The Origin Story of MIDL

MIDL is exclusively serving campus law enforcement with our real-time investigations platform, but we did not start here. Rewind to the early parts of 2021 and we find ourselves at a high school all-star football game in Pittsburgh, PA. It was an uneventful night as 0:12 displayed in dull yellow LED lights on the scoreboard, signifying that halftime was near. Within the following moments, each team would find themselves running to the locker room, but not because the time ran off the clock. As the teams lined up for the final play of the half, a sequence of loud pops froze everyone in the stadium. The next couple seconds felt like they lasted forever. Everyone stood in place looking around, trying to comprehend what was happening. Everyone in that stadium knew what was happening, but your mind almost does not want to believe this reality. You sit there and think, could that be fireworks? Is it a car backfiring? You want to make yourself believe that it is anything but the thing we all fear at events like this. Within a few seconds, everyone in that stadium accepted that the popping sounds were gun shots and mass chaos broke out. No one knew where the shooter was. No one knew if they were being targeted. The only thing that was known is that those sounds are gun shots, and they are not stopping. People were falling face first out of the bleachers trying to get to safety. The players on the field were running over fans that were frantically trying to escape. Some people ran to their cars. Some people hid under the bleachers. Some people ran to the locker rooms. Everyone feared for their life. Little did I know, this is the moment that MIDL was born.

My name is Ethan Sefchik, and I am a co-founder of MIDL. I found myself in this crowd along with Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin who had contributed to hosting this game along with myself. It turned out that the shooter was not targeting the crowd with his barrage of bullets, but rather one individual who was along the outside of the fence of the stadium. The shooter carelessly sent bullets into the direction of the people in the stands. Thankfully, the damage was limited. The target of the bullets was a 17-year old who was shot, but survived the wounds. Within minutes, caution tape was up around the stadium and 20+ police cars arrived on scene to evacuate the crowd.

The next morning, there was a news story ran on the events that took place. The shooter can be seen on nearby security cameras visibly holding a pistol before the events transpired. This sparked some thoughts in my mind. “If that camera was able to recognize a pistol, could it have provided security a chance to intervene before things escalated?”, “What is the current state of video technology today?”, “Will the police be able to find the shooter before something like this happens again?”.  I had no idea how to answer these questions or how advanced current video technology was, but Gabe Ajram and Matt Walton did. Gabe and Matt are co-founders of this company along with myself and Owen Nashelsky. Gabe has a background in system integration that traces back 12 years. He worked alongside of his father installing security systems across a variety of industries including law enforcement. Matt Walton is an IT and AI specialist from the UK that went from playing around with computers in his bedroom to contracting for the 3 letter agencies in the UK. And finally, Owen comes from a family of lawyers. He is the one that is always making sure we are upholding strong privacy and compliance standards in this world of campus law enforcement. Owen and I met each other in a rather unlikely way through playing video games back in 2016. A year later, I decided to take the 8 hour roadtrip and meet Owen for the first time in-person. This is the same trip that I met his childhood friend, Gabe. Matt came into the picture when Gabe met him in an online forum for AI.

All four of us joined forces and began our garage start-up story, only instead of a garage it looked more like 4 guys on Google Meet for the remainder of Covid. We did things a bit backwards I must say. Normally you have a bright idea, build a prototype, raise some money, and then begin really building your product. Since the world was still being affected by Covid, we found ourselves meeting virtually and building this product by ourselves. By the time we began hiring our first employees, a large chunk of the product was already built out. As the world started to open back up in early 2022, we used some of our connections to get into local commercial high-rise buildings in New York City. At this point, the product was a VMS that had a few AI features that sped up the process of searching video.

As we continued to build this company, we raised some money and began testing our product with the University of Pittsburgh. This was our first step in the vertical that we would later exclusively dedicate our efforts to. This type of client exposed us to levels of traffic, challenges, integrations, and standards that we had not experienced to date. After a year and a half of working alongside their police department and incorporating their feedback into the product, we had created a software that was positioned to revolutionize campus law enforcement. Today, we find ourselves collaborating closely with colleges and universities and dedicating our efforts to the greater campus law enforcement space.

Why campus law enforcement? We are looking to serve those that don’t get the credit they deserve. Those that have large amounts of cameras, high standards for safety, and multiple systems to manage such as access control, blue lights, panic buttons, shuttle buses, etc. But most importantly, those who are motivated to ensure that others feel safe when they come to their campus. This is a lot to handle when the only technology you have was built to be serve many different types of clients. We wanted to build something exclusive that directly addresses the issues you face as campus law enforcement, and that is what we did. We are appreciative to be working in this space and look forward to continued innovation guided by feedback from campus agencies.