Why We Dropped Out of MIT and Why We're All-In on AI for Law Enforcement
The Decision
Dropping out of MIT wasn't an easy decision. Like most people who get into MIT, I'd spent my entire life working toward that goal. The education was incredible, the people were brilliant, and the opportunities were endless. But I kept coming back to one question: what's the highest-impact thing I could be doing with my time?
The answer kept pointing toward Code Four. Not in six months after another semester, not after graduation—now. The problem we're solving is too important and too urgent to wait.
Why Law Enforcement
I'll be honest: law enforcement wasn't an obvious choice for me. I didn't have family in policing. I wasn't a criminal justice major. But as I learned about the challenges facing modern law enforcement, I became convinced this was where I needed to focus.
Body cameras have created a data explosion. Departments are drowning in video footage that they don't have time to properly review. Officers spend hours writing reports for incidents that lasted minutes. The technology that was supposed to help has, in many ways, added to the burden.
But this isn't a problem that requires just throwing more people at it. It's a problem that AI is uniquely suited to solve. Computer vision can analyze video. Natural language processing can help generate reports. Machine learning can identify patterns and extract insights from footage that would otherwise go unexamined.
The impact potential is enormous. If we can save officers even an hour a day on administrative work, that's thousands of hours per department per year—time that can be redirected to actual police work, community engagement, or simply getting home to family sooner.
The MIT Decision
MIT taught me to think rigorously about problems and to build things that work. Those skills are invaluable, and I'm grateful for my time there. But I also learned that the best way to learn is often by doing, especially in fast-moving fields like AI.
The education I'm getting by building Code Four—understanding customer needs, deploying AI in production, navigating regulatory requirements, managing a team—is education I couldn't get in any classroom. And every month we wait is a month that officers continue spending hours on manual work that could be automated.
Y Combinator offered us a spot, customers were ready to pilot our technology, and the team was ready to go all-in. The opportunity cost of staying in school became too high.
Why We'll Succeed
I'm not naive about the challenges ahead. We're a young team building complex technology for a demanding market. We'll make mistakes. We'll face setbacks. There will be times when the path forward isn't clear.
But I'm confident we'll succeed because we're solving a real problem that people desperately want solved. Every conversation with a law enforcement professional confirms the need. Every pilot deployment shows measurable results. Every piece of feedback makes our product better.
We're also building thoughtfully. We're not moving fast and breaking things when it comes to law enforcement technology. We're building with appropriate safeguards, getting extensive feedback, and deploying carefully. Speed matters, but so does getting it right.
The Mission
Ultimately, Code Four exists because law enforcement professionals deserve better tools. They're asked to do incredibly difficult jobs under intense scrutiny with outdated technology. They're buried in administrative work when they should be focused on keeping communities safe.
We can't solve every challenge facing law enforcement, but we can solve this one. We can use AI to handle the tedious work so officers can focus on what requires human judgment and expertise. We can turn hours of report writing into minutes. We can make body camera footage actually useful instead of just stored.
That's a mission worth dropping out for. That's a mission worth dedicating our careers to. And that's what Code Four is all about.
Join Us
If this mission resonates with you, we're hiring. We need engineers who can build robust AI systems. We need people who can work with law enforcement customers and understand their needs. We need team members who are excited about using technology to make a real difference.
The work is hard, the problems are complex, and the stakes are high. But the opportunity to build something truly important is rare. If you're looking for that kind of challenge, let's talk.
