"Our goal is to prevent thousands of deaths and injuries annually — and we're not stopping until we get there." — Gordon Larson, CEO, Audible Cone Alert Systems Inc.

In S4E20 of the DARE with Darwoft podcast, host Ned Hayes sat down with Gordon Larson — in collaboration with the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network — to hear how a roadside tragedy in 1996 became the founding moment of one of Oregon's most compelling hardware startups. From a frontier county in rural eastern Oregon to Fortune 500 deployments and international expansion, Audible Cone is proving that purpose-built technology can scale from anywhere.

Principal topics covered:

• The origin story: how a 1996 incident involving an ODOT flagger inspired 30 years of product development.

• How the Audible Cone system works, from traffic cones to wearable alerts, and its 11+ iterations to get there.

• The real challenges of building a hardware company in rural Oregon, and the role OEN and Frontier Innovation Hub played.

• Current traction, international expansion, and the vision to significantly reduce roadway worker fatalities globally.

For the founders building in places the startup world forgets exist, this one is for you.

Impact doesn't care where you build it. It only cares that you do.