[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the Growth Focus Podcast where we bring together tech leaders from all across the globe to share their time, their insights and their experiences with us. If this is your first time, my name is Gary Lafferty, your host and CEO and founder of the Growth Focus Partnerships, where we turn tech leaders into tech authorities through their presentations, their workshops and their webinars. So on this particular episode, we're going to be talking about founder led growth, what it needs and what it does it take to grow a company in a very competitive market. We're also going to be talking about AI and how you can integrate AI not only into your system and your product and service service, but also in the growth of your company and much more. We'll just have to see where this conversation goes. I'm really looking forward to it. So without further ado, let's bring on our guest for this episode now. Dav, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here today. Why don't you start off by introducing yourself and tell us who you are and what is it that you actually do.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Sounds great. Well, first of all, Gary, thank you very much for having me today and I'm very much looking forward to our conversation.
And so, as you mentioned, my name is Nadav Schnall. I am the CEO and co founder of Pro Sentry startup based out of New York.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Great. Okay. Well before we dive more into Pro Sentry and what it does and how you've grown that company, let's dial it back a little. Let's get to know you a little bit more. Tell us a little bit more about what got you into this in the first place. I know you've had quite a checkered different history and career path to here, so I'm intrigued for you to share it with us all today.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Sure, sure. So my background is predominantly in in the real estate world and we are the company is a prop tech or insuretech company, so definitely has connections, but never was I really in the, you know, technology sector. So my background's really more in operations. So I worked as a property manager for a rather large management company called First Service residential for about 10 years. During that tenure I was responsible for consulting for developers and opening properties and creating budgets and managing staff and really, you know, the guts of a building and the operations of a building. After that I was a CEO of a building infrastructure and service company, really being more of the field of fire suppression systems and building mechanicals and so really more of a buildings guy rather than a technology guy.
But, you know, during my experience working within buildings, I met several people, one of which is John Rusk, who is my co founder and business partner. He's been a construction worker, mediator, arbitrator, teacher in Columbia. Very interesting individual. And I met him through the world of real estate and buildings. And we set out to solve a problem which we both faced, I should say, many, many times in the past. And so that's how we came to Pro Sentry.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Well, let's dive into that because I'm an absolute follower of those who grow their companies based upon a problem. So what was the pain point that you guys saw that led to the creation of Pro Sentry?
[00:03:29] Speaker A: So, a few things from a personal perspective, I would say I can't tell you the amount of times that I would wake up in the morning and go to work and have a set plan and say, you know, this is what I plan to accomplish today. I got to do employee reviews, I got to do, you know, some budgeting, I got to do some opera operational things. And as I'm on the way to work, I get a phone call from one of the building engineers or something like that and said, listen, we just had a water leak, or we just had some kind of pipe explode, or we had something else that occurred. And then everything that you've imagined that you were going to do that day has been shelved and you're not going to get anywhere near that. And all you do now is damage control, partially physical damage control and also general damage control. Let's say if you're in a residential setting, right, in a building, you have affected unit owners, you have insurance claims, you have memos to send out, you have to talk to staff remediation. This will take weeks of your time, and this will take weeks of your focus and really with no real meaningful, you know, path forward other than mitigating what has happened. Similarly, John, my business partner, had a leak in his own house, and he thought about it and said, what? Wow, wouldn't it be really nice as a construction and builder in New York City? You know, he's built so many apartments and had and leaked into right when he's just done. And he said, boy, wouldn't it be nice to have a solution for multifamily buildings, for offices, for hotels? And so that's kind of how we've come together.
That's right.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Well, fantastic. So could you tell us exactly, very briefly, what is exactly does Pro Sentry do, and who are your ideal clients and who are my ideal clients?
