December 1, 2025 • 61 mins
In this episode of AI for the C-Suite, host Chad Harvey sits down with Egor Olteanu, COO & Co-Founder of Volt AI, a mission-driven company reinventing physical security with artificial intelligence. Igor shares his remarkable journey from emigrating to the U.S., to serving in the Army, to helping launch Google X’s Project Loon, to founding Volt AI after the 2018 YouTube headquarters shooting.
Together, they explore:
The limits of traditional security systems and why camera monitoring fails.
How Volt connects thousands of cameras into one AI-driven “brain”.
Why simplicity, intuitiveness, and real-time detection matter.
The human failure modes that cause security breakdowns.
How AI can reduce violence in schools, improve safety, and support overworked security teams.
The philosophy behind building a mission-driven tech company.
How to recruit smarter people, combat burnout, and stay sane as a founder.
Igor also offers candid insight on risk, purpose, investors, and why “the best security is the security you don’t see.”
A must-listen conversation for anyone leading organizations through the exponential age.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Greetings innovators and leaders.
This is AI for the C-suite, your compass for navigating the exponential age.
I'm your host Chad Harvey and we're here to bring you cutting-edge insights on AI tailoredspecifically for middle market organizations.
Buckle up as we embark on a journey through the transformative world of artificialintelligence.
(00:24):
Today I am delighted to welcome Igor Oltianu.
chief operating officer and co-founder of Volt AI, a mission-driven technology companythat's using AI to fundamentally transform physical security.
Igor's journey to Silicon Valley entrepreneurship is anything but conventional.
(00:45):
After emigrating to the U.S.
as a teen, he served overseas in the U.S.
Army before being recruited into Google's legendary R &D division, known as Google X.
There, he was a founding member of Project Loon.
an ambitious initiative to provide internet connectivity to remote areas usinghigh-altitude balloons, the kind of moonshot thinking that defines breakthrough
(01:07):
innovation.
But it was tragic event in 2018, a shooting at YouTube's San Bruno headquarters thatcatalyzed Igor's entrepreneurial mission.
He recognized that while he understood the operational challenges of preventing suchincidents, solving them required building an AI-powered product.
Together with his co-founder, Dimitri, a veteran engineer from Amazon, Apple, Uber, andFacebook, launched Volt AI in 2019.
(01:35):
Today, Volt's tech enables millions of security cameras to be monitored continuously withconsistent accuracy, serving Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and
industrial facilities.
But Igor's vision extends beyond enterprise adoption.
He's passionate about making complex AI systems so intuitive that anyone can use themwithout training, bringing enterprise-grade security within reach of middle market
(02:01):
organizations.
Let's dive in.
Igor, welcome to AI for the C-suite.
Pleasure meeting you.
Same.
So I mentioned in the intro when we were describing your background, the catalyst for thefounding of Volt, uh the 2018 YouTube shooting in San Bruno.
I know that's a heavy subject, but as your origin story and again, the catalyst or thedriver for the founding of Volt, I'm interested.
(02:30):
What specifically in that situation did you see operationally that you knew could besolved differently?
And why did AI become your answer rather than a more traditional security approach?
What I can say is the following.
We got very lucky that day.
because aside from the fact that San Bruno PD was there within two minutes, which isunheard of, so they were spot on, right?
(02:57):
They did a fantastic job responding to that event.
We also had a phenomenal security team.
Everybody from our chief security officer to the people on the ground, to the peoplemanaging that crisis were very well trained.
We had phenomenal technology.
We had great outsourced guards, right?
So we had all
(03:18):
the chest pieces, so to say, in order to try and minimize the damage and respond to it asquickly as possible.
And still, as the investigation went on, what we realized that uh that lady was on theground way longer than she should have been without being detected, right?
(03:39):
And that's when, you know, in the fog of it all, when I was talking to Dimitri afterwardsand kind of brainstorming around what went wrong, all the technology in the world, all the
money in the world, all the great people in the world, right, very quick law enforcementresponse, very well trained law enforcement group.
And still, right, something is missing.
(04:01):
Something is not connecting the pieces end to end in order to try and prevent somethinglike that from happening.
And we totally understand that some events
they cannot be prevented no matter how well-prepared you are.
But still, was there a way to catch this, to flag this much quicker than it was flaggedand then respond to it before she made it to the close proximity where she was in order to
(04:27):
hurt some folks, which she did.
And that was the catalyst where we started brainstorming.
And this is when the idea of connecting cameras into one AI brain came together,overlaying over real-time active geolocational tracking and all the other pieces that
essentially
makes volt what it is today.
Fair enough.
So you threw out an awful lot just even in the last three or four sentences there in termsof the capabilities of Volt.
(04:55):
And I want you to hone in on one in particular, and I don't know which one, but youidentified a couple areas there and I'm interested, what's the fundamental limitation that
Volt and AI are solving that more traditional approaches simply can't overcome?
real-time location.
And by the way, this is the one that I'm probably the most passionate of, because if youask oh various team members on our team, they might answer this differently.
(05:23):
But to me personally, um there's something that I heard a very long time ago that makes alot of sense in my head.
It's too much Intel is just as bad as not enough Intel.
uh
in the when you have to make very costly decisions very quickly right if you'reoverwhelmed by different sources of information by different types of sources just think
(05:48):
of it as the worst day of sensory overload
In a lot of cases, unless you're very well trained and you do this continuously, thatcould lead to decision delay because you're trying to process all that information.
So just having a very smart system that starts throwing images at you saying, hey, this iswhat's happening, but you don't quite understand how those images fit together in terms of
(06:15):
space and time, meaning where has the event begun?
How is it progressing?
Where is it currently?
What is it likely?
How is it likely to progress in the next?
Let's say 60 to 90 seconds, right?
It becomes very prone to human error, right?
Now
(06:35):
Our thinking was the following.
There's a couple of fundamental pieces that a first responder needs immediately in orderto understand what to do intuitively.
First of all, that's what is it happening?
And what is it happening?
It needs to be a very crisp thing, like person with a gun, right?
Or a carve through the gate, or whatever the case may be.
(06:57):
In this case, it's person with a gun, right?
And then immediately what we need to know is how old is this image, right?
Where was it taken at the time of the timestamp?
And what is the current status?
Meaning, is this image three seconds old, right?
And the person is still there, or is this image 30 seconds old and the person is now gone?
(07:20):
Well, let's take the second thing that I said.
Well, if 30 seconds have passed, how do you know where this person is?
If you have cameras, theoretically speaking, you should be able to tell.
But if you have 100 cameras and no way to tell where those cameras are, it becomes verydifficult to tell, even to people that are looking at these cameras on a daily basis.
(07:44):
Because a gray stairwell is a gray stairwell.
A parking garage is a parking garage when you have hundreds of them.
Or if the campus or the facility is very large.
So the idea behind taking that information, compressing it into a very
easy to uh understand format and then overlaying that on some sort of a system with activereal-time geolocation where you can essentially have, for lack of a better term, a perfect
(08:12):
easy to understand chain of breadcrumbs that says this is what's happening right here,right?
And right now this is what's happening, right?
Right here.
And within the next minute, it's probably going to be over here.
ah Using my hands to
show it, it becomes very simple.
But building that in order for it to be reliable, meaning it works every time the way youwant it to work, but also seamlessly without you having to press any buttons and not
(08:40):
overloading you with the information, as well as sending that information to the rightpeople that have to do their jobs simultaneously instead of blocking on each other, that
is a very difficult engineering problem to solve.
No doubt.
And uh you are coming across here as an extremely methodical, very logical individual,which I would certainly expect given your background.
(09:05):
And as somebody that thinks logically and that clearly put a lot of thought into this asyou were building this product, I'm interested.
What most surprised you as you were translating your operational security insights andexpertise into a viable AI product?
Because I've talked to
hundreds of founders and not a single one ever uh seamlessly launches a product withoutsurprises, hiccups and bumps in the road.
(09:31):
So what was most surprising to you as you were building this out?
AI is not that smart, first of all.
Mean it's phenomenally smart, but when you compare that to a human brain, and I'm sure Imight get a lot of hate for that But when it comes to crisis right and just making
decisions like you know that that Cliche thing that people say you know if you're on thebridge, and you have to you know Grab your car into an older person around you come into a
(10:00):
baby.
You know how does a I make that decision?
But it's a it's a legitimate question right?
AI is as smart as the people building it
as smart as all maintaining it and as smart as the people selecting the information itfeeds it in order for it to learn more and become very good at making increasing the
(10:21):
probability of making the correct decisions very quickly,
ah That was the first learning curve.
The second learning curve was, I'm sure every person has ever started a company ahlearned.
It will be a lot harder than you think, it'll take a lot longer than you think to get itto do what you want it to do, and it will cost a lot more.
(10:45):
ah Because to us, it was like, okay, we know exactly what to do.
Can you build it?
We can absolutely build it, fantastic.
But from knowing what to do,
building it to make and do a percentage of what we want to do.
All of a sudden, that's not a one month challenge.
It's a year.
It's two years.
It's three years.
And it's constant and you're constantly perfecting it because the world around youchanges, right?
(11:10):
Your risk profiles change.
The things that you deal with change, meaning that the product has to change with it.
And if you have this perfect, if you have this perfect, perfectly operational system inmind that you believe you will hit an
amount of months or years, I don't believe that exists.
I think you can get as close as possible to perfection before some of the criteria changesand then you're back to the 80th percentile and then you're working towards the 100th
(11:37):
percentile.
Let's dig into that concept of uh perfection, but in a slightly nuanced way.
I know that one of your passions is AI for the real world and simplifying a lot of theseAI tools, making them understandable, making them very usable without training uh in some
(11:57):
cases.
And that's pretty bold.
So how are you making an enterprise-grade AI security system as intuitive as, say, I thinkyou even said this once, a three-year-old using an iPhone?
I did say that, guilty, and I say that a lot.
ah If you don't mind me taking a couple of extra seconds to explain this, but it allstarted with the idea that I'm not an engineer.
(12:26):
And for a very long time, I did not consider myself to be technical.
ah When the idea...
started essentially becoming reality, I thought back at my time at Google X, where throughvarious different projects, we never had enough money to hire everybody.
(12:48):
And what ended up happening is that you have a handful of extremely talented engineersthat can build anything, right?
But they have to continuously be prioritized and focused on solving the biggestchallenges, meaning the rest of the team has to pull their weight on other, less
technical challenges.
(13:08):
I'll give you two examples.
One is building the high-altitude payloads for the balloons and second building theballoons.
Building the high altitude payloads became my first job at Loon specifically.
What do I know about building high altitude payloads?
Absolute zero, right?
But somebody had to do it.
The containers themselves are not very difficult, right?
(13:30):
But the electronics are somewhat difficult.
But then what I realized is that a very talented engineer can come up to me and say, hey,listen, we're going to give you all these parts, all you have to do, record it with your
phone.
That's how you put them together, right?
Balloons ended up being the same thing.
What do I know about building balloons?
Which became my second job there, right?
Well, again, you go and you watch some people and they say, look, all these materials, youcan't mess with it.
(13:54):
This is very technical stuff.
But this is how you put it together.
