Paragrin创始人复盘：如何向政府机构销售AI及部署策略

Paragrin is really around this idea of how can we leverage technology to work with our cities, our counties, our states uh to to impact the the places that we live in. At the bottom of the pyramid really when it comes to how to make cities awesome is the idea of safety. The idea that people need objective safety and also need to feel safe. And when that stability is there, it's amazing what's possible. And there were all these kind of contrasting but but but actually similar concepts that we were wrestling with at the time.

We were thinking about how to deploy inside of institutions and also find ways to eliminate the mishandling of information inside of really complex organizations that have access to super super sensitive data. And then if we could create an the backbone infrastructure level of the modern city then [music] we could help to preserve individuality. We talk about privacy and other aspects of what it means to be like an individual person but also bring people together. [music] [music] One of the most important stories in AI is from a company that you may not have heard of, but is almost certainly keeping you and your loved ones safe.

Paragrin is building AI that protects cities and communities and they are rejecting the surveillance state while doing that. And this should be a fantastic conversation about one of the most important applications of AI, forward deployed engineering, civil liberties, and much more. So, let's get into it. Nick, you ran Palunteer's SOCOM unit. You deployed into dangerous high stakes intelligence operations in the Middle East.

Tell me, what does forward deployed engineering actually mean? Um, what does Silicon Valley get wrong about it?

Palanteer was a really fun experience and a really formative one because um before joining the company, I had no idea what this concept of forward deployed engineering meant. Um, but I was surrounded by people that were running into customer environments and doing who knows what.

Yeah.

I watched them I watched them leave the office. I watched them come back to the office and tell stories. Um, it just felt to me like the adventure of a lifetime to be able to go into a customer context and own the customer's problem but also take pride in the fact that the problem is belongs to the customer and then take pride in getting the customer to the win. And so there these two kind of these two truths that I learned when I was an early forward deployed engineer and that we try to embrace as we've built our company and those are that we psychologically go in and own or co-own the problem.

We talk internally about getting all the way to the outcome with and on behalf of our customers. technology and all of the the skills and ways of delivering our tech is part of the answer, but the real answer is just getting to the outcome at all costs. Ideally, three to five times faster than any other person or team could do and everything flows from there. But recognizing that at the end of the day, it's the customer's win.

It's not our win. and taking deep pride in the impact that we have on the institution and on the people that we're sitting across the table from. Like that's that's where the magic is culturally.

What does Silicon Valley get wrong about it? When we first started building Paragrin, the forward to plate engineering concept had been around for for a while. And we got feedback that when really smart people from top five, top 10 or equivalent equivalent schools would go into a really complicated place like the LAPD and quickly try to understand 30 years of institutional context, not just at the data level, but at the the human level.

Like how does this organization work? How are decisions made? How do teams interoperate with each other? The idea that moving fast is even possible in that environment is very counterintuitive to the customer. And unfortunately, I think that shows up as ego

to a lot of organizations where people have dedicated their entire lives to a particular role. And I think Silicon Valley misses that sometimes that letting go of our intelligence, letting go of our own skills and abilities, trying to suspend our ego and then really get into the customer's context is a is an easy thing to say, but it's like it's such a high empathy, patient

Yeah.

way of working.

Yeah. I love that. Ben, you well while while Nick was off deploying into the Middle East, you were in almost the opposite part of the world in every sense of the world word. Uh you were doing refugee work in Africa, uh in India, but you landed on a similar thesis of the world and technologies role in it. Maybe say a word on that.

Yeah, absolutely. So I for for me I've always been obsessed with this idea of how do you how do you make impact with technology? I graduated school and I had these I remember I had these two offers. One was to go uh work at a small startup at the time, Airbnb, and uh the UN Refugee Agency, which is an organization that goes and helps refugees uh who are making these extremely dangerous uh treks across country lines, usually because of war, uh to try and get help.

And so I took that path and deployed to the Sudanese border uh the Colombian border and you know was deeply humbled and uh really un deeply understood uh these types of uh situations and where where technology can help and where where honestly it can't help. And I remember the thing that I I took away from that experience is, you know, UNHCR is this is this deeply disconnected organization. It does phenomenal work, but it's deeply disconnected.

They have some data. It's often in spreadsheets, and it was very difficult to actually make make sense of. And so that's where I started to like form this thesis of a lot of these problems are downstream of data problems where you can have a lot of of impact. After UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, I left to to join uh an organization that you probably haven't heard of. It's called Demagi. They're a small company. They work building last mile healthcare solutions in underresourced places around the world.

And so like one specific example, one project I worked on while I was there, we were working with the Indian government on this project building applications to help folks in rural India adhere to their uh tuberculosis drugs. And uh at the end of the day, we did get it deployed and that technology rapidly spread throughout the country. And that was a really cool moment for me and really formed my thesis and idea around how Paragan can have impact and how you can how technology can have impact in uh in the communities that that we live in.

And so paragrin is really around this idea of how can we leverage technology to work with our cities, our counties, our states uh to to impact the the places that we live in.

Take us back to 2017. You cold called your way into the San Pablo Police Department.

What was going through your heads when you did that? In 2016 when Ben and I um got together actually on a on a vacation with a bunch of our gymnastics teammates, we um had a conversation basically 10 years after we graduated saying should we build something together? We got together in San Francisco and with my experience in the national security space and similar in the US government, Ben's experience working on humanitarian causes.

And you know, on my end, I'd been flying back and forth between Baghdad and similar places in the Middle East. And you know, Ben was commuting God knows how many flights into Africa. And we looked at ourselves and said, "This is the place where people live. This is the place where people thrive. This is where the majority of our lives are spent. And then we started thinking about how to deconstruct working with American cities.

And what we came to is at the bottom of the pyramid really when it comes to how to make cities awesome is the idea of safety. The idea that people need objective safety and also need to feel safe. And w