268 - Building a Team: The Importance of Diverse Perspectives in Startup Culture with Perimeter's Bailey Farren

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Ailie Ferrin, you are the CEO and founder of a company called Perimeter, which can be found at perimeterplatform.com. Welcome to Listening with Leaders.

Thank you. It's really good to be here.

So we were just talking before we started recording about the company that you're a co-founder of. And why don't you just give us a quick Reader's Digest version of what you guys do?

Absolutely. So Perimeter is a mapping platform that makes it really easy for first responders to share information with each other and with the public during emergencies and natural disasters. So it's collaborative amongst the first responders, but for the public, all they have to do is click a link to access the real-time information that in many cases is relevant to their own life safety.

And as we were talking about it, as I understand it, that website is called perimetermap.com, and it will take your GPS information and co-locate you with whatever emergency might be going on in your area and give you an update. On evacuation warnings, orders, stuff like that.

Exactly. We wanted to ensure that any member of the public could access that map-based information like evacuation zones, evacuation routes, other hazards, etc. We wanted them to be able to access that information and have no barriers to accessing it. And so all they have to do is click that link and they can enable their location services if they would like the map to jump right to their location.. But either way, you're just one click away from the information that you need from public safety agencies.

So what's the backstory of this?

It all started for me back in 2017 when I was being evacuated from my first wildfire. So I'm from Santa Rosa, California, and in 2017 we had the Tubbs Fire.

Right. I remember.

And I, I wasn't actually living in Santa Rosa at the time. I was currently a student at UC Berkeley, which is about an hour away. But my mom had just had major surgery and she needed help evacuating. So I drove to go get her out of her house. And during the evacuation, we had no information about what to do or where to go. And during a fire like Tubbs, it just isn't obvious because there are 12 fires burning simultaneously. It looks like Armageddon. It looks like nighttime in the middle of the day from all the smoke. And so knowing which direction you need to be going to evacuate isn't straightforward. And at the time, I thought that firefighters like my dad, who's, who was a firefighter in, in my county, I figured that people like him had all the information they needed to make decisions, but they couldn't get it to people like me and my mom who needed to evacuate. But then after the fire, when I started interviewing my dad's fire department and other local public safety agencies, I was really shocked to learn that actually they were primarily relying on paper maps and radios for all of their real-time situational awareness. And so that fire and that experience and that confusion led me to go back to school and just start working on this as a research project. I wanted to understand how is it possible that I can track a burrito every square foot on its way to my house, but my dad, who's a firefighter, isn't being tracked in the field and doesn't know where the fire is. How is it possible that is the state of technology today? So I went back to school to answer that question. And then about a year later, the Camp Fire happened.

Right.

And the camp— yeah, your parents were impacted.

People got—

people were killed because they went the wrong way on the road, on the roads.

Exactly. And the fire was obviously— everyone in California and many people outside of California know how devastating the Camp Fire was. But After that event, I was sitting with a bunch of first responders who were there and helping get people out and containing the fire. And I also had friends and family who were evacuated from Paradise. And from both perspectives, I heard people saying, especially on the public safety side, gosh, if only we had a way of sharing map-based information between each other with all the public safety agencies, all the people who are responding. As well as with the public. And so it was while the Camp Fire was still burning and we were all wearing N95 masks in Berkeley on campus, 'cause the smoke was so bad, even 250 miles away.

Right north. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

That's when I realized, oh, this research project that I'm doing about fires, this isn't something that I can do and stay within the academy. This is something we need to build. We need to get it into the hands of as many people as possible, and we need to have it developed yesterday.

So you decided to become an entrepreneur.

I did.

How did you go about, you, you, you've done the research, you see the need, there's no product out there that meets the need. How do you, you're not a computer scientist engineer yourself, are you?

No, I'm not. I took a couple classes in college, but that's it.

What was your major in college at Berkeley, at Cal?

Cognitive science and rhetoric.