And this essentially, when we were talking about how will Volt be used, we're lucky enoughto have access to a lot of people that have been in this industry for 20 plus years.
And they say, look, you have to understand that the same job could be done by differentpeople at the same organization.
(14:17):
One is very technical.
Another person is not technical at all.
But they can still perform the job.
So the product has to be so intuitive that it virtually does not allow you to makemistakes.
Of course we weren't there when we first launched it, but with every single quarter itbecomes better better closer to that goal But the idea from it came from exactly that can
(14:38):
we package all the difficult stuff right and essentially allow the you know 10 5 % ofHere's what you do and if the person looks at the wrong thing or clicks on the wrong thing
the product will actually say nope do this right and I can't claim
I can't claim credit for building that because this is all Dmitry and his team, they'rephenomenal at what they do.
(15:03):
But at least that concept was very well understood by everybody as soon as we startedbuilding the product.
Let's go a little deeper on that.
So I think you gave me one good example of how you've put some guardrails to simplify theuser interface.
um Let's put ourselves in the shoes of say a security manager at a middle market company.
(15:24):
How are they going to interact with your system versus a traditional security platform?
Because I think you've also got some type of uh chat GPT-esque functionality in yourportal.
Am I correct about that?
Okay, so um with that,
With that said, how would a security manager interact with your system versus a moretraditional type of platform?
(15:45):
So think about the traditional platform, alright?
Once you buy it, you essentially have an army of people that will tell you that you needto go to this university and these training courses and you have to be certified on this
platform and then you get your silver certification, then you get gold certification,platinum certification, come on people, really?
(16:06):
Like are you kidding me?
I think it takes less time to learn how to fly a plane, right?
m
By the way, without a sense of humor, I'm joking.
Flying the plane is very difficult.
ah
Why is it so difficult?
Why is it so necessary?
It's literally cameras, right?
They're cameras.
They're cameras that are looking at stuff.
(16:27):
And what you need to know is where does it record, how long does it record for, how do Ipull that video, and if it's got any kind of active analytics or AI, right?
These are the type of triggers that I want to be notified, and this, we need to know aboutthem between certain time shifts, whatever.
That's it, right?
You don't need a university for that.
The reason that they need universities is because a lot of, historically, a lot of money,
(16:50):
and development effort has been dumped into functionality of these products.
And unfortunately, without actually asking which functionality is necessary and which isjust bells and whistles that will never be used, right?
But very little effort was thrown into the usability of the products.
When you open it up, you're like, oh, there's 27 menus with 2,700 submenus, and everysingle button tells me something to do that doesn't allow me to do anything.
(17:19):
You need universities and certification courses.
Why that was built the way it's built and it hasn't changed, I'm not going to get intothat.
Everybody can make their own.
their own conclusions from it, but we wanted to get away from it.
Meaning, our system, you asked me very interesting question.
How do we want security managers to interact with our systems?
(17:43):
We don't.
We don't want them interacting with the system.
We want the system to tell them what to do.
That simple, right?
Meaning, if the system tells you what to do and it gives you relevant, actionableinformation that you don't need to press any more buttons, you just need to go and execute
and do the human thing that is absolutely necessary and is not going away anytime soon, ifever, right?
(18:08):
Then we did our job.
Because think about how many things does a security manager have to manage on a dailybasis.
Everything from phones to issuing badges to false alarms to customer service to talking tocross-functional members of other teams to facilities to HR to whatever right there day is
full and it's very very busy on a daily basis So are we asking them?
(18:31):
on top of that now you have to manage the system that is looking at thousands of camerasNo, I think the ideal scenario and again, we're not at the ideal point yet But we're much
better than most if not all of them
Meaning that take the upfront time cost and sit with them and understand their riskprofiles for their buildings, understand their operations, understand their shifts,
(18:55):
understand what their SOPs are, right?
And then literally set up the system for them that way.
And yes, the user can go into the system and still look at the cameras and pull the videoand do all that other legacy stuff.
Nothing about it is difficult.
But the proactive piece of them, we can set that up for you.
and then the system now knows what you care about, it is smart enough to flag anomaliesthat you don't even know you probably care about.
(19:20):
And at that point, just let it run in the background and do its job.
And then if something goes wrong and something on the black screen pops up front andcenter saying this is what's happening, this is where it's happening, this is what you
need to do, go and execute.
Because guess what?
This information is now received by everybody else that you know needs to get thisinformation because we talked about it previously.
(19:44):
So now everybody can just go and do their job and after that event is over, be it aviolent event, a safety event, a whatever the case may be, then we do a hot wash or in
other words a I forgot, we call it a hot wash in the army, but it's a post-mortem, it's aafter action report.
(20:09):
debrief.
Debrief, yeah, correct.
So now we look at it and even if it's a success or a failure, you say what went well, whatdidn't go well, and how can we improve going forward, right?
After the crisis is over.
But the idea behind it actively being managed by somebody, think it's the past and I thinkmore and more systems need to essentially become a value add that runs in the background
(20:35):
and makes professional's lives easier and more effective than just another tool with tonsof information that needs to be managed.
You just laid out a lot of complex pieces here and there were a number of things thatcaught my attention.
You talked about the information overload that the managers are dealing with.
You talked about all the superfluous and quite frankly, probably unnecessary bells andwhistles in traditional systems and the complexity that's there.
(21:05):
And I know that one of the things that you're very interested in is using
the tools that you're building to reduce safety and security mistakes uh due to fatigueand attention uh or lack of training, things like that.
I'm interested, what are some of the common human failure modes that you see intraditional security operations?
(21:26):
Because I think you've started to talk about how your system addresses some of those, butI'm interested uh in your experience here uh with respect to where you see...
the humans failing because I think there's a through line between that and what you'resaying the system that you guys have built does directly which is takes a lot of the
decisions processing uh out of the hands of the the manager and directs them where theirattention needs to be but that said failure modes
(21:54):
Let's talk about the first one, which is a pretty big one.
Let's say that you and I run an organization that has 250 cameras, which is a very, verylow.
This is like a high school.
okay.
So you can imagine if, just think about it that I said 250 cameras, but then think about500, know, 1,000, 1,500, et cetera.
(22:18):
So 250 cameras.
So let's say that our budget allows us to essentially.
make sure that we have five people watching those cameras ah at any given moment.
Well, five people, it's not like five people are sitting there and watching them.
They can't work 24 hours.
Five people means that there's one person watching those cameras 24 hours because you needthree people to cover 24 hours.
(22:44):
That's 24-7.
And then you need two other people to cover for no shows, for holidays, for sick days, forwhatever the case may be.
So even though we have a budget for five people, it's only one person watching thosecameras for eight hours.
Now, can a person effectively watch 250 cameras on one screen?
Absolutely not.
Meaning that either you have a lot of screens with, you know, 5, 10, 15, 9, 12, whateverthe configuration is, screens at any given moment, or you have one screen that constantly
(23:17):
flips through various cameras.
In most cases, it's a couple, two, three screens that also constantly flip to hit the 250.
So what are the chances?
Let's say this is the perfect human being that will literally stare at those screens andwill notice everything that is happening on those small little uh squares and they will be
(23:38):
able to pick up anything that happens there.
What are the chances that they will be able that once something happens in an area that'sexactly going to be the camera that they're looking at?
Slim to none.
Now let's say we remove the superhuman that I just mentioned that doesn't exist.
And then we go to what does happen with actual humans.
(24:01):
They read books, they look at their phones, they talk to other people, they glance andthey're saying, well, if I see something, then great, right?
Plus, human factors, attention span, training, motivation.
Did you have enough to sleep?
Did you fail your exam?
Did you get into a fight with your spouse?
(24:21):
All of that goes into how motivated or not motivated, how on or off at that particularmoment within that particular shift you are.
That is just the reality, right?
And from you being fantastic to you having a very bad day is just one phone call fromwhatever, right?
And that is one of the biggest failure modes where previously a lot of these legacysystems and unfortunately still a lot of the newer systems are coming to market that has
(24:49):
been the failure point.
Meaning the systems are very much reactive and they're very much created for collection ofinformation in this case video for investigative and post investigative purposes.
Investigative let's find out what happened post investigative meaning let's process all ofthis and put the policies and the trainings in place to try
(25:10):
and prevent stuff like that happening ever again.
Imagine that you have all these cameras connected to a very smart brain that now can flywhen any anytime there's a fight Anytime when somebody hops a fence anytime when somebody
collapses due to a possible medical emergency anybody that brings a weapon ah Whatever thecase may be You know you can still look at those screens for whatever day you want But at
(25:36):
least you know that if that screen is not pulled up if you're not not looking at thatsquare if something happens It'll pop in front of you front and send their
hey pay attention there's an issue so it eliminates a lot of the failures on on that endah I have others by the way but just I'm gonna take a breather if you ask me some
(25:57):
questions
No, I think that's a perfect example.
And the way you led us through the idea of 250 cameras in a school and the amount offatigue that is going to be heaped upon the individual watching that and the solution that
you're bringing to bear.
think that really brings that home.
And it begs another question here on my end, since you surface the example of a school, Iknow during our pre-interview,
(26:24):
You shared a really compelling vision with me.
You shared, and I hope it's okay for me to share this, you talked about your vision thatif Volt could reduce violence in educational spaces by just 1%, that that would be
immensely gratifying to you.
I went out and I looked.
There's something like 130,000 plus K-12 schools and higher ed institutions out there.
(26:50):
a 1 %...
Delta on that or a 1 % impact on that amount of educational institutions that would behuge so I guess uh I'm interested in a couple things uh number one We're talking about
violence.
So I'm interested What is your definition of violence and then I'm also interested in thegoal at that 1 % goal How might you measure progress so that you're feeling like you are
(27:18):
making an impact?
Well, everything that you said is correct.
I'm just going to make one small correction.
We're not striving for the 1%.
We would love for it to be 100%.
What I was merely trying to say is that building a company like that is a 10 plus yearmarriage.
(27:39):
is 10 plus years of our lives, the people, Dimitri, myself, and other early found...
team members of VOLT, right, that will have to make a lot of sacrifices in order to buildthis.
What I'm trying to say is that even if we see a positive outcome of 1 % reduction insafety and security events, specifically violence, within the educational space, this is
(28:06):
something to be proud of and say that I did not sacrifice 10 years of my life for nothing,right, because this deals with kids and kids are our future.
That's just the reality in any society.
And I didn't mean to imply that you're only driving toward 1%.
Okay.
Sure.
No, I appreciate that.
Let's start from the beginning.
(28:28):
Meaning, how do I classify or define violence?
Keep in mind, this is my definition, but anything...
be it security or safety or whatever the case may be that make our students feel unsafewhen they go to school.
When I went to middle school and high school here in the US, I didn't think about metaldetectors.
(28:52):
I didn't think about shootings.
I didn't think about active shooter drills.
That was not the case.
My only worry was that if I decide to skip class, I'm going to get caught by my footballcoach who's also the security guy and he's going to make me regret it.
That was my only fear, right?
right.
But now unfortunately that is not the case.
And be it a shooting, obviously, that's self-explanatory.
(29:15):
But also, you will not believe some of the events that we catch.
