Duo develops app to put private security at people’s fingertips
San Antonio TX Feb 22 2023 You 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 Majors-Garza, 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 Majors-Garza, 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.”
