to 50 cameras, 100 cameras in certain instances. So it really depends on the particular application. But since we launched 3 years ago, we've really broadened to be able to service, you know, what you said is, do you want to DIY it or did you want to have somebody else come and do it? We really can service both ends of that.

KEVIN

Okay, cool. So you don't normally have cameras on the interior of the home, just primarily on the exterior?

Denise

Great, great question. Yeah, so for homes, we do not do any interior cameras. These are monitored. So now you've got the inside of your house and you're walking around in your underwear, usually that's okay. Or if you've got, you know, regular dumb cameras, but like I said, if the AI triggers, that's going to be You know, you're in your underwear in front of some poor guard, and I feel bad for the guard having to watch that, right?

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

So one of our rules for residential is we don't, uh, we don't do any interior for residential. For our business customers, we do a lot of interior cameras, but for residential, we don't.

CRAIG

Okay.

Denise

And the other reason is we want to be able to prevent stuff. We want to catch people as soon as they're coming into the property and prevent them from, from coming in. One of the stats that I didn't, uh, I didn't share with you earlier But anecdotally, my neighbor, when they had the home invasion, the people had prepped outside for, I want to say, like 5 minutes. And so you really do generally have a lot of time to prevent these more serious break-ins where they're looking around, they're scoping out the property, there's a lot of activity happening outside. And that's really where we're going to be the most effective because we're going to prevent any damage, any threat to life or limb. And, and that's where we want to focus our energy.

KEVIN

Sure. So I guess moving forward a little bit to the price question, um, so basic, let's say just kind of top of the line, I want the, I want the full system. Let's go with 3 cameras. I'm going to have them, you know, the wireless ones because these are retrofitted. Um, I'm having them professionally installed though. To get set up with you guys, because it sounds like there is no real keypad or anything. It's not like I'm having to come in and—

Denise

Yeah, so I didn't answer that question. There's no keypad. There's a smart app. We built our own app. It has all the AI and all the features integrated into it. It's got a bunch of privacy, different privacy settings, because a lot of people are sensitive about privacy because this is a different type of camera, right? It's not, again, not just a normal camera. So you have a ton of privacy information in there. The 3-camera kit comes with 3 cameras. We ship with an extra battery to make sure people don't have to be kind of bringing their cameras down and charging them. I don't like that use case. I want people to always be protected.

KEVIN

Sure.

Denise

We ship with an extra battery. And then the key to this whole system is it ships with an AI hub. So we actually run all of our artificial intelligence inside of your home. Okay. And so the hub that we ship with has a built-in charger, but more importantly, it has this special set of AI chips in it So everything's happening incredibly quickly. It's happening in real time. And that also sits inside of your house. That runs— for that kit runs about $700 to $800, and installation is usually between $50 and $150. Now, where we're different from these other folks is we do have a monthly fee that for that kit starts out like around, again, an expensive wireless plan. It's about $200. I know a lot of listeners are going to say, oh, geez, I

Denise

only pay $15 for SimpliSafe, or $20, or whatever it is. Again, the difference really is, yes, I do understand that's more expensive, and yes, I know that's not affordable by every single family in America. I wish to God I could make it affordable by every family. We are a mission-driven organization, and I work my tail off to get this to be as affordable as possible. But you have to remember, every single time something even a little bit suspicious happens, I have to pay someone to sit and watch every single one of those events. That happens 10, 15, 20, 40, 50 times a day. You're getting real protection for those dollars. Again, I don't want to be dismissive towards folks that think that isn't affordable,

Denise

but it is— for that level of protection, let me tell you, it is a game changer. Yeah, there's nothing out there that can deliver that.

KEVIN

I mean, I would, I would just hearing those prices, first of all, you heard me kind of say wow whenever you're talking about the, uh, kind of the basic kit and the install. That's way more affordable than, than more than most of the systems out there. If you're, if you're trying to go with the sensor route and you're getting the cameras and getting— I mean, you could easily spend $2,500 or more just on the equipment and the install of that equipment. into a house. So that part is, is, in my opinion, not only reasonable, that's probably inexpensive, most likely. Um, but you mentioned it earlier, and so I want to circle back to that. You said that there are people that, you know, the— these rich people who are

KEVIN

the most protected because they've got people in their yards, you know, at the gate, making sure that people don't come in. They're paying them thousands of dollars a month to—

Denise

Oh man, I mean, the numbers are gonna actually make you kind of sick to your stomach. The starting price to have a guard 24/7 at your house is about $120,000 to $140,000 a year.

KEVIN

Wow.

Denise

And but when you think about it, right, I mean, you're paying someone $15 to $20 an hour to sit there, you have to have 3.5 people to cover 24/7, you know, that's, that's how you end up there. But I mean, we're talking hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so yes, in general, what we're— the, the people that we're selling to are, are people that, uh, really understand that maybe $50— we're not going to get to the $50 price point, but this isn't something that's comparable to something that costs $50 a month like ADT. This is a whole other level of protection. Make an announcement. I love that we're on a live home DIY technology show. There's my Alexa right there. Let me unplug that right now.

KEVIN

That's awesome.

CRAIG

It wouldn't be the first homeowner show that's interrupted by Amazon.

KEVIN

No, or dogs.

CRAIG

That's right.

KEVIN

Or children.

Denise

You know the very first and best Alexa thing ever, right? I think it was like 5 Christmases ago, right, when Alexa came out, the little girl that ordered the Barbie house. Do you guys know that story? Yes.

KEVIN

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Denise

She orders the Barbie house and then she makes nationwide news. The funniest thing happened, and this is not fully confirmed, it's not official news, but I may or may not have worked with some of these people at Amazon at some point. Apparently, when that news story went out, what happened was the news said, yes, and then this little girl said, Alexa, buy the Barbie Dreamhouse. And they said that really loud in the news story. And literally millions of orders for Barbie Dreamhouse happened between 6 o'clock and 9 PM that night. It's like one of the most amazing Alexa experiences in history.

KEVIN

Sold out. That's what it said whenever you went. It said sold out.

Denise

This barbecue is really popular.

