The conversation begins by attempting to define what Davidhorn is. Borge Hansen, who became the company's CEO in 2022, is sympathetic towards the various labels (justicetech, legaltech), but remains insufficiently convinced that any of them manages to capture everything that Davidhorn has done over the past 41 years. Above all, a tag doesn't adequately capture the vision nor a mission that have both evolved and remained remarkably constant over the decades.

The journey itself begins in 1985, when UK Chief Police Superintendent David Horn created a homonymous company to tackle the thorny issue of investigative interviews and the production of objective records. Nearly two decades later, in 1995, Norway faced a similar issue of reliability of statements, which inspired the establishment of Indico Systems AS. Essentially, a Norwegian counterpart to David Horn, Norwegian officer Ivar Fahsing, identified the same unmet need for a police recording software capable of providing unbiased evidence. The two companies merged in 2021 and reinforced their mission around ethics and reliability. Davidhorn also became a part of Kernel, a Norwegian family office with a portfolio of tech companies centered around sustainability and healthcare.

The current numbers speak for themselves: in its 41 years of existence, Davidhorn has completed over 10 000 installations worldwide; boasts 400 000 global users and processes 1 million hours of untampered interviews each year. Furthermore, the company prides itself on something other players in the tech industry tend to shy away from: a comprehensive and complex product offering.

Davidhorn currently supports three distinct use cases for interview recording: field interviews, vulnerable witness interviews and suspect interviews. It also has no few than 4 distinct hardware devices, a desktop software solution and a capture app to service the specific regulatory and legal requirements each of those use cases demand.

The result is, by Borge's own admission, a complex web of requirements and needs which is best serviced by a catalog of software and hardware, able to run in multiple settings (including a covert interview recorder) and tested across numerous cultural backgrounds.

Davidhorn's CEO is adamant regarding the need to build technological solutions that not only enable investigators to perform their jobs, but that turn the job itself into something more palatable and less likely to result in officer burnout. We elaborate further on the connexion between the topic of professional burnout, and how the rise of stricter interview criteria, as well the sheer increase in documentary proof actually demand a tech solution that reduces the burden placed on police officers worldwide.

Borge cites the recent Australian bush fires as an example of how an increase in proof available can make the day to day job of officers harder: while it's imperative to go through every piece of evidence, police forces haven't been given more resources to swift through them. The end result is having officers stuck at their desks for days or weeks and barely making a dent in the documentation that must be assessed. That's where the second pillar of Davidhorn's USP comes in: increased officer well-being and productivity.

And this is where resilience and CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) come hand in hand: Davidhorn's customer base includes many government and public sector institutions, with tenders being the most common method of vendor selection. As Borge explains, those are not the easiest, nor the fastest contracts to land. But once a customer relationship has been successfully established, it tends to last: it's not easy to replicate a complex product offering that allows customers to stay on top of changing legal requirements.

If there's one key takeaway from our conversation, it's that there's no point in being dogmatic about technology. The mission defines the tech to use, not the other way around. It doesn't mean that certain types of technology must be excluded at the onset, but it also doesn't mean that they should be used at any cost, including in the case of AI.

There's no question here of removing humans from any loop: in certain legislations that would simply not be possible, and either way, the goal of the different products is to assist the investigator throughout the process, not to replace them. This complementary aspect is one we touch upon during the last question of the interview: is it possible for a company to be this mission-driven while keeping a commercial focus?

The answer follows without hesitation:

It's very hard arguing with a business that has been around for so long and remains undeterred by increasingly complex environments.