989 Anna Redmond:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP989 – Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Anna Redmond

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Anna Redmond:

When we get called in, there are employees that are having interactions that feel uncomfortable and they do not know what to do. Often those examples are when the employees are frontline employees. Sometimes they may interact with members of the general public or maybe with clients that aren’t always in the best state of mind. For example, we worked with a company that was in the medical space, and their employees would actually go and make visits to other offices and sometimes they were speaking with folks that were going through tough things, and it would get emotional. And those employees really needed to be trained and to understand like, hey, what are my options? At what point is something unsafe? And then if I think it is unsafe, how do I get out of this situation? What’s the process? We do a lot on the training front in terms of gun violence.

Melinda Wittstock:

Workplace safety and security is a growing issue, and not just from external threats. Anna Redmond is a security expert and the CEO and Founder of the fractional security agency Braav, and she says internal threats, including spillover from domestic violence, where an irate spouse follows an employee into work, is a challenge every company must address. Today we talk about Anna’s focus on transparent systems for employee wellbeing as well as how she is innovating in the time-honored traditions of first responder culture with a groundbreaking challenge coin platform. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur and visionary force behind a cutting-edge approach to corporate physical security and the digital transformation of challenge coins for veterans and first responders. Anna Redmond is the CEO and Founder of Braav, where she deploys experienced Chief Security Officers into organizations that need to get serious about safety and risks. She shares best practices for building safer, happier teams, as well as her mission to capture the stories of the heroes who keep us safe by building the first platform that gives these legacy symbols a digital twin—preserving not just the coin itself, but the story behind it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Anna shares how her journey—from Harvard to venture capital to entrepreneurship—shaped her mission-driven business, including why she built Braav without venture money. We also talk about how she’s using blockchain for her digital twin challenge coins to forge lasting connections across generations, but avoiding all the issues that come with what is perceived as the scammy NFT marketplace. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Anna Redmond.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Anna, welcome to Wings.

Anna Redmond:

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

You are the first person I’ve talked to that does physical security for companies. Should CEOs be kind of alarmed or worried? What kind of security do we need?

Anna Redmond:

It’s absolutely a growing industry. I think you have to think about it not just from a danger perspective, but from a compliance and employee satisfaction perspective. And I think the two latter pieces are actually bigger than the former. We have found time and time and again that when we go into a company and up level their physical security processes, and all of a sudden employees know who to go to if they have questions or if they feel unsafe or if they want to understand, like, hey, how is this new parking lot safer or being secured more than the old one? We found that they feel more comfortable staying at the office. Later, employee satisfaction goes up, and they feel taken care of. And the same thing happens when companies actually start complying with the letter of the law on all of the training. Like, for example, we’re in California, we work across the continental United States, but a lot of our clients are in California. And there is a proposition SB553, that actually recently required a pretty rigorous set of training and preventative measures around workplace violence.

Anna Redmond:

And a lot of companies, you know, obviously there’s a cost to it, and compliance can be a pain in the neck. But this is one of the ones where we found there to be a lot of additive benefits for companies that actually reached out and started taking care of their employees.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, it’s not just about, like, guarding the CEO. I think we all have the headline in mind of the United CEO’s gun down the street in Manhattan more than a year ago. And so, there’s that kind of CEO security, the bodyguards, all that stuff. But the employees, gosh, I mean, there’s all kinds of things to be concerned about there as well. So, tell me a little bit about how you do this and what are some of the things? Because you go in kind of on a fractional basis, right?

Anna Redmond:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

Do you, like, advise as well as implement or mostly just advise?

Anna Redmond:

Yeah. So, we’re really structured to come in, to assess and to be, we like to say, sort of like the Baynard McKinsey of security. So really smart. We pull the top leadership folks that have been in public roles like regional chief of police, special agent in charge, regional Director of Public Safety. So, you’re getting really smart people that fundamentally understand security. But the great thing about the Way that we work is unlike other companies that’ll just give you a list of recommendations and skedaddle, we would love to stay on a fractional basis and actually help you execute on all of them. And if that means helping you interview security guard companies, helping bring in the guy that puts in new cameras, we’ve had clients that have. Have situations that require, like, hey, we need to put in a ballistic door, we need to get some drones.

