How a self-taught founder built AI software for police reports

Executive overview

Officers spend one third of their time writing reports — time stolen from policing. Daniel Francis, a self-taught engineer who impersonated a laid-off Twitter employee to work for Elon Musk, built Abel: AI that generates police reports from body cam footage.

A friend's domestic violence crisis exposed the gap between what police want to do and what paperwork lets them do. Working with Musk showed Francis that mission alignment, not lifestyle business logic, is what makes hard work sustainable.

When the stakes are measurable — every 115 officers on the platform saves one life per year — quality stops being optional.

From mercenary to missionary

• First company was a fitness app built around distribution: a famous weightlifting coach as co-founder for legitimacy.
• Pivot came after impersonating a laid-off Twitter employee, getting hired, and being fired by Elon Musk — who called to apologise.
• Watching Musk fire people without internal conflict reframed the question: what problem is worth that kind of alignment?
• A staffing analysis PDF revealed officers spend one third of their time on paperwork — nothing in the document addressed it.
• Sold his fitness app shares and started Abel; the logic: if the software is 10% worse and there are 1,100 officers on the platform, someone dies.

The origin: a friend, a restraining order, an apology

• A friend fled an abusive marriage; a courthouse error sent her address to her husband.
• Police took 45 minutes to respond to a restraining order violation.
• The responding officer's disarming honesty — short-staffed, had a shooting that morning, genuinely sorry — changed everything.
• Francis realised: this officer is doing his best inside a broken system. Can software fix the system?
• That one officer's reaction likely changed policing. Francis was there to file a complaint; he left wanting to build.

Getting the first agency

• San Francisco PD: got to the CIO, hit red tape everywhere.
• Distributed homemade flyers across East Bay agencies — most rejected the idea outright.
• Police reports are viewed as critical legal documents; "random tech guy wants AI to write them" was not a comfortable pitch.
• Found Richmond PD: genuinely understaffed, genuinely suffering the paperwork burden.
• The demo used fake body cam footage shot by holding a phone to his chest. The admin captain's reaction: "You have got to do that here."
• Lesson: skip blue-chip customers who are fine. Find people who are suffering the pain point now.

Building deep product knowledge

• Went on 39 ride-alongs; everyone at Abel must complete one before joining.
• First ride-alongs feel like hosting — officers want something to happen. By the fourth ride-along with the same officer, they complain about real problems.
• Police report writing is highly nuanced; officers receive formal training for it. You cannot understand it from a distance.
• Body cam footage required access to unredacted data — impossible without an agency partnership. There was no shortcut.
• Embedding with Richmond produced ongoing relationships, repeated ride-alongs, and a real understanding of how agencies break.

On solo founding

• Two co-founder experiences: one fine, one immediate distrust and tension.
• Giving 50% equity for someone to argue with you — who you can't fire — is a bad deal.
• A founding engineer at 5% equity is a better structure: 10 of them, fireable when not measuring up.
• Solo founders need product sense. An engineer with no design instinct and no great first hire should find a co-founder.
• If you won't pick up the phone to do sales rather than give up 50%, don't start a company.
• The rare co-founder pairs that work: people who met in undergrad, at least five years of trust built before starting.

Authorship and product coherence

• Abel is named for the first victim of a crime in the Bible — the police work for Abel.
• Solo authorship lets one mental model run through the entire product; users can feel a coherent vision.
• Apple's coherent experience until ~2015 came from one person making the final call. Google products feel like they were built by an insane group.
• Adding teammates introduces stray hairs — small inconsistencies — that never fully disappear but can be managed.
• The unlock: realising that being a cracked manager is 1,000x leverage over being a cracked engineer.

Culture and quality standards

• Abel's team document opens with: Daniel must be the worst engineer and the biggest asshole. He is the floor on engineering talent and the ceiling on being an asshole.
• No culture in the traditional sense: no parties, no pleasantries. The culture is: here's the ticket, it needs to be better, let me know when it's done.
• Engineers who joined SpaceX or Twitter accepted this kind of environment because the mission was real. Abel has the same dynamic.
• Everyone on the team has done an FBI background check and a ride-along. They understand the stakes.
• Francis monitors the Slack errors channel on his phone. Holding engineers to a high standard is a compliment; tolerating mediocrity is not.

Faith and direction

• Became Catholic after selling the fitness app, walking into open Catholic churches daily in North Beach.
• Faith sets the direction: you cannot be Catholic and build something that dishonours God. Abel restores order to a disordered world.
• Took the company concept to his priest at Saints Peter and Paul before committing to it.
• Does not open meetings with prayer — professional environment — but faith drives what he chooses to build, not how he runs standups.
• Belief: Catholics have a duty to build large, generate wealth, and direct it well. The world would be better if the people controlling large institutions were Christians.