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Show Summary
In this conversation, Nadav Schnall discusses his extensive background in real estate and the innovative risk mitigation services offered by his company, ProSentry. He highlights the importance of reducing risks for property owners, the challenges of market adoption, and the critical role of relationships in business success. The discussion also covers the proactive approach to risk management and the potential insurance benefits for property owners.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Nadav Schnall (00:00)
Yeah, so I think first of all, just to say that the biggest value add that I think people really need to consider is, you know, the potential insurance benefits that buildings have by using risk mitigative systems, whether it’s pro sentry or another system out there. That’s a huge advantage right now. know, water leaks is typically the top three, you know, causes for non-weather related water damage is typically for most insurers the top three.cost,
Q Edmonds (02:01)
everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am excited to be here. I have another fantastic guest and listen, if you want to talk risk mitigation, is your person. Now listen, if you want to learn how to reduce insurance, this is your person. Like this person has some things in place that’s going to save you some money, that’s going to mitigate the risks and what is going to help you when you come to making decisions when it comes to real estate.And so I am so excited to introduce you all to, I’m gonna make sure I get this right, Mr. Nadav Schnall. How did I do you?
Nadav Schnall (02:37)
Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.Q Edmonds (02:40)
Awesome. Now, man, I’m glad to have you here and I’d be honest, man. I kind of want to dive in. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. You want to give us a bit of an origin story of kind of how you got started to know how you got into the space where you are. We would love to know that. And if you don’t mind, tell us what part of the world you’re in, man. What markets you’re operating in. So, sir, hey, man, you got the floor,Nadav Schnall (03:03)
Amazing. Thank you so much. That’s a wide range of questions. I got a lot to work with. I appreciate that. My name is Nadav Schnall. We are based out of New York City, Manhattan, on 39th Street, actually between 5th and 6th, but we service the entire United States. We are in several states already, and so we’re not geographically restricted right now.⁓ my background is in real estate. Surprise, surprise. ⁓ I started my career in a company called first service residential. ⁓ Maybe some of your listeners have heard of that company. It’s a large management company. so that’s kind of where I started my real estate career. ⁓ luxury condo development market. We did a lot of consulting for developers on how to operationally open a building so that it is sound and then transition that over to.
⁓ you know, steady state operations, hiring staff, and then really just managing, managing buildings in New York city, different types of it, anything from, you know, regular condo co-ops all the way to like mixed use hotels. so that’s really my background. And then from there, I transitioned into more of a service building infrastructure, ⁓ type of company did that for a couple of years. And then together with my business partner and co-founder, John Rusk.
We open Pro Sentry, which is a risk mitigation platform. I’ll explain in more detail what that means. But essentially, we are both real estate people. John’s been a builder in New York City for the past 40 years. So we’re kind of, came up, we’re less the classic tech people, I would say, or more boots on the ground, real estate people and kind of transitioned into it. ⁓ As far as what we do, what is Pro Sentry? ⁓ So we have this…
fantastic platform that aggregates a wide variety of sensors. anything, an IOT sensor, small sensors, anything from water leaks to gas leaks to mechanical malfunctions to oil leaks, temperature, humidity, environmental, mechanical, even rodents, right? We have methods to detect these different types of risks that buildings face on a day-to-day basis. And we have ability to notify building owners and building operators
almost instantaneously so that they have the ability to react before damages occurs. So that is extremely valuable for both the building owners, operators themselves, obviously the inhabitants of those buildings, whether it be residents or whether it be commercial offices, and of course the insurance industry, which lacks us because we lower the risk profile so there’s less claims to be paid out. So in a nutshell, that’s kind of what we do.
Q Edmonds (06:29)
Yeah, I love it man. So definitely thank you for walking us through the journey of how you got to where you are now and what what you do ⁓ I love it man. So I doubt in real estate did developing consulting operations then property management Service infrastructure now we’re doing risk management, right? I absolutely love it and I see where it all comes together And I actually have a saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments right meaning as we go through lifeAs we go through these different things and stages in our life, it teaches us something about ourself. It kind of makes us who we are today. So I would love, during your journey to get into where you are now with risk management, what have you learned? Well, mitigation, I apologize. What have you learned about yourself? Like, the journey, do the changes. What have they revealed about you that make you kind of who you are today?