Anna Redmond:

And so, we can actually not only consult, but also help implement all of those things through our trusted partners.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, with employee safety, obviously with gun culture, such that it is, and mental health issues, all these sorts of things, what are the primary concerns? Is, is it a concern that, like an employee is going to go postal or is it something else? Or what are the top concerns that.

Anna Redmond:

You know, Melinda, you hit the nail on the head. So, when we get called in, a lot of it is there are employees that are having interactions that feel uncomfortable and they do not know what to do. Often those examples are when the employees are frontline employees. Sometimes they may interact with members of the general public or maybe with clients that aren’t always in the best state of mind. For example, we worked with a company that was in the medical space, and their employees would actually go and make visits to other offices and sometimes they were speaking with folks that were going through tough things, and it would get emotional. Right. And those employees really needed to be trained and to understand like, hey, what are my options? At what point is something unsafe? And then if I think it is unsafe, how do I get out of this situation? What’s the process? So that’s what we do a lot on the training front in terms of gun violence, you know, and we say this to every client. It’s extraordinarily terrifying.

Anna Redmond:

We see it on the news all the time. That said, statistically, the chances are very, very low of it happening to you. That said, when you train your employees for the worst-case scenarios, what you end up doing is you’re also providing a ton of training for the stuff that does happen. And the things that do happen all the time are someone random and erratic coming in that’s not supposed to be in your office because you haven’t done any penetration testing, and you have a back door that people keep propping open. A lot of the workplace violence, you may be surprised to hear, this is actually domestic violence spillover. So that means something happens at home, an employee goes to work the next day and then that follows them because a partner is trying to find someone that they’ve had a conflict with and that can sort of blow back on other employees in the building. So, there’s a huge umbrella of stuff that we cover. But the good news is that when you bring in someone to build plans and to look at contingencies, your employees get trained on all of it.

Anna Redmond:

And then they have a sense of like, hey, here’s what we do if something goes wrong, we don’t have to wonder. We know what the plan is.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And so, there’s other things too, like a bank robbery or you know, someone coming into a corner store or whatever. I imagine that’s a big part of it as well. Give me a sense of who your clients are. It sounds like you have a pretty diverse range.

Anna Redmond:

Yeah, we do. We work with a number of businesses that have the sort of like, I would say like tech companies, financial services, law firms that have office space that needs to be secured for a number of reasons. We have some clients in food manufacturing; that’s a group where we do penetration testing. For some of them it’s required legally. And penetration testing basically means can someone get in that that’s not supposed to. So, we’ll send a team that is sort of scouting and looking and seeing like can they follow someone in? Can they come in Dr. Dressed up as the H Vac person? Will they find a door that’s propped open? And then in addition to that, we definitely work with high-net-worth individuals, and we do variants of this for homes. And I think that kind of runs the gamut of the types of businesses that we work with primarily and will come in either through the head of HR or sometimes we’ll actually come in through the property management company.

Anna Redmond:

So, we have buildings that we cover where there that are multi-tenant and we’re engaged on behalf of the property manager.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, what kind of pushback do you get from employees potentially about surveillance? This is a really hot topic at the moment with just fears like just, I don’t know, just the way the government’s approaching it with companies like Palantir and whatnot. You need some sort of surveillance to keep people, people safe. But what’s the right balance in that sense where they don’t feel their privacy is invaded or they’re being spied on. How do you get that balance right?

Anna Redmond:

Yeah, I think so. It definitely Changes company to company. And for instance, a medical office will have different standards than a grocery store, for example. Just personally, I was surprised. I was in a medical office not too long ago as a patient with my mom, and I wanted to record the conversation with the doctor just because I was like, man, there are so many medical terms, I want to make sure I get them. And he told me that I couldn’t, that it was against their office policy, which sort of threw me for a loop. And I don’t know, I mean, that very well may have been the right decision for that office and maybe they had issues in the past with it. But I think that’s just an example of how you really have to understand what the business processes are to make that justification.

Anna Redmond:

I will say typically employees like recording in places where they feel unsafe, especially if they know what is happening to that recording. And the best example of this is if you have a garage and you have folks that are working late and they’re leaving after hours and they know that there are cameras, and they know that someone’s watching those cameras. Because now the big trend is remote guarding, where you actually have a team of people sitting off site somewhere carefully monitoring cameras that have some level of like AI enabling. And with the ability to talk through that camera. You know, we found that that actually makes people feel better because a parking garage as an example, isn’t a place where you have an expectation of privacy. You know, like you or I could go and record in a parking garage and we wouldn’t be prevented from doing that. And at the same time, that security process people some reassurance that they’re not on their own, that someone’s watching out for them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. It’s the context really, and then the transparency around it. I imagine the best practice is like you’re saying, really the employees are trained, they know what’s going on. So that sounds like it’s a non-negotiable best practice to do this right?

