Spite Is The Greatest Motivator with Watch Duty founder John Mills

0:00 That's crazy. I'm counting one, two, three, four, five, six. Just in my eye shot, I could see six aircraft battling the flames. When the wildfires erupted in Los Angeles on January 7th, 2025, people were frantic. We didn't know where to get information. We didn't know if or when we had to evacuate. At the beginning, we got information through sort of an informal whisper network.

0:34 Did you hear, we'd say to each other, then we found watch duty. This one magical elegant app told us everything we needed to know and it was up to date and it was accurate. And we all had it. We checked it constantly. It was a lifeline literally evacuation orders fire primators and wind directions all of it faster and clearer than any government site or news outlet.

1:00 And we owe it all to tech entrepreneur John Mills. John coded watch duty himself to help his community after a series of deadly fires came close to destroying his own home in Northern California. Today, the app serves millions of people. It operates in multiple states and relies on scores of trained volunteers who gather data from radio scanners and other sources to get the information out.

1:28 The app has skyrocketed in popularity and John has no intention of selling it because the value as he explains it is bigger than any paycheck. We live in a world where too many put themselves before others. So how can we be more like John Mills? How can we inspire more people to serve those who serve others?

1:52 I think John may have the answer. This is a bit of optimism. John, thank you so so much for doing this. I know that your life has been extremely busy. How did you find yourself in this position where all of us in Los Angeles were glued to your app more than anything else? Why you and how do you find yourself here now?

2:20 Why me? Well, they said that luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparedness. And I have the unique opportunity to be able to do this with my life and dedicate my life to this work. I've been through a couple pretty close calls here on my ranch fires come very close to me. One was a 50,000 acre fire. I ended about a quarter mile from my property. Another one was a quarter mile away in the other direction.

2:44 That was another fire that I wasn't alerted about the helicopters or how I knew there was a fire not because anybody told me and so. So the world is burning outside of your home and you find out about it because you see a fire helicopter fly over you. Yeah, that's how you get alerted. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good motivation to try and want to do something or at least okay, but hold on hold on. That's a motivation for a lot of people to complain. That's a motivation for a lot of people to get angry.

3:06 That's a motivation for a lot of people to yell at their mayor or congressman or whoever you then went and built an app to give yourself the information you needed. I don't know. I feel like it's more fun, you know. You're an engineer, right? I'm trying to understand how you found yourself in the situation.

3:30 This is what the authorities, what the governments, what the local governments are supposed to provide or aren't they supposed to provide us the information we need to stay safe and know what's going on. You would, you would think so. That's what I mean by why you like it shouldn't have to be you. That is correct. My friends are joking. I just had an article about me and like the Hollywood reporter and I set up building this out of spite.

3:51 And they sent me the episode of Larry David, he mixed the spite store to spite his like the coffee guy next door. You know, I mean, it's a powerful motivator. I mean, really, I do it out of love, but also it's just that I'm disdain for like this lack of good technology in the government, right? They still call it IT, right? It's kind of like a it's kind of like a derogatory term like the guy who fixes your printer.

4:15 You know, I mean rather than actual like serious infrastructure that is held up the internet or held up cell towers like this is critical infrastructure that must exist. And so I just knew they weren't going to do it. And I could just complain on the internet, but that would have been boring. Yeah. And I think people have to understand that the LA fires were not if this is not your first rodeo.

4:35 Like what's duty is already dare I say an essential app in a lot of other places. Is that is that fair? Yeah, we started in just Lake Sonoma, Napa counties where I live in Sonoma about 2021 is when I first launched it. And since then, I mean, I'm going to want an every two or three phones in most counties in Northern California or any who experience fire, right?

4:55 There's been some pretty fast movie winder up in fires and everybody knows and unfortunately we didn't have enough adoption in LA until now. And why does yours work putting the tech aside that the tech works? Why does it work because you're basically consolidating information that comes from a lot of other places that is fairly accurate and fairly up to date.

