About Valarm LLC

Valarm is a small technology company based in the new “Silicon Beach” of Los Angeles, California. We’re all about making awesome software that’s powerful, affordable, friendly, and solves real-world problems.

The Story

Valarm was founded in spring of 2012 by two brothers: Lorenzo Gonzalez and Edward Pultar. The birth of Valarm starts with my motorcycle (this is Lorenzo writing), stolen from my carport in October 2011. If you’ve ever had a vehicle stolen, especially a motorcycle, you’ll know how much this hurts. I decided to create an anti-theft and tracking device to protect the replacement bike, and Valarm was born. Initially I priced out the electronics to build a portable, self-contained unit. By the time I put together my shopping list, I realized that all the stuff I wanted to include would add up to at least $75 and be the size of… a cell phone. As a dyed-in-the-wool software engineer, I’d rather write software than build hardware any day. Within a few hours, the basic structure and functionality of Valarm was being tested on a real phone. The feature list rapidly grew and the possibilities of the idea quickly became obvious. As the value of super-mobile, geo-located data collection made itself clear, I recruited my brother Edward to help out. More about Edward in the Team section below. Together, Edward and I matured the Valarm code into a real product. Today, Valarm is a powerful software platform for collecting geo-located sensor data.  Follow our latest developments on Twitter and Facebook.

The Team

Lorenzo Gonzalez: Founder, CEO, Chief Software Architect

I’ve been developing software since 1995 and have built major systems for Ford Motor Company, DaimlerChrysler, R.L. Polk, ADP, IBM, Qualcomm, Movielink/Blockbuster, ESPN and Yokohama Tire, to name a few. Besides acting as captain of the Valarm team, I’m the Director of Technology at an awesome, cutting-edge, digital marketing and services agency called United Future.

Edward Pultar, PhD: Founder, President, Geographic Information Scientist

Edward received his two Bachelor’s degrees in Geography and Computer Science with a minor in Math from the University of Utah. His Master’s degree in Geography is also from the University of Utah. While working toward his PhD, Edward was awarded the Jack and Laura Dangermond GIS Fellowship and interned at Google, where he worked on the Google Earth product. In 2011 Edward received his PhD in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Immediately after receiving his PhD he spent a year in Spain as a visiting professor of GIS for the Erasmus Mundus program at Universitat Jaume I where he taught technology courses in English and Spanish. In addition to his job writing software for Valarm, Edward is a faculty member at the University of Southern California in the Spatial Sciences Institute.

Pawel Sasik, Esq: Founding Partner and Director of Legal Affairs

Pawel did his undergraduate work at University of Southern California and earned his law degree at Loyola Marymount. After spending several years in the technology business as an analyst, product manager and software development project manager, Pawel finally decided to put his law degree (and license) to work. Besides his duties at Valarm (making sure we keep our noses clean, pay our taxes, and generally stay on the up-and-up), Pawel is a partner in Sasik + Moon, a small firm specializing in employment, technology and entertainment law.

Smith Long: Senior Software Engineer, Chief Executive Web Wrangler

Smith is a man who’s done it all. Armed with a degree in photography, Smith has waited tables at 5-star restaurants, run the mixing board at a recording studio, driven a cab in Austin, tour-managed a popular rock band, and built corporate websites and social media applications for major corporations. There’s pretty much nothing this guy doesn’t know how to do, at least enough to get himself in trouble. He’s got a regular job too, as a Senior Web Developer at United Future.

Scott Orlyck: Server/Infrastructure Engineer

When he’s not practicing his Linux, AWS, NoSQL and iOS Kung Fu, Scott practices actual Kung Fu. So it’d be best if you don’t mess around with our servers, unless you really want to feel the drunken praying mantis monkey fist of death I.n R.eal L.ife!!!1!11!!