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August 10, 2015 Issue

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New Emergency Alert System and App for Missing Children, the Elderly and Special Needs Adults – Notifies an Entire Local Community in Seconds

 

 

John Guydon

CEO & Co-Founder

 

Lassy Project

www.lassyproject.com

 

Interview conducted by:

Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – August 10, 2015

 

CEOCFO: Mr. Guydon, what is the concept for the Lassy Project?

Mr. Guydon: Lassy Project helps parents and caretakers find lost people faster. We give them the ability to ability to notify an entire local community about their missing child or person in seconds.

 

CEOCFO: How does it work?

Mr. Guydon: Whether or not you have a smart phone, everyone can sign up at lassyproject.com. For every child or special at-risk adult in your care, you create a profile, which is a photo and all of the pertinent information that someone might need to identify them should they ever go missing. After doing that, you would then create a network of friends, family and close neighbors. These are the people that you would contact first if your loved one is missing. If you were to discover that someone is missing, you can open the app and tap escalate, and this would immediately notify your network. At this time we also reach out and if needed, and have the ability to make radius around that last known location and notify everyone that is part of the network in that area. They will see a picture, the last known location and all of that pertinent information right on their phones.

 

CEOCFO: Who has access to a profile?

Mr. Guydon: We do not have a universal login, which means that there is no place to hack, and we do not share that information unless it is a dire situation and the child needs to be found. It is the greater good concept. If your child is missing, you would want that picture out there to as many people as possible, because the last person that someone will want to take is someone that everybody is looking for.

 

CEOCFO: Is your program geared mostly towards children or can someone who has an parent with, for example, Alzheimer’s disease also join?

Mr. Guydon: Right now it is both. Our program is for children, special needs adults, and the elderly. As it relates to special needs, a couple of weeks ago we actually found a special needs adult who strayed and went missing from a group home. We used Lassy Project to find him in 17 minutes.

Seniors pose a very specific risk, because you never know when a certain form of dementia may strike and 65% of people with dementia will wonder. Of those people, if they are not found in the first 24 hours, 50% will suffer serious injury or death. Therefore, it is critical to find these people as fast as possible. We are actually starting to work with senior care facilities to provide a license to all of their residence. If that situation occurs, they already have the network in place to do something about it.

 

CEOCFO: Have similar approaches been tried?

Mr. Guydon: Everyone is familiar with Amber Alert, which has been the gold standard for almost two decades now. The system has great intentions and encompasses far more than just people going missing. However, it is outdated and it takes too long. Other solutions are trackers, which are systems and methods where for example your child has a cell phone you can find out where the phone is.

However, the question we have always asked is what do you do, when you find out that they are not where they are supposed to be. Even if you have the location of the phone, you may be 3 miles away and it will take you a while to get there, so you cannot do anything and you want to help your child now. What do you do? There are many trackers out there that will help locate the child if the phone is on, if they have the specific app downloaded and if they have the phone on their person or close to them. Lassy Project works with any device or program that reports location. All we need is who and where they are, and we can tap into the Lassy Project network.

 

CEOCFO: What were the challenges to put the technology together?

Mr. Guydon: We have had many technical challenges. Fortunately for me, I am partnered with one of the smartest human beings on the planet, Temitope Sonuyi. He is our co-founder and the brilliant architect behind Lassy Project. Therefore, I have the pleasure of communicating this high level idea and Temitope Sonuyi then takes it and makes it real. He debugs it in his head, architects it on paper and then begins to build it. We have had several challenges, but thanks to our technical team, we have been able to overcome them. It is a pretty impressive technology that we have put together to make the Lassy Project, and all of the features that we have already, as well as all of the ones that we will be rolling out in the future. If Temitope Sonuyi were here he would tell you that technology is great, but it is the people that sign up and use Lassy Project that make it special.

 

CEOCFO: How long has Lassy Project been available?

Mr. Guydon: We started building in January 2013, and we launched in October of that year.

 

CEOCFO: Has anything changed in your approach as people have started to use your app?

Mr. Guydon: We have done a really good job of listening to our users. They are the ones telling us the use cases that they would like to see addressed. They are telling us what form factors of potential hardware that they would like to see, and the different ways that they would like to use the program. Therefore, we have implemented several key features based on their feedback, such as the ability to turn off alerts at certain times, or snooze alerts at certain times like when you are with your child and you are away from the routine. There have been many little issues and changes that amount to a big difference.

