Team

Built by people who understand both risk and software.

Hazzard was founded at the intersection of two disciplines: preparedness and risk management on one side, and production software, data systems, and AI on the other.

We are building Hazzard to solve the problems we have seen firsthand — fragmented risk information, repetitive assessments, disconnected planning cycles, and systems that make it difficult to maintain a current understanding of risk.

01

We are inside the engagements.

Every feature is validated on a real jurisdiction's plan cycle before it ships — Colorado municipalities and counties working through Active Analysis Consulting engagements. Consulting is how we learn what the record has to hold. The software is the business.

02

We have shipped AI that had to survive an audit.

Forward-deployed work putting Palantir Foundry and AIP into production for enterprise operators taught one rule that runs through Hazzard: the model proposes, code verifies, a person decides, and every step is on the record.

03

We know the regulation, not just the software.

44 CFR §201.6, the 2025 Local Mitigation Planning Policy Guide, the FEMA Plan Review Tool. The product is organized around the elements a FEMA reviewer scores and the workshops a planner actually runs.

Patrick Van Horne, Co-founder & CEO

Patrick Van Horne

Co-founder & CEO

Boulder, Colorado

Patrick leads Hazzard's strategy, operations, customer development, and go-to-market efforts. His career has focused on helping organizations understand risk, prepare for uncertainty, and make better decisions before consequences become unavoidable.

A former Marine Corps infantry officer, Patrick later co-authored Left of Bang and went on to work across emergency management, disaster response, consulting, training, and preparedness. He co-founded The CP Journal, where his work with emergency managers, public safety agencies, local governments, and other organizations helped surface the problem Hazzard is built to address: critical risk information is often fragmented across plans, assessments, studies, departments, consultants, and institutional knowledge.

At Hazzard, Patrick focuses on ensuring the platform reflects how organizations actually understand, communicate, and manage risk — and delivers practical value to the people responsible for making those decisions.

  • Co-founder, Active Analysis Consulting — hazard mitigation and risk assessment engagements
  • Co-author, Left of Bang; led Combat Hunter training at the School of Infantry
  • U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer — platoon and company leadership, Iraq deployments
  • Team Rubicon Boulder area team leader; panel member, ACRP 03-68 contingency planning
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Christopher Knight, Co-founder & CTO

Christopher Knight

Co-founder & CTO

Denver, Colorado

Chris leads Hazzard's product, engineering, and technical architecture. His work focuses on building trustworthy software and AI systems that can turn large, complex bodies of information into structured, usable products.

Before Hazzard, Chris was a Forward-Deployed Engineer at Palantir, where he worked with enterprise customers on deploying Foundry and AIP systems. He previously served as a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Guild and has spent 13+ years building and leading software products across startups and scaled platforms.

His work has centered on production AI, data systems, and large collections of complex information — including tools that help users work with that information while preserving the provenance, controls, and review needed to trust the output.

At Hazzard, Chris focuses on building the technical foundation behind the platform: the data layer, AI workflows, review systems, and product infrastructure that make Hazzard reliable, auditable, and useful in real operating environments.

  • Forward Deployed Engineer, Palantir Technologies — Foundry / AIP production systems
  • Senior Software Engineering Manager, Guild — product engineering leadership
  • Production AI and data platforms — LLMs grounded in verified source corpora
  • Public civic-tech builds — searchable guides over large legislative corpora
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