Anna Redmond:

100%. And I think you’ve really hit the key word there, which is best practice. And that’s the question we get from most of our clients and what we like to go in and deliver. You know, it’s not about like having bars on every window and like snipers on your roof, like most businesses don’t need that, but it is about like, hey, what’s the best practice commensurate with the level of risk here? And then also understanding of the level of risk changes. You know, like we work with clients who for one reason or another, like they’re in the public eye or maybe they’re the subject of protest. And so, their risk level is very different than, for example, a food processing facility or a doctor’s office. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m so curious of what made you get into this field, Anna.

Anna Redmond:

That’s such a great question. I am not a first responder; I’m not a veteran. Six years ago, I knew next to nothing about this industry. So, it was a very big pivot on my end. And really like very much a fish out of water story. I, you know, we’ll backtrack. So, graduated from Harvard, ABAM master’s in history of science, went to work in venture, hopped over to the public side, worked at a couple of different hedge funds and knew that I had wanted to be an entrepreneur basically since I was nine. Like, I was the kid that was always inventing stuff and so founded a totally different business alongside a lovely co-founder.

Anna Redmond:

We focused on thought leadership for Fortune 500s. And we grew and ran it sort of agency model business for about eight years. And in 2020 it was, you know, we’d sort of reach, reach the end of the line of what we wanted to do. We wound down a piece of it, transitioned another portion, and I was kind of sitting at the juncture of like, hey, what’s my next career move? And over the space of several months, I felt like I just was bombarded both in my personal life and my professional life with sort of stories of people feeling unsafe all the way to like. And this happened to me personally. I was at a Starbucks in West LA, where I live, and I saw a man literally get assaulted outside the massive Starbucks picture window, right? And this was happening, I mean, like five feet away from me, except I was on the other side of the window. I was in the store and there was a. It was a crowded Starbucks.

Anna Redmond:

Everyone sort of stood frozen. No one knew what to do. And, you know, it felt like a long time, but I’m sure it was, I don’t know, 60 seconds. Eventually, the Starbucks barista who was, you know, all of, I don’t know, maybe 5 foot 4 and I think in his early 20s of that, somehow managed to break up this fight and the police were called, took forever to get there. Now I know, knowing all of the first responders that I’ve met, they were tragically, tragically understaffed at the time and so understandable. But I went home just feeling very shaken and sort of thinking to myself, well, gosh, what is the private security industry even like? And I Started to do a ton of research, and I actually got my guard card in the state of California, which is what you need to become a security guard. Not because I wanted to become a security guard, mind you, but because I wanted to understand the process and started meeting first responders, veterans and just talking to them and saying like, I know next to nothing about security, but I do know product market fit and I’ve talked to tons of people and I feel like the product market fit for this industry is off. And I really expected, I’ll tell you, going into this I knew zero veterans, I knew zero first responders and I came out of it having so many of them among my closest advisors, friends and I thought when I was having these conversations I fully expected someone to say, oh, hold on there lady, you’re out of your lane or something.

Anna Redmond:

And that didn’t happen. They were so kind and thoughtful and earnest and really wanted to help and validated a lot of my insights. So, you know that fast forward two years and we raised our first tiny pre seed round and launched Braav.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? That’s amazing. So, and interesting that you have like a venture background. You have, you, you’ve done all sorts of things to, to get here. How has your venture background influenced what you’ve built here?

Anna Redmond:

Oh, in so many ways I think, you know, having the opportunity to see what leading companies really benefit from. What’s a true accelerant, what kind of bogs you download it kind of, I think there’s no substitute for going through it yourself. But if you watch carefully, you can kind of learn from the experiences and sometimes mistakes of others. So, you know, I wanted to be really nimble. That was really important to me. I did not want to do a big raise, so I did a tiny raise out of the gate. I really, I had seen so many companies get bogged down in these cycles where you’re fundraising and then your job becomes fundraising and then you’re not focused on the core business. So, I was very mindful of staying out of that pattern.

