“We have more founders and VCs here than ever, they just don’t know each other yet.”
— Joseph Russo
Joseph Russo founded Palm Beach Tech in 2015. He spent years building it into the region’s tech association, work that later became South Florida Tech Hub. In 2022, he founded Emergency Ventures. As Hurricane Ian bore down on Florida, he built a working hurricane app in 24 hours with bootcamp students. He later joined the product team at RapidSOS, the 911 technology company.
In January, he founded Midnight, a home security startup. More than a decade earlier, Russo had chased two burglars into the dark outside his own home. The community was gated and the alarm was active. More than 20 homes and vehicles on his street were still hit in the same incident. Midnight is built to verify a real threat and get that information to emergency responders faster than a phone call can.
His cofounders and advisers come out of ADT, Google Home, Citizen and Motorola. The team went through Antler’s New York residency and is now validating hardware prototypes while weighing crowdfunding against outside investment.
This is part of a peer-to-peer series of conversations MAIN runs exclusively with Miami’s AI founders, investors and leaders.
What Does West Palm Beach’s Tech Ecosystem Still Need?
We asked Russo seven questions by email. His answers are below.
Your line about Palm Beach needing “institutions that actually help together these resources.” What does that look like when it works? Give me the version of West Palm Beach in 2030 that you’d call a success.
“The tech industry needs infrastructure to scale: venture capital firms, angel investors, founders, and generally tech talent. Moreover, we need the lifecycle of this working over decades. Engineer gets hired, learns, founds a company, exits, and then invests. Every step of that timeline needs resources for that person to succeed.”
“To build a successful startup, you need that gut instinct to guide the right decisions in the moment.”
— Joseph Russo
You’ve now built three companies around the same instinct: getting people information when the systems around them fail. Is that a mission you chose, or did it choose you? The burglary, Irma, RapidSOS: same pattern, different scale.
“My personal mission is to build a better world through technology and innovation. Helping people in their worst moments with technology is a natural progression, from helping entrepreneurs build their livelihoods and technologists build careers and companies.”
Midnight sits at the intersection of home security and emergency response, two industries with real incumbents nearby, like ADT and Carrier. What’s the specific gap the phone-call alarm model still can’t close, and why hasn’t a bigger player closed it?
“Time and false alarms.”
Andreessen Horowitz just made West Palm a regional hub for American Dynamism. Does institutional money like that change what a founder can build there, or does it just change the price of real estate?
“During COVID-19, Miami proved investors will move here for the lifestyle. The past 5 years has continued to prove institutional investors can call Florida home. Yet we have lost talent to NYC and SF for generations. Good founders with great ideas, based in Florida, are more investable than ever.”
You organized logistics for 20,000 people with no app and no funding, then shipped a hurricane app in 24 hours with bootcamp students. What does that tell you about what actually matters in a crisis, and does any of that translate to building a startup in peacetime?
“A crisis sharpens skills, but does not teach instinct. To build a successful startup, you need that gut instinct to guide the right decisions in the moment.”
You’re weighing crowdfunding against outside investment for Midnight. What would make you choose the crowd?
“Midnight will likely launch through pre-sales and crowdfunding, in order to maximize velocity and focus attention on capturing early customers. We have investors as well, but consumer hardware comes with unique capital and timelines needs.”
What’s the one thing transplanted New York founders get wrong about building in South Florida?
“New Yorkers come here for the lifestyle, but they miss the opportunity. The false expectation is that one moves here, silos themselves in a home office, and flies back to NYC for meetings. We have more founders and VCs here than ever, they just don’t know each other yet.”
Russo’s answer on Midnight’s biggest obstacle doubles as his answer about the region itself. West Palm Beach has more of everything it needs now: money, founders, a16z’s name on an office lease. What it still needs is the same thing his security company is trying to fix. Faster, more reliable connections between the people who have the information and the people who need it.
