Mark43 is a company that builds the world’s most powerful cloud-native public safety computer-aided dispatch (CAD), records management system (RMS), analytics, and property and evidence platform. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Mark43 co-founder and Head of External Affairs Matt Polega.
Matt Polega’s Background
Matt Polega is the Co-founder and Head of External Affairs at Mark43 where he oversees all planning and execution of all outward-facing efforts, including company and product brand, positioning, thought leadership, employer branding, and public relations.
Matt developed the earliest iteration of the Mark43 RMS, and remains deeply connected to the mission and what it takes to build effective public safety technology. In 2015, he was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for the category of Enterprise Technology. He holds a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering with a minor in computer science from Harvard University, where he was also the captain of the Division I Track and Field team.
Formation Of Mark43
How did the idea for Mark43 come together?
“Paying homage to Tony Stark’s inventions in Marvel’s Iron Man trilogy, in which he created 42 versions of his protective suit, Mark43 is on a mission to enhance public safety technology and take it to the next level,” Polega reflected. “Eleven years ago I co-founded Mark43 with two of my classmates, Flo Mayr and Scott Crouch, while we were still at Harvard. We were three engineering students who expected that public safety agencies were using the same cutting-edge technology that we saw on CSI or NCIS. We quickly realized through a class project that this was not the case, and the public safety sector was underserved by the antiquated technology that was available at the time. We wanted to bring them the modern tools that would empower governments and their communities to improve the safety of officers and the people they are sworn to serve. We believe in the power of technology to transform public safety and founded a company that would help police leadership better serve their communities and keep their officers safe. Our first customer was the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, and ten years later we have partnerships with more than 200 local, state, and federal public safety agencies.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for Mark43?
“Working with my co-founders, Scott and Flo. Eleven years after we co-founded Mark43, we are still working together at the same company. That is a rare thing, and it is a tribute to how well we work together. It isn’t always easy, but we believe in having difficult conversations when necessary and letting each of us leverage our strengths while supporting each other in our weaknesses,” Polega highlighted.
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in building the company, and has the current macroeconomic climate affected the company?
“Public safety is not an easy industry to break into – policing is a tight community that can be wary of vendors. We worked very hard to establish trust with police leaders, and we did that by demonstrating that we were passionate about public safety, we’re mission-driven and truly committed to delivering technology that makes public safety professionals’ jobs easier, allowing them to get back to what drew them to policing in the first place,” Polega acknowledged. “Like most tech companies, we run our business in a sustainable way that ensures we can continue delivering dependably for our customer base.”
Core Products
What are Mark43’s core products and features?
Polega said that Mark43’s mission-critical, cloud-native product suite, includes:
1.) Records Management System (RMS) allows streamlined workflows, intuitive search, and native NIBRS validations to form the most comprehensive and intuitive public safety reporting platform. Mark43’s RMS has six core capabilities: Report Writing, Case Management, Property & Evidence, Booking, Stat Reporting & Crime Analysis, and System Administration.
2.) Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) operates as a natural extension of the dispatcher, call taker, and in-field first responder during an emergency response. Using this system, officers are able to take calls from anywhere, regardless of whether they are at a computer or on their mobile device. This system has 2 core capabilities: Dispatch and First Responder.
a.) Dispatch enables telecommunicators to respond to events swiftly and efficiently, armed with the right information at the right time. The right information includes alerting dispatchers to potential hazards at the scene of emergencies and helping them make the best use of field resources by suggesting which units should respond. The software alerts dispatchers of potential hazards at the scene of emergencies and helps them make the best use of field resources by providing unit response suggestions.
b.) First Responder is thoughtfully designed to provide field personnel a direct window into incident response and emergency dispatch via our specialized mobile in-unit solution. Agencies can leverage First Responder both in-unit and through our Mark43 OnScene mobile app, which extends an agency’s CAD deeper into the field and untethered from a mobile-data terminal (MDT) and vehicle. Mark43 OnScene equips first responders with the context and situational awareness of a traditional CAD but puts that information into their hands via their mobile devices even while away from their vehicle.
Evolution Of Mark43’s Technology
How has Mark43’s technology evolved since launching?
“We never deviated from our core belief that the foundation of any public safety operation is CAD and RMS since they are the main software data collection tools used by agencies for analysis and data-driven decision-making,” Polega shared.
“Agencies that adopt modern, cloud-native platforms will be best- positioned to leverage new and evolving technology that adds capabilities and enhances user experience. As we developed and improved those CAD and RMS systems – all on the AWS GovCloud platform – we were able to deliver more leading-edge technology such as Mark43 Alternate CAD and Mark43 OnScene.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Mark43’s most significant milestones?