Anna Redmond:

And then also, you know, and I think this is, this has been amazing because of my venture background and it’s a community that I’m still very much engaged with. There were a lot of very smart people that I was able to tap on the shoulder and say, hey, can I have 30 minutes of your time? And that was awesome.

Melinda Wittstock:

A couple things you said that really resonated with me. I’m a five-time founder now onto a sixth company as well. And I’m also a venture partner in a new firm. From my perspective as a founder, I always like dealing with venture people who’d actually built businesses before. You know what I mean? Right? Like, yeah, because you don’t really know until you’ve…

Anna Redmond:

You’ve.

Melinda Wittstock:

…You’ve done this. Just in the act of diligence with portfolio companies, but also being exposed to companies that are outside, like, my field or whatever, it accelerated me. I was just able to absorb and learn so much from that experience. When you kind of switch hats, you do get really firsthand idea of, like, how you’re being, you know, evaluated even. What are some of the mistakes, you know, to avoid?

Melinda Wittstock:

But the other thing that was interesting about what you said is you decided even though you’d come from venture, you didn’t really want to be on that fundraising cycle. Right? I come to the same conclusion. I’m like, why do I want to do that? Like, you know, let’s just build a model from the beginning that’s got good revenue and it can, it can grow, it can scale, it can be huge. But, like, if we’re really growing on revenue, there’s all kinds of other instruments. And why do I want to be in a constant fundraise and in a. Like, yeah, like, why. Why do I want to give my company a chunk of my company away if I don’t have to? Right.

Anna Redmond:

Oh, my gosh, Melinda, you’re so right. And I think that sometimes I watch that and you see that, you know, you see all these headlines like so and so just raised a $5 million round. A 10, a 20. And you get all of these accolades. But at the end of the day, you know, the success story isn’t raising money. It’s like doing something with that money.

Melinda Wittstock:

You sold part of your company and with it a lot of control. And then can. You can have all kinds of weird cross incentives.

Anna Redmond:

Absolutely. Or…

Melinda Wittstock:

And if you’re a woman or a man, you can lose your company, that you’re not the right person anymore.

Anna Redmond:

No, you’re so right. And which is why when we launched the second piece of our business, which is the challenge coin piece, which I’d love to share about as well, but, you know, it was so different, right? We started having conversations where people like, well, do you want to raise money for that? But because we had revenue and because we were able to Run so lean. I kind of went back. I was like, I don’t think so. I think we’re just gonna build it. And I have to tell you, like, that piece of the business over the last two months has just been stellar. It feels like we’re taxiing. Ready for liftoff.

[PROMO CREDIT]

Wings of Inspired Business is brought to you by the podcast, Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets where Steve Little – serial entrepreneur, investor and mergers & acquisitions maestro – shares the little-known 24 value drivers that spell the difference between a $5m business, and a $50mm even $500 mm business. It always pays to understand what’s driving the underlying enterprise value of your business. So, check out Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets at zerolimitsradio.com – that’s zerolimitsradio.com and available wherever you get your podcasts. More information about valuation growth at Zero Limits Ventures.com

Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Anna Redmond, Founder and CEO of Braav, a company rethinking how organizations approach real-world security

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Anna Redmond:

It’s been really electric. And I think now to myself, like, I think I’d be in a different trajectory if two months ago I had said, yeah, I’m gonna go out and try to do for, you know, 1.5 to 2 million dollar raise.

Melinda Wittstock:

You’d still be raising, maybe, and. Yeah. And meanwhile, like, I mean, you said something really important. You keep it really, really lean. Like, really lean. And just make sure you have a model that’s an actual business.

Anna Redmond:

Yeah, yeah. And it takes. Look, it takes discipline. Right. Like, it’s more fun to be the company that pays for DoorDash and has a ping pong table. But, you know, at the end of the day, that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to build something spectacular.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? Yeah. So, a great segue into this coin thing. So, challenge coins. Tell me about that. Let’s just start at the beginning. What. What are the challenge coins all about?

Anna Redmond:

Yeah. So, I’m building Braav, right? And I meet all these first responders and veterans, and they’re just lovely, just absolutely lovely people. And they start giving me these coins, and I can tell by the coin and the way that they hand it over that it’s really meaningful, but I have no clue what it is. So, I do my research, and it turns out the challenge coins, which come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, 2 inches, 3 inches, round, square, triangular, shaped like a dragon, shaped like everything, have been around for about 100 years. It’s a military and first responder tradition. And they’re typically given out in a couple of different ways. They can be achievement.