 

CEOCFO: How are you reaching out to potential users?

Mr. Guydon: For one, doing interviews and other avenues in the media that are helping us tell our story. In addition, we have the users themselves sharing it with people. Essentially, someone joins and builds their network, so they are sharing it with other people when they build their network.

 

CEOCFO: How do your two levels of escalation work; who initiates the action at each stage?

Mr. Guydon: We have implemented the two levels of escalation to address this issue specifically. You do not go straight to the community. You go to your network first and people are more likely to press that button much faster. The second level of escalation is done by Lassy Project staff only and it ties in with law enforcement, so people are definitely not abusing that. The first level people tend to self-police and not push the button unless the really feel it necessary.

 

CEOCFO: Is there a particular demographic that is most likely to embrace Lassy Project?

Mr. Guydon: It runs the gamut. Any population demographic can have a special needs adult, and then there are the elderly and parents with young children. It is designed for everyone to use.  However, we do find that mom’s are the ones who tend to reach out to us the most, because the get it faster and are typically the biggest advocates.

 

CEOCFO: What is your eventual business model?

Mr. Guydon: Our eventual business is the senior care facilities, offering Lassy Project for a license to work with all of their residence. Additionally, we will end up rolling out applications to include pets and things like your car or your bike, tied in with law enforcement, which makes it the best way to find anything.

 

CEOCFO: What has been the response from law enforcement?

Mr. Guydon: The response form law enforcement has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, they actually contacted us a couple of days ago for a missing 2 year old. We are endorsed by several law enforcement agencies across the country, so it has been positive. Law enforcement is seeing Lassy Project as a vital tool that they now have at their disposal to help them do their job better, because of the challenges that they face.

 

CEOCFO: How do you deal with the frustration of having such a good and potentially lifesaving idea, but it takes time to be adopted?

Mr. Guydon: One day at a time. When everyone hears about Lassy Project, they tell us that they cannot believe that they have not had this and that it is something that they need. That has been the overwhelmingly consistent response that we have received. We just need to continue to work and iterate on things until we are where we would like to be. Then continue after that, because technology is always changing and as long as people continue to get lost or abducted, then we have work to do.

 

CEOCFO: How do you stay ahead of the technology to incorporate a new device or operating system?

Mr. Guydon: You have to continually test your hypotheses and continue to be a visionary. Much of it is just solving problems as you build. You also stay connected to the user and the user experience, while also being up to date with the newest and the latest things that are coming out.

 

CEOCFO: Might you work with parent organizations or school groups to spread the message?

Mr. Guydon: We love whatever help we can get. Everyone mentions schools, and we do think that it is a good idea, so currently we are looking for the best way to work with them.  We have parents currently sharing Lassy Project information with their HOAs, PTAs…

 

CEOCFO: Are you looking for partnerships or funding? Do you have what you need to continue to move along?

Mr. Guydon: We are always looking for partnerships and funding. There are some pretty amazing things that we are working on, so we would love more help and support in doing that. There is a great deal of potential, not only financially, but just with the impact on communities everywhere.

 

CEOCFO: Could you tell us about some of what is in he works?

Mr. Guydon: We are looking at a find almost anything platform. We want to be the new standard for finding things – period. However, the ultimate goal is to prevent  at-risk adults, seniors and children from going missing. People stealing bicycles and cars should be considered fools because clearly you are going to get caught. Therefore, there is some hardware that we are vetting currently, and when it is ready it will transform the way we do things.

 

CEOCFO: Why pay attention to Lassy Project today?

Mr. Guydon: It is the one thing that you can sign up for that literally can save someone’s life. If you are reading this and you have a heart and a phone, you should have already joined Lassy Project. It takes less than a minute and it makes a very big impact. Anyone that works with a company, even if you do not think there is synergy there, let’s talk, because there are many different ways that we can work with people. There are banks and restaurants; all sorts of different types of companies that we have ideas on how we can best work together. We just need to have those conversations sooner rather than later.



 

“Lassy Project helps parents and caretakers find lost people faster. We give them the ability to ability to notify an entire local community about their missing child or person in seconds… It is the one thing that you can sign up for that literally can save someone’s life. If you are reading this and you have a heart and a phone, you should have already joined Lassy Project.”
- John Guydon


 

Lassy Project

www.lassyproject.com

 

Contact:

John Guydon

720-253-7585

team@lassyproject.com




 

 



 

 


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