CRAIG

Yeah. Well, like this, like, relating this back to, like, home security, David, I actually had a police officer friend of mine not too long ago tell me, like, hey, do you, do you integrate your smart locks in your home with your Alexa or your Google devices? And I was like, yeah, of course. He's like, dude, turn that off immediately. And I'm like, why?

Denise

Yeah, dude, turn that off immediately.

CRAIG

Every thief in the world knows to walk to every front door and say, Alexa, unlock the front door.

KEVIN

Right.

Denise

Yep.

CRAIG

And I was like, oh my gosh, like, how did I not think of that? Like, yeah, of course they can hear it.

Denise

Alexa, unlock the front door. Alexa, disarm the alarm.

KEVIN

That's right. Yes.

Denise

Yeah, I mean, if you're welcome.

KEVIN

The only, the only way that really works is if you have like an Apple TV, because no one's walking up saying, Siri, close. You know, nobody. No, everybody knows how bad the Apple Hub is. Nobody's even trying that. That actually might be the most secure thing you could do for your house right there.

CRAIG

There you go.

KEVIN

So I'm just saying. Well, okay, so I— look, so you're telling me $100,000— let's, let's say you got some, you know, cheap fat guard, right? He's $100,000 for the, uh, for the year.

CRAIG

And why do you have to be fat?

KEVIN

Because he's terrible. Okay, all the terrible ones are fat. All right, so, um, he's horrible.

CRAIG

And neither one of us are jumping on this bus with you, by the way, but that's fine.

KEVIN

Yeah, that's fine. I'm I'm comfortable. And so he, he's horrible. And, and we're talking about $2,400.

CRAIG

And it had to be a he.

KEVIN

Okay. He was white too. All right.

Denise

Um, so— Did he have a beard?

KEVIN

He did. He did.

Denise

Oh.

KEVIN

Yeah. Uh, well, of course he had a beard. He was too lazy to shave. What are you talking about? Like, this guy's, this guy's lazy. He's only worth $100,000, right?

CRAIG

I like this narrative. Okay, carry on. So, but all Kevins, but we're, we're, we're talking about $2,400 here.

KEVIN

And, and we're talking about the same or better possibly because the guy's not falling asleep at the wheel.

Denise

Well, let me tell you my better story because what you just said is exactly right. The other thing that really sold me on this as I was doing research was I remember I was like researching guards and I was watching them and I was kind of shadowing them as an entrepreneur. That's one of the things I like to do is just like really get into the weeds of what is it that you're going to be doing in the future. I was researching one night and I saw this video of a zoo. There was a guard who was supposed to be guarding the gate and he's slumped over and he's fallen asleep. The video is obviously from a CCTV system. There's a CCTV

Denise

system, guard slumped over, gate slightly open, and none other than an elephant walks up to the guard and through the gate.

KEVIN

Oh, no.

Denise

I mean, you really can't make this up. You guys can Google this, like, an elephant walks out of the gate. An elephant. And just one more time, an elephant. Yes, our system's better than a real guard in a lot of ways too, and that's one of them. Like, we monitor our guards, we have all these metrics we track on them in real time to make sure that things like that aren't happening. What was really ridiculous about this particular story was that CCTV system was also being monitored, and the guy that was supposed to be monitoring the CCTV system, watching the guard that was sleeping, was also asleep.

KEVIN

You can't make that up, man.

Denise

Yes, that's exactly right. Are you kidding me? Just one more time, like, an elephant. I realized not only were we going to be able to do this for wildly cheaper than those hundreds of thousands of dollars, we're going to be able to do way better. Data is my thing, that's my shtick, and you can use data to make sure that you're delivering really high quality. That's where companies like Amazon and Apple and Google, that's where they come from. And that's our goal, is to kind of replicate that part. Just an elephant, I just want— an elephant.

KEVIN

It's amazing, it's amazing.

CRAIG

David, so with your system, I mean, like, you know, we keep going back to the person in the booth, I think, that's gonna, you know, like actually be speaking to these perpetrators and things like— so what part of your system is actually AI?

Denise

Yeah, so, so the AI, the camera immediately streams to the AI within about less than half a second. It's about 250 milliseconds. And the AI starts analyzing every frame of the video to check to see, is there a person? Is this a person that I recognize? Is this Is it just a flag waving in the wind? Is it a dog? What's the situation? The AI does 2 things with that. One is it filters out the stuff that's not suspicious. Then, number 2, is it presents to the guard. In our special console, the AI also kind of communicates directly with the guard to say, I'd really like you to look at these 3 things, and here's

Denise

why.

CRAIG

Mm-hmm.

Denise

It's kind of weird kind of describing an AI as talking to a person, but that's kind of what it is. It's doing the initial screening work and then saying, here are the things that need particular attention from you. And we're getting to the point where we're actually starting to predict, here's what I think you should do about it. And so we'll not only show the guards, here's what I want you to look at, but here's what I want you to think about doing about it.

KEVIN

Wow. That's next level, man. It feels next level even though— I mean, you're telling me deep learning, it's been around for a little while. I mean, real quick, can you give me an example of something else that deep learning that someone might be aware of? Can you think of something?

Denise

Oh, man. The 2 things that I think are the easiest would be just recognizing faces. You mentioned facial recognition. The best facial recognition on the planet now all run on various forms of deep learning. Then, another one would be deepfakes, right? So, where you've got people acting like Tom Cruise or putting actors in different situations and swapping actors in movies. Those are probably the 2 best ones. Filters on Snapchat and Instagram, a lot of those are based on deep learning. The way that I would kind of summarize it as it relates to security is that, yeah, deep learning has been around for 5 years. Just to kind of emphasize how incredibly impactful this is, deep learning as it relates to security means that the

Denise

AI that I'm able to run on that little hub in your house that you buy for $800, including the cameras, is more sophisticated than the AI that was running at the NSA in 2012.

KEVIN

Wow.

Denise

10 years ago. That's how big a leap in technology this is.

KEVIN

That's amazing.

CRAIG

I really want to know how you know what the NSA had.

Denise

Can we erase that part of the—

KEVIN

It's in 2012.