5:18 That's actually the easy part, right? So as a technologist, the challenge isn't to go and to scrape all these government websites and to make a beautiful product and package, etc. Like people know how to do that, right? Like Silicon Valley is very good at getting your attention and keeping it, making sure you doom scroll endlessly and then buy a bunch of random stuff that you don't need, right?

5:36 Like it's very good at that, but the magic is actually in the people and what I mean by the people are these radio operators and reporters who are listening to fire scanners constantly. So those folks in real time are hearing everything and disseminating that information across the application via push notifications.

5:55 So that newsfeed is coming from human beings who were spending their days and nights hearing the fire ground and that's what the magic actually is. There's nothing else to it. Anyone could have done what I did. The hard part was to find these people who were bound by their own like sheer will and the desire to help people.

6:13 And so that was the really key insight here. That's the data that's missing. There are big two questions. A tech is obsessed with AI and AI seems to be the answer to absolutely everything. And yet you chose to go human. Why human and not automation? Well, in my opinion, AI is unable to do this job right now. It's just not there yet. That might be a reality in the future, but we do use some AI and we use that to help do signals and noise processing, right?

6:42 So we do have a lot of AI that are scraping and scanning government websites that are trying to interpret random things and they feed that information into Slack where the human beings were able to see it and interpret it. So to answer your question shortly, I don't think it's ready yet. And then finally, like even if it was ready, I would be concerned about mistakes being made.

7:03 And I just don't like that idea right now. It's life and safety. You know, this isn't like a silly chatbot helping you write a paper or something, right? This is like, do I run east or west when I leave my house or not? It's a little bit too dangerous in my opinion. It's a little bit like autopilot, right? Which is I think every single one of us is fine with computers helping pilots fly the plane. But at the end of the day, we like the idea that there's two pilots sitting there evaluating the automation. We trust people sometimes more than we trust computers, which I think is a good thing.

7:33 And so Silicon Valley very much is about a business model, an IPO, giving everybody equity to get people to work hard to get to that quote unquote liquidity event that everybody's obsessed with. And yet you are not for profit who the people who work with you so hard are volunteers. What was it about starting a not for profit versus the traditional Silicon Valley route. And then how did you get the people to sign up?

8:01 We do have some paid staff, obviously, like any nonprofit does. We had zero for the first 18 months. It was just a bunch of volunteers. So let's start there, right? So these radio operators were already doing this job on Facebook and Twitter, right? The first really big mega fire was the Valley fire, I think 2015 or so. And then we had the tubs in 2017 and paradise to see their 18 or 19, I believe. And so we've had these series of events that have driven these radio reporters to start putting this information out on Facebook and Twitter. And they were doing this for free anyway, right?

8:31 You know, just just concern citizens. Correct. And again, somewhere acts an active retired firefighters and all different types of people. It's kind of all over all over the board. So they were already doing a nonprofit, right? Like some of them had, you know, co-fi lengths to buy them $5 cup of coffee, but they were doing this because it's a hobby, right?

8:50 Like, why do Wikipedia do this for free? Right? Like why are there like redditors who were like avid geeks about keeping their subreddit community organizing cleans? Like it's in their hearts to do this. And so taking that idea, like, of course they want to do a nonprofit. It's in their heart to do it that way. And so for me, like on a very personal level, I understand why they do that. I feel their pain.

9:17 And this, this should be for sale. This can't stop, right? Maybe one day the government will do it and we'll stop a nonprofit's job should be to finish its job and delete itself. That would be ideal, right? The program finishes running and then it gets deleted. But unfortunately, we're in a growing industry as my friends like to remind me.

9:36 Yeah. Yeah. What can we do for you? What does watch duty need? What do you need from us? Like how can we help? How do we support you? Well, the community is supporting us. I mean, it's amazing to get, you know, such amounts of funding in such a short period of time. And obviously donations are super important to keep our operation running.

