About MAD Gear

MAD Gear is a small, family-owned company based in Bee Cave, Texas. We build communications-first preparedness tools that give people structure before they need it.

We started after the AT&T outage in late February 2024. For a brief moment, everyday coordination got weird fast. Messages did not go through. People could not reach family members. It highlighted something we did not want to admit. We did not have a plan that was clear, written down, and ready to use.

Planning is everything

We are planners by nature. Checklists, references, whiteboards, daily updates. We had plenty of organization. What we did not have was a structured system for what happens when communications become unreliable and decisions need to happen quickly.

In early March 2024, we sat down and built a simple planning framework that could expand as needed. It was built around coordination, redundancy, and getting back into contact. That became the Contingency Planner.

Since then, MAD Gear has sold nearly 15,000 physical planners and we built ReadyPlan, our digital planning platform with over 5,000 users.

Why communications comes first

A plan is only as good as your ability to coordinate it. Our background is military communications, and that experience shaped how we think about preparedness. You do not plan for perfect conditions. You plan for failure points.

We take a practical approach. We do not believe fear-mongering helps. We would rather people put that energy into an actionable plan that reduces stress and increases clarity.

The planner is the master copy. The phone is the operational copy.

Paper still works when batteries die, networks fail, or stress makes people forget details. The physical planner is the master record. It is the full reference that does not depend on a signal, a login, or an app update.

But we learned something quickly. Most people always carry their phone, and fewer people carry their planner everywhere. That is why we built ReadyPlan.

ReadyPlan is the operational copy. It is designed to be accessible, easy to update, and simple to share with the people who need it. The planner and ReadyPlan are built to work together. One is durable and permanent. The other is portable and actionable.

How we use AI

We do not position AI as something you rely on in the middle of an emergency. The value is upstream while you are building the plan.

AI helps you turn scattered thoughts into a structured draft. It helps connect pieces people usually miss. It can help draft plans, map evacuation routes, suggest communications plans with redundancy, generate checklists and inventory lists, and tie related sections together so the plan is coherent.

The barrier is not that people do not care. The barrier is that people do not know where to start. A strong draft changes that. Once there is structure on the page, people can iterate and improve with far less friction.

Mission

Our mission is to equip families and groups with a structured planning system that supports an orderly, coordinated response to real-world scenarios. We are lowering the barrier to entry by making planning approachable, practical, and shareable.

Where we are going

Over time, we are building MAD Gear and ReadyPlan to serve larger groups that need coordinated planning access. That includes churches, private schools, neighborhoods, and community organizations.

If you are a family, start with ReadyPlan. If you lead a group and want coordinated planning access, we are building for you too.