Denise

Go ahead and open your door. Those are friends of mine that are visiting you right now. It'll be fine.

CRAIG

Don't worry about it. Yeah, we'll pour them a drink. It'll be fine.

Denise

Right.

CRAIG

But, you know, one of, one of the things I, I did wanna ask you about all of this is, like, I, I think, you know, I think the average homeowner right now has probably seen the movie Terminator, knows what, you know, if I, if I were to make a Skynet reference, they would go, okay. Yeah. I know what you're talking about. Like, and, and, and I think a lot of homeowners, if you even, like, bring up AI, You know, it's, it's something that, you know, probably evokes a certain emotion. Is, is AI something that homeowners should be concerned about, worried about? I mean, like, you know, obviously I'm talking to somebody who's using it, but like, you know, it's, it's— I think it's kind of

CRAIG

a trigger word for a lot of people.

Denise

Well, it's a fair question. That, that's a super fair question. Um, you know, and, and I think there are uses for AI that, that can, can like border on scary, and there's this You said Skynet. I think that's only for people that are our age, though, so hopefully your listeners are in that same age bracket there. But, you know, AI, the deep learning that we're talking about right now, is pretty contained. Yes, it seems kind of next level. One of the key things that we do, though, is we base our AI on modeling it after humans, meaning that we observe our guards, we track some data, And then, we try to predict what the guards are supposed to do. Then, we use that AI to help the guards. The best analogy I could give you is,

Denise

if you've looked at Tesla's Autopilot, Tesla's Autopilot does the same thing. It tries to predict, what would a great driver do in this same situation? Then, I'm going to do that, but I'm going to continue to get feedback from the humans, and the humans are in control. I think that's a very good analogy. fundamental decision that we made was that we want to make sure that humans are always in this. You know, I live in Silicon Valley, and so I'm always asked by investors, couldn't you just get rid of the people? And my answer is no. The people are at the center and the heart of what this is. And that, I think, always should be the case, whether that's because people are going to be able to respond more effectively to unique situations

Denise

from other people that we haven't seen before, to Humans are much better at interacting with police, obviously.

CRAIG

Mm-hmm.

Denise

There's all kinds of different reasons why I think that AI, when it's applied in this way, is— I understand the trigger, but it's very, very safe. And frankly, right, I mean, you don't have to listen to me. Listen to our customers. Go read our reviews on Amazon where people say, I have an active threat on me. I'm a judge, and I haven't been able to sleep for the last 3 months, and I sleep well now knowing that I have Deep Sentinel.

KEVIN

Wow.

Denise

Yes, yes, there's AI. Let me actually— you can find really quickly. We have a YouTube station, Deep Sentinel YouTube station. We produce these videos every week. We did a holiday edition a couple weeks ago because a bunch of our customers went out and they waved to the cameras. You can do this special signal that pulls guards onto the camera, and they made us holiday cards. Like, all of our customers, like, they made these really big 2-foot-tall holiday cards and they wrote, Happy Christmas, Deep Sentinel. Thank you for protecting our family. Thank you for making me feel safe in my home. Yes, AI can be scary, but I'm a super, super, super big believer in safety. We're a mission-driven organization. I

Denise

believe everybody deserves to feel safe. I think that promotes everything from just the basics of learning and being able to converse with your family and deal with your family to hyper-political stuff where you have political parties that don't feel safe and they interact with each other in a yucky way. Safety is such a fundamental thing. It's such a fundamental building block of society that as long as we're being responsible and we're using it in this way, man, I'm all about it.

KEVIN

Man, this sounds to me like— just hearing you talk about this, I mean, you've had a lot— let's just put it black and white here. You've had a lot of accomplishments. in your life. Right? You, you've worked for, you've worked for one of the, the largest company in the, in the world here with, with Amazon. They're gonna continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger. You, you were on the ground roots of that. Grassroots. That's the word. That's the—

CRAIG

yeah.

KEVIN

Grassroots of that. You, you, you know, Redfin, arguably one of the best, if not, you know, right up there real estate Websites, right? Super, super, super powerful. And it sounds to me like this might feel like one of your biggest accomplishments. I don't know. Maybe I'm projecting that. Oh, man.

Denise

That's an understatement. This is my pride and joy. I mean, like I said, I've got— we were talking before. I've got 2 little girls. I've got my family here. When we, as a family, decided what my next venture was going to be, This company has so much meaning to my family. You know, I'm going to tell a little bit of a personal story here. I came down from work, you know, during the pandemic. I'm in my house all day long. I'm in my office right now. I came downstairs and I was having a little bit of a bad day. And my 10-year-old, she was 9 at the time, she saw it. She said, hey, Daddy, what's wrong? Her name's Cecilia. I

Denise

said, you know, CeCe, I just, I had a, I had a bad day. And, you know, business is kind of rough. And then the pandemic was kind of brutal on us. And she said, yeah, but, but Daddy, did you, did you save anyone's life today? I was like, perspective. Yeah, word.

CRAIG

Yeah.

Denise

Thank you. Thank you to you. And that's why I say like, it is an understatement. It's not apocryphal in any way. I I love this company. I love what we do. We saw a vision of a safer world, and that's why we all work here. And yes, it's a business, and yes, we strive to make money, and yes, we're selling things. But at the end of the day, if we can move the needle on making people feel safer in their homes, just imagine a world, right? Like, remove Deep Sentinel, remove my my accomplishments or financial outcome and just say everyone in the world feels 20% safer.

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

And imagine that world for a second and how we interact with each other differently when we see each other at the supermarket, how we interact differently when we, when we come to a head at a stop sign, how we interact differently if I drop something or accidentally bump into you at the airport, right? Like, just if everyone feels safer, everything and every interaction that we do changes. And that's, to me, that is, using Steve Jobs' term, that is the dent that I want to leave in the world.

KEVIN

Man, that's huge. And I'm guessing here that you have— I'm just kind of thinking, there's got to be ways that these camera systems are going to continue to get better and recognize things. Even more, like mood and like, like other things that down the road I can imagine you going, okay, there's so much more that this thing can do, like to even detect things in people that they don't even know about themselves. I mean, I know that's kind of weird and freaky for some people to think, but like on some level there's, there's got to be some things down the road that this thing isn't even doing yet. I'm just guessing.