And that prepares you for going into computer science, right?

Building an app. Yeah.

And I, I went to art school before that, so I've been all over the place.

There you go. So how did you go about making this app become a reality?

Something that I love about being at a school like Berkeley and being in Silicon Valley is our proximity to some of the most talented engineers in the world is miles, if not feet, at a place like UC Berkeley. And so I was fortunate enough to be building relationships with the people who are still at Perimeter today. First and foremost, my co-founder, he's someone that I met at an, actually at an entrepreneurship startup class in Berkeley. And so I met him there and he's one of the first people that I talked to about my idea. And I actually talked to him about what was going on before the Camp Fire happened, just because I knew that something needed to be different and there needed to be a system. But at the time I thought, maybe we will do this research and then we'll give it to a big company who can actually take it and build something. Because at the time I'm not thinking, gosh, I'm 21 years old, like I'm going to start this company myself. At the time I'm like, maybe I can do the research and hand it off to someone more qualified than me. But I sat down with him and we talked about the idea. And then a couple of weeks later, the Campfire happened and When we got back together, we decided we're going to do this and it doesn't have to just be us. We can hire some of the most talented people we know. And many of the earliest employees at Perimeter were people who dropped out of UC Berkeley, whether from their undergrad or from their PhD program. But we all got together and started building collectively.

Wow. How did you fund this thing?

So we, we got our first check the week before I graduated. So that check came from a startup accelerator called Alchemist. And so we applied to Alchemist right after the campfire and we got rejected, but we reapplied 6 months later and we got accepted. So that got us our first small check, but enough to feel like we were really doing this thing. And then a few months later, I went to formally fundraise and COVID happened, which right at the same time. So we brought in a couple little checks, but I spent about 12 months fundraising and getting rejected every single day. So I think I probably have more venture capitalist rejections than anyone I know. But in 2021, we raised our first $1.5 million, which helped us to build the product and bring it to our first few customers. And then last year, we actually did a crowdfund and we raised another $4.5 million from people all over the US.. And that has helped us to take Perimeter from being mainly a platform used on the West Coast for fires and floods and hazardous material incidents to now being used in counties nationwide in the Midwest for tornadoes and severe weather, but now also deployed in Florida and Alabama with concerns about hurricanes and storm surge zones, et cetera. So The platform that we've developed, while it was inspired by fires, it's something that can be used and is being used for all types of hazards and incidents from the natural disaster side of things, even to the day-to-day road closures and special events. Really anything where public safety agencies want to get really easy, intuitive, map-based information into the hands of the public.

What has been the reception of agencies when you approach them? You're— Got this very young company, young woman coming out of Berkeley saying, hey, I got something that you might be interested in. What's their reaction when they first hear about it?

It's different now than it was when I was first pitching it, as you can imagine.

You got track record now.

Exactly. Getting our first customer was really hard because one of the first questions that people ask, especially when they're talking to a very young founder or very young founders, is who's already using this thing?. And when we can say no one, when that's our answer, then the county says, thanks, I'm going to pass. I don't want to be the first public safety agency to try this. And that's still one of the first questions that I get when I'm pitching Perimeter. It's who's already using it? And those first few counties, they took a really long time to find. Once we found the counties though, who they were innovators, they wanted to be on the forefront of getting intuitive, real-time information into the hands of the public. They, they're the trailblazers and the pioneers themselves. Once we found those people, and we were able to get the platform in their hands, really overdeliver, support their first deployments, and have such incredible success with those deployments, the additional sales beyond that have been much easier. And so now when someone asks, who's using it? Instead of saying, let me start listing the counties, I'll say, Well, let me start listing the states that are using it. And that usually checks the box for them.

Right. Wow. So just rough estimate, how many agencies are using the platform now?

So there are a lot of different public safety agencies. I don't have the exact number, but more than 250 public safety agencies to date are users of the Perimeter platform. And that's across 5 different states. But that's on the side of the public safety app that people use. On the side of the residents, we have millions of people who are using perimetermap.com to get information during disasters.

