San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Duo’s app puts private security guards at ordinary customers’ fingertips
might use your cellphone to order groceries, a pizza, socks from Amazon, a ride home from the bar. How about private security?
Last year, two local entrepreneurs launched an app named Secur that enables users to summon security officers at the touch of a button. It’s now available for use in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston, and they hope to spread its reach nationwide.
The co-founders, Gray Hardaway and Torri MajorsGarza, say the app gives everyday people access to the kind of protection usually available only to celebrities and the wealthy. A company might use it when firing a troubled employee, or a Realtor when holding an open house. A group of young women walking back to their hotel after a concert. Or a group of protesters who fear violence from the other side.
They began discussing the idea in summer 2020. Around that time, Hardaway’s wife was being stalked by a neighborhood resident with a mental illness; even after dozens of 911 calls, she had trouble getting the police to confront him, he said.
“My wife said, ‘I almost wanted to order a pizza, just so I would have somebody there.’ Because this guy knew that nobody was coming to stop it,” he said. “Why has nobody made security as accessible as everything else in the world?”
Hardaway and MajorsGarza, who knew each other from their background in medical sales, began hiring consultants and talking to software engineers. They’re now working to raise $2 million from investors to grow the company. They’re close to finishing renovations for office space in a building on the Northeast Side.
As of now, a monthly plan costs $9.99 for an individual and $49 for a business. When protection is requested, it costs $35 per half-hour, with a two-hour minimum, according to the website.
“There’s two paradigms in public safety. There’s 911, and then if you’re ultra-wealthy, you have private security,” Hardaway said. “Ninety-nine percent of us are relying on hope — hope that 911 gets there.”
The entrepreneurs recently sat to discuss how they came up with the idea for the app, how it’s being used and whether it might be politically controversial. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: You developed this concept in summer 2020 — obviously, a tense time in our nation. Was the idea in response to that?
Torri:
The world was not as safe as it used to be, and people were starting to feel that. We all thrive on safety. I felt less safe. (My husband is) a police officer, so I feel more safe than most people, and I live in a gated neighborhood. I thrive on that — I love the feeling of safety. I was a single mom for a long time; I lived in
a neighborhood in San Antonio that wasn’t gated. As the world started to change, I thought, “What would I feel like, at this point in life, with things going upside-down?” I didn’t like that for other people.
Q: Do you feel that among the public there’s more demand for this than there was 10 or 20 years ago?
Torri:
For certain. You know, in other countries, it’s very common to have private security. The United States is behind in that way — thankfully, we’ve had a more secure society. But the police are overwhelmed and can answer fewer calls.
Q: Do you see a future in America where more people use private security?
Torri:
I’d like to rewind to the ’70s, when we grew up, and we had never even heard of private security. That would be my wish. But I think that, unfortunately, we probably will see more private security going forward.
Gray: The ’70s had similar crime rates — this term “private policing” became very popular in the ’70s. So we’re kind of repeating history. And it changed; the structure got better. Crime has become so political, for whatever reason, that the laws have changed. A lot of people tell us, “I feel like the criminal has more rights than I do. I can’t get help until they’ve committed a crime,” which is counterintuitive.
Q: Is your app the first to offer this kind of service?
Gray:
There are a few people kind of trying. (One app has) a model where you can book a security guard in advance. We tried, and it was $3,600 for three hours. One of our goals is to make this affordable for people like my wife, when she was a single mom.
We did an early nationwide survey — is this a product people would want? We asked people 25 questions about their life, their experiences, feelings around safety, have they ever had to call 911. We
a lot of stories, which really helped us build the scenarios for how this could be used. Every day, it’s something different when people use it, that we didn’t expect. We had professional people that we surveyed who said, “I do online dating, but at some point, I’m gonna sit face-toface with a stranger. Could I have an officer in a blazer at the next table?”
Q: I looked at your prices, and they seem affordable. Are those prices sustainable?
Gray:
With demand, they could be. It’s the problem the country is facing, right? There’s only so many police officers available. That’s why they can’t respond — half of calls right now go unanswered. I think it’s going to be a paradigm shift. We have police officers who feel a little bit like they’re handcuffed, ironically, in their own job in their ability to act and prevent, because they get in their car and it tells them where they have to go. It’s prioritizing crimes that have already been committed, so they’re not able to go help and prevent crime.
Torri: Not everyone’s willing to take a bullet for somebody else. It takes a certain kind of person that wants to put on plainclothes — no vest, often — carry a gun and stand in front of you, for you to be safe.
Q: Are the security officers prepared to take a bullet?
Torri:
100 percent. They are wired differently. They’re in protection mode; they look for exits as soon as they walk in. Their main goal is to get you away from harm, but they will stand in front of you no matter what is coming their way.
Gray: I think one of our hurdles from prospective users is: “Am I going to get a mall cop?” So we’ve gotten profiles and bios and photos of our officers, because we want to keep highlighting, these are pretty incredible people. If you go to their personal pages, there’ll be picYou
tures of them protecting the Clintons.
Q: Could you describe the vetting and training process?
Gray:
The vetting in private security is pretty standard across the board for any company who has officers. All of them are fingerprinted and run through FBI background checks. They all do criminal history background checks. They all have to go through mental health testing. So it’s pretty rigorous.
Torri: He’s being humble about the vetting process. They’ve all been met face to face by him. He’s flown or driven to every single person who’s on that app.
Q: You’re raising money now, right? Could you describe what you’re doing?
Gray:
Somebody once told me, “Money solves a lot of ills.” In order to propel it forward, to build the infrastructure, money helps get you there. It’s angel investors; they don’t have voting rights, but we’re offering common shares. Our original goal was just to self-fund. Then we were like, “We can’t self-fund. This is a pretty aggressive dream.”
Q: Could you give me examples of situations the app has been used in?
Gray:
We have people that do protests, and they want protection because their counter-protesters are showing up armed and masked.
Torri: That’s about every weekend.
Q: What kinds of protesters?
Torri:
I hate to get political.
Gray: On either side, we’re going to protect who needs protection. But these tend to be people protesting children at drag shows.
Torri: Then there was that contentious child exchange. We have one female who takes someone with her to make the exchange just because her soon-to-be-ex-husband is not completely stable.
Gray: We’ve done bacheheard
lorette parties in Austin, which was kind of interesting. It was also not something that we thought of as a scenario.
Q: Was the drag show protest you mentioned the one at the Aztec Theatre here in San Antonio?
Gray:
I don’t think so. The people that hire us are up in Dallas.
Torri: It’s just an individual that calls us.
Q: Are there liability concerns? Obviously, you’re putting people in tricky situations. Are you worried something might happen — the officer ends up in an altercation?
Torri:
It’s a matter of time. That’s what our business is. Secur is actually a technology platform that connects people who need security to those who provide it. We also have a security company, so the security company will be the one liable for that.
Gray: We haven’t invented anything new. We’ve just invented how you have access to it, if that makes sense. Private security has existed. The laws are very clear on how you can do private security, what you can do as private security. But it’s really been accessible to CEOs and celebrities. All these officers — it’s kind of like, these assets exist, the infrastructure exists, and we can activate them for people that aren’t celebrities.
Q: Are you worried that what you’re doing could be politically controversial, especially if you’re getting involved in protests?
Torri:
Our marketing company’s terrified about it. We want to protect everyone. That’s all there is to it. It winds up being difficult because of the situations that we’re put in sometimes, but at the end of the day, we’re there to protect those who need protection.
Q: If there was a protest, and both sides tried to hire you, would you go there for both sides?
Torri: Absolutely. We want it to be a safe world.