Denise

Absolutely, right? I mean, we're already in market, we have thousands of customers, and I still spend 50% of my budget on R&D every year.

KEVIN

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CRAIG

So do the cameras themselves have to have a certain— I mean, because you talked earlier about you can actually retrofit some other cameras if they're not necessarily y'all's, but I mean, do they have to have like a minimum resolution in order for the AI to actually function?

Denise

Yeah, so we We certify specific cameras. The ones that we use that are third-party are what are called Power over Ethernet cameras, PoE. Yeah, most of your listeners should be familiar with that, and that's just where you use a network cable and it delivers both data and power to the camera. And in general, what we're looking at is 2K and above cameras that we support right now.

CRAIG

Okay, and then on the— I mean, like, one of the— I know one of the issues people around here at least deal with, I mean, we, we have a new internet company moving through that's providing, you know, better, better service than some previous companies. But like a lot of people around here complain about, you know, downed internet and things like that. I mean, is, is there sort of a— I would imagine your system operates off of an internet connection.

KEVIN

Is—

CRAIG

do they have like a backup cellular system or how does that work?

Denise

That's a great question. So, so we use more bandwidth than fits on cellular right now. So, and this also goes to why the AI is in that hub in the home. is we really protect the home's bandwidth. So if you have a Nest system, for example, you know, Google really loves that you share all of your personal moments with them, and so they download every single second of your video in real time.

KEVIN

Yep.

Denise

And you can have, like, on great internet, you can have like a maximum of 4 cameras on your house, and then you literally can't watch Netflix anymore. And so, I mean, like, end of the world, right? Talk about, I'm trying to make the world a better place, and people can't watch Netflix, right? Like, we've ruined everything. Yeah, it's not worth living anymore. Where's the end?

KEVIN

I'm out.

Denise

Part of what we do though with this AI is the AI's job is to filter out the events so that if there's just a flag waving and there's just wind, we're not using up all your bandwidth for things like that. And so yes, we do have to have bandwidth, but we are by far and away the most efficient bandwidth— bandwidth-efficient camera system that's on the market today.

KEVIN

Wow, that's great. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, okay, so my last question, and Craig, maybe you got some more, but, but mine is, what have we not asked? Like, what— you're, you're, you're, you're so under— you understand this thing so well. I mean, you developed it. So what are something, if anything, that we haven't asked that you're going, I would really like people to know this?

Denise

The one thing, and this is not related to Deep Sentinel necessarily, it's going to kind of go back to the AI question, is that deep learning, yes, it's transformative to security. I think we've harnessed that and we've found kind of the future of what security is going to look like there. It's so much bigger than that. It's so much bigger than filters. This last year, there was a type of deep learning called AlphaFold that was released by Google. And it allows them to decode parts of the human genetics and genetics in general. I want to say on the order of 10 times better than what was available by the prior deep learning, which was 10 times better than the prior methodology,

Denise

meaning that we can start looking at the genes and not just saying, okay, we've identified these 1 or 2 genes that may predict this 1 type of cancer. but actually analyzing the entire genome. And there are game-playing AIs. There are AIs like in your Tesla that will make driving safer. If you are scared of AI or you are not educated in it, it is something that I cannot encourage you enough to teach your kids about it, to learn about it. You don't have to go learn how to code, right? But become educated about it. I think that this entire next generation of technology, the next 20 years are going to be defined by AI capabilities, and that's going to impact all of our lives.

KEVIN

Yeah.

CRAIG

Are you familiar with— what's that law that says that technology— what is it?

Denise

That technology doubles every 2 years? Oh, the 3 Laws of Robotics. And this is Isaac Asimov, who was a science fiction writer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's that you can't ever harm a human, and you can't ever do something that you— by action or inaction, should not harm a human. The second law is that the robot should always obey an instruction given to it by a human. And the third law is that a robot should avoid actions or situations that could cause it to harm itself. Those are the 3 laws that this guy proposed, I want to say, like 75 or 80 years ago.

CRAIG

Wow. Yeah, yeah, I, I, I know that one. There's, there's a different one that I'm thinking of that talks about like the— oh, sorry, the progress of technology, like that technology like doubles.

KEVIN

Yeah.

CRAIG

So is it, is it every like—

Denise

well, well, Moore's Law.

CRAIG

What is it?

KEVIN

Moore's Law.

Denise

It's called Moore's Law.

CRAIG

Moore's Law.

Denise

Every— yep, that, that, um, that it's, it's specifically around, uh, transistors, but that like technology basically doubles every 2 or so years in terms of its capabilities.

CRAIG

Yeah, and I really feel like we're, we're in, we're in one of those moments, like right now. Yeah, specifically because everyone's being forced, you know, due to the pandemic and everything else that's been going on, everyone's been forced to engage with their technology. And so I think a lot of people like you who are probably getting a lot more feedback than, than they're, they're probably used to in the past, Well, and that's a great point, right?

Denise

If you guys didn't watch the movie about— it wasn't The Social Network. That's the one about the starting of Facebook, but it's about the— it's on Netflix. It's about the impact of these social networks and how they use our data against us.

CRAIG

Oh, the documentary that's on there. What is that?

Denise

Yeah, I forget what that's called. I can hear him.

CRAIG

He's going to find it.

KEVIN

He's going to find it.

Denise

Social Dilemma.

CRAIG

Social Dilemma.

Denise

Holy smokes, what an amazing, amazing documentary. And it does such a good job of describing how if AI is used incorrectly, it's not that it's out of control and it's crazy, it's that it's under the direction of individuals who have interests that are at odds with your health, period, full stop.

KEVIN

Yep.

