Doron Kempel Podcast Transcript
Doron Kempel joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Doron Kempel. Doron Kempel is the chairman and CEO of Bond, where he leads the company’s mission to redefine personal security through an AI-enabled preventative safety platform designed to protect individuals, families, and enterprises before incidents occur.
Under his leadership, Bond has scaled a multidisciplinary organization combining advanced software systems, live operational command infrastructure, and human security expertise to deliver continuous proactive protection services across multiple geographies. Well, good afternoon, Doron. Welcome to the show.
Doron Kempel: Hey, Brian. Thank you for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. I know you’re based out of New York. I’m in Kansas City, so I appreciate you navigating time zones, calendars, et cetera, to be here. And Doron, if, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna jump into your first question. You’ve had one of the more unconventional paths to the personal security space.
A decade in Israel’s elite special operations forces, then serial founder of two enterprise tech companies acquired by HPE and IBM, and now the CEO of Bond. What’s the thread connecting all of those chapters, and what ultimately drove you towards protecting individuals rather than enterprise infrastructure?
Doron Kempel: A great question, and I think that the part of it that perhaps is less intuitive to the audience is where it all starts. So I was very fortunate to be accepted to a, a military unit that gets assignments at the level of problems. In other words, at the level of a prime minister or head of the military, this unit is presented with certain problems.
And what the, of course senior members of the unit need to do with the rest of the team is take initiative and innovation. These two words, those two Is seem to be the same thing, but they’re different. Initiative doesn’t require innovation. But what you need to do in that particular unit is find a way to solve problems, problems that are worthy, worthy from a national security perspective, and that are feasible.
Feasibility has to do with operational complexity, technology budget et cetera. And that mindset of taking initiative and then innovating in order to make something that is worthy feasible is one of the key threads across everything that you’ve described, from that particular unit where you were taught and you later internalized the notion that everything is feasible or possible until proven otherwise, and this mindset of looking for problems that are worthy and then finding a way to make them feasible.
So that’s one, I would say, main thread. In addition, if you look at all of those activities, they all involve certain skills. A- and those skills include, of course, technological innovation- And then operational innovation. Operational innovation typically has to do with people, and I think about it as moving people in time and space.
Think about it, that’s what coaches do. That’s not what accountants do. Accountants don’t move people in time and space. They move data. They’re doing analytical work. Engineers don’t move people. So there’s the element of technology, there’s the element of operations, then there’s the element of leadership.
Whenever you’re doing something new, you always need to convince people. You need to influence them, whether it’s a prime minister, whether it’s your senior executive, whether it’s your team members, your partners. That’s another very important thread. And of course, once you move into the business world, there’s business complexity, financial complexity, and that is also a common thread.
So those are the common threads. With regard to what drove me, I always look for worthy and feasible problems to solve. Clearly, the problem of personal security and peace of mind, Brian, is a big problem that troubles billions of people globally. I thought it was of course, worthy, and once I realized that it’s feasible technologically, operationally from a business perspective, et cetera, here we are
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. Thank you so much. And I’d like to highlight a few things from the guest perspective. Where it all started, we talked about your, your service, your incredible service in elite units in the Israeli Defense Forces. You were presented with complex problems all the time, and you had to solve those.
And you mentioned two things, taking initiative and innovation to tackle these problems. And as you mentioned, everything is feasible until improvement impossible. But that element everything has an element of technology, operations, and leadership, and you talked a little bit about that leadership, where leadership is, is where you need to move people.
And, and that is, of course, as we talked about before the podcast started, people is what makes the world go round. So thank you. And Doron, Bon- Bond combines AI-driven software with live human agents in operational command centers. Why did you decide not to go fully automated, and how do you think about the right balance between machine speed and human judgment in real security incident?
Doron Kempel: Excellent question. So, so it all starts, and I recommend that to everyone, we’re asking ourselves, “What’s the mission?” Sometimes I hear people saying, “What are the first principles?” I say, “No, no, no, scrap that. Think about it in a way that’s intuitive to you. What are we trying to accomplish?” What we’re trying to accomplish right now is making people safer and feeling safer.