Wow. Ah, you would have never imagined that you would be where you are today 5 or 10 years ago, huh?

No, certainly not. When I was in undergrad, was I imagining being the CEO of a data-driven public safety company? Just a couple of years later. It would have been— it would have been hard to imagine. And I always tell students, anything can happen at a school like Berkeley. Keep your head on a swivel.

Exactly.

Don't go to class in your pajamas.

There you go. Today, you're in your mid-20s. What is it that gets you up in the morning, gets you excited to go to work?

Honestly, I feel like even though I'm 5 years into Perimeter, I feel like I'm totally in the honeymoon phase still. And the reason for that is because, one, this is a very complex company and environment to be working. And the complexity, it keeps everything so interesting because there's always a new interesting challenge to take on, especially when it comes to helping public safety or supporting public safety agencies with their work. There are so many different needs that they have that technology can really make a difference around. And so learning about those constantly, learning from our customers with regards to how we can continue to take Perimeter to the next level, all of the complexity is really exciting for me personally. But also, it is so incredible to be able to work on something that truly has such a positive impact on people's lives. And I knew before I graduated, I knew that I couldn't have a job that required me to pretend like it was meaningful. It had to actually be meaningful. And I feel like at Perimeter, I really get to have that incredible experience of tackling a really hard problem, but also tackling a problem where the solution and the impact of the work that we're doing is just having such a big impact on the people that we serve. And then the last thing is, you can imagine that people really underestimated me when I was pitching them.

I can imagine.

And everyone told me that this company would be impossible. They said, you'll never be able to fundraise for something like this. You'll never be able to build a product that actually can make fire departments and emergency managers and public works all happy. How could they all use the same tool? And they said, and even if you could convince someone to use it, you'll never be able to figure out how to sell to government more than maybe just one agency. And so for us, I feel like something that is so exciting is we are constantly challenging those limitations. And with every new deployment, every new pioneering emergency manager, and every new state, we're able to show that something like this is possible. And we're able to be an example for all these other young aspiring founders who are being told the exact same things that we were told, and we can be an example to them to say, you got this, keep going. Sometimes it'll feel like eating glass, but just keep chewing and you'll get there.

So tell me a little bit about your personal journey from being a fine arts, rhetoric— I caught— I missed the other major part of your major.

Cognitive science. I know.

Yeah. Okay.

Hard to keep track.

From all of that to being a CEO and founder of a— what sounds like a, a young but very successful company. There are skill sets that you were— you did not train for.

Absolutely. Yeah, I feel like being a founder is just a, a constant lesson in things you don't know how to do. And I think that's one of the things that really attracted me to the entrepreneurship space in general. Growing up, I was homeschooled for basically my entire life. Other than one random year in 4th grade, I was homeschooled. And being a homeschooler taught me that if I wanted to learn something, if I wanted to figure something out or achieve something, I had to go after it myself. And I think that's one of the reasons why I have been so interested in such a diverse range of subjects in school, because I'm so curious about all of these different things. And Perimeter has really given me an environment to unleash all of that curiosity, and I think that's one of the most helpful, hmm, one of the most helpful traits that any entrepreneur can have, not just because it helps you solve problems, but because when you're curious about the problems in your life, for me personally, it makes the journey feel a little bit lighter and a little bit more— it's like something that I can really enjoy problem solving as opposed to feeling, oh my gosh, I'm failing because I don't know this thing. Instead, I can look at it and say, oh, I don't know how to do this thing. That's going to be really fun to figure out.

So aside from tenacity and curiosity, what is it that's unique about yourself, do you think, that's allowed Perimeter to be so successful as its leader?