Denise

And, and so that's why we have to be educated, right? So that we don't have senators asking Mark Zuckerberg stupid questions and making Mark Zuckerberg, you know, get away with, with it. Uh, you don't have to pin him down and ask, you know, and, and harm Facebook. I'm not anti-Facebook, but we should be able to have intelligent dialogue, right? And, and, but your point was, is that we're all engaging with technology, we're seeing it for what it is, and maybe some of us are saying that's amazing and some of us are saying that's That's horrible. But again, kind of going back to this concept of safety, if we all feel safe and then we're all informed, man, that's a great world. Then you can have real dialogue, reach real conclusions.

Denise

And I think that's, you know, in my very personal inside of this household, that's where we believe America becomes amazing, right? It's just that combination of facts and challenges.

KEVIN

All right.

CRAIG

So I got to know then, since you're a technologist, I gotta know your initial reaction to the metaverse.

Denise

Oh, man. So one of my best friends works at Facebook. He's pretty high up. And it's not that he shared it with us in real time and was streaming with us while Mark was announcing it internally, but I may or may not have been part of that meeting. even though I'm not part of Facebook.

CRAIG

You can say no comment. That's fine. If you got friends that are involved, I totally understand.

KEVIN

Yeah, we can talk when we're off air.

Denise

I'm fine with that. Let me put it this way. I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is in touch with humanity anymore.

KEVIN

Ah.

Denise

Anymore. You know, I love—

KEVIN

that's fair.

Denise

That's fair. Yeah. I got recruited really early to join Facebook. I was really close friends with Sean Parker, who was the first president of Facebook. The very first thing I did was get in a fight with Mark, which is why I didn't end up joining. There you go. He was at least in touch with us enough back then, and I feel like he's completely lost it. I love his technological vision. I love VR. I've got a VR headset right here. My kids come in here and they play Beat Saber and they play with VR all the time. I love doing that with them. I love technology as a part of our lives. I don't like technology as supplanting our lives. I

Denise

think that is why The Social Dilemma is such an amazing movie to me, is that it exposes us to what's happening if we let it run rampant. And by the way, I will say that If you watch that, you'll also see some interviews with early Facebook executives who say, we saw this as an opportunity to expose truth, and we believe that meritocracies would come about from information flowing freely. I can also verify from my early engagement with Facebook, that is exactly what they believed. They really believed that whether you're far right or far left, that these alternate truths would be clarified in a world where information flowed freely. That's not what happened. Facebook has progressively gone from this very idealistic world where at least they had good intentions to one where I think they're very out of

Denise

touch, and it's not clear what their intentions are anymore. I think that's where I become disappointed in metaverse, both from how it's going to impact society perspective, as well as just like, What the heck are you talking about, dude? That's—

KEVIN

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it, you know, since we're talking about crazy things, um, one of the things that is bizarre to me is this, this whole deal. I mean, and maybe you saw that, that NASA has hired like 15 theologians, um, and people that are spiritual advisors.

CRAIG

I did see that.

KEVIN

To, um, answer this question. How do you think the world would react if they found out that aliens were real? Yeah, I just saw that. Isn't that bizarre? Yeah. Have you heard that?

Denise

Yeah, I, I try to avoid the news, but that headline made it through. And because I'm an angry Twitter user, so that's—

KEVIN

Yeah, you and that other guy.

Denise

Exactly.

CRAIG

What's the new one everyone's jumping to? Is it— it's Gitter. That's the one that everybody's bailing and jumping. Are you on that? Gitter? Are you on that one?

KEVIN

I've never even heard of it.

CRAIG

Did you hear about that?

KEVIN

No, I, I'm— I come— I have no idea what you're talking about right now.

CRAIG

So, David, do you know about Gitter?

Denise

I, I am— I am lost as well. I don't know Gitter.

CRAIG

So, okay, so I, I'll give you guys the, the, the brief history of what's going on here. So, uh, Joe Rogan and that was, I think it was like 3 or 4 weeks ago now, had Dr. Robert Malone on his show. He was very controversial regarding COVID and vaccines and all the whole thing. So, Okay. Dr. Robert Malone on his show, he'd been, he'd been banned from Twitter.

Denise

Mhmm.

CRAIG

So Joe was like, well, this is ridiculous. You shouldn't be banned from Twitter. You're a doctor. You're a physician. You should be able to speak your mind on there.

KEVIN

Alright. Fine.

CRAIG

And he goes, well, yeah, I'm not on there anymore. I'm on Getter. And he's, and Joe's like, well, what's Getter? And he's like, well, it's like a Twitter alternative. They basically stole their code and they repurposed it, and now it's like—

Denise

And they don't ban people.

CRAIG

Yeah, that's right. And Joe's like, well, that sounds awesome. So like, right after the interview, Joe announces to the world, hey, I'm over on Getter now. Oh, well, like, and so like within like 2 weeks of announcing that, they've gotten more than a million new users.

KEVIN

Of course.

Denise

And interesting, okay.

CRAIG

It's like, you know, it's like the really fast-growing new platform, like What was the one that got shut down during the election?

KEVIN

Oh, well, there was the— well, everybody was jumping ship from Facebook over to, uh, what was that one? Start with the P something. I don't know, nobody cares. Yeah, yeah.

Denise

Uh, anyway, you know, I mean, you know, I mean, I, I don't know if you want to segue into that really deeply, but I mean, like, I— this is along the same lines of the metaverse, right? It's like, what, what's their true north, right? Banning content, right? Yeah. And Whether, whether that is scientifically backed or not, that doesn't make it not true. And I ought to be really careful here, right? Like, science is a process, and I'm a big believer in science, but like, we have science being wielded as a weapon. Science is never intended to be a weapon. Science is a dialogue. Science is an ongoing dialogue of people presenting facts, observing those facts, and then trying to reach the best conclusion for themselves and society and

Denise

trying to explain these things. I come from a family of scientists. I'm half Chinese, so all of my Chinese half of my family have PhDs except me. We are scientists. That's where I come from. Stopping dialogue is really distressful to me. Based on what Joe Rogan said, really, I see technology's role in this as being really questionable, right? And that's on every part of the spectrum. That's from, you know, if you're having questions about the vaccine, I think there's really a ton of reason to question the real efficacy numbers, necessarily. But you should be able to have a dialogue about, is it 40% effective against Omicron or is it 48%? That's a really important thing for you to know personally.

