1. My Introduction to Axon
I first heard about Axon Enterprises through David Gardner on his Rule Breaker podcast with The Motley Fool. Gardner highlighted Axon as a Rule Breaker stock—exhibiting several of the six core traits: first mover, top dog in an important emerging industry, visionary leadership, and a mission that matters.
That mission—to redesign the future of public safety through non-lethal enforcement technology—stood out. Axon, known for the Taser, was expanding into entirely new digital arenas of law enforcement, and I could see it wasn’t just building products; it was building an ecosystem.
2. The Spark of Conviction
I added Axon to my watchlist in 2019 and began researching regularly. I spent one hour a week (sometimes more, sometimes less) diving into their earnings calls, leadership philosophies, and product innovation pipeline. The more I learned, the more the business passed what I call my sniff test—a sense that this company had real operational leverage and values alignment with its customers.
By April 2020, during the COVID-induced market crash, I saw my opportunity. Great companies at great prices are rare—so I began building a position.
3. What I Liked from the Start
Axon’s mission to equip law enforcement officers with non-lethal tools was not only ethical—it was also strategically aligned with what police departments themselves wanted: safer enforcement, better public trust, and fewer fatalities. Tasers were not just a product—they were becoming an indispensable part of the policing toolkit.
But what set Axon apart wasn’t just the hardware. It was the network effects and system lock-in being built through innovations like:
- Axon Body Cameras
- Evidence.com (a secure, cloud-based digital evidence platform)
- Axon Records (a digital records management system)
- And most recently, Draft One, a tool that leverages audio/video data to automate incident report generation
Each product builds upon the last, expanding the value chain and making it hard for clients to switch providers.
4. My Portfolio Strategy
I initially started with a small, risk-adjusted position, as I typically do. Over the years, I dollar-cost averaged into Axon as my conviction grew. Today, Axon represents approximately 10% of my portfolio, built from an initial capital base of around 3%.
It sits in the G2 Fund – Future Leaders category of my portfolio. Axon is EBIT profitable, growing rapidly, and expanding its product ecosystem across law enforcement, defense, and adjacent civilian markets. It has the makings of a future compounder.
5. Leadership & Culture
Axon’s leadership team, particularly CEO Rick Smith, is mission-driven. His vision is bold—he wants to make the bullet obsolete—and his execution backs it up. The culture at Axon is one of purposeful innovation. They are not afraid to reinvent, iterate, and go against the grain.
They’ve consistently shown that they can move beyond the hardware margins of Taser into higher-value recurring software revenue—without losing their mission-centered DNA.
6. Flywheel & Innovation Stack
The brilliance of Axon lies in its incremental innovation model. Every new product enhances and extends existing offerings. You can’t just buy Axon’s camera—you need Evidence.com to manage it. You can’t just buy Records—you need the whole platform to extract its full utility.
And Draft One is a perfect example. Built on top of Axon video and data infrastructure, it reduces officer time spent writing reports—freeing them to be in the field and improving report accuracy.
This solution-based innovation stack is where Axon’s power lies—and why their Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is scaling rapidly, up 121% YoY as of their last earnings call.
7. Total Addressable Market (TAM)
While I’ll dive deeper into this in a future post, here’s a high-level snapshot of Axon’s TAM by vertical:m
Their current strength in U.S. public safety is being extended through international expansion and adjacent verticals—effectively tripling or quadrupling the available runway.
8. My Antithesis: What Would Change My Mind
While I’m deeply bullish, I remain aware of potential risks:
- Regulatory restrictions or litigation around non-lethal weapons
- Government budget cuts that reduce law enforcement procurement
- Competitive innovation from entrenched defense players or AI-first startups
- Overreach or mission drift that weakens their identity
But for now, the risks seem low relative to the execution quality and TAM expansion.
Final Reflection
Axon is a company I would be proud to hold for decades. It is building mission-critical systems in a way few companies do: with high moral clarity, strong operational leverage, and deep integration into how society functions. It is not just innovating in law enforcement—it’s reinventing how justice can be served efficiently and safely.
That’s why I’m long—and likely to stay that way.
