RALEIGH – It was a big week for the Wilmington-based public safety SaaS company Essential Personnel.

On Thursday morning, the Wilmington-based startup was announced as one of nine NC companies to receive a $50,000 grant from NC IDEA. Just a few hours later, they were named the winner of the NC TECH Startup Showcase.

Essential Personnel’s exec team: From left to right: CTO Chris Watford; CEO and Co-Founder, Scott Monroe; CFO and Co-Founder Preston Stackhouse; and Lead Software Engineer, Zac Tyhacz. Photo courtesy of Essential Personnel.

In an exclusive interview after the event, Scott Monroe, CEO and co-founder of Essential Personnel, described how important the wins felt to him and his team. 

“This is a company that came from two firefighters,” said Monroe. “It’s a big week, and we’re excited to take this momentum and support police, fire, and EMS across the country.” 

A performance management platform specifically for public safety

“Our mission is to enable public sector leaders to build strong organizations with physically and mentally ready personnel,” said Monroe in his address to the NC TECH Conference on Thursday.

The SaaS platform has tools that are becoming people management standards—like 360 reviews, personnel and team management, and organizational charts. 

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But it also has features that serve the unique needs of public safety, like, for example, an incident management tool to track when personnel are involved in critical incidents, like a police officer’s use of force, or a firemen on scene with a child fatality. 

“Most agencies, you’ll find that they are still tracking this data with pen and paper, or with a spreadsheet,” said Monroe.

The organization hopes to address issues that those organizations are facing with recruitment, retention, low morale, and wellness—in a way that meets the unique needs of public safety-type roles. 

President and CEO of NC TECH, Brooks Raiford, congratulated all six of the startup showcase finalists at the close of yesterday’s conference.

“We aren’t kidding when we say we had quite a few submittals, so just to be among the six is an accomplishment,” said Raiford. “We’re really proud of all of them and what they’ve achieved.”

On the road to DIG SOUTH

In addition to the recent grant and award traction, Essential Personnel has customer growth, with clients in six states. They also work with multiple agencies in North Carolina, including the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office and Black Mountain Fire, and are partners with Wilmington Fire, where the company founders were stationed before launching the startup. 

And they have about 40 more agencies in their pipeline. 

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Monroe shared these updates with WRAL TechWire while traveling to DIG SOUTH Tech Summit, where he’ll be pitching on May 13.  Essential Personnel will be one of 10 startups pitching to a live audience in Charleston. 

The other NC startups pitching at DIG SOUTH are Raleigh-based Be Global Safety, Asheville-based Cardstalk, and Wilmington-based F3TCH.

NC IDEA selects nine startups for $50K grants – the winners are …