CRAIG

Oh, yeah.

Denise

That's a really important thing for society to know. And if we feel like that's getting hidden, do we stop trusting those sources? And that is a fundamental issue. And again, if you believe in meritocracy and you just let all information flow and you find that doesn't work, I think we already know that censorship doesn't work either, right?

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

The role of technology needs to be much more thoughtful and much more careful in those situations, because all you're doing is you're just swinging users from one platform to the other. What I find myself, I have some preexisting conditions, and so I find myself having to go and read the primary sources. If I've actually read the dignity— not dignity health, sorry, the health report from South Africa. I watched the 2.5-hour Zoom meeting where they presented all the statistics because I don't trust Joe Rogan. I don't trust Twitter. I don't trust CNN. I don't trust Fox. And it turns out, by the way, every single one of those people I just mentioned misquoted that study, which is the study about Omicron, because Omicron originated and grew the

Denise

fastest in South Africa. Every single one of those people did. And I like Joe Rogan, well, in general, better than the other folks personally. Same thing with— there's a study out of Israel. The right-wing media says that, hey, this is a study of 2.5 million people proving that natural immunity is true. It's not. It's a study of 76,000 people out of a population of 2.5 million. Then the left-wing media is just ignoring natural immunity. That is the problem that I wish— when you ask the funny question about metaverse, I think it's a very serious question about Hey, there's a real fact. There's a real paper that came out of Israel that actually shows that natural immunity is incredibly effective. It's as effective as

Denise

vaccines. I don't know whether it proves that it's more or less. That's within the margin of error, but it certainly states that it's very effective. That's something people need to know.

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

They don't need to believe that it's been solid and it's better because that's not true. That's not what the paper says, and they don't need it to be ignored. as a society, you know, and I got a little bit deep on you guys here, but like, I'm very passionate. I've got 2 little girls that are going to grow up in this world, and I want them to grow up in a better world. I want them to grow up in a world that can maturely have these types of conversations. And yeah, because, you know, that's so important.

KEVIN

Yeah. And I think, you know, you look— I was talking to someone just the other day, they're like, yeah, I don't know if we're ever gonna have kids. I just don't want to bring them up in this world. And I don't think that's fair. I mean, I don't think it's fair to these people who are having to make that decision. They're having to make that decision to go, look, I'm choosing not to have a family beyond my spouse, right? Because I mean, the 3 of us on this call and a lot of people that are listening to this right now understand the joy of children. I mean, they're—

Denise

Oh, amen.

KEVIN

I mean, I couldn't— I can't explain that to someone who doesn't have children. I'm not going to tell you your life is It's just different. Right? But, but you're—

Denise

Different, and I would never go back.

KEVIN

Exactly.

Denise

Not in, not in a million years, not for every dollar on the planet.

KEVIN

That's right. I would do it over and over and over and over and over again. Right? Because it's the most wonderful thing that I've ever experienced in my life. And so now we're, we, you know, what you're, what you're saying is so very important because we, we are effectively changing, you know, technology and, you know, the way that we're interacting with our devices and what's available available to us all the time, and nothing seems to be true anymore. What are we— what are we getting? Like, we're— all of this is making us get to a point where some people are going, I'm not gonna bring a child into this world because of that.

Denise

Yeah.

KEVIN

And— and I don't think that's a— that's not fair.

CRAIG

So—

KEVIN

so the question is legitimately, how do we get— how do we get around that? How do we get to the point where— where more things are safe? So thank you for that, by the way. More things are safe. How do we get to a point where things—

Denise

And that's actually, you know, I think safety is at the heart of this because if you feel comfortable in yourself and you feel safe in yourself, you're able to engage in more intense dialogue. You're able to listen to things that you may disagree with. There was a study done about Palestine and Israel, and it's written up in this book called From Beirut to Jerusalem. It's one of my favorite books because it talks about this concept of zero-sum game. If you believe— I'm going to summarize this huge, amazing book. The point of the author in that book was that when you feel like the world's a zero-sum game, if I win, you lose, and if you lose, I win. And if I feel like that all day long, it's going to be

Denise

way hard for us to have an interaction where there's something important to both of us and it's hard to find compromise. And that's— they were analyzing that concept in the context of Palestine and Israel, where you're either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine or pro-Israel or pro-person, right, in some of the ways that it's put forward, or you're pro-Israel or you're pro-person. And that black and white zero-sum game creates loss for everyone. And in my analysis of politics, and I've done some volunteering on political campaigns to try to understand not to support specific candidates, but to understand, like, why are people responding? What are they responding to? And, you know, the term clickbait could not be more true,

Denise

unfortunately.

CRAIG

Yeah.

Denise

What people respond to, what they click on, what they read, what they spend time on, what they donate to politicians based on is angry clickbait. It is inflammatory, incendiary, intentionally misleading, emotionally engaging text and content. And my sense is that, again, safety is one of those key ingredients. I think the other one is that we have to be able to have platforms and engage in more complex discussions, meaning that we need to have people that are educated and able to get educated and willing to be educated. Education in the United States has degraded dramatically, both in its effectiveness and its just general importance. We're more concerned about the economy. It's not the economy, it's not super important, but America— go back to when we were growing up in the '80s. We used to

Denise

talk about education all the time as one of the most important principles of America. We've lost that. Again, this battle where science is no longer an aspiration and a process and a dialogue, it is a weapon to be wielded against my political enemies. Holy smokes, we've lost already. That type of thing has to go away.

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

I would say that education is way, way up there because we all got exposed this last 2 years to exponential curves. I happen to be a statistician, so I'm pretty comfortable with that. But the average person skipped stats class in high school because it didn't seem that important. And now all of a sudden it's determining all of our freedoms and what we can and can't do and our health and safety, both of those. And those two were in conflict. Those two were a zero-sum game, and we didn't have the statistical knowledge in our population to reconcile that.

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

So again, kind of a deep answer, but those would be the two things I would point to. Safety, mental health is a big part of that, and education.

KEVIN

No, it's good. It's really, really good. We could, we could go on, man. We could.

CRAIG

I mean, a whole separate show.