Things like bullying, right?
When a group of kids locks another kid in a party party or something like that.
Things like we've seen kids collapse in the hallways between classes due to diabetes anddue to seizures and whatever the case may be.
Well, yeah, if they collapse and they don't get any help for 45 minutes because everybodyelse is
(29:39):
busy and the hallways are empty versus they get help within seconds.
Even if they have that condition and they go to school and they understand that somethinghappens to me, there's this there's this guardian angel right that is watching over me
that will make sure that I get help.
Will the kids still worry about that?
Sure, right.
But will they at least know that chances are you're to get help that you need?
(30:02):
And that's how I define not just violence, but just the safety aspect overall.
I just want to make sure that
When kids go to their respective schools, be it elementary schools, middle schools, highschools, whatever the case may be, they feel safe.
And more importantly, their parents also feel safe.
That is on that side.
How do we measure?
(30:25):
First of all, I am not that smart to figure out how to run the statistics of how tomeasure societal changes and percentages.
uh
balloons.
Well, I put them together.
There's the difference in building them and putting them together.
ah
But what I can tell that between Dimitri and the other engineers that we have, they'reabsolutely smart enough to do that.
(30:47):
And even right now, we collect a lot of data.
And by the way, when they say that, it's customers, they own their own data with us.
We don't sell data.
We don't do anything with that.
It is their data.
But internally, we collect a lot to essentially see how effective our systems are.
And this is something that is being checked over and over again on a continuous basis tomake sure that our system is continuously improving.
(31:12):
And I'm sure ah there's a win.
mean, we already are discussing those and we are collaborating essentially with everysingle customer that we have.
Because keep in mind, once a system is onboarded, we either have weekly meetings with themor monthly or quarterly.
There's constant reviews and QBRs where the customer has the ability to say, this iswhat's going well, this is what's not going well, and these are the things that your
(31:36):
system is not doing that we would like it to do.
So there's constant back and forth feedback.
But one of that feedbacks is also how do we measure success and what does success mean toyou specifically at this customer because they're not all alike Some customers really care
about you know violence because they're in very bad neighborhoods other customers reallycare about You know people not paying when they park in their parking garages, right?
(32:00):
That is that is their big deal
But generally speaking, success deals with safety and security of the students.
And there is a lot of different metrics that could be tracked that says, hey, historicallyover the past three years, this is what we've been seeing, both reported internally as
well as caught by the system.
(32:20):
And this is what we're seeing now.
And again, not a data scientist.
I'm sure there is a million of different holes that somebody can poke into it and say,well, it's not that black and white.
Sure.
But if we can at least get some positive signals, oh let's say in three, four, five years,whenever VOLT becomes a household name, where we can say, hey, listen, sure, all you smart
(32:45):
brainiacs out there, here's the data.
Please tell us if we're wrong or if we really are seeing a decrease in some of thesesafety and security events, i.e.
we can make the conclusion that...
I think these operations, these facilities, these buildings, these schools are becomingsafer.
(33:06):
It's a very long answer to your question and I mumbled a little bit, but hopefully some ofthat made sense.
No, I think that made a lot of sense and I appreciate the context and your answer alsomade me realize that we've been focused predominantly here on educational institutions
within our conversation, but I believe you have clients outside of education as well,correct?
(33:28):
What's the equivalent value proposition for, I don't know, manufacturer or an officebuilding or retail location?
because their risks and incidents are looking a little bit different I would imagine thanin the educational sector.
Well, for our non-education customers, mean, the reason that they buy Vault is still dueto safety and security risks.
(33:51):
The reason that we started focusing more and more on education is because safety andsecurity of kids hits much harder than safety and security of employees as grown adults.
Unfortunately, I would love for enterprise customers to take that justice seriously asstudents and staff within K through 12 as well as higher ed facilities take it.
(34:14):
But unfortunately, that is not the case.
At least that is not the case now, and that's what we have not found that to be the casein the past.
three years since we started deploying to customers because we would be we would pitch anenterprise client and say hey listen
this is what we do, is how we can help you.
And we get somebody who is very passionate about the subject because something happenedpreviously, or they came from an organization where they know that this is a serious thing
(34:41):
that can really damage a company's reputation, right?
And they're all in.
They're all in in understanding whether you are the correct solution, not the correctsolution.
And if you are the correct solution, how can they bring it to the table?
Maybe it's only one facility instead of all of them first, right?
But they're engaged, right?
Others,
That's not a priority.
(35:02):
Whatever you want, however you put it, they're like, this is really cool, but I have25,000 other things that I believe I would much rather spend our money on.
With education though, that was a very eye-opening moment where within 30 seconds it justclicks to them.
Because again, let's be honest, most people become educators because they care.
(35:23):
They really, really care about their students and about making those facilities and thoseenvironments as student-friendly as possible.
And it clicks.
They may not have a project.
They may not know anything about the system or this industry in general.
They may not have the money, but they are so engaged and they're asking
asking you in some case and please help me figure out how I can bring this on at least forone school at least for a couple of cameras right one of the reasons why we do free pilots
(35:51):
right in most cases not for all right but in most cases we do free pilots because even ifthey don't have the budget and even but they need to show this to somebody that has the
ability to give them some budget for next year and it's within a school or a university wewill do but we'll be like hey use the system it's not now it's not just a concept now but
(36:12):
like put your hands
for so to say, right?
See how it works.
It's just a very different mentality we have found when you talk to educators, even ifthey know nothing about it, they immediately understand the benefits and the positive
impacts that could happen if they bring a system like that into their schools.
Very good.
(36:33):
I'd like to return for a moment to some of your experiences working at Google X.
And I'm not interested in unpacking specific experiences, but what I'm interested in isworking there exposed you to, quite frankly, some of the most ambitious technology
development in the world, taking moonshots, doing really big things in a culture where Ithink they often talk about attempting the impossible.
(36:59):
So.
With that experience in your rear view mirror, what lessons did you bring with you tovault from that uh deliberately?
And what lessons did you leave behind?
Because you're building a very different company than the one that you were at.
It was a very humbling moment at the age of 25 to end up at Google X because
(37:31):
I thought I was, well, I was above average, you know, between my hobbies and my intellectand my abilities to do stuff and everything that I've achieved to that point.
I was like, yeah, I'm feeling pretty good, right?
Most rooms that I work into, I'm in the top percentile.
And then you get there.
And guess what?
(37:52):
Oh, you have one degree, they have three, right?
And not only two of them are in aerospace engineering from MBA, but one of them is fromHarvard, right?
As an MBA.
And then they have another one, the fourth degree from like, uh, some Juilliard school ofmusic, just because they wanted to learn piano.
(38:13):
And you're like, okay, that's, that's the first hit on my chin.
Then I was like, you jump out of airplanes, but so do they, but they also build airplanesand helicopters in their garage.
So they can actually fly their own contraptions to a
drop zone, land, do some jumps, get back to it and fly home.
Right?
you do pretty well in fitness.
yeah, they run ultra marathons on top of doing all that stuff.
(38:35):
Right?
and on top of that, right?
They're building all this cool stuff at Google and they've been, and they make it seemlike they don't care.
Right?
It's just, it's, it's that simple to them.
And you immediately sit down and you realize, holy crap, what did I just get myself into?
That was Google X.
(38:55):
And what I realized is that it's synchro swap, meaning that everybody's super nice.
Everybody from...
The lowest people that are interns to all the way to the most senior people that make thebest.
Everybody's super nice and everybody will give you the tool and will give you theenvironment for you to learn if you want to.
(39:18):
But guess what?
You're gonna have to get out of your comfort zone.
You're gonna have to go on Amazon and buy some books and start reading certain subjects.
You're gonna have to understand that you're going to walk into a room and you're going tobe the dumbest person ever for a very long time.
Hmm
But if you just learn 15 % of what these people know, all of a sudden, your life willchange.
(39:39):
And now they will find used to, yeah, of course you're not going to be coding just as wellas somebody that just spent 12 years at MIT learning or some other place learning
robotics, right?
But you will be able to do a job that they need you to do, right?
And that will make you an asset to the team, and that will make your project succeed.
(39:59):
And if your project succeeds, everybody else involved in this project will succeed.
But it's a very humbling experience and some people did that they were like, okay I'mgonna be the dumb person of the year for the next three years But I'm okay with that
because I am here to learn right and other people
they washed out, but they washed out not because people made them wash out, they washedout on their own because they were like, I'm not spending the next two, three years
(40:25):
essentially working 10, 12 hours a day plus studying an extra six just to make sure that Idon't fail at my job.
Nope, thank you, I'm good.
And there's various reasons for that.
I was young, I was single, I had zero responsibilities, so to say, right?
There's people with families and kids and all that.
So I understand that not everybody's built equal, but that mentality,
(40:46):
where always hire people that are smarter than you, stay with us to this day.
Like, I like the fact that I consider myself, let's be honest, technically.
dumbest person in my company, right?
It is phenomenal, right?
But what does the team, it means that, you know, I can say something and then people mightlisten to me and they'll be like, okay, cool.
(41:09):
All right, we got it.
But then they will go and actually build what they know that we want, but they will do itthe right way.
Right?
So I'm just a very big believer, like all jokes aside, that if you hire people that aresmarter than you, your company will skyrocket.
If you, if you're insecure about that, and you always need to essentially be the smart
(41:30):
the person in the room or the big boss in the room, you're in for a very rough ride.
That is just the reality.
So that is the mentality that I tried to bring from Google X into this company.
Hire people smarter than you and they will build exactly what needs to be built withoutneeding you to do babysitting.
(41:54):
The thing that I didn't bring is that...
Unfortunately, as organizations get bigger and they get older, a lot of bureaucracy comesinto play.
A lot of politics come into play.
A lot of things that, in my opinion, they kill innovation.
And I don't think Google X was at that point when I left.
(42:16):
I don't think Google was at that point when I left.
love Google, Alphabet now.
I think they're phenomenal companies and I think they taught me more about how to succeedthan anybody ever did.
So I will forever be grateful to those companies and those people.
But I've also noticed some trends where...
(42:39):
people that were really willing to do the work and to essentially to do whatever isnecessary to learn to make sure that the project and the company succeeds.
also we started getting people that were there just to essentially there was a saying it'scalled the rest and best essentially do nothing and make sure you stock best.
(43:00):
All right.
Because you're a typical in the four year vesting schedule.
Right.
And nothing kills the morale of high performers more than understand
that because of some political skills or some bureaucratic skills, those people willessentially will get just promoted just as fast as you will, in some cases even faster.
(43:23):
Or they're so adept to essentially jumping company to company and doing the rest investthat they know the game very well and...
They don't accomplish anything, but at the same time they keep growing.
And it's this sense of unfairness where we should be judged on performance ah and theresults that we deliver, but some of us are and some of us are not.
(43:48):
And it's a...
It's something, it's part of our four core values at Vault.
One of them is being B direct.
Meaning that if you see something that you disagree with, doesn't matter if it's an internand they see something that I do they disagree with.
Trust me, I do plenty of things people disagree with.
And so does Dimitri.
(44:09):
Say something.
Your job will never be jeopardized based on your opinions.
