Deciding to Give the Product Away Free

Michael is the co-founder and CEO of Prepared, the AI assistant for 911 calls that helps dispatchers capture information faster, translate emergency calls in real time, and deliver lifesaving context to first responders. Founded out of Yale in 2019, Prepared grew from a school safety app into a critical platform for emergency communications, disrupting a notoriously tough market. This mission-driven journey just reached a major milestone: Prepared was acquired by Axon, the global public safety technology company. In this conversation, Michael joins Meka to share the inside story of building in a tough market, the counterintuitive strategies used to crack government procurement, and why their mission is a competitive moat. In today’s episode, we discuss:

• Why school shootings were the catalyst for building safety software
• Navigating the most challenging customer base: government and public safety agencies
• Why Prepared gave away its first product for free — for years
• Lessons from evolving a wedge product into an AI-driven suite
• How Michael balanced conviction with customer feedback
• Building long-term investor relationships
• Staying true to the mission through headwinds and tailwinds
• And much more…

Where to find Michael:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelchime/

Where to find Meka:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mekaasonye/
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/bigmekastyle

Where to find First Round Capital:

• Website: https://firstround.com/
• First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
• This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

References:

• Axon: https://www.axon.com/
• Dylan Gleicher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-gleicher/
• March for Our Lives: https://marchforourlives.org/
• Neal Soni: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neal-soni/
• OpenAI: https://openai.com/
• Peter Thiel Fellowship: https://thielfellowship.org/
• Prepared: https://www.prepared911.com/
• Sam Altman: https://x.com/sama
• Slack: https://slack.com/
• Uber Eats: https://www.ubereats.com/
• Yale University: https://www.yale.edu/

Timestamps:

(3:03) Staying mission-oriented under pressure (3:54) Negotiating an acquisition from a hospital bed (06:25) How Sandy Hook shaped the Prepared story (09:15) From school safety app to 911 platform (10:02) Why are 911 systems so outdated? (13:02) Prepared’s first product iteration (16:04) Why attempt to tackle the govtech market? (18:36) Mission as fuel: staying resilient through endless rejections (20:03) Should young people drop out of college? (23:10) How Michael nurtured a learner’s mindset (25:23) Forging unwavering founder conviction (31:41) Landing Prepared’s first user (32:39) “I want to be terrible at sales” (34:35) Expanding to a premium product line (36:55) Leveraging AI to expand the product surface area (41:49) How much should you listen to customers? (45:35) Building in headwinds vs. tailwinds (47:18) Navigating partnerships and competition (54:52) Michael’s unconventional approach to fundraising (1:02:54) Has Prepared found product-market fit? (1:04:00) Reflecting on the founder journey