911He got mugged, then revamped 911 for the next generation

By Brian Blum

Published 13 November 2018

Israeli company Carbyne has re-engineered the infrastructure for 911 services from the ground up, to take advantage of all the innovations that have come along in the 20 to 30 years since most emergency systems were built. Those innovations include the ability to see the location of a caller on a map, to chat by text if a voice call is not possible, to use VoIP (Voice over IP) services like WhatsApp and Skype, and to stream video so the 911 operator can see what’s happening in real time.

Amir Elichai was walking along the beach in Tel Aviv when he was approached by strangers who demanded his wallet. He complied, and as soon as he was safe, he called Israel’s emergency services system.

“The response time was terrible,” he recalls, leaving the muggers plenty of time to flee. “The technology was not at all up to date.” So Elichai decided to change the situation.

Four years and $24 million later, Elichai’s company, Carbyne, has re-engineered the infrastructure for 911 services from the ground up, to take advantage of all the innovations that have come along in the 20 to 30 years since most emergency systems were built.

Those innovations include the ability to see the location of a caller on a map, to chat by text if a voice call is not possible, to use VoIP (Voice over IP) services like WhatsApp and Skype, and to stream video so the 911 operator can see what’s happening in real time.

Carbyne (formerly known as Reporty) now has customers in 30 cities in the United States, Mexico, Europe, Israel and Singapore. The latest customer, in the city of Huixquilucan de Dogollado, Mexico, came online in September.

“Listening to the call-takers and the PSAP [public safety answering point] staff as they watched the pins drop [on the Carbyne 911 map] within a few meters of where the callers were, and the video upload on their screens was amazing,” says Raymundo Sánchez López, Carbyne’s regional director of sales for Mexico.

Carbyne has a staff of 65 in three offices – Tel Aviv, New York and Mexico. The company’s chairman is former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Could be built into Waze
Emergency call systems aren’t particularly sexy – they’re the kind of services you don’t think about until you need them. That was one reason why Founders Fund, which joined the company’s August Series B funding round of $15 million, became interested.

“I’m looking for businesses that aren’t massively competitive and Carbyne stands alone in a really unpopular industry,” Trae Stephens, a partner at the firm who is leading the investment, told the website TechCrunch.