It just won't, right?
You're here to do a job.
If you're part of the team, you're here to make sure you figure out how to work well withthat team, and then you accomplish.
That's it.
Everything else, focus on delivering results.
That is the biggest thing that you need to worry about.
(44:32):
So to summarize things is that I don't know if this is just a natural beast of companiesgetting bigger and the pressure of hiring quicker, whatever the case may be, that the
quality of people that you hire becomes to drop a little bit.
And we will try, and I think we've done a great job at this point, keep our company asclose as possible to that perfection where people get in because they're driven, because
(44:59):
they're smart, because they want to accomplish things, and everything else, how they talk,what they think, none of that really matters.
It's all about delivering results.
So they never have to feel like they're doing all the work and somebody next to them isdoing no work, but at the same time everybody's getting kudos at the same level, at the
same frequency.
I think you uh just inadvertently answered a question that I was going to ask you abouthow you build a startup team that's charged with doing the impossible.
(45:28):
And I think you really gave me some context around that.
So let me pivot and ask you when you're building something that's quote impossible, uhwhat is still impossible that you're working on?
Because you've clearly made a lot of other strides toward building tech.
and breathing life into things and making them possible from your starting point all thoseyears ago.
(45:49):
So what's still impossible that you're working on?
I don't think anything is impossible to tell you sure.
It's actually part of my email, my personal email handle still I think.
Nothing is impossible.
I truly don't believe in anything impossible.
I think there's a matter of resources and timing.
(46:09):
Something that we do today was, I mean, you couldn't do this 150 years ago, it wasimpossible for them.
But is it impossible?
No, it's not.
Timing and resources.
To us, even building the product that we currently have, initially it seemed close toimpossible.
It said, we're going to try it, we don't know how it's going to work.
(46:31):
uh Now, obviously, oh integrating what you said, the chat GPT functionality into ourproduct to make sure that people, can just talk to the product and the product will do
what they want.
uh
seemed impossible.
Now we have it working.
It's still not where we want it to be ultimately, but it's a long journey, but it'sworking, right?
(46:54):
I don't really want to get into our roadmap.
You don't want to spill everything right now?
Oh, OK.
You can do it.
uh But there's a lot of things that even right now when we're sitting and we're thinkingabout what will Volt look like in 18 months and 36 months and five years, whatever.
ah There's a lot of things that we're like, we're going to do this and we agree that we'regoing to do this.
(47:19):
But how we're going to do this, we have no clue.
We have no clue how we're going to do it.
But tell you what, we'll figure it out.
Well, let's let's talk about that a little bit more not in terms of the the how but maybein terms of how you're thinking about things and I'll ground this in this next question
There is a ton of talk about agentic AI right now, right uh AI agents.
(47:44):
It's a hot topic We're starting to finally see the emergence of some of the promise uhhere in 2025 in terms of what they could possibly do I'm interested about how you're
thinking about AI agents within the context of physical support
physical security and the role that they could play in Volt's future.
(48:04):
Can you shed any light on how you're thinking about those?
I mean, to be honest, I'm not.
This is more, this goes so beyond my expertise that even if I try to come up and tell yousome elaborate answer right now, what I think is going to happen, I'm 99.9 % sure that I
(48:25):
will be wrong, right?
What I do spend most of my time thinking about is how do we turn
I believe the best security is the security that you don't see.
It's just magic that works.
So now when you're going through all these purchasing, be it RFPs or just purchasingprocesses for systems.
(48:50):
The front and center focus is always on, in the systems world, it's always cameras.
Cameras, cameras, cameras, cameras.
And if I have $10 and I need to buy cameras, and cameras cost $10, and AI costs $10, I'mobviously going to buy cameras, right?
Because without cameras, nothing can be done.
(49:12):
The problem that I see with that is that cameras without their ability to be proactive andwork in real time are useless.
They're collecting a bunch of information that most of that information goes unused andnobody ever watches it again.
Is there a way to marry that?
Meaning that is there a way where...
(49:33):
people will understand that having more cameras than zero AI is actually useless, buthaving less cameras, but a very smart system and those cameras placed correctly, right?
Well, all of a sudden...
give you the ability to offload 80 % of all the manual processes that you currently dowith all your people managing all your security systems.
(49:55):
So, sorry I couldn't answer the question that you asked, I just wanted to say that that'swhat I spend most of my time thinking about, is how do we get to that point?
Well, people will finally understand that cameras by themselves and people with butts inseats looking at monitors does not improve their security.
It just doesn't.
Or if it does, it's so incremental that it's unnoticeable.
(50:17):
Sure.
Well, I think you did answer the question actually.
em I think you talked about the best security is that which is invisible.
And I think that runs directly to the heart of a lot of missions of tech powered companiesin that the tech should be invisible.
It should be seamless, which is one of the things that we've talked about here before inour discussion today, which is making it as easy as possible for a three year old child to
(50:43):
operate.
Right.
It's the same premise.
So
I think you did answer that question, so thank you.
uh No, no, no.
uh Look, the agentic piece of it, that's technical wizardry ah as opposed to thephilosophy that's overlaying it, which I think you very succinctly described there.
(51:05):
So speaking of philosophy, I'm also interested in uh the idea of purpose.
You talked about the core values that power your organization earlier.
And I know that you've got uh a passion for this.
And so my question to you is, as an entrepreneur that's pursuing a passion, that has apurpose, that's using tech to make the world a better place, but also somebody that has to
(51:30):
raise capital to deliver returns, how do you balance that mission-driven purpose with thecommercial imperative?
Are they in tension and conflict?
Are they in alignment?
What's that look like from your standpoint?
you find the right investors.
And again, we are lucky enough to have some amazing advisors and amazing friends.
(51:54):
Most of them have run companies and sold companies, became investors, introduced us toother investors.
Great investors know other great investors.
We've said no to money that we believe that it's not going to be right for us for sure.
But so far we've...
we've surrounded ourselves by investors that, by the way, they're investors.
(52:15):
Their job is not to make us happy or be friends with us.
There's a ton of times where we were not doing well.
It's a startup where they would, in a very polite and very diplomatic way, still eat usalive in those calls.
That's their job, right?
It's okay.
It's nothing personal, But at least if they're passionate about the things that you'repassionate about.
(52:37):
And if they believe...
where at least they believe that there's a chance of you succeeding in that becausethey're still passionate through it, they will have your back even when things go bad.
ah So when we make commercial decisions and when we make decisions that deal with what theproduct is going to look like or how...
(52:58):
Who are we going to go after in terms of sales and marketing and how we're going to priceour product?
Which things are we going to prioritize that we believe will increase the demand andstickiness of our product?
We never have to really worry about what will the investors say.
because we surrounded ourselves with such good investors that they understand that we knowmore about the space than they do.
(53:21):
They know investments.
They know building companies.
They know great people.
They're phenomenal at that stuff.
But they trust us to make a decision to make sure that the company keeps growing, right,and that eventually they will see the returns on their money and their time that they've
put into us.
So I guess that's a very long way of saying that at this point we're very lucky to
(53:44):
surrounded our cap table essentially with the right people.
So our time is uh starting to draw very short here.
So I want to ask you one or two final questions.
Since we're talking about investors, we're talking about the organization.
If you project five years ahead down the road for Volt, what does success look like foryou?
(54:08):
We are the market leader in our industry and education in the US.
Both K through 12, public and private, as well as higher ed, colleges, universities,cetera.
And how do you measure that market leader status?
What's most meaningful?
If you go into a school and it's one of three types of people, they either have Volt, theyeither are about to get Volt, or they know about Volt and they decided to get something
(54:37):
else, we're a market leader.
I love it.
All things volt.
Wonderful.
That's great.
Let me ask you one other question here, Igor.
uh I know that you engage in, shall we call them a lot of high-risk activities outside ofthe office, right?
(54:57):
uh For you, number one, what's your favorite high-risk activity?
Skydiving.
Okay.
And uh I believe you mentioned in our prep call when we were talking about that, uh Ithink I asked you, what do your investors say about those high risk activities?
And you said to me something along the lines of.
(55:20):
They're not too happy about it, the ones that know about it.
But they know that if I don't do that, that is the best way for me to stay sane.
So I think they've accepted that unwillingly.
and that's exactly what I wanted to ask you.
Are those activities necessary for somebody that is constantly pushing the bleeding edgeto stay sane?
(55:42):
Do you need to have those types of outlets?
I think if you're not happy in your personal life, you'll never be happy at work.
And if you can't build a great personal life, you'll never be able to build a greatcompany.
ah That's my personal belief.
People can argue with me until they're blown in face, but I'm going to stick to my guns.
(56:02):
And here's why.
Building a company...
again, these are not my words.
believe Sam Alton said that in one of his talks where every smart entrepreneur understandsthat it's going to be difficult and there's going to be ups and downs.
What they don't understand is how frequent those ups and downs will be, how high the upswill be, how low the downs will be, and the unpredictable nature of when they come.
(56:30):
And they always come in the most...
Inconvenient times.
So you're essentially being beaten up physically and mentally for years.
For years, right?
You're constantly under constant stress and you have to put on a smile, a positiveattitude, wake up in the morning and get in the shark tank again and again and again and
(56:54):
again and things are going to fail and things are not going to work and investors aregoing to be pissed off at you and your family is going to be pissed at you and you're
going to lose friends and you're going to lose family and you're going to
lose so many different things, right?
And you have to continue, keep going, keep going and keep going.
Well, if you just do that and you don't have a release and the release can be different.
Some people play chess and people golf, some people grow tomatoes, other people go tomusic shows.
(57:19):
My releases are skydiving, scuba diving, snowmobiling, motorcycling, pretty mucheverything that deals with adrenaline.
That is what I love to do because I know that if I do one jump, just one,
I drive back with a big smile.
If cars cut me off, I don't even care.
I'm listening to music, I'm happy.
(57:42):
I just threw myself out of an airplane.
Gravity's not going away.
It didn't kill me.
I'm happy.
I can't think of a better place to uh end our discussion today than on you being happy.
So uh thank you for sharing all that, especially that last bit of insight.
(58:04):
I think that that's really valuable for anybody that's not just founding a company butleading a company.
there are not a lot of people out there that understand the pressures of leading anorganization, let alone founding and growing it.
So I appreciate you giving us.
some insight into that and sharing those experiences with us here today.
It was my pleasure.
(58:24):
So, all right, for our listeners that want to learn more about you, maybe they want totake you skydiving, maybe they just want to get in touch, they want to purchase some Volt
equipment and AI, what's the best way for them to do that?
of all that AI is the best.
And then feel free to just contact me directly on LinkedIn.
Fantastic.
(58:45):
All right, Igor, this was a true pleasure.
I would love to have you back uh once you've not only hit, but massively exceeded that 1 %target that we talked about earlier.
So thank you for your time.
Thank you for yours.
It was a pleasure.
And for all of our listeners out there, thank you for your time and thank you for tuningin to AI for the C-suite where we're committed to helping middle market leaders thrive
(59:09):
during the exponential age.
If you found value in today's discussion, be sure to subscribe to our podcast, follow uson all the socials and visit our site, aiforthecsuite.com.