I think one of the most important things is I am completely dedicated to personal growth. And using Perimeter as an opportunity to become the best version of myself. And of course, I have so many goals around the impact that Perimeter is going to have as a company, but I really see entrepreneurship as an environment for coming to terms with all of your edges, all of my edges, the things that I'm not good at, and figuring out, okay, how can I use this to become the best version of myself and the most in integrity version of myself. And I sometimes see— this might sound a little bit strange, but sometimes I see entrepreneurship as a spiritual journey as well, because there's so much that you want to control that isn't actually in your control. And we have to figure out how to cope with that as entrepreneurs. And so something that has had such a big impact on me as a founder is being able to look for coaches and teachers and people who can be advising me and mentoring me and, and helping me overcome challenges, whether it's a business challenge or a leadership challenge or a, a spiritual challenge. And so I think my dedication to growth is something that has really served me this whole time.

How many, how many employees does Perimeter have now?

12.

Wow.

So it's still small and growing.

It's still small and growing. It's about to get a lot bigger.

Really?

Yes.

Why, why is it gonna be a big— is it a big scale-up?

Yes, yes, we're going to— we're raising our Series A this year.

Oh wow.

We're really excited.

And is, is there an exit strategy for this, or are you just going to keep doing it for as long as you can?

Right now we're just focused on building Perimeter into the best company it can be with the best product possible. And something really unique in customer— in public safety is having the best customer service.

There you go.

Because These agencies, they want to call and be able to talk to someone, and we want to be the someone on the other side of that, on that call.

So I think, my guess is that through this whole journey you've learned how to listen.

Yes.

Tell us what you learned about listening.

One of the most important things I learned about listening early on has to do with both the listening itself but also the questions that are being asked. And one of the big mistakes I made at the beginning of, of my Perimeter journey was not asking enough questions. Now, you can imagine, I asked a whole lot of questions. It's not that I wasn't asking questions, but I stopped too early. And originally, when we were developing the company, I thought that we were going to sell to fire departments. And this was a tool because the firefighters were asking for this platform. And so I thought, they're obviously our user, so they must be our buyer. And what I learned by going to market and not succeeding in sales was that even though the fire departments want Perimeter, it's actually, it goes above them in terms of purchasing and what that means for all of these public safety agencies. And so I learned really early on, or honestly not early enough, that I needed to continue asking harder and harder questions to figure out, okay, you say you want this. You say these are the problems that you have, but if I go to sell it to you, then you say you can't buy it. And that is what helped me understand, oh, it's not the firefighters that take this on. We actually have to go a step above and go to the counties.

Right.

And that helped us understand that, oh, it's not just a tool for fire departments, I thought. Actually, this is a tool that the counties buy for all of their public safety agencies to be able to share information together. And so one of the things that I often share with young entrepreneurs who are in the really early days of product development and their go-to-market strategy is really ask those questions early and keep asking. Don't settle for the answer that you want. Keep pushing past to really get to the heart of what these people are experiencing, what their needs are, and what their capabilities are to actually solve some of those challenges, because that's where As founders, we learn what the most critical problems are to solve. So for me, what I've learned about listening is one, make sure you're asking a lot of questions. And if you get an answer early on that sounds like the answer you're looking for, maybe ask a few more questions.

How do you deal with, first of all, have you had to deal with any contentiousness either within Perimeter or, or in, in customer relations?

