In a TikTok video with over 3 million views, a girl in a fluffy, maximalist coat sits within the again seat of a luxurious SUV, parked in the course of a New York Metropolis avenue. Atop the 6-second video, a line of textual content reads, “our bodyguards bought us matcha.” The digital camera zooms in on two intimidating males in full fits with crimson ties, every carrying an iced matcha latte as they stroll again to the automotive.
In the same video, a younger girl movies a glossy Chevrolet Suburban because it pulls up in entrance of her home. A person in a go well with opens the door for her earlier than she’s whisked away, surrounded within the automotive by different stoic, professionally dressed males. They wheel her carry-on-sized baggage as she enters the airport, safely escorting her to her flight as she brags within the on-video textual content: “pov you ordered safety to take you to the airport.”
These posts had been timed strategically with the launch of a brand new app known as Protector, which debuted final week in Los Angeles and New York Metropolis, permitting unusual folks to order a Secret Service-like safety element. However the movies weren’t natural.
“We posted 14 items of content material for [Protector] which resulted in 15 million views and over 30,000 downloads,” the ladies from the matcha video, Fuzz and Fuzz, wrote in a TikTok, disclosing that they had been employed to make these movies.
The opposite creator, Camille Hovsepian, was not organically selling the app, both, a Protector spokesperson advised TechCrunch. The creator’s boyfriend, serial entrepreneur and development hacker Nikita Bier, is an advisor to Protector.
In Bier’s playbook, which earned his personal apps acquisitions by Discord and Facebook, rage bait is a part of the enjoyable.
“When you make 8 figures, you shouldn’t waste the remainder of your life attempting to get incrementally greater—like doing a b2b saas startup,” Bier wrote in a latest post on X. “As a substitute, you ought to be pondering of the way to piss off hundreds of thousands of individuals on the web every day by launching controversial app ideas, for pure love of the sport.”
Although Bier’s development technique is synthetic, it has confirmed profitable in producing buzz. He just lately suggested an AI-powered well being app to change its name from Most Days to Loss of life Clock, then advised the app so as to add a survey that predicts precisely how and when customers will die. Certain sufficient, the app shot to No. 6 on the well being charts within the iOS app retailer and bought a shout out on the Late Present with Stephen Colbert.
“Me telling you to rename your app: $24,000/mo,” Bier wrote on X. “Your app in a joke on Colbert: Priceless.”
However for Protector, which Bier describes as “Uber with weapons,” the concept is extra tenuous than including a gimmicky AI characteristic to a well being app.
Protector’s guards are lively responsibility or just lately retired legislation enforcement, every of whom has government-issued permits to hold firearms and work as a guard. Hiring a safety element on Protector will value customers at the least $1,000 for at least 5 hours, plus a $129 annual membership payment.
In line with estimates from Appfigures, an app intelligence agency, Protector has been downloaded by U.S.-based iOS customers about 97,000 instances within the first week after its February 17 launch. A couple of third of these downloads got here on launch day, because it climbed to No. 3 on the App Retailer’s Journey charts. This preliminary curiosity across the app has slowed down although; as of February 27, it sits at No. 70 on the Journey chart.
Although individuals are downloading the app — maybe out of sheer curiosity — these installs don’t assure that folks will really pay to make use of it.
Protector’s goal buyer is unclear, because it’s tough to think about what sort of particular person could be on board with paying over $1,000 for such an ostentatious, pointless service. Maybe as one other tactic to spice up engagement, Protector has made appeals to a extremely particular viewers: enterprise executives who’re involved about their security after the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson (who would doubtless have entry to company safety anyway).
“If a Protector was current [when Thompson was killed], disaster may have been averted,” the corporate claims in a video on X. The safety guard within the video then runs by way of three potential eventualities the place he claims he may have deterred the assailant from committing homicide.
With such a minimal potential buyer base, it’s not clear how Protector will be capable to maintain itself.
However for now, the app has backing from angel traders together with Balaji Srinivasan. The previous a16z common associate is understood for shedding a public bet that the Bitcoin value would attain $1 million, and he has a particular curiosity in backing “startup societies” and “community states” like Prospéra, Honduras. Final 12 months, he furthered this aim by renting an island close to Singapore to host a 90-day “Community Faculty,” which he described as “a technocapitalist college town” for “everybody who doesn’t really feel a part of the institution” and believes that “Bitcoin succeeds the Federal Reserve.”
Whereas “Uber with weapons” is much less excessive than adopting islands to be half of a bigger, Bitcoin-based revolution, apps like “Protector” may have a extra direct impact on common folks.
Protector isn’t the primary firm to pursue this idea. BlackWolf, an app that additionally affords armed rideshare drivers, operates in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas; Appfigures estimates that BlackWolf has been downloaded about 256,000 instances since launch in 2023.
Like Protector, BlackWolf has leaned on extravagant social media advertising and marketing and fear mongering, capitalizing on information of driverless Waymo automobiles being vandalized. BlackWolf founder Kerry KingBrown urges viewers to make use of his service as an alternative of taking a Waymo, as if different, extra cheap options like Uber and Lyft don’t exist.
These ways recall Citizen, the community-sourced crime reporting app that provides a $20 per month service the place customers can join with a safety agent in an emergency.
If these new apps can study something from Citizen, it’s that the incentives of public security and startup development don’t combine. This was particularly clear in an egregious incident when Citizen founder and CEO Andrew Body promoted the app’s livestream characteristic by broadcasting a seven-hour manhunt for a suspected arsonist, providing $30,000 for info resulting in the person’s arrest. However after blasting notifications to all Los Angeles customers to affix the pursuit, it turned out that that they had the improper man — the Los Angeles police arrested an harmless suspect.
Although Citizen remains to be working — and Body stays CEO — its errors loom giant as Protector prepares its subsequent announcement. Protector isn’t simply engaged on “Uber for weapons.” It plans to launch an app known as “Patrol,” the place customers can crowdfund safety guards to surveil their neighborhoods. The more cash customers donate, the upper the extent of safety they will unlock, together with robots and drones to observe the realm.
It’s a controversial enterprise transfer in a time when People’ trust in law enforcement has wavered within the wake of high-profile police killings.
“We’re not mall cops,” a safety guard mentioned in a promotional video for Patrol. “We’re actual cops.”