Anna Redmond:

Right. So, every president has had a presidential challenge coin for the past, I don’t know, probably 50 years, maybe more. And if you Google it, you’ll actually see the president extending a hand and palmed. And the palm is a coin, and then the person shaking his hand receives that coin. And those are extraordinary, right? Like, that’s. You’ve done something really big, but at the same time, you know, you get into. You know, you join a unit. You get a unit challenge coin, you join LAPD, you get an LAPD challenge coin, you make it onto, you know, this is big, clearly, but, like, you make it into the Navy SEALs or onto SEAL Team 3 or SEAL Team 6, there is a coin.

Anna Redmond:

Private security will mint their own coin. So, there’s like, an allied universal coin. There are coins for meeting certain criteria, coins for achieving something. The list goes on and on. And often people will mint them for events, too. And some of the events are sort of joyful, and then there are ones that are very sad. So sometimes there are operations where people. Military operations where people lose their lives, and sometimes they’ll mint a coin sort of commemorating that.

Anna Redmond:

I am learning about this universe. My mind is blown. Because I’ll tell you, Melinda, there are 30 million people in the US that have some form of challenge coin, and that’s a low estimate. And in the meantime, I’ve gone through however many years of my life having heard nothing about this, so I’m struck by the thought of, like, gosh, first of all, the coins are cool. Second of all, why haven’t I heard these stories? Because every single story I hear, when I say, hey, tell me about your favorite coin, it’s either a dramatic story or it’s a heartfelt story, or it’s a sweet story. 

Anna Redmond:

There’s so much positivity behind it. So. So one day, sort of two and two come together in my head. Obviously, I have the Venture background. I’m definitely sort of a native of tech community in one way or another. And it hits me like, man, this should be digitized, because there’s this group of 30 million Americans holding and passing around these coins, telling these amazing stories, and the stories are gone like the wind. If you don’t have the human to tell you the story, you lose it. So, we throw together an incredibly, incredibly rush Alpha.

Anna Redmond:

Takes us, I think, less than a month. It’s super clunky. It, like, sucks. But we show it to people, and people want to use it. We have a group that wants to hand out coins just on our platform. I get people saying, hey, I want to advise for this. I recruited new advisors based on that super clunky Alpha. And I’ve built stuff, Melinda, that has not worked.

Anna Redmond:

I’ve built stuff where I’ve knocked on doors and I’ve said, hey, look at this cool thing. And people were like, yeah, yeah, I’ll look at it later. So, I know what the difference feels like. And this is not that thing. This is really special. So, we kind of take a look, and we’re like, you know what? This is not a side project. This is going to be half the company. At least maybe it’s more than half the company.

Anna Redmond:

So, we take the alpha down, spend some actual money, rebuild it as a beta, and now we’re two and a half months into the launch. And I’ll tell you, I am so excited. We have paying clients; we have users growing. I’m talking to tons of first responders, military folks daily. And I keep hearing, and I’ll tell you, like, it brings tears to my eyes. Like, they’re telling me thank you. They’re saying, thank you for building something for our community. 

Melinda Wittstock:

I remember all the hype about, you know, NFTs and coin, you know, people getting really confused and not really liking crypto and all that kind of stuff. Did you find any kind of confusion in the market around?

Anna Redmond:

Totally, yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

How do you get around that? Because people don’t know the difference between, you know, blockchain is just an underlying technology that powers crypto. But, like, everything is suddenly. If you say blockchain, everything’s crypto and like, oh, and. Or it’s got the scam sort of vibe around it. 

Melinda Wittstock:

So, what do you do about that?

Anna Redmond:

You know, I’ll tell you. I think we benefit from a couple of things. So. So the way that our platform works there, there are two ways that it works. One is for people that have a ton of physical coins, or not even a ton, just a handful, whatever the number is, you can go and digitize them on our site. And that piece is not blockchain. And we made that decision for a reason. I’ll tell you why in a minute.

Anna Redmond:

So that is just, you know, we call it sort of like the Facebook of challenge coins, or someone actually called it the ancestry.com of challenge coins. I like both of those analogies. And it’s just a place where if you have those coins, you could put them up there. We’ve done a really nice job with the visuals. They. They kind of turn in space. You could see the front and the back. You click on it.