9:54 It's hard to ask because right now the relief efforts are going to take, you know, almost a decade. I mean, we still have towns around me that have not been rebuilt. And so part of it is challenging for me to ask for anything else, rather than give money to direct relief because watch duty is a capital efficient business.

10:14 We will continue to operate and not stop. We are in the business of bits, not atoms, right? Computers are cheap to operate, but rebuilding 12,000 homes and restoring lives that are lost is just not possible. The best thing to do is give money to direct relief efforts like direct relief.org and others who are on the ground helping.

10:35 This is why I love you. I ask you, how do we help you and you ask us to give to other people? I mean, that's what I do, right? John, seriously, man, you bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears

11:18 You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears You bring me to tears It's an interesting conversation because all of those folks who made that money they had the attitude to get there and something happens and I don't know what it is I mean I have some ideas where it stops and I guess what I'm trying to get it is what is it in your DNA that I that how do we replicate you I mean we both agree on two things we both agree that you shouldn't have to do this government should be

19:48 agree they need to be more of you. How do we raise a generation of people who with a chief generational wealth or not that service is built into how they want to live a life and grow old. Yeah I mean some of that really like I tell people that I run a nonprofit because I hate them and what I really don't understand is like if you're a really good operator why would you give your money to philanthropists who don't know how to run a business right like some of these nonprofits that I've seen like the homeless industrial complex in San Francisco is like one thing that really upset me about 10 years ago when I was getting involved is like those those executive directors didn't actually know each other right?

20:31 like the largest ones of the largest buildings don't ever meet and it occurred to me one night walking home after this big event that I had thrown and I put these executive directors together and and I realized they knew each of those names and didn't know each other and I finally realized they're actually in competition with one another.

20:48 They do not want to solve the problem and that right then and there I was like I'm first of all I'm done I'm not working in the homeless industrial complex anymore until I can come back and make a difference and then I realized that like I'm not giving money to these people they do not know they're not good stewards of capital so as an operator or an investor why am I going to invest in a failing business show me the outcome right where is it I don't know where it is so again more spike you know.

21:17 But this is an important insight which is and I hate the term not for profit right that is a tax delineation that is an IRS delineation on your own form of course they should be profitable they just measure profit differently so if you're if your charity exists to rescue kittens out of trees then I want to see that you're rescuing a lot of kittens out of a lot of trees that is the profit right that is.

21:37 And so instead of calling them not for profit we should call them for impact and I want a metric to your point you're right which is whether it's homelessness or whether it's cancer whatever it is they're competing who will come to their gala. As opposed to working together and trying to actually cure cancer and you're right which is it's it's the worst kind of corporate competition which is trying to undermine each other rather than cooperate.

22:01 There is no winner in charity that doesn't like oh you win cancer charity like you're you're I think you said it best which is they win when they go out of business because we don't need them anymore. That is the goal and in the fire service i've seen the same thing I mean there are a couple community groups that are you know fire wise fire safe groups that's what they're called and some of them are at odds with each other and some of them even have their monthly meetings at the same time so you have to pick one.

22:29 It's the charity industrial complex it's challenging it's challenging not like it okay so let's take a step back i'm a well intention person i have a wallet volunteering is one option but not everybody can do that sometimes we we like to give financially how do i know to give to you. You and not to somebody else who says all the right things to me and makes me feel pretty and invite me to the gala et cetera et cetera et cetera you and i have a conversation saying it's an it's nonsense they compete with each other it's they're not trying to solve the problem all we're doing is telling people don't get involved.

23:06 So how do we get people to stay involved how do we get people to know who to volunteer for and who to give to. I mean it's a great question and something that I want to set out to solve right there's a couple of things going on here at watch studio one of them is leaving a better blueprint behind right and so something we did this year in our annual report is it reads like a startup monthly update from a founder it does not read like a bunch of pretty pictures and a bunch of nonsense and maybe some video that is a tear jerker.