Those are the two missions of Bond, increase personal security and the feeling of being safe. That means that AI is one of the tools that we have, and of course, humans, in order to help other humans be and feel safer, is another capability At this point in time, it’s clear to us that the humans whom we’re responsible for, they are the goal.
AI is the means, one of them. People are the mission. In order for them to be safer, in order for them to feel safer, humans today want to interact with humans, and the level of comfort that they have with machines or with AI is at level X. I’m not going to specify what that is. During the course of our journey, we need to, of course, use AI and other technologies in order to be more effective, more efficient, you talked about speed, in order to detect, and in order to make the right dete- decisions and then take the right action.
And over time, technologies are gonna play an increasing role in that. But today, what is clear to us, Brian, is that one of the core capabilities of Bond is our promise that if you’re a Bond member, that’s an end user, if you want a Bond personal security agent, you get it in five seconds. You click a button like video monitor me, and you get a Bond agent on your phone in five seconds.
You’re never alone again. Now, think about the human psychology around that, of not being alone again. Who promises this anywhere in the world today? No one. And what people want, what the customers, the members want, is they want another woman to look… another, a human to look after them. Now, they want to know that that human is super equipped, juiced up in our command centers, with a- with access to first responders, with AI and other technologies that allow this person to make quick decisions and take quick action.
It could be that over the course of this journey, AI will eventually also make the decisions. Today, we don’t let AI make the decisions. AI is in decision support role and in an execution support role. In other words, AI can detect, if you activate a service called Track Me on the Go, our AI can detect in real time that, say, Lisa is not on the right route, not in the right speed, perhaps stopped where she shouldn’t.
And then immediately, the AI activates the agent, and the agent reaches out to Lisa to check what’s going on with her and to help her. So in summary, both play a pivotal role. The humans who help humans and the AI that helps the humans who help the humans. And over time, as we see that our members become more comfortable and they want AI to play a greater role, that may change.
Take an example, there are now cabs that are driving themselves. I spoke with my wife. She says, “Who wants to be in those cars right now?” And I’ll say, “You wait, and in a while people are gonna ask, ‘Who wants humans to drive them when you can have more reliable bots driving them?'” So it’s just a matter of time, but we need to remember all the time, the mission are the humans, the means is the AI.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And again, just to repeat that, humans are the, the, the mission and the means is AI, which again, we talk about AI the last couple years here it’s been more prevalent in, in our everyday lives. But again, you talked about what is the mission? What are we trying to accomplish? It’s humans, right?
Increase that personal security and provide the feeling of being safe. 99, 99% of humans, in my experience, don’t wanna feel or be alone, and I like how you can provide that sense of security with your platform. So thank you, Doron. And Doron, Bond has been gaining traction with large corporations as a benefit for employees.
How are enterprises thinking about personal security as part of their duty of care, and how does that B2B channel change your growth strategy?
Doron Kempel: Terrific. So w- what the audience can reflect u- upon is the fact that revolutions at the onset are very subtle. We don’t know that it’s happening. For instance, we see that people are not coming to the office during COVID, we say, “Oh, it’s going to pass.”
It has not passed. This has transformed the way that we work. Or we, we say to ourselves, “Oh, people are using BlackBerrys a few years ago. It’s just a, a niche.” No, everybody now has a smartphone. So once a certain technology allows all of us to see that something that wasn’t possible before is possible, that creates a revolution.
We’re now in the midst of a personal security and peace of mind revolution. What we are doing is something that has not been feasible, not economically, not operationally, not technologically before, and that is having everybody feel that they’re not alone. Our ability to take care of people, not only when they’re in the protected buildings, if it’s corporate buildings, university buildings government buildings, or personal buildings, but when we’re out and, and about.
By having a Bond agent on your phone, we deliver the witness and a recorded camera, and most perpetrators, that’s what all law enforcement people know, want to stay away from cameras and witnesses, which we deliver in five seconds. By making that possible, possible in terms of effective and affordable and privacy preserving, we’ve now created a new reality.
