{"id":25461,"date":"2021-07-28T04:53:41","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T04:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/rapidsos-learned-that-the-best-product-design-is-sometimes-no-product-design.html"},"modified":"2021-07-28T04:53:41","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T04:53:41","slug":"rapidsos-learned-that-the-best-product-design-is-sometimes-no-product-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/rapidsos-learned-that-the-best-product-design-is-sometimes-no-product-design.html","title":{"rendered":"RapidSOS learned that the best product design is sometimes no product design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, the best<\/span> missions are the hardest to fund.<\/p>\n

For the founders of RapidSOS, improving the quality of emergency response by adding useful data, like location, to 911 calls was an inspiring objective, and one that garnered widespread support. There was just one problem: How would they create a viable business?<\/p>\n

The roughly 5,700 public safety answering points (PSAPs) in America weren\u2019t great contenders. Cash-strapped and highly decentralized, 911 centers already spent their meager budgets on staffing and maintaining decades-old equipment, and they had few resources to improve their systems. Plus, appropriations bills in Congress to modernize centers have languished for more than a decade, a topic we\u2019ll explore more in part four of this EC-1<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

People obviously desire better emergency services \u2014 after all, they are the ones who will dial 911 and demand help someday. Yet, they never think about emergencies until they actually happen, as RapidSOS learned from the poor adoption of its Haven app we discussed in part one<\/a>. People weren\u2019t ready to pay a monthly subscription for these services in advance.<\/p>\n

So, who would pay? Who was annoyed enough with America\u2019s antiquated 911 system to be willing to shell out dollars to fix it?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the company iterated itself into essentially an API layer between the thousands of PSAPs on one side and developers of apps and consumer devices on the other. These developers wanted to include safety features in their products, but didn\u2019t want to engineer hundreds of software integrations across thousands of disparate agencies. RapidSOS\u2019 business model thus became offering free software to 911 call centers while charging tech companies to connect through its platform.<\/p>\n

It was a tough road and a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Without call center integrations, tech companies wouldn\u2019t use the API \u2014 it was essentially useless in that case. Call centers, for their part, didn\u2019t want to use software that didn\u2019t offer any immediate value, even if it was being given away for free.<\/p>\n

This is the story of how RapidSOS just plowed ahead against those headwinds from 2017 onward, ultimately netting itself hundreds of millions in venture funding, thousands of call agency clients, dozens of revenue deals with the likes of Apple, Google and Uber, and partnerships with more software integrators than any startup has any right to secure. Smart product decisions, a carefully calibrated business model and tenacity would eventually lend the company the escape velocity to not just expand across America, but increasingly across the world as well.<\/p>\n

In this second part of the EC-1, I\u2019ll analyze RapidSOS\u2019 current product offerings and business strategy, explore the company\u2019s pivot from consumer app to embedded technology and take a look at its nascent but growing international expansion efforts. It offers key lessons on the importance of iterating, how to secure the right customer feedback and determining the best product strategy.<\/p>\n

The 411 on a 911 API<\/h2>\n

It became clear from the earliest stages of RapidSOS\u2019 journey that getting data into the 911 center would be its first key challenge. The entire 911 system \u2014 even today in most states \u2014 is built for voice and not data.<\/p>\n

Karin Marquez, senior director of public safety at RapidSOS, who we met in the introduction, worked for decades at a PSAP near Denver, working her way up from call taker to a senior supervisor. \u201cWhen I started, it was a one-man dispatch center. So, I was working alone, I was answering 911 calls, non-emergency calls, dispatching police, fire and EMS,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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RapidSOS senior director of public safety Karin Marquez. Image Credits:<\/strong> RapidSOS<\/p>\n

As a 911 call taker, her very first requirement for every call was figuring out where an emergency is taking place \u2014 even before characterizing what is happening. \u201cEverything starts with location,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I don\u2019t know where you are, I can\u2019t send you help. Everything else we can kind of start to build our house on. Every additional data [point] will help to give us a better understanding of what that emergency is, who may be involved, what kind of vehicle they\u2019re involved in \u2014 but if I don\u2019t have an address, I can\u2019t send you help.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/8F-rq0VemdM\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, the best missions are the hardest to fund. For the founders of RapidSOS, improving the quality of emergency response by adding useful data, like location, to 911 calls was <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-25461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t