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Ideal Clients got it. So Prosensure is a risk mitigative platform. So we provide a variety of different sensing technologies for buildings. We provide both hardware and software and monitoring anything from water leaks to oil leaks, to gas leaks, to mechanical malfunctions, environmental issues, temperature, humidity, smoke, vape, you name it. Anything we can figure out with a sensor, we try to put that on. And the goal of these sensing capabilities is really to reduce risk within buildings. We're trying to reduce risk, we're trying to reduce damage, we're trying to reduce inconvenience, we're trying to reduce insurance costs, which is a huge thing. And that's really what we're trying to do. And as far as an ideal customer, I would say almost any building, right? We don't. We're not a B2C operation, we're a B2B operation. But any multi tenant, multifamily hotel office space that has multiple spaces, that would be our ideal client. So quite broad in that sense.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Gotcha, Gotcha. So, you know, you've grown this company from very, very humble beginnings to where it is today. What has been the most effective growth channel for you so far, you know, when it comes to sales and partnerships and referrals or either one of those, what's worked really well for you, would you say?
[00:06:19] Speaker A: So I would say two things, right? I think one is referring to relatively easy one, if you can identify one, and that is regulation.
So we heavily, we heavily, you know, benefited from regulation in New York City, which happened to be a local law that passed that required gas detection. And so that was great for us. We were set up to achieve that. And so, you know, once you have tailwinds of regulations, and that's easy, and it's easy to. Relatively easy to accomplish, but then of course, it's very hard to identify. So for those out there that have the ability and insight to look into regulation and figure out where that's where that can be helpful is huge. But I think for us, the more valuable component is really to identify needs and gaps and that is again, going back to damages within buildings.
Building has, you know, and any product, you really look at it or your client has different pressure points, right? And so looking at these pressure points and identifying where, what is pressuring the client right now, right? So in my case, it was looking at, you know, insurance costs are going up, right? How can we use technology or how can we reduce insurance costs in order to be able to do that? You know, damage is happening, this is happening. So identifying those things and really Trying to, to kind of exploit them in order to be able to, to have growth.
So I would say that's an, that's in a nutshell, right.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: The last time we spoke, you know, you've also used some kind of like group events or show events where you bring together people and do some kind of demonstration with them. How's that worked for you?
[00:07:55] Speaker A: That's, I mean that to us is one of the most valuable points. So I think what we've done as a company is we've tried to establish ourselves and not just, you know, obviously not for the purpose of just being established. In other words, really coming with a lot of knowledge and being the source of knowledge or the authority. Authority to be able to consult at no cost, by the way. I think that's an important component, but to consult for people in need. So in our case, we take, let's say take two industries, right. One is property management and another is insurance. And so try to educate those both, both of those fields on what we do and how we can help them. So how technology can help reduce, reduce insurance costs in the event, for example, the insurance carriers. Right. Or four buildings. We talked quickly about like the local law and the gas. So how do you comply with this? You know, a really educational thing. You know, of course, you know, there's a selling component. We're there for a reason, but it's not a sales pitch. It's really just to say, hey, here's a local law. This is, this is how you comply, this is what you do. This is your options. Some of them are options we don't offer, but that is part of the way to educate. And then you looked upon as really a source of knowledge and, and really being helpful. And then hopefully that also converts into sales.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really important. I mean when you think about what are the main reasons people buy is either to make money to save money, especially with businesses. Make money, save money or keep me out of jail and keep me compliant. You know, you, you kind of got the nutshell there for you. So you can actually, you can help them save money, you can keep them compliant and that makes them more efficient, which helps them make more money on that. You've actually got the good trifecta there, a hundred percent.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think that is, that is very much there. And I think, you know, in any, and it may be true to any business, but in our business we've really tried to identify three different pillars, right. And try to create a little bit of an ecosystem, how you Know, by us helping a client, the client will benefit from another entity. That entity would benefit from our service. So if you try to create that and that becomes a little ecosystem of, of, you know, sharing costs and sharing efficiencies, I think that's a real value add for clients fasting.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: So that's all the great stuff. You know, that's what's really helped you get to where you are today. And, you know, there'll be people, there'll be followers and listeners and viewers of this show who's going to think, yeah, that's really great. You know, I love it when all you got that little trifecta and you can actually educate your clients into what they need. It's almost like teaching the buyer how to buy and why they need to buy as opposed to just pitching, to coin your phrase earlier on. You know, it's helping that buyer know what to and how to buy.