Join us next time as we continue to unlock the potential of AI for your organization.
And until then, keep your algorithms running, your leadership evolving.
(59:30):
and your AI in check.
Thanks everybody.
Greetings innovators and leaders.
This is AI for the C-suite, your compass for navigating the exponential age.
I'm your host Chad Harvey and we're here to bring you cutting-edge insights on AI tailoredspecifically for middle market organizations.
Buckle up as we embark on a journey through the transformative world of artificialintelligence.
(00:24):
Today I am delighted to welcome Igor Oltianu.
chief operating officer and co-founder of Volt AI, a mission-driven technology companythat's using AI to fundamentally transform physical security.
Igor's journey to Silicon Valley entrepreneurship is anything but conventional.
(00:45):
After emigrating to the U.S.
as a teen, he served overseas in the U.S.
Army before being recruited into Google's legendary R &D division, known as Google X.
There, he was a founding member of Project Loon.
an ambitious initiative to provide internet connectivity to remote areas usinghigh-altitude balloons, the kind of moonshot thinking that defines breakthrough
(01:07):
innovation.
But it was tragic event in 2018, a shooting at YouTube's San Bruno headquarters thatcatalyzed Igor's entrepreneurial mission.
He recognized that while he understood the operational challenges of preventing suchincidents, solving them required building an AI-powered product.
Together with his co-founder, Dimitri, a veteran engineer from Amazon, Apple, Uber, andFacebook, launched Volt AI in 2019.
(01:35):
Today, Volt's tech enables millions of security cameras to be monitored continuously withconsistent accuracy, serving Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and
industrial facilities.
But Igor's vision extends beyond enterprise adoption.
He's passionate about making complex AI systems so intuitive that anyone can use themwithout training, bringing enterprise-grade security within reach of middle market
(02:01):
organizations.
Let's dive in.
Igor, welcome to AI for the C-suite.
Pleasure meeting you.
Same.
So I mentioned in the intro when we were describing your background, the catalyst for thefounding of Volt, uh the 2018 YouTube shooting in San Bruno.
I know that's a heavy subject, but as your origin story and again, the catalyst or thedriver for the founding of Volt, I'm interested.
(02:30):
What specifically in that situation did you see operationally that you knew could besolved differently?
And why did AI become your answer rather than a more traditional security approach?
What I can say is the following.
We got very lucky that day.
because aside from the fact that San Bruno PD was there within two minutes, which isunheard of, so they were spot on, right?
(02:57):
They did a fantastic job responding to that event.
We also had a phenomenal security team.
Everybody from our chief security officer to the people on the ground, to the peoplemanaging that crisis were very well trained.
We had phenomenal technology.
We had great outsourced guards, right?
So we had all
(03:18):
the chest pieces, so to say, in order to try and minimize the damage and respond to it asquickly as possible.
And still, as the investigation went on, what we realized that uh that lady was on theground way longer than she should have been without being detected, right?
(03:39):
And that's when, you know, in the fog of it all, when I was talking to Dimitri afterwardsand kind of brainstorming around what went wrong, all the technology in the world, all the
money in the world, all the great people in the world, right, very quick law enforcementresponse, very well trained law enforcement group.
And still, right, something is missing.
(04:01):
Something is not connecting the pieces end to end in order to try and prevent somethinglike that from happening.
And we totally understand that some events
they cannot be prevented no matter how well-prepared you are.
But still, was there a way to catch this, to flag this much quicker than it was flaggedand then respond to it before she made it to the close proximity where she was in order to
(04:27):
hurt some folks, which she did.
And that was the catalyst where we started brainstorming.
And this is when the idea of connecting cameras into one AI brain came together,overlaying over real-time active geolocational tracking and all the other pieces that
essentially
makes volt what it is today.
Fair enough.
So you threw out an awful lot just even in the last three or four sentences there in termsof the capabilities of Volt.
(04:55):
And I want you to hone in on one in particular, and I don't know which one, but youidentified a couple areas there and I'm interested, what's the fundamental limitation that
Volt and AI are solving that more traditional approaches simply can't overcome?
real-time location.
And by the way, this is the one that I'm probably the most passionate of, because if youask oh various team members on our team, they might answer this differently.
(05:23):
But to me personally, um there's something that I heard a very long time ago that makes alot of sense in my head.
It's too much Intel is just as bad as not enough Intel.
uh
in the when you have to make very costly decisions very quickly right if you'reoverwhelmed by different sources of information by different types of sources just think
(05:48):
of it as the worst day of sensory overload
In a lot of cases, unless you're very well trained and you do this continuously, thatcould lead to decision delay because you're trying to process all that information.
So just having a very smart system that starts throwing images at you saying, hey, this iswhat's happening, but you don't quite understand how those images fit together in terms of
(06:15):
space and time, meaning where has the event begun?
How is it progressing?
Where is it currently?
What is it likely?
How is it likely to progress in the next?
Let's say 60 to 90 seconds, right?
It becomes very prone to human error, right?
Now
(06:35):
Our thinking was the following.
There's a couple of fundamental pieces that a first responder needs immediately in orderto understand what to do intuitively.
First of all, that's what is it happening?
And what is it happening?
It needs to be a very crisp thing, like person with a gun, right?
Or a carve through the gate, or whatever the case may be.
(06:57):
In this case, it's person with a gun, right?
And then immediately what we need to know is how old is this image, right?
Where was it taken at the time of the timestamp?
And what is the current status?
Meaning, is this image three seconds old, right?
And the person is still there, or is this image 30 seconds old and the person is now gone?
(07:20):
Well, let's take the second thing that I said.
Well, if 30 seconds have passed, how do you know where this person is?
If you have cameras, theoretically speaking, you should be able to tell.
But if you have 100 cameras and no way to tell where those cameras are, it becomes verydifficult to tell, even to people that are looking at these cameras on a daily basis.
(07:44):
Because a gray stairwell is a gray stairwell.
A parking garage is a parking garage when you have hundreds of them.
Or if the campus or the facility is very large.
So the idea behind taking that information, compressing it into a very
easy to uh understand format and then overlaying that on some sort of a system with activereal-time geolocation where you can essentially have, for lack of a better term, a perfect
(08:12):
easy to understand chain of breadcrumbs that says this is what's happening right here,right?
And right now this is what's happening, right?
Right here.
And within the next minute, it's probably going to be over here.
ah Using my hands to
show it, it becomes very simple.
But building that in order for it to be reliable, meaning it works every time the way youwant it to work, but also seamlessly without you having to press any buttons and not
(08:40):
overloading you with the information, as well as sending that information to the rightpeople that have to do their jobs simultaneously instead of blocking on each other, that
is a very difficult engineering problem to solve.
No doubt.
And uh you are coming across here as an extremely methodical, very logical individual,which I would certainly expect given your background.
(09:05):
And as somebody that thinks logically and that clearly put a lot of thought into this asyou were building this product, I'm interested.
What most surprised you as you were translating your operational security insights andexpertise into a viable AI product?
Because I've talked to
hundreds of founders and not a single one ever uh seamlessly launches a product withoutsurprises, hiccups and bumps in the road.
(09:31):
So what was most surprising to you as you were building this out?
AI is not that smart, first of all.
Mean it's phenomenally smart, but when you compare that to a human brain, and I'm sure Imight get a lot of hate for that But when it comes to crisis right and just making
decisions like you know that that Cliche thing that people say you know if you're on thebridge, and you have to you know Grab your car into an older person around you come into a
(10:00):
baby.
You know how does a I make that decision?
But it's a it's a legitimate question right?
AI is as smart as the people building it
as smart as all maintaining it and as smart as the people selecting the information itfeeds it in order for it to learn more and become very good at making increasing the
(10:21):
probability of making the correct decisions very quickly,
ah That was the first learning curve.
The second learning curve was, I'm sure every person has ever started a company ahlearned.
It will be a lot harder than you think, it'll take a lot longer than you think to get itto do what you want it to do, and it will cost a lot more.
(10:45):
ah Because to us, it was like, okay, we know exactly what to do.
Can you build it?
We can absolutely build it, fantastic.
But from knowing what to do,
building it to make and do a percentage of what we want to do.
All of a sudden, that's not a one month challenge.
It's a year.
It's two years.
It's three years.
And it's constant and you're constantly perfecting it because the world around youchanges, right?
(11:10):
Your risk profiles change.
The things that you deal with change, meaning that the product has to change with it.
And if you have this perfect, if you have this perfect, perfectly operational system inmind that you believe you will hit an
amount of months or years, I don't believe that exists.
I think you can get as close as possible to perfection before some of the criteria changesand then you're back to the 80th percentile and then you're working towards the 100th
(11:37):
percentile.
Let's dig into that concept of uh perfection, but in a slightly nuanced way.
I know that one of your passions is AI for the real world and simplifying a lot of theseAI tools, making them understandable, making them very usable without training uh in some
(11:57):
cases.
And that's pretty bold.
So how are you making an enterprise-grade AI security system as intuitive as, say, I thinkyou even said this once, a three-year-old using an iPhone?
I did say that, guilty, and I say that a lot.
ah If you don't mind me taking a couple of extra seconds to explain this, but it allstarted with the idea that I'm not an engineer.
(12:26):
And for a very long time, I did not consider myself to be technical.
ah When the idea...
started essentially becoming reality, I thought back at my time at Google X, where throughvarious different projects, we never had enough money to hire everybody.
(12:48):
And what ended up happening is that you have a handful of extremely talented engineersthat can build anything, right?
But they have to continuously be prioritized and focused on solving the biggestchallenges, meaning the rest of the team has to pull their weight on other, less
technical challenges.
(13:08):
I'll give you two examples.
One is building the high-altitude payloads for the balloons and second building theballoons.
Building the high altitude payloads became my first job at Loon specifically.
What do I know about building high altitude payloads?
Absolute zero, right?
But somebody had to do it.
The containers themselves are not very difficult, right?
(13:30):
But the electronics are somewhat difficult.
But then what I realized is that a very talented engineer can come up to me and say, hey,listen, we're going to give you all these parts, all you have to do, record it with your
phone.
That's how you put them together, right?
Balloons ended up being the same thing.
What do I know about building balloons?
Which became my second job there, right?
Well, again, you go and you watch some people and they say, look, all these materials, youcan't mess with it.
(13:54):
This is very technical stuff.
But this is how you put it together.
And this essentially, when we were talking about how will Volt be used, we're lucky enoughto have access to a lot of people that have been in this industry for 20 plus years.
And they say, look, you have to understand that the same job could be done by differentpeople at the same organization.
(14:17):
One is very technical.
Another person is not technical at all.
But they can still perform the job.
So the product has to be so intuitive that it virtually does not allow you to makemistakes.
Of course we weren't there when we first launched it, but with every single quarter itbecomes better better closer to that goal But the idea from it came from exactly that can
(14:38):
we package all the difficult stuff right and essentially allow the you know 10 5 % ofHere's what you do and if the person looks at the wrong thing or clicks on the wrong thing
the product will actually say nope do this right and I can't claim
I can't claim credit for building that because this is all Dmitry and his team, they'rephenomenal at what they do.
