Groundbreaking Startup Turns Corner with Tele-Legal Platform

Andre Creighton:

Yeah, Fritz, thank you for having me and I appreciate the gracious introduction. Thank you so much for that.

Fritz Spencer:

Much deserved. Much deserved. So to get us started in two to three sentences, can you explain TurnSignl to our audience?

Andre Creighton:

Absolutely. So TurnSignl is a mobile platform that connects you in real time to an attorney when you're pulled over or you're in an accent. So you can press one button or use voice command and it'll connect you to attorney in whatever jurisdiction you're in. So if you're in Minnesota and you cross over the river into Wisconsin, you will get a criminal attorney from Wisconsin that can guide you through that traffic stop. Or if you're in an accident, you'll get a PI attorney in Wisconsin. And we are nationwide now, so we cover anywhere in the country and you will get an attorney from that jurisdiction.

Fritz Spencer:

Wow. So on demand Attorney, attorney in my pocket at all times.

Andre Creighton:

Absolutely. Yeah, we usually say ride with an attorney in your passenger seat is kind of our slogan.

Fritz Spencer:

I like it. So you kind of mentioned it a little bit there, but what exactly is the problem that TurnSignl is solving?

Andre Creighton:

So during Covid, I think everyone's kind of searching for a way to figure out what's next for them in their life. Just really doing some soul searching and that was just it for me and my other two co-founders, Ja and Michael, we've been friends forever. Michael and I grew up in St. Paul and we knew the Castile family very well. So when Philando tragically lost his life during a traffic stop, it didn't sit too well. And then George Floyd happens and Minnesota became the epicenter of some of these tragic events and we said, what are we as three professionals, a finance guy, a tech sales guy, and then also attorney doing to be a part of the change we want to see. So we started TurnSignl.

Fritz Spencer:

Wow. So you saw that problem and immediately just hopped on to solving it. So let me know, what is your target audience looking like for this application then?

Andre Creighton:

So we actually operate in a dual-sided marketplace. If you're a user, a B2C user, you can go onto the App store or Google Play store and download the app. It's 6 99 a month or $60 a year. However, our bigger play is that we actually go to companies like Eisner Amper and they bring it on as an employee benefit their employees. So we have 30 plus actual organizations that have brought this on to their employees, a hundred percent employer subsidized. And how it works is the employee will get the benefit similar to Health, dental, vision and you get five dependents for free.

Fritz Spencer:

So it seems like it's definitely built for scaling with corporations and being a benefit platform as well. Something that a company could really entice new employers or new employees rather to join because they have these different types of benefits. So Andre, you mentioned that a user of this application is going to be actively involved with police. I'm interested, has there been buy-in from the police authorities for your application and they're aware of what you guys are doing in their jurisdictions?

Andre Creighton:

Yeah, absolutely. Whenever we enter jurisdiction, we do our best to ensure that we meet with law enforcement to let them know when they see a TurnSignl bumper sticker on the back of their car, that should be the safest interaction they're going to have today. Right? Because there's an attorney on the side holding both sides accountable. We always say that there's three things that we want to do and these interactions that's deescalate the interaction, protect driver civil rights and make sure that both the driver and law enforcement get home safely to their families because that's the most important thing.

Fritz Spencer:

Great. I love to hear it. Got to have both sides aware of what's going on and that way there's no issues coming out of it.

Andre Creighton:

Absolutely.

Fritz Spencer:

And you talked a little bit about the program itself and it sounds like it's a SaaS system with a mobile app or something like that. Can you tell me a little bit more about the technology?

Andre Creighton:

Yeah, so from a tech stack perspective, it's similar to a FaceTime. So you press one button or use voice command within seconds, you get an attorney that pops up on the screen, the attorneys on their side, they can toggle on their availability similar to Uber or Lyft. So obviously if an attorney's out having a couple of cocktails, we don't want 'em on the platform and it tracks your geolocation. So that's the way that we're able to connect you to attorney said jurisdiction and it's not a Rolodex. We did a lot of work with law enforcement early on to let them know what we're doing and some of the feedback we got was we don't want to get to a window and have someone say, hold on, wait, wait a second, I'm getting my attorney. So actually it calls all the attorneys in such jurisdiction simultaneously.

Fritz Spencer:

So you guys have a pool of attorneys in the local area that are ready and available, just like a lift with surge pricing ready to go to help people during these traffic events, have you guys focused in on these types of events? Is it really traffic or do you guys have a specialization or do you know ahead of time what kind of call you're getting brought into?