23:36 They can see to open your purse what I did is I tore down our metrics well beyond what the form 990 is which is the nonprofit reporting form and I really went deep here's how much we spend on an office zero here's so much a cost to operate this thing here's how many dollars per page view a cost and I really went whole hog at it and just started to go extraordinarily transparent like no one ever does whether you're a public or private company you got to be crazy to do what we're doing and we're just crazy enough to try and do that and hold.

24:06 Hopefully open the door and show people that we are impactful and your money actually goes really far so I think that's step one that's almost an after fact though right like you want to have more money come in and that show what you're doing is impactful but the obvious one is the reason I'm on this podcast right you and everyone their mother and Paris Hilton are all talking about watch duty on TikTok right and Instagram and so taking from Silicon Valley that's what we call product market fit right product leg growth and product market fit.

24:35 We delivered an incredible product and still deliver a credible product every day that people are constantly talking about and so there's a couple of things that play here that really hit home and when you're hitting someone's a million brain of like this is life and safety it becomes very relevant and top of mind for you and I think there's a confluence of events here that are allowing us to do what we're do.

24:59 You know I the podcast is called a bit of optimism I brought you on here to inspire and to share who you are and the goodness that you that you're doing but you know you're making me angry and I now I'm filled with spite as you say spice a wonderful motivator because I'm literally going through a list of.

25:23 People who are incredibly smart they're engineers their marketers their brilliant leaders and they did it for their companies they had brilliant market fit they solved a problem they became the the gem in whatever industry they're in they made their money and they're not doing what you're doing. And I'm angry I'm so spiteful right now that very talented people and you said it right which is well intentioned people go into not for profit they're full of why and they lack how right lots of desire to do good lot of good intention you know and it breaks down in politics show up and they just they don't have the product stuff and then on the business side you have a lot of product ingenuity you have a lot of how sometimes lacking lacking the why you're doing the thing that is the way.

26:12 A business and a charity should both work so i'm just very angry so thank you very much for that you're welcome I talked to a friend who lost his house in the fires it's all gone there's the initial shock and then there's a little bit of denial and that you know they think the bigger shock will still to come he lived in the palisades and he was saying that he's worked really hard to accumulate a lot which is how he could afford a house in the palisades losing at all as traumatic as it has been.

26:42 Makes him realize the that he has to change his life he realizes he now needs to say yes to being on the committees and he needs to say yes to being on the boards and he needs to take his incredible talent that helped him achieve what he's achieved and redirect it and I think that's wonderful. The thing that upsets me is why does it take trauma and loss for us to want to devote our lives to service if you go back to world war two for example right there were more cases of young men who killed themselves.

27:12 Because they didn't get drafted than those who did what happened to our society after the greatest generation we went from greatest to boomer xyz and alpha there's not even a description of our generations anymore if you didn't get shipped off to war you bought a war bond to support the war effort if you couldn't afford a war bond you planted a war garden which did practically nothing but it made you feel like you were part of it and everybody was grateful that you were committing some sort of time and energy.

27:42 For the effort even if it was just ceremonial what happened to a society where our instinct is not to give our instinct is to take our instinct is to become investors not philanthropists yeah I mean i i notice it to obviously in this country is definitely lost solidarity with our neighbors I think that.

28:03 Consumerism is a big part of it we started to understand marketing and psychology really well after the second world war and started to sell consumerism and really use the things that we learned during war to unfortunately sell goods and services really and then of course. You know bedroom community neighborhoods moving out of city centers and i think that was kind of painful and i and then i think the death nail for it really is how the internet has become a dirty place at times you know i think it's just like.

28:32 Skipping had many generations here but I think it was all just an inevitability and that it becomes so easy to reach people through their phones and have them doom scrolling and then have them be angry to then respond to people and fight on the internet and it's just it's just divisive so I wish I knew i've just i've seen it too and I wish I had a better.