KEVIN

Yeah, we could do. I mean, like, it's just there's a lot to dig into there. But, and honestly, Craig and I, what most people don't realize is like, like, I come to record podcasts and my wife's like, all right, I'll see you tomorrow because Craig and I wind up, you know, sitting across the table from each other off air, and we solve everybody's problems all over the world. And it's really nice to have someone else who's way smarter than either one of us, even, even Craig, who can engage in some of these conversations with us. So we've, we've— I've enjoyed that. Yeah.

CRAIG

Yeah. For sure.

KEVIN

For sure. So it's good stuff. Good stuff. But we—

Denise

I've enjoyed it, guys. I appreciate you letting me kinda wax poetic and, and philosophical there on a couple things.

CRAIG

But no, I, I think a lot of what you're talking about is— I think, I think it's what a lot of people are feeling, a lot of what a lot of people are thinking.

KEVIN

Yeah.

CRAIG

And but like that, not any of the people who have the microphone are actually saying.

KEVIN

Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and that's part of, that's part of the frustration thing.

Denise

Yeah.

KEVIN

Because everybody's saying what everybody else wants them to say rather than what they're—

Denise

anyway.

KEVIN

Yeah, yeah, we could go on, but we, David, we really have to get to the most important part of this entire show.

Denise

Uh-oh.

KEVIN

The thing that everybody's been waiting for, for so long.

Denise

Feel the drum roll.

KEVIN

Which is the final 4. The final 4. That's right. All right, the final 4 questions that we ask each and every one of our guests, and you do not know what these are. You've not seen them before, which is great.

CRAIG

Specifically asked not to see them.

KEVIN

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, all right, here we go.

CRAIG

You ready?

KEVIN

Here's the first one. What is the must-have tool that you won't leave your house Without?

Denise

Oh, snap.

KEVIN

Okay.

Denise

My F-350.

KEVIN

Oh, yes. Oh, you should move to Texas, man. You've already got the equipment.

Denise

I love that thing, man. I, I've always had Japanese and German cars. And my neighbor convinced me to get an F-150 a few years ago. And then I got an F-350. And I use that thing for everything. I I love my truck. And I'm 5'6, so I look really big in an F-350.

KEVIN

Yes. I love it.

CRAIG

All right. So I gotta know, we were talking about this before the show. Is this a result of the horses?

Denise

Oh, so no, it's a result of— it's actually a horribly terrible story. So I had the F-150. I wanted to get an RV. I got a fiver, a fifth wheel. And I was like, You know, if you're a member of any of these RV communities, someone always asks every day, hey, can I put this size RV on my X truck? And the tow police always show up and say, no, you know, you need to get an F-650 in order to tow a 200-pound trailer, right?

KEVIN

Yes.

Denise

That's like the default answer. So I was like, you know, again, same thing, like, who's gonna give me the right answer? So I did all the math. And then I put this 10,000-pound trailer on my F-150. I put airbags on it, I solidified it. And then that night I had this nightmare that I was driving on a mountain pass and it was a big wind and my kids were in the car and we just had this horrible accident. I woke up crying. You know, that's my, my soft side. And I said, sweetie, I hate to do this to you, but we got to get a bigger truck. And so I, that's why I got the F-350 is for, uh, it's for our family.

KEVIN

That's a great reason.

CRAIG

If all I have to do is cry to get an F-350.

KEVIN

Yeah. We're going to work on it.

CRAIG

I'm going to go inside and cut some onions up.

KEVIN

Like, you're gonna see, like, I'm gonna be walking in and Craig's gonna be there punching himself in the stomach. Like, like literally jabs into his stomach. Like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm preparing for a conversation that's about to go down.

CRAIG

I think your wife is nicer than mine. Mine would probably laugh at me.

KEVIN

Oh man. Hey, I completely understand though, because I'm an RV guy myself. And so I just recently went to— from a half-ton truck, but I went the other direction and I bought an Excursion. And so I absolutely love that thing. But anyway, that's all I got.

Denise

Again, I'd never bought an American vehicle. We just bought— I bought an F-150. We bought the F-350. I just bought my wife a new Expedition too. Nice.

KEVIN

Nice.

Denise

I love that platform. Yeah.

KEVIN

I'm with you. I'm with you. All right, so here we go. Next question. What's a project you've walked away from? Now, when we wrote this—

Denise

Never walk away. Never walk away. Never admit it.

CRAIG

Okay.

KEVIN

All right. Look, we heard it. You heard it here first from him.

CRAIG

All right.

KEVIN

Yeah. I mean, so he's all in. Like, if something ever goes wrong, he will figure it out.

CRAIG

Apparently, he's still got some he's still failing at.

KEVIN

Yeah, right. Like, don't, don't walk into his bathroom right now because there's a toilet.

Denise

I have so many holes in my walls right now. I mean, I cannot tell you. I mean, I don't know how much time you guys have, right? Like, I can tie this to RVs. My wife got COVID. I have preexisting conditions. So I moved into our RV in our driveway about a month and a half ago. We don't have RV hookups here. I don't have waste or power.

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

So I tore out my wall, I tore out my power main. so that I could hook up an extra conduit so I could put a 50-amp 240 so I can hook up my RV in our driveway. I still have a 6-foot-tall by 2.5-foot-wide hole in my wall right now at this moment. I didn't want to hire an electrician to do that because all you're doing is hooking up 2, 3, 4 wires, right? For the love of God, I don't want to pay $3,000 for that. It's just dumb.

KEVIN

Right.

Denise

It hurts so much for the electrical maintenance.

KEVIN

So funny.

Denise

I, I, I'm a little bit joking with that answer, but it's unfortunately— my wife would tell you it's— that's probably true. I don't generally walk away.

KEVIN

Well, and, and I would think someone like— someone like you is like, nope, I can figure it out. I can figure this out. I'm a smart dude. I can figure it out. So—

Denise

I generally try to.

KEVIN

Yeah. All right, next question. How do you wind down at the end of a long Well, here's my answer.

Denise

Come here. Come here. My daughter just walked in. This is Cecilia. This is our 10-year-old.

