“I think what it means to be an entrepreneur is to be someone who pays so much attention to their environment that they recognize when the status quo isn’t good enough for people who are being affected,” said Perimeter co-founder Bailey Farren on the most recent episode of the Stairway to CEO podcast.

Stairway to CEO is a weekly podcast released by Future Commerce, where host Lee Greene interviews startup founders and CEOs to trace their trajectory as entrepreneurs and isolate key takeaways for organizational leadership. Farren was invited to discuss her personal experiences in both public safety and business management, as well as the unique challenges of selling to government and public safety buyers.

After growing up with a close familiarity with public safety — her parents are both first responders — Farren was inspired to start Perimeter following the devastation the 2017 Tubbs Fire left behind in her hometown of Santa Rosa. The company started as a research project at UC Berkeley, where she learned that firefighters and other responders are relying on World War II-era tools like radios and paper maps to respond to major wildfires.

“I’m over here swimming in tech, just an hour up north in the Bay Area, and yet none of my friend or family who are evacuating from Santa Rosa have any information,” Farren said. “I know how much money is being poured into real-time technology, analytics, data science, etc. just an hour north of us. Why did we have nothing?”

The podcast episode is available online here.

By Trevor Greenan. Questions? Get in touch at tgreenan@perimeterplatform.com.

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