Video: How PerVista Uses AI to Stop Gun Violence Before It Happens

hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the it Channel all to help you make Better Business decisions I'm your host Katie boso my guest today is venard Wright CEO and founder of perista a Services Company offering AI powered security systems meant to stop gun violence before it can happen Bernard also shares his mission to increase access to opportunities in it and expand the talent pool welcome Bernard it's great to see you thank you Katie it's great to see you as well thank you so much for being a part of this today I think that what you're doing over at perista is so interesting and I know the journey that you've been on to get there started honestly 30 years ago for you at the top of your it career so there's so much that I want to dig into but why don't we start with with the basics here and talk about what perista is this is a a fairly new company I'd say I believe that you've just celebrated one year in operation but that's not to say you haven't done a lot with that time so talk to me about what Pista is that's right so perista started like you said a little more than a year ago so in May of 2023 there was a very high-profile incident right here in Prince George's County which is where we're headquartered where three teenagers ran onto a school bus and attempted to shoot another team so thankfully the gun jammed but because of that it really got a process started that led to the creation of Pista and that process was our local State's Attorney Aisha Bray boy reached out and asked a question what can technology do to keep this from happening again in the future so me and the team we went off and we did research to see what existed in the market and to see what the capabilities were in terms of technology and we developed a platform that uses artificial intelligence to analyze video streams from surveillance cameras and real time to detect Firearms when we detect a firearm we notify police in real time and the goal is to cut down an active shooter events in schools hospitals and other public places so that's where we are as a company and we've made a lot of progress since that date end May of 2023 you've been a CIO a fractional CIO you've leted an MSP you've you've pretty much done it all to be able to bring you to this point so when you're approaching your customers and I should also stop there and ask who are your customers what kinds of verticals do they look like because when we talk about security that's not necessarily a niche thing that people need it's everywhere it's something that everyone needs but for you who are your typical customers sure so we do work with a lot of nonprofits uh so the national school boards Association is one of our more prominent customers we work with the American Association for exporters and importers nuclear Innovation Alliance those are just examples of nonprofits that we work with we also do work with small and mediumsized companies as well we work with governments we work with universities we work with sports teams and what we see across each one of those vertical is that really technology tends to be the same just about everyone uses Microsoft 365 and other technologies that tend to be ubiquitous across the board which is what really Amplified the impact that crowd strike had so what we are looking to do is number one to understand those themes across the board and to come up with a strategy that really helps us to be effective and applying as often as possible possible things that work well in other places so we are learning from customers in different vertical but in addition we want to make sure that those customers are successful so that's really where we are and the verticals that we work in and our goal is really to make sure that we are invisible because if we are doing our jobs they almost forget that we're there I do like that forgetting that you're there is important but it's important also to be there when they need you the most so walk me through a typical client interaction and this is where I was going before when you're approaching clients about this and they're thinking yeah security cameras what's the big deal what's the difference obviously you and I know what that is but when you're telling them about the service that's involved with this walk me through everything that the client is getting even after implementation so the goal is really to make sure that they do have peace of mind Ian so the world is becoming a more complex place and I wouldn't necessarily say it's becoming worse it's just that there is ready access to firearms and weapons and this isn't an attack on the Second Amendment because certainly we do have the ability under the Constitution to have the right to Firearms but at the same time it should be done lawfully so what we're looking to do is to make sure that there is a balance between the two so that when people are in public places they're free to go about and enjoy that place and to feel safe that nothing is going to happen so what we do number one is take a look at the facility um so our solution works best when it's both internal and external cameras and what I mean by that is the building where we are there is an armed security guard in the lobby but the reality is that by the time someone were to come into the lobby it could be too late so in that case what we're looking to do is to make sure that there is visibility in terms of someone walking up from the parking lot to the lobby so that's part of what we're looking to do to make sure that there is a line of sight into areas where they might not see otherwise in addition to that that's combined with security cameras on the inside to make sure that certain areas are also covered so we're looking at other use cases that will expand Beyond weapons but the goal is really to make sure that customers are feeling safe in multiple ways so with that being said the solution is only as good as the cameras so in addition to that what we're looking to do once the solution is in place to make sure that those cameras in the system is performing the way that they expected to so we optimize over time and a good example of where that's going to be necessary is of course with the bubble cameras where there's a glow over the camera over time those can become foggy which will cut down an efficacy of detection so sometimes it's necessary to replace the camera sometimes it's necessary to move cameras and sometimes it's necessary to also tune the solution so that we're not getting false positives so it's not just to set it and forget it our goal is to make sure that it's getting better over time one thing when we were originally talking and we first met something that I want to make sure that I I do point out is that this is not facial recognition this is something that is direct identifying a risk based on a firearm being on a person so I think the best way to kind of explain that is to walk through a customer success story in which whether this be a test that you did or a real world situation how does it work and what's the aftermath once it's able to Ping the police and and