28:50 Answer that we always we got an answer right what do you think it's an interesting insight how we took the skills we learned from war we took these skills that we had to learn like fast manufacturing which wasn't a thing until the war. And the brilliance of the assembly lines and we could turn out tanks and boats and planes like nobody's business you right we learned these skills in war and then we applied them after that at the end of the war they they all looked at Joseph garbles this brilliant propagandist for the Nazis.

29:16 They were so impressed by his ability for propaganda to move populations to do things that you know they wanted that the regime wanted Edward Bernays saw what Joseph garbles did was so impressed and he takes this thing that was called propaganda and he saw an opportunity couldn't call a propaganda so he renamed propaganda that the public relations.

29:36 But I guess the question that I grapple with is what happened to the ethical underpinnings we see a drug company that has a patent essential drug raise the price of that drug a thousand percent fifteen hundred percent because it helps them surpass their financial goals disgusting and when we dragged their CEOs in front of congress to testify they all say the same thing which is we followed the law we didn't break the law which is true none of them broke the law that is not illegal but it is horribly unethical.

30:04 Then the law is a lower standard than ethics and I'm just curious you know it definitely changed where ethics were a thing I mean chivalry was a thing where your word was vital and like this thing but ethics and chivalry your word and honor these words and they're gone now it's just show me the metric and if the metric is good I'll do it if it's not I won't.

30:26 Everyone is waiting for the hammer to drop right on watch duty being a nonprofit like that question all the time and I just like I just look at them like that's just so boring yeah we've heard that story before who wants to hear that again like that's not what I want to leave behind it just seems like we're in a generation of like if you can it means you should.

30:46 And I just don't I don't like it like again your point like my word matters to me you know and I don't know why it's gone again I'm hoping we can find more examples of work like this and I leave a legacy behind of other people who want to do this and I give a road map and ways to do this easier because man the amount of people who want me to you know either convert or take their money or why and you be corp you can still do this.

31:12 And I'm like this is not what's interesting to me and they can't understand like what is wrong with me did I have like some sort of traumatization and I just like can't get over it like I don't need the money because I'm so filthy rich it's just not not the case. I put a million dollars of my own money into this company right because I just wanted to prove to myself it worked and now that it worked it's making money I'm funny taking a paycheck again as a January 1st not much but you know whatever man like money will come and go like this is a once in a generation thing.

31:41 I really want to lead other people to this path and hopefully again leave the world a better place than we found it. Hey man tell me an early specific childhood memory I'm just very curious about you. Well I mean when I was really young I was you know building with my father which was always really fun for me he's a woodworker.

32:03 Actually he's an IBM executive but he had a wood shop and he grew up that way his father was World War II he went to war he's you know 17 or something that lied about his age and went to the Pacific theater became an engineer. It's in my blood to build right we're builders and so I was you know helping him restore anything that I could I really just loved spending time doing that and creating things that I'm nothing.

32:27 I took that into computers as well because there are times where he wouldn't want to help me or I was to use a power tool so I would start hacking on computers and so it's kind of how I got into this. Is there a specific one that stands out a specific project on you worked on with your dad something that really stands out.

32:43 I remember one my favorite class in middle school I think was called technology it's really woodworking glass mostly and we had to build little air powered robots so it's like a little robot arm. That has a bunch of syringes with air lines going to them you can like articulate the arms back and forth and sorry I remember my dad helping me do this and of course I won because my dad built a lot of the damn thing.

33:05 But it was super fun to like get to like make wood and things move you know because wood doesn't really move if it does is breaking usually. So it was fun to like kind of build little toys and robotics and things like that and win the science fairs and whatever I just feel like it's cheating but anyway whatever I learned how to make really cool stuff with my father.

33:24 What do you think it is about that memory of all the fun things and all the things you built with your dad what do you think it is about that one that stands out that you want to talk about it right now. Man how do these questions are coming. I don't know how to answer that what I just. You think I'm going to ask you the same questions as all as all the other TV shows.