Was that a strategy that you fell into that's worked really well, or was it something that you knew before and you thought, you know, we're going to run with that?
[00:10:37] Speaker A: No, absolutely. I would say that we, that we fell into it. Right? Because I think, and I think it was something that we learned. We're continuing to learn. Right. So, you know, you look at a different, you know, in our case, either it was regulation or again, insurance. Those areas are kind of gray areas anytime, right? Regulation, they're set by, you know, technocrats or whatever in some office or some, you know, governmental agency, right. And they come up with all these things that you have to maybe throw into mentioned AI, right. Throw it into chat GPT and explain it to you. Right. Or figure something like that. Or you take insurance, which is, you know, many times it's been a gray area, people don't know, and it's heavily regulated. What can you do and what can't you do? And people just like, you know, it's one of those things that someone else that let someone else take care of it as long as, like you mentioned, I don't want to get into jail. Right. Or I don't want something to happen, but someone else. So taking that and trying to simplify it, we discovered was a huge way to kind of connect with people. Right. So if you're offering something, offering knowledge, offering a better understanding, simplified understanding really gives, gets. It brings a lot to the table. And I think that's just an approach that we've kind of stumbled across and then really adopted and hugged and continue to practice today.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah, love it. It's such a powerful thing when you, when you can actually educate them as opposed to just pitching them, you know, they feel like they got some great value ahead of time from you and it just makes it easier. Then especially you lay out this is a step by step way of doing it. This is how you actually end up purchasing it, buying it, getting involved. It makes it a lot easier. So thank you for your candor on that. I'm just falling into it, which is brilliant. Continuing on the canda, what's been harder than expected in scaling your company so far.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: So adaptability is always obviously the biggest, biggest thing, right? So like trying to figure out, you know, when you, when you start up, when you start out as a new startup, right. So it's, you know, it's, it's like going to a new city and saying, you know, I use the word pitch again and pitching a client and saying, you know, and even if it's a great pitch, right. You've used all the things that we discussed today and you know, they're really happy and they move forward. And then you come to a question and you say something like, well, where are you installed? How many clients did you have in a certain way? You kind of have to initially at least fake it till you make it. It is what it is. But having a very strong proof of concept with strong deliverables on metrics on how you've done and what has been the value add to the platform. You know, again, in our case, one of our, one of the ways we did this is we just started to aggregate a lot of data on the buildings that we've served as much as we could. Right. And trying to analyze that data to bring actual facts that when we go to a client, you may not be in the beginning in hundreds of buildings, like in our case, right. You can only be in 5 or 10. Right. But take as much data as you can from those and try to show with that data what is the value add. How do you think you're going to be able to replicate that with your new client? And I think that's been a challenge initially, but that's one of the ways that we're able to kind of bridge that gap.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Well, I'd like to delve in a little bit more deeper into this nairob because, you know, property, property managers, building owners, they're not known for their tech savvy, they're not known for being tech forward. How do you get that buy in, you know, from people who aren't really tech orientated, data orientated, they know what it is, but they're not going to say, hey, let me delve into this.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head with a lot of, with one of the challenges that we've identified, which was there is so much technology out there and a lot of that technology specifically surrounds around buildings. Because you think about it, it's a place where most us humans spend the majority of our time. And yet with all this technology that out there, building owners, property managers are hesitant to adopt technology. It's something that I see first of all firsthand as a property manager in the past, but also very much so in the future. And it's just, and there's various considerations. And so what we did at least is we really looked at that and analyzed from like a hypothetical situation. To be honest with you. It wasn't really, it was just to kind of try to understand why is it that buildings or whatever your client may be, why is that, that they are hesitant to adopt technology?