Contentiousness in terms of disagreements, unhappiness, upset? Oh, absolutely. I think anytime you put two people together, they're going to be disagreeing. I think one of the— we talk about this a lot at Perimeter, but there, when we were learning about starting a company and we were learning to be founders, my co-founder and I and one of our first employees, we all met in this startup class and we had a professor who is the managing director of Berkeley's entrepreneurship department called SEET. And that professor, his name is Ken Singer. He used to talk about these three different archetypes that existed in startups. He would talk about accelerators, brakes, and clutches. And so someone who can communicate with the accelerators and the brakes. And then of course, I think you can probably imagine who those other archetypes are. And you can probably also guess that I'm the Accelerator archetype. And when we were listening to this lecture, we thought, oh, this is— yeah, we get it, but it's probably not— it's probably not too on the nose. But then we started a company together and we realized, oh my goodness, we are these archetypes perfectly. And oftentimes at the beginning of the company, I would clash with the Break archetype., and we would need my co-founder to come in and help communicate between the two of us. And my colleague, Mohr, he's my break. Him and I laugh about this all the time because at the beginning, like for the first year, him and I would just really clash. And the fact that we've learned how to work together is obviously it's so critical for Perimeter because you need to have all three of those archetypes on your team. If you were all accelerators, you would be in trouble. You wouldn't have a company. Exactly. And so I'm always looking for ways that even though we're different, that we can learn how to communicate what's really important between us because every startup needs that diversity. Otherwise, you don't have the rounded out opinions that can make your company successful.

Interesting. What I teach people to do is how to stop fights and arguments. Yeah, forever. So that you can have disagreement, which is great. Yes, but it doesn't get escalated. And then you can come back and you, you can engage in really effective problem solving. Because what I see too often is people get into disagreements and it becomes personal, and now it's a fight to be right, and they're like these tectonic plates coming together and it's explosive.

And not productive.

So my time is spent teaching people how not to do that. It's interesting. One more question. I'll let you— I could talk to you for hours. You're great. Thank you.

I, I have so many questions for you about exactly what you just shared.

All right, we can talk about that in a moment. But first of all, Bailey, what's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

I revealed it a little bit already. But I think one thing is when I meet people, they of course are going to see the very confident, hard-charging side of me. And so they know that I am going to walk through all the brick walls that are standing between me and the thing that I'm going after. But what I think a lot of people don't see that's true about me, and I would guess based on many of my relationships, it's true about a lot of entrepreneurs, is we have a lot of internal battles that we are waging and really committed to. And I think that being committed to being present for some of those internal challenges is something that can really make entrepreneurship a gift. And earlier when I shared that I think one of my, one of the traits that helps me be successful is this radical emphasis on growth. I think part of the reason why that, why that helps me is because I'm really committed to staying present for a lot of the ups and the downs. And entrepreneurship is nothing but high highs and low lows. And it can be really painful if we don't take care of ourselves during those low lows. And to be 5 years in, people ask me, they're like, what's your secret? You've been doing this for quite a few years at this point, right? You're not 5 months in anymore. And I'm like, yeah, sometimes you cry in the bathtub and that's okay. And being able to sit there and process the experiences that we have and that I have as an entrepreneur helps me feel like I'm not just racking up trauma. Instead, it's okay, this is an opportunity that is going to help me rise above. And one of the philosophies that has had such a big impact on me personally, and I would say spiritually, is Stoicism. And I became very interested in Stoicism when I was in high school, actually. And it has been one of the philosophies that I just go back to over and over again, because it can be easy for me to catastrophize an experience and get trapped in a story that is limiting or anxiety-producing. And what many of the practices from Stoicism help me do is to remember that I am always in control of the story that I tell myself about the experiences that I'm having. And that framing is what makes my work as an entrepreneur now still feel like a joy, because I can look at my job and not say, oh gosh, it's— this is so hard, how are we going to solve this problem? Instead, I can say, wow, I'm so lucky that I get to have this experience and I get to sit in the ring and solve these problems. And that feels really different than Oh gosh, how am I going to figure this out? And so to answer your question in fewer words, I would say that really being present for those internal challenges and present for my mental health is something that really helps and is one of those maybe under the surface aspects of my personality and many entrepreneurs out there who— this is something that you don't always see when you see someone on Forbes 30 Under 30 and you assume, wow, that must be nice. And you don't realize sometimes they cry in the bathtub too.

Yep. Bailey, this has been an amazing conversation. Again, I could go on for hours with you, but we got to cut it off. So thank you so much for your time today and the best of luck. You're doing amazing work. I'm honored to know you.

I'm honored to know you too.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders.. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.