But in order for that revolution to occur, what we need are leaders, and here I want to give a lot of credit for the leaders of the largest corporations in the world, Brian, who’ve already decided to offer Bond to all types of their employees, their store employees, their home care nurses, their salespeople, drivers, people who work from home.
So that is the beginning, and if you think about the companies that are Bond customers, they include, Brian, one of the three largest companies in the world in terms of employees and in terms of revenues. One of the three largest smartphone companies in the world, one of the three largest telecommunications companies in the world, entertainment companies, retailers, and so forth.
When these people start, when these leaders take this initiative and offer that to all types of employees, you know that an inflection point is coming. So first of all, I want to hold my hat in my hand to all of those leaders and suggest that we are at the beginning of what seems like a subtle but soon to reach an inflection point revolution, and I project that within five years from now, anyone that we care about as parents, as CEOs, as mayors, as head of universities, as ministers, governors, et cetera, all of the people whom we are responsible for, if they want to, they will have a service such as Bond on their phone.
They’re not gonna be alone, they’re gonna be safer
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. And just again, highlighting a couple things here. You went into that, those societal transformations or revolutions, as you said. They start small. Examples were like COVID and smartphones, et cetera. And, and I know we need to have another revolution in this space of personal security.
But the ability to take care of people and help them feel, make them feel safe is, is key and, and there’s certainly a gap that you’re filling here in the market. And which is cool is it’s gon- it’s effective, it’s affordable, and you certainly kept privacy in mind. So really appreciate that.
And Duran, the last question of the day, as we look, AI continues to advance and threat landscapes evolve, whether they’re physical, digital, or hybrid, where do you see the personal security industry in the next decade, and what role do you believe Bond will play in shaping that future?
Doron Kempel: So, a- again, what’s most important for all of us is to always start with, with the mission, what we’re trying to accomplish.
The mission is enhancing the personal security and peace of mind of humans. AI is a very important technology, much talked about, but it’s one of various technologies that are going to continue playing a role in making all of this more effective, more scalable, more affordable to more people. So our mission is to have everybody feel safer.
The mission is personal security for all. And when I say personal security, remember, and this is not a complaint, it’s just a- an observation. All of us are beneficiaries of living in a wonderful country, talking about the United States, and we all get national security, and we all get federal security, and there is security in our cities and maybe in our buildings, but that’s not personal security.
Personal security, in other words, somebody who’s looking after us, is something that only few today get CEOs and other VIPs. And what we’re doing, without using too many big words, is democratizing the notion of personal security for all. We wanna make it effective, affordable for everyone, anywhere. And in that particular journey, AI and other technologies are gonna play a, a major role.
One more point that is very important, should not be missed. We now, when we meet with corporations, Brian, we show them that offering Bond is not only the right thing to do morally and ethically, care for your employees, which they all want to do, but it’s ROI positive. In other words, when you offer Bond to your employees, there is a value on a per employee per year.
An employee who receives Bond, that is anywhere between five X and 10 X the cost of Bond. In other words, what we have created here is something that is not only effective, but for corporate leaders or mayors, if you want, we now have mayors around the world who are starting to offer the service to their residents.
It is ROI positive. It ru- it reduces the cost of medical and insurance, it inc- it increases engagement morale, and it lowers churn and other benefits. Back to you
Brian Thomas: Thank you so much. Thank you. Doron, you mentioned always keeping that mission in the forefront, which is enhancing the security and peace of mind of every individual, and I really like this, democratizing personal security for everyone, right?
Not just the VIPs, celebrities, and CEOs, et cetera, but you did mention also this ROI positive. W- having that peace of mind, and a lot of times your mental health impacts well, all the time really, in some fashion your, your physical health, and you talked about some of that ROI for again, peace of mind r- in relations to the physical and mental wellbeing of, of individuals.
So thank you. And Doron, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Doron Kempel: Brian, it was a great pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity. Have a great rest of your week.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Doron Kempel Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
