How Peregrine embedded inside police departments to build their first product | Ben Rudolph

<p>Peregrine Technologies unifies fragmented government data systems into a single, current, complete data asset — then gives agencies the tools to build operational workflows on top of it. In a recent episode of Unicorn Builders, we sat down with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brudolph/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Ben Rudolph</a>, Co-Founder of <a href="https://app.peregrine.io/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Peregrine</a>, to learn how the company spent its first six months embedded inside a police department before writing a line of product code, how they constructed a repeatable sales motion in one of the most procurement-hostile markets in the country, and why nine years of forward-deployed engineering is now their structural advantage in the AI era. Peregrine is now deployed in over 400 cities with a team of approximately 400 people.</p><p><strong>Topics Discussed: </strong></p><ul><li><p>How Peregrine landed its first customer by cold-calling a specific commander and researching his prior drug bust before ever mentioning the product </p></li><li><p>Why the founding team spent the first six months doing detective work — not building software </p></li><li><p>How Peregrine&#39;s demo strategy is built around local government priorities, not a fixed product pitch </p></li><li><p>The two moments that told Ben they had product-market fit — and why neither was a revenue number </p></li><li><p>The three chapters of Peregrine&#39;s company-building journey: wilderness, repeatable motion, and scale Why proprietary government data, customer proximity, and security controls are the three ingredients that make Peregrine defensible in the AI era The two operating principles behind Peregrine&#39;s forward-deployed engineering model</p></li></ul><p><strong>GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:</strong></p><ul><li><p>Target the second-in-command: Peregrine&#39;s early targeting was precise — they looked for commanders and captains who were ambitious, career-motivated, and had a technology-forward lens. Not the chief, who is rarely day-to-day. That archetype — second or third in command, younger, wants to move up — was their entry point at San Pablo PD and remains a defining characteristic of their ICP today. In institutional sales, the person with both the motivation and the operational authority to champion something new is almost never at the top of the org chart.</p></li><li><p>Research the prospect before you pitch the product: P