Citizen announced today that it will acquire Harbor, a disaster preparedness app and tech firm. The financials of the deal were not disclosed by the company.
Transforming public safety is a massive undertaking and requires an incredible team and set of products to accelerate our mission. Andrew Frame, founder and CEO of Citizen, said in a press release that they were excited with the acquisition of harbor.
In the 60 U.S. cities where it operates, the company says it delivers over 20 million notifications each day. Users used to be able to report incidents directly to Citizen, but now they are encouraged to call the police.
Harbor, the app that gamifies emergency preparedness, launches
Harbor, which raised a $5 million seed round about a year and a half ago, gamifies the process of preparing for crises like fires and earthquakes. The app asks users to enter their zip code. They are told what disasters are most likely to happen to them.
Harbor gives users Preparedness tasks that only take a few minutes, rather than bombarding them with a massive emergency list to handle all at once. Users might be encouraged to take on more time- intensive safety measures, like learning cardiopulmonary resuscitation, if they check smoke detectors or stocking a go-bag first.
Dan Kessler, the CEO of harbor, will join Citizen as Chief Business Officer.
Controversial crime app Citizen launches $20/month Protect service
This acquisition could help Citizen give users ways to stay safe. Protect is a $20/month service that lets users contact a Citizen agent if they feel unsafe, but don't want to call the police. Protect has 100,000 users according to Citizen.
Citizen has been involved in various controversies over the years with 10 million users. The app was removed from the App Store because it encouraged activities that could lead to risk or physical harm.
The app has come under fire for offering to pay users $30,000 for information about a suspected arsonist who turned out to be innocent, as well as trying to deploy private security workers to examine the scene of reported crimes.
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