do what it does best that's absolutely right um so I do want to double down on the point that you made we're not detecting people we're not detecting faces we're detecting weapons so our goal and because we are looking to work with schools we are looking to work with hospitals there are certain standards that are in place like Hippa and furpa that protect people's privacy um so what happens is when we detect that there is a firearm uh we're making a match against our data set of firearms so in that case we're not just saying okay it's a firearm but we're also saying that we're about 95% sure that it's not just a firearm but a long gun because the response for an AR-15 is going to be different from the response for a 9mm so we do want to make sure that police have full situational awareness and those alerts are sent in a couple of different ways so number one it does come up in the platform but in addition it also sends a text message it also sends an email so a lot of people are familiar with what happens with rang alarm.com and ADT and some other providers but the difference between our solution and those is that in addition to detecting people vehicles and animals we detect Firearms so it functions in very much the same way where that alert comes across and what happens is we don't want police to come when there isn't an incident or if something is happening that should be happening I'll go back to the example that I gave before of the armed security guard they have the right to carry a gun um so does a police officer so in that case there is a manual step that's in place where we look and we verify that okay this is a firearm but it's a police officer who's carrying it or that's not really a firearm and in that case we won't send the alert to the police so we do have the ability to send alerts to people in real time so if it is a security guard we can send it to the security guard at the same time we see that alert but before it goes to police we do manually verify so that we're cutting down on false positives and not having police respond to something they shouldn't respond to very much and I think that human realtime overlap is something where we constantly talk about AI in the form of being the bad guy in the situation or the Bad Robot whatever you want to view it as so I think where we speak to AI as changing the world for the better this is really where it comes in computer vision meets people on top of that where do you see the differentiators in this particular offering because computer vision it's it's not the first uh it's not necessarily a new term it's new were but I have heard of other offerings that do something similar what would you say when somebody asks you where do you draw the line in the sand and say we're over here and the rest are over there what's your greatest differentiator so the biggest thing that we're looking to do to differentiate is that we are able to move our solution around as I mentioned before the world is becoming a much more complex place which means that crimes happen in different places crime really does evolve so we've really been doubling down on making sure that our solution isn't just for Office Buildings and public places but also a good example would be an outside demonstration so if there is a concert or something else that's happening Outdoors our solution is able to protect that event by corporating drone technology so during this interview I was a little afraid that you might hear us testing the drones here in the office because that's a big part of what we're looking to do and to that really factors in that criminals are looking to see where surveillance cameras are so drones have the ability to close those gaps because drones can move from location to location whereas a surveillance camera is installed so that's something big that we're doubling down on to make sure that we're also able to account for the evolution of crime and things that change over time now the current customer base that you have knowing that you're just over a year old are they only here in America no so we just signed a deal with uh over in Brazil as well so we are an international company at this point we're proud to say so we're seeing that the same challenges that exist here in the US are starting to pop up around the globe as well so we are looking to make sure that we're not just keeping people safe here in America but we're also keeping people safe around the world as well so let's talk a little bit about your background you did operate at MSP prior to perista can you talk to me about how you feel that prepared you for the needs of customers in this managed service offering space sure so we started uh wave welcome in 2020 and some would say that wasn't the best decision because of course we know there was a global pandemic that was going on at the same time but for us it did work out so wave welcome really experienced a bit of an evolution as well and the way that we evolved is we started off being a fractional CIO offering so the reason that was significant is because of course a lot of small and medium-sized organizations can't afford to hire a CIO so we were looking to really offer that advisory level service and work with organizations that didn't have access to someone who could make those decisions or the expertise to make certain decisions as well but over time what happened is people started offering to Outsource their it to us so we evolved into becoming an IT MSP we really didn't set out to become one so we did work with organizations across Industries which was really the first for R Ina really offering common themes that work across Industries so it prepared Us in that we really understood what it meant to be a partner and I'll give you an example of that so I mentioned the national school boards Association so they've experienced some changes over time where they used to have an internal it department but because of different factors they had to make the tough decision to eliminate the internal it department and they also needed to cut down on cost so one of the things that we do take pride in is being able to offer those services at a lower cost and the reason we're able to do that is because we also work with entry-level it Talent so lots of young people are very interested in getting into it but the reality is they just don't have the hands-on experience in terms of breaking into those careers so what we do is we do bring them in and for uh apprenticeships we give them the experience they need and the ones that emerge as the top level Talent end up getting a full-time job but that also helps us to keep our cost down so we have created a career pipeline where we are bringing in entry-level it Talent giving them the the experience but also positioning Prince George's County as a tech destination so that allows us to keep our costs low but it also allows us to make sure that people are getting opportunities to break into it careers talk to me about that a little bit more do you see that as the answer to the talent shortage and retention problems that we're seeing across the tech industry right now yeah I think it's a start absolutely