(15:03):
But at least that concept was very well understood by everybody as soon as we startedbuilding the product.
Let's go a little deeper on that.
So I think you gave me one good example of how you've put some guardrails to simplify theuser interface.
um Let's put ourselves in the shoes of say a security manager at a middle market company.
(15:24):
How are they going to interact with your system versus a traditional security platform?
Because I think you've also got some type of uh chat GPT-esque functionality in yourportal.
Am I correct about that?
Okay, so um with that,
With that said, how would a security manager interact with your system versus a moretraditional type of platform?
(15:45):
So think about the traditional platform, alright?
Once you buy it, you essentially have an army of people that will tell you that you needto go to this university and these training courses and you have to be certified on this
platform and then you get your silver certification, then you get gold certification,platinum certification, come on people, really?
(16:06):
Like are you kidding me?
I think it takes less time to learn how to fly a plane, right?
m
By the way, without a sense of humor, I'm joking.
Flying the plane is very difficult.
ah
Why is it so difficult?
Why is it so necessary?
It's literally cameras, right?
They're cameras.
They're cameras that are looking at stuff.
(16:27):
And what you need to know is where does it record, how long does it record for, how do Ipull that video, and if it's got any kind of active analytics or AI, right?
These are the type of triggers that I want to be notified, and this, we need to know aboutthem between certain time shifts, whatever.
That's it, right?
You don't need a university for that.
The reason that they need universities is because a lot of, historically, a lot of money,
(16:50):
and development effort has been dumped into functionality of these products.
And unfortunately, without actually asking which functionality is necessary and which isjust bells and whistles that will never be used, right?
But very little effort was thrown into the usability of the products.
When you open it up, you're like, oh, there's 27 menus with 2,700 submenus, and everysingle button tells me something to do that doesn't allow me to do anything.
(17:19):
You need universities and certification courses.
Why that was built the way it's built and it hasn't changed, I'm not going to get intothat.
Everybody can make their own.
their own conclusions from it, but we wanted to get away from it.
Meaning, our system, you asked me very interesting question.
How do we want security managers to interact with our systems?
(17:43):
We don't.
We don't want them interacting with the system.
We want the system to tell them what to do.
That simple, right?
Meaning, if the system tells you what to do and it gives you relevant, actionableinformation that you don't need to press any more buttons, you just need to go and execute
and do the human thing that is absolutely necessary and is not going away anytime soon, ifever, right?
(18:08):
Then we did our job.
Because think about how many things does a security manager have to manage on a dailybasis.
Everything from phones to issuing badges to false alarms to customer service to talking tocross-functional members of other teams to facilities to HR to whatever right there day is
full and it's very very busy on a daily basis So are we asking them?
(18:31):
on top of that now you have to manage the system that is looking at thousands of camerasNo, I think the ideal scenario and again, we're not at the ideal point yet But we're much
better than most if not all of them
Meaning that take the upfront time cost and sit with them and understand their riskprofiles for their buildings, understand their operations, understand their shifts,
(18:55):
understand what their SOPs are, right?
And then literally set up the system for them that way.
And yes, the user can go into the system and still look at the cameras and pull the videoand do all that other legacy stuff.
Nothing about it is difficult.
But the proactive piece of them, we can set that up for you.
and then the system now knows what you care about, it is smart enough to flag anomaliesthat you don't even know you probably care about.
(19:20):
And at that point, just let it run in the background and do its job.
And then if something goes wrong and something on the black screen pops up front andcenter saying this is what's happening, this is where it's happening, this is what you
need to do, go and execute.
Because guess what?
This information is now received by everybody else that you know needs to get thisinformation because we talked about it previously.
(19:44):
So now everybody can just go and do their job and after that event is over, be it aviolent event, a safety event, a whatever the case may be, then we do a hot wash or in
other words a I forgot, we call it a hot wash in the army, but it's a post-mortem, it's aafter action report.
(20:09):
debrief.
Debrief, yeah, correct.
So now we look at it and even if it's a success or a failure, you say what went well, whatdidn't go well, and how can we improve going forward, right?
After the crisis is over.
But the idea behind it actively being managed by somebody, think it's the past and I thinkmore and more systems need to essentially become a value add that runs in the background
(20:35):
and makes professional's lives easier and more effective than just another tool with tonsof information that needs to be managed.
You just laid out a lot of complex pieces here and there were a number of things thatcaught my attention.
You talked about the information overload that the managers are dealing with.
You talked about all the superfluous and quite frankly, probably unnecessary bells andwhistles in traditional systems and the complexity that's there.
(21:05):
And I know that one of the things that you're very interested in is using
the tools that you're building to reduce safety and security mistakes uh due to fatigueand attention uh or lack of training, things like that.
I'm interested, what are some of the common human failure modes that you see intraditional security operations?
(21:26):
Because I think you've started to talk about how your system addresses some of those, butI'm interested uh in your experience here uh with respect to where you see...
the humans failing because I think there's a through line between that and what you'resaying the system that you guys have built does directly which is takes a lot of the
decisions processing uh out of the hands of the the manager and directs them where theirattention needs to be but that said failure modes
(21:54):
Let's talk about the first one, which is a pretty big one.
Let's say that you and I run an organization that has 250 cameras, which is a very, verylow.
This is like a high school.
okay.
So you can imagine if, just think about it that I said 250 cameras, but then think about500, know, 1,000, 1,500, et cetera.
(22:18):
So 250 cameras.
So let's say that our budget allows us to essentially.
make sure that we have five people watching those cameras ah at any given moment.
Well, five people, it's not like five people are sitting there and watching them.
They can't work 24 hours.
Five people means that there's one person watching those cameras 24 hours because you needthree people to cover 24 hours.
(22:44):
That's 24-7.
And then you need two other people to cover for no shows, for holidays, for sick days, forwhatever the case may be.
So even though we have a budget for five people, it's only one person watching thosecameras for eight hours.
Now, can a person effectively watch 250 cameras on one screen?
Absolutely not.
Meaning that either you have a lot of screens with, you know, 5, 10, 15, 9, 12, whateverthe configuration is, screens at any given moment, or you have one screen that constantly
(23:17):
flips through various cameras.
In most cases, it's a couple, two, three screens that also constantly flip to hit the 250.
So what are the chances?
Let's say this is the perfect human being that will literally stare at those screens andwill notice everything that is happening on those small little uh squares and they will be
(23:38):
able to pick up anything that happens there.
What are the chances that they will be able that once something happens in an area that'sexactly going to be the camera that they're looking at?
Slim to none.
Now let's say we remove the superhuman that I just mentioned that doesn't exist.
And then we go to what does happen with actual humans.
(24:01):
They read books, they look at their phones, they talk to other people, they glance andthey're saying, well, if I see something, then great, right?
Plus, human factors, attention span, training, motivation.
Did you have enough to sleep?
Did you fail your exam?
Did you get into a fight with your spouse?
(24:21):
All of that goes into how motivated or not motivated, how on or off at that particularmoment within that particular shift you are.
That is just the reality, right?
And from you being fantastic to you having a very bad day is just one phone call fromwhatever, right?
And that is one of the biggest failure modes where previously a lot of these legacysystems and unfortunately still a lot of the newer systems are coming to market that has
(24:49):
been the failure point.
Meaning the systems are very much reactive and they're very much created for collection ofinformation in this case video for investigative and post investigative purposes.
Investigative let's find out what happened post investigative meaning let's process all ofthis and put the policies and the trainings in place to try
(25:10):
and prevent stuff like that happening ever again.
Imagine that you have all these cameras connected to a very smart brain that now can flywhen any anytime there's a fight Anytime when somebody hops a fence anytime when somebody
collapses due to a possible medical emergency anybody that brings a weapon ah Whatever thecase may be You know you can still look at those screens for whatever day you want But at
(25:36):
least you know that if that screen is not pulled up if you're not not looking at thatsquare if something happens It'll pop in front of you front and send their
hey pay attention there's an issue so it eliminates a lot of the failures on on that endah I have others by the way but just I'm gonna take a breather if you ask me some
(25:57):
questions
No, I think that's a perfect example.
And the way you led us through the idea of 250 cameras in a school and the amount offatigue that is going to be heaped upon the individual watching that and the solution that
you're bringing to bear.
think that really brings that home.
And it begs another question here on my end, since you surface the example of a school, Iknow during our pre-interview,
(26:24):
You shared a really compelling vision with me.
You shared, and I hope it's okay for me to share this, you talked about your vision thatif Volt could reduce violence in educational spaces by just 1%, that that would be
immensely gratifying to you.
I went out and I looked.
There's something like 130,000 plus K-12 schools and higher ed institutions out there.
(26:50):
a 1 %...
Delta on that or a 1 % impact on that amount of educational institutions that would behuge so I guess uh I'm interested in a couple things uh number one We're talking about
violence.
So I'm interested What is your definition of violence and then I'm also interested in thegoal at that 1 % goal How might you measure progress so that you're feeling like you are
(27:18):
making an impact?
Well, everything that you said is correct.
I'm just going to make one small correction.
We're not striving for the 1%.
We would love for it to be 100%.
What I was merely trying to say is that building a company like that is a 10 plus yearmarriage.
(27:39):
is 10 plus years of our lives, the people, Dimitri, myself, and other early found...
team members of VOLT, right, that will have to make a lot of sacrifices in order to buildthis.
What I'm trying to say is that even if we see a positive outcome of 1 % reduction insafety and security events, specifically violence, within the educational space, this is
(28:06):
something to be proud of and say that I did not sacrifice 10 years of my life for nothing,right, because this deals with kids and kids are our future.
That's just the reality in any society.
And I didn't mean to imply that you're only driving toward 1%.
Okay.
Sure.
No, I appreciate that.
Let's start from the beginning.
(28:28):
Meaning, how do I classify or define violence?
Keep in mind, this is my definition, but anything...
be it security or safety or whatever the case may be that make our students feel unsafewhen they go to school.
When I went to middle school and high school here in the US, I didn't think about metaldetectors.
(28:52):
I didn't think about shootings.
I didn't think about active shooter drills.
That was not the case.
My only worry was that if I decide to skip class, I'm going to get caught by my footballcoach who's also the security guy and he's going to make me regret it.
That was my only fear, right?
right.
But now unfortunately that is not the case.
And be it a shooting, obviously, that's self-explanatory.
(29:15):
But also, you will not believe some of the events that we catch.
Things like bullying, right?
When a group of kids locks another kid in a party party or something like that.
Things like we've seen kids collapse in the hallways between classes due to diabetes anddue to seizures and whatever the case may be.
Well, yeah, if they collapse and they don't get any help for 45 minutes because everybodyelse is
(29:39):
busy and the hallways are empty versus they get help within seconds.
Even if they have that condition and they go to school and they understand that somethinghappens to me, there's this there's this guardian angel right that is watching over me
that will make sure that I get help.
Will the kids still worry about that?
Sure, right.
But will they at least know that chances are you're to get help that you need?
(30:02):
And that's how I define not just violence, but just the safety aspect overall.
I just want to make sure that
When kids go to their respective schools, be it elementary schools, middle schools, highschools, whatever the case may be, they feel safe.
