Ignite Startups: Passive Sensors, Drone Swarms, and the Future of Air Defense with Deo Arlo | Ep285

**Deo Arlo** (0:00)
I think most achievements are, they turned out to be less than what you thought of them to be, because I think, this is a quote I made up in my mind, but it sounds so poetic. The sweetness of victory is quickly subsided by the weight of responsibility. Once you gain that new level, once you earn that new title, it's now just your day-to-day, and it's not your new burden, right? Victory turns into burden, something you have to carry. It's good, because now you have this new responsibility that you can create influence, and you can do a lot of things you can control, but also, it's more stuff to think about. The most successful people in the world, the most influential people, the most powerful people in the world, are probably not the most happy. They have a lot of stuff on their plate.
The more you rise, the more you gain a responsibility.

**Brian Bell** (1:01)
Everyone, welcome back to the Ignite Podcast. Today, we are delighted to have Deo Arlo on the program. He is the founder and CEO of Arlo Industries, a YC-backed company building a passive sensing mesh to track drones and missiles without radar. Very exciting. To have Mani is such an incredible background, but I'll let you hear from him. Thanks for coming on, Deo.

**Deo Arlo** (1:18)
Thank you, Brian. Thanks for having us.

**Brian Bell** (1:20)
Yeah, well, I'd love to start with your origin story. What's your background, and how'd you get into doing what you're doing?

**Deo Arlo** (1:25)
It's a big question when people ask about why do I want to build a defense. I first came into the thought of building a defense when I was born, so quite early.

**Brian Bell** (1:32)
I was born during riots.

**Deo Arlo** (1:34)
People were chasing us around, so it was a very violent time back then. I was born in Indonesia. There's a lot of riots against immigrants, which my family were. And so I just had this vivid experience growing up with a lot of violence. And so I wanted to protect people. And I went into a rabbit hole of, you know, how can I build tools to protect people, went into the rabbit hole of defense, and just thought of where should I position myself in the world to learn more about this stuff. So I came to actually Israel and spent six years there, got more actual violence and rockets above my head during the six years and during the wars and learned how we can improve aerial defense. Spent some time in Ukraine and long story short, I built a company in America and here I am, solving it for the rest of the world.

**Brian Bell** (2:14)
That's really amazing. I mean, you've kind of lived and breathed the violence overseas that Americans take so much for granted. We live in such a serene, peaceful country, right? But you've seen it firsthand in Indonesia and Israel, and now Ukraine has to have a profound impact on you and how you see the world. How do you see the world through that lens of what you've seen versus how you think Americans generally see the world?

**Deo Arlo** (2:38)
First of all, it made me grateful to be in a place where I finally can sleep in peace. Whenever I leave Israel or Ukraine to Finland, to Poland, to America, obviously, or Eastern Europe, I feel alarmed when I hear my phone ringing or something. Oh, shit, that's something. Okay, it's not. I'm in a safe place. I can sleep tight. I don't have to run to the bunker. But sometimes I realize people take that for granted.
People don't understand how much different it is in the rest of the world. So I'm very grateful now that I'm in America and be able to build something for real in a place that's safe and also supportive. And I'm just very happy to be able to build in this space.

**Brian Bell** (3:15)
You describe Arlo's coming from a philosophy that conflict should be concise and precise. What does that mean in practice?

**Deo Arlo** (3:20)
It came from the understanding that conflict will always happen, first of all. I think a lot of people wish for world peace and I do too. I think people who are not familiar with the world of defense, they view weapons or defense manufacturers as this warmongers. No, nobody wants wars.
Everybody wants peace. But are we going to have it tomorrow? Probably not. So the first thing we can do to take this first step is to make it concise. The fact is humans are our animals. We have disagreements and we will always quarrel, either it's in our heads or sometimes it turns physical. But what we can do is whenever it does turn physical, we should make it concise, make it quick, reduce collateral dimension. That's what we're trying to solve with, first, aerial defense, right? Because civilians, they're the ones that are paying the price mostly when you have sharpness from rockets exploding up in the sky. That's what I saw when I was in Israel. We have sharpness lining around my apartment, and aerial defense is the one thing we can work on to start solving this problem.