We’re gathered for the 2016 International San Francisco Smart Gun Symposium, billed as a response to
President Obama’s January remarks on gun safety. After citing gun accident statistics, Obama asked: “If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your phone unless you’ve got the right fingerprint, why can’t we do the same thing for our guns?” It’s a question Ron Conway, a co-sponsor of the symposium, is eager to answer. Conway is one of tech’s most influential angel investors, known for his
early-stage backing of Google, Facebook and Airbnb. In recent years he has become San Francisco’s agitator in chief, fighting limits on short-term rentals, assembling an immigration-reform lobbying group and financing mayor Ed Lee’s campaign. Today’s cause: his Smart Tech Challenges Foundation, which is spending $1.5 million to spur development of firearm safety tech.
Conway takes to the podium to announce he has found a solution: the 18-year-old sitting near him, smiling politely but confidently in his well-tailored suit. His name is Kai Kloepfer and he’s from Colorado, a state that’s had more than its share of mass shootings. “He is the Mark Zuckerberg of guns,” Conway tells the room.
Kloepfer has spent the past four years designing a handgun with a fingerprint reader built into the grip, and he deferred his acceptance to MIT after winning a grant from the Smart Tech Challenges Foundation in 2014. His startup, Biofire, is just a few months from a live-firing prototype, which, assuming it works, will be the first gun to unlock like an iPhone.