What are the reasons, what are the drivers there? Once we were able to identify them and put them all on a very, very long list, we set out to say, well, how do we solve that, that problem? How do we, as part of our, partially part of our sales pitch, but also very much so, how do I, how does more and almost more importantly, how does our solution answer those things? And so, you know, we found that, for example, you know, a lot of building engineers and people that work in the building staff there could be a little bit technophobic. You know, they're like, I don't know about that, or maybe I don't, I don't want to be responsible if something goes wrong. You're all that, you know. And so how did we solve that? Make it, make it very easy, very user friendly, not complicated. I mean all of our, all of our technologies, they get deployed by. We've made it that initially when we set out, we said we were going to do installations, we're going to do this, and the operation turned into be really big. All of a sudden you have to have installers and you have a lot of overhead and all this. So we said, hold on, hold on, hold on, let's stop for a second. We know that buildings are technofobic, so we can either do the work for them or.
But then there's overhead, there's responsibility, there's all that, or we just make it so simple and so easy. And we spent a lot of time on that, making it really easy so that people would be able to make it adoptable and so that those are the ways to do that. Of course there's ROIs that are involved and there's a whole bunch of other things that are really, really valuable to buildings or to those whatever. But what we were able to identify is, you know, that little ecosystem I talked about before, making it adoptable, making maybe making it reliable, understanding, showing that you have the knowledge on buildings, you understand buildings, you understand, understand how that worked. And I think the collective really made it easier for us to, to approach buildings and for them to adopt our, our solutions.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just getting their buy in, isn't it? As I say, they woo. I don't, I don't want that responsibility, especially with this, this new tech. You know, what happens if something goes wrong, if I press the wrong button and it has the reverse effect or whatever. Yeah, that's why I was really interesting that. Because obviously when we're selling tech it really goes down to actually who those buyers are, what goes through their brains, you know, and what surprises you most about the buying decisions. Well, let's move on to AI and daft because obviously we can't have a tech webinar, a tech podcast episode without even mentioning AI. Let's unpack the AI side. What does it actually do in your system? How have you integrated AI into your system to make it work and make it easier for your clients?
[00:17:11] Speaker A: So excellent question. I think it's interesting think fortunately for us, we happen to be one of those companies that the likelihood of us being replaced by AI is very low because at the end of the day you need a physical sensor, you need to be able to sense water. AI can't sense the water, you know, can sense gas in the air. I mean they could put algorithms and you could potentially. And that's kind of where we're going a little bit. Trying to be a little bit more predictive within, within buildings, kind of understanding where your next leak is going to be, how long it takes. And so those, those are the components that we can use AI, obviously you can use AI a lot within your sales platform, trying to understand, you know, what buildings need and all those type of things. For us it would probably be more around building the analytics around it. You get so much data. Once you have thousands and thousands of sensors, you get a lot of data from the sensor. And so being able to create models that you can actually analyze the data and figure out, you know, predictive maintenance, potentially seeing within buildings with certain systems. And this happened every X amount of time. Okay, now you can. Well, I Think you may want to look at this type of system or the other system. I think that's kind of where we would see potential growth in adopting AI.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. Because it will help you make those better decisions and help you deliver more value at scale once you can get it to help with you and collect all that extra data from it.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Yeah, a hundred percent. So that's, that's kind of where that is. And of course I think, you know, depending on how and what models you use, I think a lot of the interaction within prospects is super helpful. You know, you, and you can tell the difference. But sometimes you have these obviously generated AI emails and marketing emails which at least me, I automatically delete them. But then there's the more thoughtful kinds and the interesting interactions within websites.