And more importantly, their parents also feel safe.
That is on that side.
How do we measure?
(30:25):
First of all, I am not that smart to figure out how to run the statistics of how tomeasure societal changes and percentages.
uh
balloons.
Well, I put them together.
There's the difference in building them and putting them together.
ah
But what I can tell that between Dimitri and the other engineers that we have, they'reabsolutely smart enough to do that.
(30:47):
And even right now, we collect a lot of data.
And by the way, when they say that, it's customers, they own their own data with us.
We don't sell data.
We don't do anything with that.
It is their data.
But internally, we collect a lot to essentially see how effective our systems are.
And this is something that is being checked over and over again on a continuous basis tomake sure that our system is continuously improving.
(31:12):
And I'm sure ah there's a win.
mean, we already are discussing those and we are collaborating essentially with everysingle customer that we have.
Because keep in mind, once a system is onboarded, we either have weekly meetings with themor monthly or quarterly.
There's constant reviews and QBRs where the customer has the ability to say, this iswhat's going well, this is what's not going well, and these are the things that your
(31:36):
system is not doing that we would like it to do.
So there's constant back and forth feedback.
But one of that feedbacks is also how do we measure success and what does success mean toyou specifically at this customer because they're not all alike Some customers really care
about you know violence because they're in very bad neighborhoods other customers reallycare about You know people not paying when they park in their parking garages, right?
(32:00):
That is that is their big deal
But generally speaking, success deals with safety and security of the students.
And there is a lot of different metrics that could be tracked that says, hey, historicallyover the past three years, this is what we've been seeing, both reported internally as
well as caught by the system.
(32:20):
And this is what we're seeing now.
And again, not a data scientist.
I'm sure there is a million of different holes that somebody can poke into it and say,well, it's not that black and white.
Sure.
But if we can at least get some positive signals, oh let's say in three, four, five years,whenever VOLT becomes a household name, where we can say, hey, listen, sure, all you smart
(32:45):
brainiacs out there, here's the data.
Please tell us if we're wrong or if we really are seeing a decrease in some of thesesafety and security events, i.e.
we can make the conclusion that...
I think these operations, these facilities, these buildings, these schools are becomingsafer.
(33:06):
It's a very long answer to your question and I mumbled a little bit, but hopefully some ofthat made sense.
No, I think that made a lot of sense and I appreciate the context and your answer alsomade me realize that we've been focused predominantly here on educational institutions
within our conversation, but I believe you have clients outside of education as well,correct?
(33:28):
What's the equivalent value proposition for, I don't know, manufacturer or an officebuilding or retail location?
because their risks and incidents are looking a little bit different I would imagine thanin the educational sector.
Well, for our non-education customers, mean, the reason that they buy Vault is still dueto safety and security risks.
(33:51):
The reason that we started focusing more and more on education is because safety andsecurity of kids hits much harder than safety and security of employees as grown adults.
Unfortunately, I would love for enterprise customers to take that justice seriously asstudents and staff within K through 12 as well as higher ed facilities take it.
(34:14):
But unfortunately, that is not the case.
At least that is not the case now, and that's what we have not found that to be the casein the past.
three years since we started deploying to customers because we would be we would pitch anenterprise client and say hey listen
this is what we do, is how we can help you.
And we get somebody who is very passionate about the subject because something happenedpreviously, or they came from an organization where they know that this is a serious thing
(34:41):
that can really damage a company's reputation, right?
And they're all in.
They're all in in understanding whether you are the correct solution, not the correctsolution.
And if you are the correct solution, how can they bring it to the table?
Maybe it's only one facility instead of all of them first, right?
But they're engaged, right?
Others,
That's not a priority.
(35:02):
Whatever you want, however you put it, they're like, this is really cool, but I have25,000 other things that I believe I would much rather spend our money on.
With education though, that was a very eye-opening moment where within 30 seconds it justclicks to them.
Because again, let's be honest, most people become educators because they care.
(35:23):
They really, really care about their students and about making those facilities and thoseenvironments as student-friendly as possible.
And it clicks.
They may not have a project.
They may not know anything about the system or this industry in general.
They may not have the money, but they are so engaged and they're asking
asking you in some case and please help me figure out how I can bring this on at least forone school at least for a couple of cameras right one of the reasons why we do free pilots
(35:51):
right in most cases not for all right but in most cases we do free pilots because even ifthey don't have the budget and even but they need to show this to somebody that has the
ability to give them some budget for next year and it's within a school or a university wewill do but we'll be like hey use the system it's not now it's not just a concept now but
(36:12):
like put your hands
for so to say, right?
See how it works.
It's just a very different mentality we have found when you talk to educators, even ifthey know nothing about it, they immediately understand the benefits and the positive
impacts that could happen if they bring a system like that into their schools.
Very good.
(36:33):
I'd like to return for a moment to some of your experiences working at Google X.
And I'm not interested in unpacking specific experiences, but what I'm interested in isworking there exposed you to, quite frankly, some of the most ambitious technology
development in the world, taking moonshots, doing really big things in a culture where Ithink they often talk about attempting the impossible.
(36:59):
So.
With that experience in your rear view mirror, what lessons did you bring with you tovault from that uh deliberately?
And what lessons did you leave behind?
Because you're building a very different company than the one that you were at.
It was a very humbling moment at the age of 25 to end up at Google X because
(37:31):
I thought I was, well, I was above average, you know, between my hobbies and my intellectand my abilities to do stuff and everything that I've achieved to that point.
I was like, yeah, I'm feeling pretty good, right?
Most rooms that I work into, I'm in the top percentile.
And then you get there.
And guess what?
(37:52):
Oh, you have one degree, they have three, right?
And not only two of them are in aerospace engineering from MBA, but one of them is fromHarvard, right?
As an MBA.
And then they have another one, the fourth degree from like, uh, some Juilliard school ofmusic, just because they wanted to learn piano.
(38:13):
And you're like, okay, that's, that's the first hit on my chin.
Then I was like, you jump out of airplanes, but so do they, but they also build airplanesand helicopters in their garage.
So they can actually fly their own contraptions to a
drop zone, land, do some jumps, get back to it and fly home.
Right?
you do pretty well in fitness.
yeah, they run ultra marathons on top of doing all that stuff.
(38:35):
Right?
and on top of that, right?
They're building all this cool stuff at Google and they've been, and they make it seemlike they don't care.
Right?
It's just, it's, it's that simple to them.
And you immediately sit down and you realize, holy crap, what did I just get myself into?
That was Google X.
(38:55):
And what I realized is that it's synchro swap, meaning that everybody's super nice.
Everybody from...
The lowest people that are interns to all the way to the most senior people that make thebest.
Everybody's super nice and everybody will give you the tool and will give you theenvironment for you to learn if you want to.
(39:18):
But guess what?
You're gonna have to get out of your comfort zone.
You're gonna have to go on Amazon and buy some books and start reading certain subjects.
You're gonna have to understand that you're going to walk into a room and you're going tobe the dumbest person ever for a very long time.
Hmm
But if you just learn 15 % of what these people know, all of a sudden, your life willchange.
(39:39):
And now they will find used to, yeah, of course you're not going to be coding just as wellas somebody that just spent 12 years at MIT learning or some other place learning
robotics, right?
But you will be able to do a job that they need you to do, right?
And that will make you an asset to the team, and that will make your project succeed.
(39:59):
And if your project succeeds, everybody else involved in this project will succeed.
But it's a very humbling experience and some people did that they were like, okay I'mgonna be the dumb person of the year for the next three years But I'm okay with that
because I am here to learn right and other people
they washed out, but they washed out not because people made them wash out, they washedout on their own because they were like, I'm not spending the next two, three years
(40:25):
essentially working 10, 12 hours a day plus studying an extra six just to make sure that Idon't fail at my job.
Nope, thank you, I'm good.
And there's various reasons for that.
I was young, I was single, I had zero responsibilities, so to say, right?
There's people with families and kids and all that.
So I understand that not everybody's built equal, but that mentality,
(40:46):
where always hire people that are smarter than you, stay with us to this day.
Like, I like the fact that I consider myself, let's be honest, technically.
dumbest person in my company, right?
It is phenomenal, right?
But what does the team, it means that, you know, I can say something and then people mightlisten to me and they'll be like, okay, cool.
(41:09):
All right, we got it.
But then they will go and actually build what they know that we want, but they will do itthe right way.
Right?
So I'm just a very big believer, like all jokes aside, that if you hire people that aresmarter than you, your company will skyrocket.
If you, if you're insecure about that, and you always need to essentially be the smart
(41:30):
the person in the room or the big boss in the room, you're in for a very rough ride.
That is just the reality.
So that is the mentality that I tried to bring from Google X into this company.
Hire people smarter than you and they will build exactly what needs to be built withoutneeding you to do babysitting.
(41:54):
The thing that I didn't bring is that...
Unfortunately, as organizations get bigger and they get older, a lot of bureaucracy comesinto play.
A lot of politics come into play.
A lot of things that, in my opinion, they kill innovation.
And I don't think Google X was at that point when I left.
(42:16):
I don't think Google was at that point when I left.
love Google, Alphabet now.
I think they're phenomenal companies and I think they taught me more about how to succeedthan anybody ever did.
So I will forever be grateful to those companies and those people.
But I've also noticed some trends where...
(42:39):
people that were really willing to do the work and to essentially to do whatever isnecessary to learn to make sure that the project and the company succeeds.
also we started getting people that were there just to essentially there was a saying it'scalled the rest and best essentially do nothing and make sure you stock best.
(43:00):
All right.
Because you're a typical in the four year vesting schedule.
Right.
And nothing kills the morale of high performers more than understand
that because of some political skills or some bureaucratic skills, those people willessentially will get just promoted just as fast as you will, in some cases even faster.
(43:23):
Or they're so adept to essentially jumping company to company and doing the rest investthat they know the game very well and...
They don't accomplish anything, but at the same time they keep growing.
And it's this sense of unfairness where we should be judged on performance ah and theresults that we deliver, but some of us are and some of us are not.
(43:48):
And it's a...
It's something, it's part of our four core values at Vault.
One of them is being B direct.
Meaning that if you see something that you disagree with, doesn't matter if it's an internand they see something that I do they disagree with.
Trust me, I do plenty of things people disagree with.
And so does Dimitri.
(44:09):
Say something.
Your job will never be jeopardized based on your opinions.
It just won't, right?
You're here to do a job.
If you're part of the team, you're here to make sure you figure out how to work well withthat team, and then you accomplish.
That's it.
Everything else, focus on delivering results.
That is the biggest thing that you need to worry about.
(44:32):
So to summarize things is that I don't know if this is just a natural beast of companiesgetting bigger and the pressure of hiring quicker, whatever the case may be, that the
quality of people that you hire becomes to drop a little bit.
And we will try, and I think we've done a great job at this point, keep our company asclose as possible to that perfection where people get in because they're driven, because
(44:59):
they're smart, because they want to accomplish things, and everything else, how they talk,what they think, none of that really matters.
It's all about delivering results.
So they never have to feel like they're doing all the work and somebody next to them isdoing no work, but at the same time everybody's getting kudos at the same level, at the
same frequency.
