Mills evacuated his property during the Walbridge Fire in 2020 and decided he needed to take action.
And a lot of the people who got me through that fire are actually now employees of my company.
Its a team of people who actually make the thing work.
Dozens of beachfront homes in Malibu, CA were destroyed overnight in the Palisades Fire on Wednesday, January 8, 2025.© Photo by David Crane/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images
The key was really the reporters themselves, the radio operators, right?
Last year, Watch Duty had 7.2 million users, up from 1.9 million the year earlier.
Like why are you building it?
Screenshots of the Watch Duty interface during the Palisade Fire on Jan. 8, 2025. Images: Watch Duty
Why does this matter, right?
How do you get this to market?
How do you really leverage technology to be able to make a difference in the world?
Watch Duty app founder and CEO John Mills in a photo from 2022 © Jeffrey Packard (Supplied by John Mills)
Thats when it clicked for Mills.
I grew up in a wood shop with a computer, right?
So Ive been writing code since I was eight.
Before that, I grew up working with my hands.
And so a lot of my life has been in technology, said Mills.
Mills understands the gravity of what hes created and the vital resource it can be in life-threatening situations.
When Watch Duty goes off in your pocket, its because something bads happening, said Mills.
The organization is looking to expand into other states and cover other types of natural disasters like floods.
We call this company Watch Duty, not Fire Duty on purpose, right?
We knew from the beginning it was about geospatial problems.
If people have to migrate, thats the business we want to be in.
Unlike OpenAI, were not changing.
Were not for sale.
Thats nonsense behavior, Mills said, describing the sneaky corporate structure of OpenAI.
Theres no shell companies.
Theres no other owner or anything up underneath the corporation on purpose.
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Meta Pissed Off Everyone With Poorly Redacted Docs
Meta is being very transparent on accident.
