Take Risks. We've Got You.

When I was in my twenties, I sublet my apartment in San Francisco and moved to New Orleans for six months. I didn't know a single person there. I had visited once, a decade earlier, and loved everything about it: the history, the architecture, the food, the music, the way the warm air feels at night". Everything.

My dad, who didn't have the benefit of my rosy tourist glasses, pointed out that New Orleans had the highest murder rate in the nation at the time, and that I didn't actually have a place to live or a job lined up. (This was the late nineties; you couldn't exactly scroll through Zillow for an apartment.) As a concession, I promised to call him every other day just to confirm I was still alive.

At the time, I thought he was overly dramatic. Now, I think it was a measured request.

And for what it's worth, the city delivered. It was far from perfect, but I found an apartment, a job, and friends, and eventually loved it enough to move there properly for a few years.

I thought about my dad's request recently when I read that China's most popular app is called "Are You Dead Yet?" — a safety check-in tool designed for young people living alone. It struck a nerve.

That's one of the reasons we added The Beacon to One Final Message. It's a simple dead man's switch: if you stop responding, it delivers a short message to whoever you choose. No large data cache, no complex contact lists, just 1,000 characters to fill in and update whenever you like. It takes about five minutes to set up.

I want everyone to have a chance to be as carefree as they like. Chase that dream. Take that incredible journey. Climb that peak. Make that move.

The world isn't any safer than it was when I was twenty-something with a one-way ticket to New Orleans. But we have better safeguards available now. The Beacon is one of them.