I think you uh just inadvertently answered a question that I was going to ask you abouthow you build a startup team that's charged with doing the impossible.
(45:28):
And I think you really gave me some context around that.
So let me pivot and ask you when you're building something that's quote impossible, uhwhat is still impossible that you're working on?
Because you've clearly made a lot of other strides toward building tech.
and breathing life into things and making them possible from your starting point all thoseyears ago.
(45:49):
So what's still impossible that you're working on?
I don't think anything is impossible to tell you sure.
It's actually part of my email, my personal email handle still I think.
Nothing is impossible.
I truly don't believe in anything impossible.
I think there's a matter of resources and timing.
(46:09):
Something that we do today was, I mean, you couldn't do this 150 years ago, it wasimpossible for them.
But is it impossible?
No, it's not.
Timing and resources.
To us, even building the product that we currently have, initially it seemed close toimpossible.
It said, we're going to try it, we don't know how it's going to work.
(46:31):
uh Now, obviously, oh integrating what you said, the chat GPT functionality into ourproduct to make sure that people, can just talk to the product and the product will do
what they want.
uh
seemed impossible.
Now we have it working.
It's still not where we want it to be ultimately, but it's a long journey, but it'sworking, right?
(46:54):
I don't really want to get into our roadmap.
You don't want to spill everything right now?
Oh, OK.
You can do it.
uh But there's a lot of things that even right now when we're sitting and we're thinkingabout what will Volt look like in 18 months and 36 months and five years, whatever.
ah There's a lot of things that we're like, we're going to do this and we agree that we'regoing to do this.
(47:19):
But how we're going to do this, we have no clue.
We have no clue how we're going to do it.
But tell you what, we'll figure it out.
Well, let's let's talk about that a little bit more not in terms of the the how but maybein terms of how you're thinking about things and I'll ground this in this next question
There is a ton of talk about agentic AI right now, right uh AI agents.
(47:44):
It's a hot topic We're starting to finally see the emergence of some of the promise uhhere in 2025 in terms of what they could possibly do I'm interested about how you're
thinking about AI agents within the context of physical support
physical security and the role that they could play in Volt's future.
(48:04):
Can you shed any light on how you're thinking about those?
I mean, to be honest, I'm not.
This is more, this goes so beyond my expertise that even if I try to come up and tell yousome elaborate answer right now, what I think is going to happen, I'm 99.9 % sure that I
(48:25):
will be wrong, right?
What I do spend most of my time thinking about is how do we turn
I believe the best security is the security that you don't see.
It's just magic that works.
So now when you're going through all these purchasing, be it RFPs or just purchasingprocesses for systems.
(48:50):
The front and center focus is always on, in the systems world, it's always cameras.
Cameras, cameras, cameras, cameras.
And if I have $10 and I need to buy cameras, and cameras cost $10, and AI costs $10, I'mobviously going to buy cameras, right?
Because without cameras, nothing can be done.
(49:12):
The problem that I see with that is that cameras without their ability to be proactive andwork in real time are useless.
They're collecting a bunch of information that most of that information goes unused andnobody ever watches it again.
Is there a way to marry that?
Meaning that is there a way where...
(49:33):
people will understand that having more cameras than zero AI is actually useless, buthaving less cameras, but a very smart system and those cameras placed correctly, right?
Well, all of a sudden...
give you the ability to offload 80 % of all the manual processes that you currently dowith all your people managing all your security systems.
(49:55):
So, sorry I couldn't answer the question that you asked, I just wanted to say that that'swhat I spend most of my time thinking about, is how do we get to that point?
Well, people will finally understand that cameras by themselves and people with butts inseats looking at monitors does not improve their security.
It just doesn't.
Or if it does, it's so incremental that it's unnoticeable.
(50:17):
Sure.
Well, I think you did answer the question actually.
em I think you talked about the best security is that which is invisible.
And I think that runs directly to the heart of a lot of missions of tech powered companiesin that the tech should be invisible.
It should be seamless, which is one of the things that we've talked about here before inour discussion today, which is making it as easy as possible for a three year old child to
(50:43):
operate.
Right.
It's the same premise.
So
I think you did answer that question, so thank you.
uh No, no, no.
uh Look, the agentic piece of it, that's technical wizardry ah as opposed to thephilosophy that's overlaying it, which I think you very succinctly described there.
(51:05):
So speaking of philosophy, I'm also interested in uh the idea of purpose.
You talked about the core values that power your organization earlier.
And I know that you've got uh a passion for this.
And so my question to you is, as an entrepreneur that's pursuing a passion, that has apurpose, that's using tech to make the world a better place, but also somebody that has to
(51:30):
raise capital to deliver returns, how do you balance that mission-driven purpose with thecommercial imperative?
Are they in tension and conflict?
Are they in alignment?
What's that look like from your standpoint?
you find the right investors.
And again, we are lucky enough to have some amazing advisors and amazing friends.
(51:54):
Most of them have run companies and sold companies, became investors, introduced us toother investors.
Great investors know other great investors.
We've said no to money that we believe that it's not going to be right for us for sure.
But so far we've...
we've surrounded ourselves by investors that, by the way, they're investors.
(52:15):
Their job is not to make us happy or be friends with us.
There's a ton of times where we were not doing well.
It's a startup where they would, in a very polite and very diplomatic way, still eat usalive in those calls.
That's their job, right?
It's okay.
It's nothing personal, But at least if they're passionate about the things that you'repassionate about.
(52:37):
And if they believe...
where at least they believe that there's a chance of you succeeding in that becausethey're still passionate through it, they will have your back even when things go bad.
ah So when we make commercial decisions and when we make decisions that deal with what theproduct is going to look like or how...
(52:58):
Who are we going to go after in terms of sales and marketing and how we're going to priceour product?
Which things are we going to prioritize that we believe will increase the demand andstickiness of our product?
We never have to really worry about what will the investors say.
because we surrounded ourselves with such good investors that they understand that we knowmore about the space than they do.
(53:21):
They know investments.
They know building companies.
They know great people.
They're phenomenal at that stuff.
But they trust us to make a decision to make sure that the company keeps growing, right,and that eventually they will see the returns on their money and their time that they've
put into us.
So I guess that's a very long way of saying that at this point we're very lucky to
(53:44):
surrounded our cap table essentially with the right people.
So our time is uh starting to draw very short here.
So I want to ask you one or two final questions.
Since we're talking about investors, we're talking about the organization.
If you project five years ahead down the road for Volt, what does success look like foryou?
(54:08):
We are the market leader in our industry and education in the US.
Both K through 12, public and private, as well as higher ed, colleges, universities,cetera.
And how do you measure that market leader status?
What's most meaningful?
If you go into a school and it's one of three types of people, they either have Volt, theyeither are about to get Volt, or they know about Volt and they decided to get something
(54:37):
else, we're a market leader.
I love it.
All things volt.
Wonderful.
That's great.
Let me ask you one other question here, Igor.
uh I know that you engage in, shall we call them a lot of high-risk activities outside ofthe office, right?
(54:57):
uh For you, number one, what's your favorite high-risk activity?
Skydiving.
Okay.
And uh I believe you mentioned in our prep call when we were talking about that, uh Ithink I asked you, what do your investors say about those high risk activities?
And you said to me something along the lines of.
(55:20):
They're not too happy about it, the ones that know about it.
But they know that if I don't do that, that is the best way for me to stay sane.
So I think they've accepted that unwillingly.
and that's exactly what I wanted to ask you.
Are those activities necessary for somebody that is constantly pushing the bleeding edgeto stay sane?
(55:42):
Do you need to have those types of outlets?
I think if you're not happy in your personal life, you'll never be happy at work.
And if you can't build a great personal life, you'll never be able to build a greatcompany.
ah That's my personal belief.
People can argue with me until they're blown in face, but I'm going to stick to my guns.
(56:02):
And here's why.
Building a company...
again, these are not my words.
believe Sam Alton said that in one of his talks where every smart entrepreneur understandsthat it's going to be difficult and there's going to be ups and downs.
What they don't understand is how frequent those ups and downs will be, how high the upswill be, how low the downs will be, and the unpredictable nature of when they come.
(56:30):
And they always come in the most...
Inconvenient times.
So you're essentially being beaten up physically and mentally for years.
For years, right?
You're constantly under constant stress and you have to put on a smile, a positiveattitude, wake up in the morning and get in the shark tank again and again and again and
(56:54):
again and things are going to fail and things are not going to work and investors aregoing to be pissed off at you and your family is going to be pissed at you and you're
going to lose friends and you're going to lose family and you're going to
lose so many different things, right?
And you have to continue, keep going, keep going and keep going.
Well, if you just do that and you don't have a release and the release can be different.
Some people play chess and people golf, some people grow tomatoes, other people go tomusic shows.
(57:19):
My releases are skydiving, scuba diving, snowmobiling, motorcycling, pretty mucheverything that deals with adrenaline.
That is what I love to do because I know that if I do one jump, just one,
I drive back with a big smile.
If cars cut me off, I don't even care.
I'm listening to music, I'm happy.
(57:42):
I just threw myself out of an airplane.
Gravity's not going away.
It didn't kill me.
I'm happy.
I can't think of a better place to uh end our discussion today than on you being happy.
So uh thank you for sharing all that, especially that last bit of insight.
(58:04):
I think that that's really valuable for anybody that's not just founding a company butleading a company.
there are not a lot of people out there that understand the pressures of leading anorganization, let alone founding and growing it.
So I appreciate you giving us.
some insight into that and sharing those experiences with us here today.
It was my pleasure.
(58:24):
So, all right, for our listeners that want to learn more about you, maybe they want totake you skydiving, maybe they just want to get in touch, they want to purchase some Volt
equipment and AI, what's the best way for them to do that?
of all that AI is the best.
And then feel free to just contact me directly on LinkedIn.
Fantastic.
(58:45):
All right, Igor, this was a true pleasure.
I would love to have you back uh once you've not only hit, but massively exceeded that 1 %target that we talked about earlier.
So thank you for your time.
Thank you for yours.
It was a pleasure.
And for all of our listeners out there, thank you for your time and thank you for tuningin to AI for the C-suite where we're committed to helping middle market leaders thrive
(59:09):
during the exponential age.
If you found value in today's discussion, be sure to subscribe to our podcast, follow uson all the socials and visit our site, aiforthecsuite.com.
Join us next time as we continue to unlock the potential of AI for your organization.
And until then, keep your algorithms running, your leadership evolving.
(59:30):
and your AI in check.
Thanks everybody.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Male Room with Dr. Jesse Mills
As Director of The Men’s Clinic at UCLA, Dr. Jesse Mills has spent his career helping men understand their bodies, their hormones, and their health. Now he’s bringing that expertise to The Male Room — a podcast where data-driven medicine meets common sense. Each episode separates fact from hype, science from snake oil, and gives men the tools to live longer, stronger, and happier lives. With candor, humor, and real-world experience from the exam room and the operating room, Dr. Mills breaks down the latest health headlines, dissects trends, and explains what actually works — and what doesn’t. Smart, straightforward, and entertaining, The Male Room is the show that helps men take charge of their health without the jargon.