Andre Creighton:

Yeah, so there's two buttons. They route to two different things. So if it's a traffic stop, there's a traffic stop button. If it's an accident, there's an accident button. And like I said before, you can use voice command, Hey sir, hey Goong being pulled over or I've been an accident. It'll connect you to whatever attorney is servicing that. So whether it's a criminal or a PI attorney.

Fritz Spencer:

Awesome. So what kind of feedback have you been getting from your customer base? What do they love? What do they dislike? What are you changing?

Andre Creighton:

Yeah, the feedback has been super positive. We recently had, so we get about 130 calls per month across the country. So it is being used quite frequently. We recently had a customer who was a mother who got this platform for their son and their son was rear-ended and 16-year-old, it's first time driver and he didn't know what to do, their interaction and the guy was like, Hey, I don't need your insurance, I'll just pay for it. And he started to feel weird. So he used TurnSignl l and we found out in New Jersey there's actually a law that says you have to call police. If it's over a certain amount of damage, the police gets there and end up finding out that the guy actually is over the limit. So this is just an instance where not only did it help this individual in this interaction, but also it prevented this driver from continuing to be on the road and potentially harming someone else later down the line.

Fritz Spencer:

Wow. That's an amazing story and I love how real world it is because I mean so many of us out there have been in those situations, myself included, I don't know many who have avoided a traffic incident in their life. So we talked a little bit earlier about your transition. You said you were the finance guy before and you've kind of switched careers. You're now in a co-founding and a technology startup. Tell me a little bit more about how those changes happened and how you pivoted from those different career paths or points.

Andre Creighton:

Yeah, my early career started out in tax at various firms from Lurie, which is now Eisner Amper to Baker Tilly, then to corporate conglomerate Cargill. And what I always say is that those experience were a combination of building that foundation that I needed to be able to do this and do this job well. Obviously I don't do anything in silos. I have to obviously think my other co-founders and also our employees because they do a lot of the day-to-Day hard work that I know nothing about. Right. From a technology standpoint.

Fritz Spencer:

Got it. So you've gone through a lot of these different changes. You had to learn a lot, I'm sure. Is there anything that you want to brag about when it comes to TurnSignl?

Andre Creighton:

Yeah, I mean we recently just signed our largest deal being embedded into a legal plan. So you could think of a MetLife, an Rog, they provide legal insurance to a lot of employees on a voluntary basis. We're now embedded into legalese and they go and they source that to a lot of corporations. We also have started to delve into working with OEMs, so a lot of the auto manufacturers to actually get into the dashboard. So similar to an OnStar. So our goal is that every car, every vehicle, whether it's a Ford or a Volvo or a GMC, when they roll off the lot, it'll have TurnSingl already embedded into the dashboard.

Fritz Spencer:

So is that what's next for TurnSignll? You guys are developing these relationships and going down that, I guess customer acquisition route?

Andre Creighton:

Absolutely. Yeah. One thing I didn't mention is the platform actually records as well. As soon as you press that button, so immediately it starts recording with your front facing camera, it's safe to your personal cloud. We don't have access, attorney doesn't have access. It gives the driver the autonomy. What we envision is a world where just like someone leaving their home picks up their wallet, their keys, they also pick up TurnSignl or they use TurnSignl in their car and able to use their internal external cameras within the vehicles to be able to record. For instance, if someone says, the officer says, Hey, I need you to get out of the vehicle, well now you actually can use external cameras of the car to actually record the interaction as well.

Fritz Spencer:

Wow, that's incredible. So tell me from the startup standpoint, there's always something that you guys have to do next, whether it's raising funds, acquiring customers, typically, I want to say it revolves around acquiring new investors, right? Is that something that you guys have gone through and tell me a little bit about that.

Andre Creighton:

Yeah, we raised, so we raised an initial seed round, which consisted of mostly friends and family. We did have some VCs in that round and some early stage angel investors. Since then, we've also raised a kind of bridge round into our series A, which we're currently in the process of closing. We have about a million dollars left in that round, which is really cool that we're able to scale in that way, but that's the money that we foresee us being able to use to really be able to continue down our product line and be able to actually get this into the vehicle.

Fritz Spencer:

That's awesome. I'm glad you shared that because I'm sure there's some interested investors and entrepreneurs just listening right now that may want to reach out. So Andre, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. It was an absolute pleasure to learn about Turin Signal.

Andre Creighton:

Thank you so much for having me and keep up the great work.

Fritz Spencer:

Always, always. And thanks to our listeners for tuning into Tech Talk, the entrepreneurs and innovators who turn towards EisnerAmper for audit, tax advisory and outsourcing solutions to help propel their business forward. Don't forget to subscribe to EisnerAmper's podcast to listen to more tech talk episodes and visit eisneramper.com for more tech news that you can use.

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