Rich people are scared of getting shot in the streets. A dangerous app is capitalizing on it

The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but the arc of American capitalism, without a doubt, bends toward guns.

I’m talking here about Protector, a new gig app that lets users book armed drivers and personal security agents. Protector launched in New York and Los Angeles last week, where users can now request ride shares with gunslinging drivers and bodyguards, all of them either active or retired military or law enforcement personnel. 

Rising demand for humans to arm themselves against one another? It’s a tough data point in the ever-continuing “How’s society going?” conversation. Protector’s services start at $200 an hour — with a required a five-hour minimum — and like all good gig economy offerings, users can customize their order.

 A few toggles include selecting their Protector’s dress code as either business formal, business casual or something called “tactical casual,” which, to this writer, conjures the image of one Letty Ortiz in the “Fast & Furious” franchise carrying a hammer in her cargo pants (photo linked for your viewing ease). After selecting their bodyguards’ outfits, users can pick between a Cadillac Escalade or a Chevy Suburban — both of which have room for five “Protectees,” the app notes as you make a reservation. From there, your personal security detail can ferry you around town, to any number of errands, book signings, book burnings or, presumably, wherever you’d like to bring a few armed beefcakes. 

That Protector even exists, of course, reflects the fact that the world’s richest and most powerful individuals have perhaps felt more physically vulnerable in the weeks and months since Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down in broad daylight in New York City in December. That killing, scary enough on its own for a wealthy executive, was met with a national reaction that suggested most Americans sympathized far more with the alleged shooter than the victim.  

Protector first announced itself back in December, firing off a press release two days after Thompson's killing that announced the app would be fast-tracking its New York City launch. "My deepest condolences are with the family and friends of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson," Protector’s founder and CEO Nick Sarath said in the release. "We rely on law enforcement to keep us safe, but they cannot be everywhere at once.”

Sarath, 25, doesn’t appear to have a background in law enforcement. He does, however, have a background in launching at least one other mobile app to meet a zeitgeisty moment. According to his LinkedIn, Sarath joined Meta as a product designer in 2019 and left the following year to launch Poparazzi, which pitched itself as the anti-selfie app by only allowing users to post photos of other people. (Think of it as a cousin to BeReal.) 

The app spent a moment at the top of Apple’s U.S. app store in 2021, but ultimately shut down two years later. Meta scooped up a few of the app’s core members, though it’s unclear whether Sarath was included in that bunch. (Sarath did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) His time at Poparazzi ended in October 2022, according to his LinkedIn. The next public entry in Sarath’s work history comes two years later, in October 2024, when he’s listed as becoming "Founder & CEO, Protector."

Sarath is also, apparently, the founder and CEO of Patrol on his LinkedIn, described only as “a product of Protector.” To Sarath’s credit, it is tough to think of a way to make a quicker, easier buck than to appease the fears of a class of people with unlimited economic resources who find themselves imminently fearing death a bit more than usual. In the days after Thompson’s murder, phones were reportedly “ringing off the hook” at Allied Universal, a personal security firm whose clients include 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies. 

And even before the killing, America’s elites were already feeling queasy about their physical safety. Suntera Global, a private wealth management firm, wrote in an August 2024 blog post about rising reports of “physical security threats” against high-net-worth individuals, with those threats including kidnappings, extortion and home invasions. 

The Robb Report, a luxury lifestyle magazine catering to the planet’s wealthiest individuals, wrote in September about the “sense of unease” among the ultra-wealthy in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s near-assassination “despite his top-level Secret Service protection.” 

But despite the very real (and very profitable) fears among the ultra-wealthy, Protector is also playing another game: manufacturing desire. Nikita Bier, a tech founder who said he advised Protector, called the app “Uber with guns” in a post on X, and offered a way for users (read: men) to use the app in a way that doesn’t exactly scream, “The services offered are of grave seriousness and importance, and to anybody out there with more money than they know what to do with, you should never use Protector to bring out some hired goons as a flashy stunt or gimmick.”

“If you have a hot date this weekend, pick her up in a Protector,” Bier wrote on X, in a post that generated much of the existing buzz around Protector’s launch. (Interestingly, on his LinkedIn, Sarath notes that he was “recruited by Nikita Bier” when he joined Meta in 2019.) 

In its own bid to generate buzz around its launch, Protector paid two young influencers, Josie Francis and Nicole Agne, both 29, to document their time being chauffeured around New York Fashion Week by a pair of Protectors. (Cut to: mirror selfies of two thin women flanked by hulking beefcakes, etc.)

Francis and Agne told The New York Post that “as two girls in their twenties … we’ve never felt safer in the city.” 

“Honestly, we’re already having withdrawals,” they told the Post in a statement. But with all the respect in the world to these influencers, how does their experience have anything to do with high-net-worth individuals fearing a public execution from a disgruntled poor? 

As somebody who’s been a 29-year-old woman on planet Earth, I can understand why one would experience withdrawals from a time when they didn’t have to, in some small but constant capacity, scan their physical environment for threats. But Protector isn’t doing anything to suggest it’s interested in preventing gender-based violence like assault or rape. Revealing as their experience may have been, I’m left believing that these influencers were hired by Protector for the most obvious reason: They’re living aspirational lives, and wouldn’t it be fun if you and your rich friends booked a pool of Protectors to ferry around the crew for a wild night on the town?

I have little to base this belief on, other than the general insights about human nature I’ve gleaned over my time on this planet. Also, there's the fact that Protector is only the latest high-profile offering to sprout from the gig economy: a marketplace that isn’t too keen on vetting whether or not its users actually need its services. (Has GrubHub ever asked you whether you need to have that pad thai delivered from 0.2 miles away?) But making an app like Protector as marketable as possible — by appealing to both spooked billionaires who fear vigilante violence, and affluent 20-somethings chasing an exciting experience — runs the risk of making an already dangerous enterprise (deploying armed goons into any situation) come even closer to inciting lethal violence. 

How, in any way, is it safe to launch a business that pumps guns into settings and situations that didn’t previously involve firearms? This might feel reductive to any Americans who have habituated to the smell of gun smoke in the air, but the data on this is exhaustive and irrefutable: adding even one gun to a situation dramatically increases the chance that situation turns into a shooting. States, neighborhoods and cities with higher rates of gun ownership each consistently produce higher-than-average homicide rates, and the least-restrictive public carry laws correlate to higher rates of homicide, assault and mass shootings in those areas. 

Bringing guns into a public setting “increases the risk for violence” from “escalating minor arguments,” according to the most recent annual report on gun violence from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Even the mere presence of a gun “increases aggressive thoughts and actions,” the report states, and that in itself heightens the chance of a shooting.

If you’re among Salon’s more fiscally privileged readers, congratulations, enjoy what I hope is a truly luxurious bathtub situation, and please — for me! — don’t book a Protector. Please don’t bring more guns into our nation’s public spaces. If you have serious cash to blow on a stupid or ridiculous experience, might I suggest ordering a $38,000 sweater and giving your doorman a one-of-a-kind price tag to gaze upon?

And if you’re a billionaire who’s tired of constantly fearing your own death, my sympathies. I’d first ask you to consider why it’s so easy for you to believe that some people wish you dead — far more people, perhaps, than either of us is comfortable admitting. Might this suggest something about the way your actions are affecting your species and planet?

Next time you’re making a business or financial decision, you might ask yourself: Could this lead to more people wishing me dead? If so, is there something I could do that would cause fewer people to laugh at my pain? Then act accordingly. You might save yourself from a life filled with small-talk with hired guns who were trained to speak to you in short sentences.