so certainly here in Prince George's County we're not known as being a hot bed of tech talent but there's certainly an appetite from young people to get into it so what I see Happening Here is number one there are lots of companies that really do need tech support so of course it's cost prohibitive a lot of times to get that tech support So number one we do give the young people that experience they need in terms of the internships by partnering with employee Prince georgees so employee Prince georgees here is our Workforce Development partner so they get lots of Grants and other opportunities for funding from the federal government and other places as well so it helps to defray the costs so number one the young person is able to say yes I'm interested they come and get the training but then they partner with employers so for employers it does give them the ability to bring in talent that they couldn't afford to bring in otherwise and for small and medium-sized companies that couldn't afford the talent they're able to also get access to the talent at a lower cost so to answer your question about whether that's the answer it certainly can be if you have partners that are willing to put certain programs in place so Prince George's County we do have the appetite to do that because one of the things we touched on before when we spoke is the fact that historically Prince George's County was the wealthiest minority County in the country so as of the 2020 census we lost that designation to a neighboring County County controversially and what we saw is that there was an opportunity to really raise the per capita income of people in Prince George's County by focusing on technology as an industry but in order for that to happen there have to be deliberate interceptive strategies in place so we're looking forward to being a big part of that and certainly other counties and localities around the country could do the same thing by focusing on technology as a preferred industry and being creative about Workforce Development programs that give young people hands-on experience we do as a compan subscribe to conscious capitalism so for us conscious capitalism is not just focusing on profits which every responsible company does do of course we're looking to make money but we also look at different types of capital so we do look at human capital which is people Social Capital which are networks and the national capital which is the environment um so we know that in each one of those there are stakeholders that we should be paying attention to so we have measurements to make sure that our business model is moving the levers in each one of those areas so that's a big part of the way that we operate and certainly we're looking to make sure that we do that even better moving forward very inspiring to hear and I'm sure that the young people that will be listening to this podcast can reach out to you and find out more about that love the idea of putting them in that direction a couple more questions I have for you about perista itself talk to me about who are the vendors hyperscalers and so on that are helping you run who who are the ones that are helping to power you so we are an AWS partner uh so we are certified as a select tier partner uh so we have a lot of AWS Technologies that's built into it so number one we are using Bedrock for some of the AI components we're also using recognition and uh for machine learning and Kinesis for the camera stream so that's certainly a big part of our technology we use others as well so certainly no one can get away from using Microsoft for certain things so we use powerbi for data analytics but I would say those are the two biggest ones so AWS by far is our biggest partner and it's a critical part of our solution so we are really doubling down in that relationship because it also gives us the ability to go around the world so as we deploy to other countries we can deploy an instance that's in their country and that's one of the beauties of partnering with AWS as far as going on through the rest of the year you talked about that talent pool that you're really trying to invest in with new and young Talent are there any other philanthropic or charitable Investments That Pista you yourself andard are making in 2024 that you'd like to talk about absolutely so I did write a book at the beginning of 2024 called cracking the C code and what cracking the C code does is it focuses on the soft skills that are necessary for people to succeed in their careers it's based on my own career so I do share some anecdotes where I had to learn certain lessons the Hardway and hopefully by reading the book people are able to avoid uh experiencing those same painful lessons that I did but the reason that's significant is because as I was going through my career at the sea level I did see that there wasn't a lot of diversity at those top levels and of course diversity means a lot of different things it's not just race it's not just gender it's it's age it's neurodiversity it's a lot of different things so what I'm looking to do is to make sure that there is diversity at the top Levels by making sure that people understand number one what's necessary for them to get to that level and then number two what's necessary for them to be successful at that level so we do offer trainings I do uh talks a lot of times here at our office and at other places as well just to make sure that we're training people in those lessons and those are free classes and we've also rolled out a mobile app give anyone who wants a copy of the book a copy of the book it's also available for free online so that's really a big part of what we're looking to do and that's just my part of making sure there's greater diversity at the sea level if I'm an end user and I see this and I say this is exactly what my business or my nonprofit needs how can we reach out to you that way sure so you can reach out to me directly at vista.com and that's P RV s.com and our web address is Pista doai so you can reach out to me either way but I also have a personal page uh venard W I have the designation of being the only venard right in the world so that's vennard dw.com is my personal page and I'm very active on LinkedIn as well so I do make sure I'm communicating all of our latest developments across LinkedIn and I certainly welcome the connections and the ideas and certain things in terms of what we can do better Bernard it's been a pleasure getting to speak with you and learn more about per Vista I'm so excited to see where you go throughout the rest of the year and into 2025 thank you for joining me today thank you Katie it's been a pleasure as well thank you so much to vard for joining me today and thank you for watching or listening you can check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or watch on our YouTube page at channel inssider news and Trends you can also listen to every episode as a podcast on your preferred podcast listening platform don't forget to like subscribe and follow to never miss an episode once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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