Polega cited that the top milestones include the wide variety of public safety organizations that have implemented their systems and proven that the software has been extremely successful and beneficial to those agencies.
— Boston Police Department
— Seattle Police Department
— San Antonio Police Department
— D.C. Metropolitan Police Department
- Louisiana State Police
- Albuquerque Police Department
— The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office
— The Cumbria Constabulary (UK)
“Furthermore, recent product launches and advancements have disrupted the space. While on-prem and other primary dispatch systems might go down, our resilient, cloud-native CAD and Alternate CAD stay online. Mark43 OnScene, available on iOS and Android devices, untethers officers from their cars, bringing the full functionality of mission-critical CAD systems with them into the field. Mark43 is significantly improving the way public safety agencies can do work,” Polega continued.
Customer Success Stories
When I asked Polega about customer success stories, he replied:
“We recently grew the Mark43 footprint across the state of Florida, including new deals with both the Coral Gables Police Department and the Boynton Beach Police Department, the first agency in Palm Beach County to benefit from these much-needed public safety technology upgrades.
Coral Gables telecommunicators, serving both the Coral Gables Police and Fire Departments, will use the system’s vital functionality to pinpoint exact locations and clearly display data for increased situational awareness when responders arrive on the scene. This enhances safety for emergency responders and their ability to meet the specific needs of their community. The cloud-native public safety platform also ensures superior data security controls that public safety agencies can trust, due to Mark43’s unwavering commitment to the highest levels of compliance and cybersecurity. In addition, Mark43 Analytics will give the Coral Gables Police Department leadership real-time access to complete and accurate data, which can be used to drive positive outcomes and assess trends. With dedicated customer support, Mark43 provides 24/7 steadfast partnership to address any Coral Gables Police Department needs.
Boynton Beach, in addition to Mark43 CAD, will use Mark43 RMS to enable faster report-writing, integrated compliance standards, better case management, and a superior user experience that leads to enhanced work performance and job satisfaction.
In 2019, the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) knew its RMS wasn’t meeting the department’s needs. Deputy Chief Karen Falks, at the time responsible for Community Engagement & Technology, led the team that upgraded SAPD from a legacy records management solution to Mark43 RMS, establishing best practices and innovative ways of thinking along the way. After implementing our systems, SAPD saw an increase in the amount of time that officers are in the field, a decrease in investigation time, an improvement in public satisfaction, and zero scheduled downtime for maintenance and upgrades.
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Mark43 pursuing?
“Mark43 is executing against a $7 billion total market. Our key customer categories are U.S. state and local governments, the U.S. federal government, and international governments,” Polega assessed.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Mark43 from its competition?
“From day one, we were committed to cloud-native technology. We partnered with industry-leading cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) to ensure maximum security, resiliency, and scalability for agencies around the country and the world,” Polega noted.
“With a world-class team from leading tech companies, the U.S. military, and many law enforcement and public safety agencies, we employ the best to ensure our platform empowers our customers today as their needs evolve for tomorrow. From day one, we knew this meant building cloud-native technology.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Mark43’s future company goals?
Our goal is to be the last CAD and RMS a public safety agency ever needs to buy. With our pace of innovation and improvement, we aim to help our customers see around the corner as public safety evolves.
We also will continue to have a relentless focus on security. We will soon be one of the few companies in the world to be FedRAMP High and StateRAMP certified, meaning we adhere to the highest standards of security protocols and compliance and are ready to serve the U.S. federal government.
We believe resiliency is the future. The pandemic, an uptick in large-scale weather emergencies and cyberattacks, as well as the growing costs and security vulnerabilities associated with on-prem systems will make it increasingly difficult to justify any technical environment that is not cloud-native.
Mobility will continue to be a game changer. What can we do to take our responders out of the car and into the community? How can we dramatically cut the time spent at the station?
AI is the big topic that everyone is talking about right now. And we are too. But for public safety agencies, we believe in the need to proceed carefully. Agencies need to work closely with community members, elected leadership and end-users to develop policies and procedures that allows agencies to safely, effectively, and ethically deploy new technologies like AI .
No matter what lies ahead, our goal is to ensure that our customers have what they need to keep their communities safe.
Mark43 is the leading cloud-native public safety technology company. We deliver a modern, intuitive, and mobile-first CAD, RMS, and Analytics platform that empowers governments and their communities to improve the safety and quality of life for all,” Polega concluded.
“Working with more than 200 local, state, and federal public safety agencies, Mark43 is transforming how first responders use technology to respond, engage and serve the community. We provide the tools, resources, expertise, and security foundation that public safety needs so they can get back to the business of public safety.”