KEVIN

Hello, Cecilia.

Denise

I did not lock my office today. Yeah, this is live, sweetie. Oh, that's great.

KEVIN

She's made for the camera.

CRAIG

That's fine.

KEVIN

I need to know— tell me the name of your stuffed animal there.

Denise

Froggy. That's Froggy.

KEVIN

Of course, I should have known.

Denise

So CeCe and I, we will— we just found a new Xbox game called Unravel. We play games on Xbox, we read Harry Potter together, um, or we play card games. We like to play Exploding Kittens as a family. Yes, yes, that's a good one. Which is not quite 100% appropriate, but it's so good. It's so good. It's really fun.

KEVIN

Yeah, it's so good. Nice, I love it.

CRAIG

What's the, uh, the Jewel one that Oh, Azul. No, no, no.

Denise

We just got Azul yesterday. We literally just got Azul yesterday.

KEVIN

Yeah, Azul is yeah. It's the one.

CRAIG

Yeah. No, the one with the jewels on the cards.

KEVIN

Oh, the jewels on the cards. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CRAIG

Oh, and like it's on a grid and like, come on. This is one I play with my kids all the time now.

KEVIN

I'm completely.

CRAIG

You and Jared introduced me to it.

KEVIN

It's not Azul.

CRAIG

No.

KEVIN

Okay.

CRAIG

I played Azul with you guys, which is great.

Denise

Uh-huh.

CRAIG

Um, starts with a C.

Denise

Uh, Catan?

CRAIG

Not Catan. Uh, which is a great game.

KEVIN

Uh, I don't know, man. I'm completely—

Denise

I mean, it's gonna be checkers. He plays it with diamonds.

KEVIN

It's war. Yeah, yeah. My, my buddy Roger said Splendor. That's not it though, is it?

CRAIG

Splendor.

KEVIN

It's Splendor.

CRAIG

Splendor.

KEVIN

Splendor. My buddy Rod for the win. Rod for the win. Here you come in. Yeah, I'm just gonna put you— I'm gonna put your name up here just because of that.

Denise

Yeah.

KEVIN

Thank you, Rod. You're the only one that gets your name up the entire time for getting Splendor. You're welcome.

CRAIG

All right. So if your girls are gonna be the perfect age, Splendor is a fantastic game.

KEVIN

It is a great game.

CRAIG

Like I play, I play it with my 12-year-old. I play it with my 8-year-old.

KEVIN

Yeah. It's—

CRAIG

I love that game.

KEVIN

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. Well, cool. All right. We got a couple other questions.

Denise

One more question.

KEVIN

Actually, just one. We got one more question. What's one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice that you've ever received?

Denise

So, my wife told me, Insert anything here and I've already won, right? You know that.

KEVIN

Yeah.

Denise

But my, my wife told me that I need, I need to be a better listener. And, uh, so my— I, I've been kind of working on New Year's resolutions the last little bit with the kiddos, and my New Year's resolution for the last 5 years, and this is both professionally and personally, has been to be a better listener. And, uh, you know, it's a weird thing But I mean, we're surrounded by so much information and so many smart people and much just data that we can either be overwhelmed or we get threatened by it, we get defensive. You know, we were talking about like censoring and things like that. But if instead you can just learn to listen and engage and ask questions and be an

Denise

active listener— I may be a little bit more Socratic than people are comfortable with, meaning I ask like really aggressive questions because I really want to understand things. I have found that to be one of the most rewarding pieces of advice I've ever gotten because it allows me to develop deeper relationships with people around me. It allows me to develop relationships with people I disagree with, and it allows me to learn. So I love that one.

KEVIN

That's great. I love it, man. That's fantastic. So here's the thing. We actually lied to you, which is fine, right? Obviously.

CRAIG

Yeah.

KEVIN

But there's actually—

Denise

I don't know.

KEVIN

There's a secret 5th question. Craig asked this question. It's, it's Craig. Craig has to ask this question. It's the only one that he remembers, so I let him do this one. So here you go, Craig. All right, you ready?

CRAIG

It's a, it's a killer.

Denise

Yep.

CRAIG

All right, if people want to get a hold of you or your company, how do they find you?

Denise

I'm sweating right now from that. Like, oh my gosh, these guys, another question.

CRAIG

Um, it's most of my life. I'm a massive letdown.

KEVIN

It's true, y'all. It's true.

Denise

The 2 best ways. One, if you want to learn about Deep Sentinel, the best way to do that is our YouTube station, our YouTube channel. We have great videos there. We show tons of interventions where we're stopping crimes. If you want to learn about Deep Sentinel, that's the best place to go there. We have our website, deepsentinel.com. If you want to get in touch with me personally, the best place to do that is probably LinkedIn. That's, that's my most active social network. Trade information there. And again, Dave Sellinger, CEO, Deep Sentinel. You'll find me on LinkedIn. You can follow me there. I don't do a ton of posting, but I do have a bunch of folks that follow, and I try to share

Denise

wisdom as it falls on my lap. Cool.

CRAIG

Fantastic.

KEVIN

Excellent. We're gonna link that all up in the show notes, so those of you that are frantically writing all of that stuff down, like, don't worry, we're gonna link it up right here in the show notes. Man, it has been fantastic having you on. Thank you so much for taking the time. the time to join us. It's been a—

CRAIG

thank you.

KEVIN

It's been a really good episode. So we appreciate it very, very much.

Denise

That was awesome. If you guys finish the next episode, you want a drinking buddy for afterwards, I'll join you guys anytime. That was awesome.

CRAIG

Deal.

KEVIN

Deal. That's— you had us at drinking. So that's fantastic. Well, listen, thank you all for downloading today's episode. It's, it's been great to be with you guys again. And yeah, if you haven't already, leave us a 5-star rating and review on iTunes, that would be fantastic. I'm losing it. All the things. All the things.

CRAIG

Click the things, the thumbs, the hearts, all those.

KEVIN

Yeah, do all the things. Yeah, and David, don't leave. We wanna talk to you a little bit more, but until next time, we'll see you later.

CRAIG

See ya.

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