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Tech Topics In This Article: Security tech, Georgia startups
Prevent. Predict. Protect.
Law enforcement groups, national security agencies, and first responders all have tools to react to threats. But the data they need to prevent crime is often found in disparate and hard-to-find locations.
That’s where the security-focused startup Bravo Foxtrot hopes to make its mark. The company, based out of Canton, Georgia, is “taking raw intelligence and turning it into actionable intelligence,” said Founder Brandon Puhlman. The goal is to provide law enforcement officials and first responders with the investigative tools to predict, prevent, and respond to criminal activities accurately, efficiently, and safely.
Agencies can speak to the platform in plain English about a real-time criminal investigation they are working on and gather information that can be more easily shared across jurisdictions who are involved in an active case.
But the AI-powered platform is not designed to give law enforcement agencies blanket access to information. Instead, Puhlman said the platform is built with strict safeguards to ensure responsible data use and compliance with legal and ethical standards.
“There has to be a justified reason for officers and agencies to go out and track this type of behavior. The end all goal is to save lives, to enhance rescue operations, keep the community safer, build community trust,” he added.
Get To Know The Team
Founder Brandon Puhlman, based in Canton, Georgia, is a veteran of both the Marine Corps and the United States Army, where he worked in combat operations. After a stint as a project management at the DoD (Department of Defense), Puhlman transitioned into law enforcement, working as a security police officer at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and then as a police officer and detective for the Sandy Springs Police in Metro Atlanta.
With a focus on undercover narcotics and human trafficking cases, he realized a problem with how information was being shared and how siloed it could be during an active investigation.
“I just saw so many discrepancies in how we collected information and how we disseminated that information across agencies,” Puhlman told Hypepotamus. Often he would be working across eight or nine pieces of software, making it “almost impossible to track and identify all the actors and players” associated with each open case he was working.
He started thinking about a better way to collect important police and security data in 2020, when he was working with outdated information that caused him to wait for a subject to show up at a location but he never did.
Today, the team has grown to include Co-founder Frank Esposito, Carly Simenauer (Chief of Product), Brandon Payne (COO), Steve Lewis (VP of Ops), Brian Meek (Director of Sales), and Hailey McCoy (Business Development Manager).
Backing Bravo Foxtrot
Bootstrapped to get off the ground, Bravo Foxtrot was able to raise the startup’s first $100,000 last April from Alpharetta-based realtor and investor Jenny Doyle.
Now, the team is looking to complete its capital raise through WeFunder, a popular crowdfunding platform known as the “Kickstarter for investing.”
The startup’s WeFunder link can be founder here.
Bravo Foxtrot is also on a hiring spree, with multiple engineering, finance, and sales roles open on their job board.
Starting in Georgia, Puhlman said his goal is to bring the technology to law enforcement agencies across the Southeast region over the next 24 months.