And so I think that's another area that you can, that is worth exploiting.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Let's move on to the future vision and your next moves. Where is Pro Sentry heading in the next 12 to 18 months? What's the vision for that?
[00:19:14] Speaker A: So we are land and expand as we say. That's really what it is. We're heavily focused right now in the northeast, probably across five states. But our goal is to travel more west and south. And so we are on the cusp of doing that. We're going to have some exciting announcements soon. So that's kind of where the, where the head's at and where we would like to be. And I'm assuming the follow up question, so what's the challenge and how to, and how to get there? And so I think it's a lot about. It's a couple of different areas. I think one is understanding like not every city and not every metro area is the same. Right. Some are physical changes. Right. Like certainly states like Florida. Right. They're more, you know, they're warmer, there's more humidity. There's these type of environmental aspects that would affect our platform and our offering as opposed to if you go to the north, you know, east or northwest where you know, cold temperatures in the winter, what does that mean? So there's, there's challenges there that we have to figure out. And, and I would say those challenges are actually opportunities. Right. Because we need to figure out, well, what are the issues that buildings face in these areas. Right. And how do we go out to solve them. I think the other is within our existing client base. Right. We have a lot of additional offerings and better offerings that we're continuously adding new technologies. I think that's one of the great things about us is that we're really able to integrate a wide variety of solutions. And so we are now working on a pilot program with a large institution where they're going, where they're trying to improve radiator controls and trying to save on steam and energy. And that was not risk mitigation at all when we started off, but that was a need that a client had. And so that's the second challenge, Last opportunity is really trying to identify those new areas, but then also being able to provide a good, working, tested product. Right. And you're always on the go, so you're trying to, on the one hand, expand cells and get into as, as much and as many as you can, but you also want to make sure that you're maintaining quality and making sure that your solution is a good one.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I've got one last loaded question for you. I asked all my guests a loaded question. At the end of it, if you could give one piece of advice to young, no doubt, doesn't matter how old, that young Nido, if you could now look back and give that one piece of advice to young Nirav about succeeding in today's world in business, what would that be?
[00:21:44] Speaker A: For me personally, this is a personal question, obviously, but I, I think more quiet, I think more confidence, you know, and I do think I'm a quite, quite a confident person. But, you know, inside is always a different thing. And so if I had to ask myself or if I had to give myself some kind of advice, I hope that, I hope I'm answering the question that you wanted to and ask, but I think I would just, you know, history shows that ultimately when I put my mind to something, I succeed at the end. Right. It may not be, maybe a bumpy road, it may not be smooth, but just kind of just understanding that if you keep at it and just have that kind of quiet inside and just go by what you believe in, obviously be open to feedback and making adjustments when needed and not being stuck in your ways, but really just the quiet and the confidence and the, the resolve maybe to kind of go after. After what you think you need to.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Do, that makes perfect sense and a lovely piece of advice to finish on. So, Nadav, if people want to get hold of you, have a chat with you, potentially work with you, what's the best way of doing that?
[00:22:49] Speaker A: So two ways, I would say, which probably easiest, right? Either go on our website. So www.procentury.com. that's P-R-O-S-E-N-T-R-Y.com prosentry and contact us. Or alternatively, they can email
[email protected] Fantastic.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Well, I'll make sure that my team puts those in the show notes for you at the bottom so that they can do a one click and get straight to you. So thank you very much. As I said for your time, Nadav, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on board today.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Thank you so, so much for having me. This was great.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us for yet another episode of the Growth for Focused podcast. And as for you, if you've listened to one or ten or hundreds of these episodes, you know what I'm going to say next. If you've liked something that I've said, you thought that's a really good idea, I could utilize that. Make sure you like it, comment on it, so people can see what you're picking up from there. But more importantly, please share, share episodes like this because we all grow by standing on the shoulders of giants like Nadav and our other guests. So until the next episode, keep working hard. But more importantly, please be profitable and we'll see you on the next episode. Goodbye.