33:40 No I did not thank God. Again I think I said it before what was fun for me was like reimagining wood in a different way right wood is not supposed to move and it was fun to be able to use these things to like prototype a moving object. It's just not something you normally would do and I like mixing materials which I do now a lot in my life software hardware machines cars computers.

34:05 I like the part of the matrix where the little kid is bending the spoon you know and it looks at neo and it's like you have to remember there is no spoon right none of this is real and you can bend reality you know and so like these moments allowed me to realize I'm limited by my own beliefs right and so I think that's what really got me to think bigger.

34:25 I think that theme has repeated it you are inspiring us to reimagine you're inspiring us to reimagine how to apply our brains to solve problems you're asking us to reimagine how a charity works you'll pay them real world salaries because you can. There's just no shareholder to extract profit for and you're asking us to reimagine what a charity looks like that you don't have to have these four impact companies that have IPOs but rather just keep building charities that pay really well.

34:51 And so real problems you're asking us to reimagine what a metric is what how to define profit you're asking us to reimagine what it means to live a life worth living if we follow your route we're cheating like we're beating cancer we're overcoming these challenges like we win because we're cheating because we're using our our talents in a different way.

35:10 You've definitely given me a lot to think about about how business charity all of this stuff yeah really like this idea of like human potential there's like something so incredible about. When you give people the conduit to do something right that they're kind of already doing like you can really harness that to be extraordinarily like dangerously kinetic and that's what we've done with all this potential energy from all these people.

35:33 And speaking of World War II a story that I've been obsessed with since I was a kid is how we broke the enigma we weren't able to crack the German cryptographic machine which was called the enigma for quite some time. And so the way that we got it was actually again same thing idle human potential and so we put out crossword puzzles in all the allied newspapers and said if you can break this puzzle please email this to Bletchley Park outside of London in England.

36:01 And a bunch of people were able to break these things repeatedly one of them her name was Joan Clark who became the first cryptographer but we used all these people's just like this mass crowd of intelligence and and found the brightest people and without her we would never have well maybe never have defeated them right and it was a pretty incredible endeavor of the human condition and potential energy becoming very kinetic.

36:29 And to your point about sort of how we reimagine we reimagine how we can recruit which is we put in the regular newspaper these impossible crossword puzzles and and if you could solve it we wanted to talk to you we didn't hold mass interviews and then try and you know take take this test take this personality test and will assess if you're you know it's it's it's reimagining even how to hire.

36:55 That's right it didn't take convincing right here's money do this job it's like i'm going to do this anyway this is what i'm going to crossword puzzle anyway i love a problem i'm bored of the problems in the newspaper give me a more difficult problem because i like this stuff because it's fun put all those people in a room and see what happens.

37:12 Here we go and that that's how we did it right and this is no different we've done similar things before it's just not how we think about to your point hiring and creating things that always seems like specialized people who have degrees in whatever we just proved that a lot of experts did not know what they were doing right very very drastically go higher crypto go higher people who break code and that's what we do we're like we and because what they didn't they bring old thinking in old ways that's right.

37:42 And what people who have that natural ability what they do is they bring new thinking new ways and they are unrestrained they're unrestrained in their imagination and this team is keeps coming up, which is reimagining let us raise a toast and let us raise a glass to those who serve others. And that true fulfillment in life all of these people looking for joy and purpose as you have learned there's no greater joy and no greater sense of life purpose than to be in service to those who serve others absolutely she just to them.

38:14 All right my friend be safe be well and let me know how I can serve you i appreciate that thanks a lot thank you much man. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more please subscribe wherever you'd like to listen to podcasts and if you'd like even more optimism check out my website SimonCenic.com for classes videos and more until then take care of yourself take care of each other a bit of optimism is a production of the optimism company.

38:50 It's produced and edited by Lindsey Garbenius David Jaw and Devon Johnson our executive producers are Henry at a Conrad and Greg Rutersham.