Anna Redmond:

You can input the story, the date that you got it, and you can click around on other people’s profiles and say, hey, you know what coins does Dave has? Oh my gosh, he has that coin. Like, I have a friend with the same coin, or I have a similar one. I was in the same unit. So that piece is really around community, forging connection and preserving the stories. And there’s a whole other piece around older veterans that I’d love to spend some time on, but maybe I’ll put a pin in that for a minute. The blockchain part really comes up for new coin issuers. So, the pitch there is like, hey, you’re making a coin. 

Anna Redmond:

Make the physical coin. We’re not trying to talk you out of that. But, hey, have you considered creating a digital twin? And the digital twin is going to live on the blockchain. And we describe blockchain as like digital cement. It creates provenance. So once something’s written to the blockchain, it’s fixed. And what the blockchain component gives you as an issuer of the coin is you get to communicate what your story is about your coin. Because you may hand someone a coin, and maybe your coin has an insignia on it or quote in Latin or Greek or something, and it means something really special to you, and you don’t have time to tell every single person.

Anna Redmond:

So, on the blockchain, you can have that story embedded. We’ve actually created sort of a blockchain coin capsule, which includes the ability to add multimedia so you can put in a video, you can put in photos. And we’ve had some pretty stellar use cases where both of those made so much sense. But most importantly, as the issuer, you get a connection to your recipients, which, when people hand out challenge coins today, like they do it physically, it’s literally, it passes from hand to hand. And so, unless you’re super organized or a great note taker, you may not even remember who you gave all your coins to, but you probably want to. And there’s a whole other use case where coins are used in fundraising. So, it’s really helpful to know who your recipients are because now that you know how it works, because we’ve broken it up into those two sections, we don’t lead with blockchain, we lead with story preservation, which we find really resonates. And then when we talk about blockchain, we describe it as a way to ensure the trustworthiness of information. And that piece also resonates. And so then the third thing we’ve done, which we made this decision only after talking to former and current NFT founders who’ve built stuff for, you know, in the art space for other things related with blockchain NFTs, and they told us, whatever you do, if you’re building for an existing community that you respect and value, do not Create a marketplace out of the gate because you will get a bunch of people crashing it, trying to arbitrage it, trying to bid stuff up, bid stuff down. Do not create a marketplace. And so, we listened to that. So right now, the only people on the site really are folks for whom this community is important. We do have a plan for creating marketplace because they’re asking for it.

Anna Redmond:

But I think the order in which we do it and how we roll it out will be really, really critical to avoiding all of that negative NFT blowback.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, right, right. So how do you see this growing? Take me through some of the use cases. So, you have this challenge coin. You got the digital twin of it. You’re talking about the story and whatnot. Is this ultimately a way that people connect with each other? Or what’s the, what’s the, what’s the big vision?

Anna Redmond:

The big vision is we’re going to have 30 million people on this platform. I want every single Challenge Coin holder in the U.S. and that’s not even including internationally, because this is a tradition that’s traveled. It pops up in Europe, England, Australia. I want every single challenge coin holder on this site making connections and more importantly, preserving the stories for their children, their spouses, their families. Because we do see that there’s a lot of loss of narrative. And we’ve talked to so many veterans who have said like, you know, and these. And these are older folks who, you know, Vietnam, Korea, World War II, who say, when I’m no longer here, my grandchildren will have no clue what these things are.

Anna Redmond:

And that’s a really sad thought, especially if some of them were earned, you know, through blood, sweat and tears. Right. Something really big. So that’s. I really fundamentally most wedded to that human vision of this platform. A space where valor and courage and kindness are celebrated and preserved. So that’s the first piece.

Anna Redmond:

Obviously it’s a business, so how do we make money? We definitely charge issuers for the coins that we mint on the blockchain, and that includes perpetual hosting of their coin, the ability to contact their users. We’ve actually pioneered something pretty special. We call it a living coin, which lets issuers continue to push updates and media into the coin sort of holders. So, the example I always give on this is one of my advisors will raise is an active-duty Navy seal. He’s in charge of special warfare recruiting. And his coin is so special, is the first ever coin that was the physical coin with a digital twin. And it was the first coin to Go live on our site. And he’s an awesome guy.

