Montreal-based app OurPwr strives to help women feel safer

For many young women, walking alone on campus or off can be unnerving. But a Montreal entrepreneur is hoping her new security app will help to empower them. Robin Petriogiannis, so nice to meet you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me. So this app is called the Power App. And it comes from a place of experience. Can you tell us about what led you to create this security app? Absolutely. So our app called Our Power helps women get out of dangerous and uncomfortable situations. So when I was 17, I was sexually harassed at work and everything on the market was a reactive panic button. And so that doesn't make any sense. We need something that's empowering, proactive and makes women feel like they're supported. So how does this app work exactly? So you can discreetly activate the app without unlocking your phone if you have a smartphone from the action button and then once you're in the app you're also able to then collect evidence so we have evidence that records from both sides of the camera so we call it our digital witness simultaneously and then it also connects you with your circle which is your community of support which And our proactive heat map lets you see how long it takes for help is essentially find my friends on steroids. to get to you before you enter a situation, like a date or a party. You say that you can record, so what would the benefit of recording be? A lot of women don't have any sort of evidence or proof in case something happens, whether they're being harassed, they feel like they're being followed, and they don't know where to turn. So they're able to record as well as call for help at the same time. So they said they could go to campus security, law enforcement, HR, any sort of situation like that. Oh, that's interesting. Can you show me how it works? Absolutely. So right here, if you click the panic button here, It immediately starts recording evidence from both sides of the camera. There's no flash or anything like that so you can see it right now. This way if you're walking like this or any sort of situation it's getting all that evidence. And then we also have this proactive heat map so you can see I have somebody who's within 15 minutes from me or if you zoom out this is where your other members of your circle are. And so our goal is that basically before you enter a situation like a date party or leaving class late you're able to see How long it would take for help to get to you so you know how much time you have to buy yourself if something's happening and then basically we have a very detailed profile as well that you would be able to share in case of a potentially dangerous situation where you go missing or anything like that that has a photo of you, it has your outfit of the day, it has any sort of medical issues or things that you want to share. And then you can download, here's an example of your evidence. This was from this morning. I think my hair is in curlers, but. Bye. But so basically you're able to download it from both front and back camera and it's first sent to the cloud actually because if your phone is low on storage or you don't have I have, um... Or your phone's taken away or anything like that. This way you don't lose that access to it. Oh, wow. You've thought of everything, haven't you? Thank you. Yeah, we try to take a full solution approach and help women before, during, and after. You might be wondering, well, how do we help you after? We also have our resource page that's city, state, and province specific. Okay, wow. The app is not free? If you're using it for your safety, there's a subscription. We currently have our founding member pricing on right now, which is about 50 US for the year. But, no matter what, we're always cheaper than your Netflix subscription. And if you're using it, let's say, to support your daughter or your friends or family, then it's free for you. So if you're the responder there to help your family or friends, it's free. In terms of getting something like this off the ground, you just graduated from the engineering school at Concordia. How did school help you to get this off the ground? So I started the company right before I actually started my undergrad degree. And while I was in school, I was able to apply a lot of the lessons and learnings. Some of our employees, actually, I met while I was doing my co-op internship as well. And the Gina Cody School of Innovation has a fund that has been able to support us as well while we were at Concordia. What's the response been? It's been very positive so far. We only recently launched about a month ago, so it's still new. But everyone has been really enjoying the app, saying that they feel safer daily and more comfortable when they're using it. And a lot of parents who are actually the primary purchaser of our subscription have said it gives them peace of mind knowing that their daughters are safe and comfortable on campus. Okay, so right now your target is for young women, but anybody can use this app. It's not specifically for students. Exactly. Women of all ages have safety concerns and unfortunately once you graduate, for instance from university, your safety concerns don't go away. They just change as your life stages change. So this is for women from any age, basically high school age to 70 and up. We have women who are saying that they're uncomfortable with this if they live alone or if their husbands are traveling. So we support women of all ages. Robin, thank you so much. Thank you.