Our internal motto is "To Hack & To Protect." The vision for Bannerman is to build technology to make people safer and we mean that. The booking experience is the most important aspect right now and we could dedicate 1, 5, 10 more years to perfecting that if necessary before building other tools.
@GeoffreyWeg great question. "Booking experience" means as a user, I can book security professionals on demand or at a scheduled time. For that experience to be exceptional, there's a lot going on behind the scenes. Finding and vetting the right guards is included in that. We're doing all that we can to make sure technology and data heavily influence the offline aspect of the service. To the user it might seem like a smooth experience, but on our end it means doing things like collecting ratings and feedback to only keep the most professional Bannermen on our platform, conducting routine background checks, alerting us whenever a Bannerman is a few minutes late, etc. The timeline includes bringing the service to other cities.
@GeoffreyWeg totally agree that the on demand aspect is a major challenge. We're doing our best to listen to early users and iterate on that. Surprisingly, there are customers that need a security professional day-of. Since it's not being offered by any traditional security company, we're going to continue to offer it since it's a big advantage.
@jm3 haha, we get asked that a lot. Some people swear it comes from the Hulk's real name 'Bruce Banner'. Others think it's from GOT. The definition of Bannerman is the "carrier of a military unit's colours, standards or other banners." We are huge GOT fans but it's from the old English word.
@jessepollak a significant portion of our bookings are for event security, as well as for bars and restaurants. $35 is mid-range. There is much higher and much lower. What makes us attractive to our customers is that they're getting a reliable service every single time without huge fluctuations in quality at a competitive price point. The quality of our Bannermen is top notch: West Point graduates, Marines Special Forces, guys that do protection work for celebrities, etc.
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