Anna Redmond:

He’s super smart, does so much stuff. And so, I always joke, like, one of these days, you may go into politics, and you’ll be like, governor of Texas or whatever. So, if that happens, like, he can push that update to his coin holders, Right? Like, people that met him 10 years ago can be like, oh, my gosh, like, look. Look what Will’s done now. Or maybe it’s not that. Maybe he’s launched a nonprofit or a business, but there’s a way to communicate and not lose those relationships. So that’s special. And then the third piece that we are being asked for actively is, hey, can we use your site for fundraisers? And the best example of that is there are a lot of wonderful nonprofits that serve veterans or first responders, and often when they are doing fundraisers, they will give out challenge coins to their donors.

Anna Redmond:

But one of the issues is that they want to support donation levels that are low enough that it doesn’t make sense to be mailing out physical pieces of metal. And they’d love to be able to have our site up so they can collect donations and send out digital challenge coins. And that’s something I’m being asked for left and right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ah, that’s so interesting. And so, if somebody wants to, you know, someone is deserving of a coin, what’s the process? Do people nominate other people, or do you just nominate yourself? Or both, or how does that work?

Anna Redmond:

That’s such a great question. So, it’s considered bad form to ask for a coin. In theory. It’s supposed to be sort of this delightful, unexpected event in the sense that someone sees you doing something and just gives it to you and says, hey, Melinda, I’d like to give you my coin. That’s a phenomenon that’s based on, you know, merit or relationship. There are certainly some coins, like, if you. You know, there are no female Navy SEALs, but let’s pretend that I was so awesome as an athlete that I could qualify. If I became a Navy seal, I would get a coin. I would get a coin with whatever. And that’s given to everyone once they clear that hurdle or, you know, if I’m a member of a specific military unit.

Melinda Wittstock:

Got it. Got it. Okay. I think this is so interesting, too, because, you know, it’s sort of like oral history in a way.

Anna Redmond:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And so, there’s so many use cases I could think of when you have all that data and all these.

Anna Redmond:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s we, we should be as a society learning a lot more from history than we are. Like, I just think of mistakes in war where people are fighting the wrong battle at the wrong time or the, or they, they haven’t learned from the past kind of experiences or mistakes or when things have gone well and, and preserving all of that I think is pretty important.

Anna Redmond:

Yeah. And I think, you know, I’m, I’m most touched by the opportunity to preserve individual stories too, because, you know, so one of the initiatives that we’re just kicking off, which I’m really excited about, is we’re actually going to have high school students interview older veterans and help them digitize their coins. Because one of our concerns was like, gosh, if you’re in your, you know, late 70s, early 80s and beyond, like maybe that’s, it’s a tough ask to say, hey, we’re going to put your coin onto this digital platform. There’s a little bit of a tech gap. So, we’re talking to high schools about having high school students go in and just talk with veterans and say, hey, tell me about this coin. Let me photograph it. Obviously, kids are amazing with digital stuff. I have two girls, 12 and 15, and anytime I need an ad hoc video or photo, I ask them and their stuff looks like, like it’s out of vogue, like it’s so good.

Anna Redmond:

And so, then the kids can be responsible not only for helping preserve that piece of history, but also then they have that one-on-one interaction with people who’ve lived this, this wildly different experience that, that maybe they don’t have an opportunity to really interact with.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, 100%. Well, bravo to you for doing what you’re doing. What’s the best way, Anna, for people to find you and learn about whether they need security, their physical premises, or they know someone who’s deserving of a coin, or all the different ways. What’s the best way?

Anna Redmond:

So first of all, I think everyone needs security, a security assessment, which is really what we start with, and we recommend literally every business should do it once a year because you should at least know what your vulnerabilities are. And then you can decide, you know, what level of steps you’re taking. So, everyone should reach out to me and that’s Anna. A N N a Braav B R A AAV CO and then if you’re interested in learning about the challenge coin platform, would love to have your insights. It’s allcoin a l l c o I n.br and I will say the site is gated right now, which means that it’s wait list only. We’re letting in only selective cohorts. But if you put your name on the wait list and mention that you heard about us on this podcast, I would love to let you in and get your feedback.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings today for flying with us.

Anna Redmond:

It has been such a pleasure.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Anna Redmond is the Founder and CEO of Braav, a company rethinking how organizations approach real-world security.

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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