Andrew Frame (born 1979) is an American technology businessperson.[1] He co-founded the phone app Ooma in 2004, serving as CEO until 2009. He then founded the app Citizen, and serves as CEO of the company.[2]
Early life
editAndrew Frame was born in Henderson, Nevada in 1979. By his teenage years he was writing open-source software. At the age of 15, Frame dropped out of high school and started his own company, an internet service provider.[1] Interested in UFOs, around age 16 he managed to breach two major systems at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Following a two-year investigation, the FBI arrested him in 1997. He was sentenced to a $25,000 fine and 100 hours of community service, in addition to showing NASA the vulnerabilities in the Jet Propulsion network.[2]
Career
editFrame moved to San Jose, California at age 17,[1] getting a job at Cisco as a systems engineer.[2]
He subsequently worked two years at Procket Networks, and in 2004 co-founded Ooma,[2] an internet phone company based in Palo Alto, California.[3] While at Ooma, Frame met founders such as Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker, and Mark Zuckerberg, and subsequently spent several weeks helping the then-fledgling Facebook set up its network architecture. In the process, he received Facebook shares that became worth tens of millions of dollars.[2]
He then developed the idea of an app that posted geo-targeted real-time notifications of public safety information. The community-safety app Vigilante was released in the New York App Store in October 2016, with a video of users thwarting an assault becoming viral.[2] The video attracted the attention of Apple Inc. and the NYPD,[2] and Apple banned the app until March 2017. Frame renamed the app Citizen as a result, and shifted messaging from crime fighting to safety awareness.[2]
By 2019, Citizen had raised $40 million, with investors such as Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Mike Judge.[2]
Frame came under criticism in May 2021 when, via Citizen, he offered a $30,000 bounty on a person wrongly suspected of arson in the Palisades Fire.[4] After the bounty, the LAPD cut ties with the company.[5]
In 2023, Vice released a documentary about Citizen and Frame.[6]
References
edit- 1 2 3 "Meet Andrew Frame, the Mysterious Mogul Behind the Citizen App", LA Magazine, 5 January 2022, retrieved 7 June 2026
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Murder! Muggings! Mayhem! How An Ex-Hacker Is Trying To Use Raw 911 Data To Turn Citizen Into The Next Billion-Dollar App", Forbes, 15 July 2019, retrieved 7 June 2026
- ↑ "3 Questions For ooma's Andrew Frame", SFist, 16 August 2007, retrieved 7 June 2026
- ↑ "Citizen CEO offered to personally fund LA arson manhunt — for the wrong person", The Verge, 21 May 2021, retrieved 7 June 2026
- ↑ "LAPD Emails Reveal Fallout of Citizen's Botched Manhunt", Vice, 27 January 2022, retrieved 7 June 2026
- ↑ "Watch: New Documentary Tells Inside Story of Vigilante App Citizen", Vice, 8 May 2023, retrieved 7 June 2026