Nadav Schnall (07:21)
Well, that’s that’s I feel like being a CEO of a startup, you learn something almost every day. I mean, it is such a journey to be able to do this. So I think first of all, really looking on past experience and understanding how to incorporate that into what we’re doing today. I mean, I think that’s, you know, as I kind of alluded to earlier, think one of our biggest advantages as a company is that we’re not some kind of tech company that came up with some technology.and are now trying to find the solution to implement it in, we know what the problem is, and we set out to solve that problem, which is, you know, maybe there’s a lot of companies that do that as well, but that’s not necessarily what a classic tech company does. ⁓ So I think I learned that tremendously, I think from a personal perspective, I mean, you learn to deal with so many different types of situations. So to figure out how you can do that, learning how to
calmly do things and when you’re outside of your common outside of your zone, how do you get back into that zone? You know, being a startup, you get punched in the stomach all the time, all the time. And so how do you just know to wake up, brush off and say, okay, I’m out to that. So those are kind of the big, big lessons I would say, you know, on, this journey.
Q Edmonds (08:36)
Yeah, love it, man. Thank you for sharing. I mean, you probably know this all too well. As you go to success, you run into adversity, right? And so as you was growing, building to where you are now, what kind of adversity has you bumped up again? How does adversity look within the risk mitigation lane? What are some of the things that adverse things that you had to come over,Nadav Schnall (09:00)
⁓ I mean, you have to come over, know, first of all, just to, I would say one of the first things is getting people to acknowledge what you’re doing and to say, Hey, yeah, this makes sense. want to do this because you know, you can, you can get together with your business partner and say, yeah, we’re going to come up with this plan and you can build models and you can get financing maybe, and you can get whatever, but what you’re doing is you’re continuously nonstop convincing everyone around you that what you’re doing.is gone to work. And so as a founder, you know, you have a vision. You’re like, I need to get this vision. And, we’ll talk about adoption probably later, but like, if I look at it, any, you know, investors got to believe in us because they got to give us money. And then you go to clients, they got to believe in us because you got to sell the product and you got insurance carriers. You got to show them that you have the data. So you’re kind of facing those things on a day-to-day basis. I think that’s kind of the high level there.
Q Edmonds (10:30)
what’s the next big goal for you? What are you looking to solve a scale next, sir?Nadav Schnall (10:33)
So the next goal for us is really adoption, right? That’s our biggest goal right now. ⁓ I think we are already in five states right now. We have additional states kind of about to sign, so we’re getting into some additional markets. So I think for us, ⁓ while I don’t wanna sound overly aggressive, it’s not like we’re trying to be one of those, we’re not trying to go like this. think part of our goal is to make sure we get adoption, we get adoption right.And we make sure that we’re actually getting value, but obviously getting more of our clients to see the value and getting the insurance carriers. There’s an ecosystem that we are trying to build here, right? And this ecosystem basically means we have a product that we want to sell that we really believe in and believe that it really brings value to clients and to insurance companies. By installing and deploying this product in more and more buildings, the buildings have the obvious advantage because
They have less damage. As a result, they have less insurance claims. As a result, their tenants, residents, whatever type of building it has, they’re happier, right? Because who wants to wake up in the morning and to a leak, right? And then proving that with that data, proving that to the insurance carriers, that is this kind of ecosystem that we’re building. So our goal is to really cement that and show that in as many ⁓ areas and as many locations as we can.
Q Edmonds (12:01)
Love it, man. So I want to ask you this. I want to talk about relationships for a little bit. Is building relationships, is it important to you? Has it benefited you? What is your perspective on it? Like talk to me about relationship building. What’s your perspective on it?Nadav Schnall (12:17)
Relationships is everything. Relationships is everything. It is so important and building it and honing it and making sure to me, mean, first of all, historically, ⁓ not only within this role in pro-century, but in general, relationships has always proven to be one of the most important things in the world of business. So to me, you hit the nail on the head with what it is. ⁓ We are a New York based company. And I think if John and I,didn’t have the relationships that we had. Now I’m not saying we wouldn’t be as successful as we are, but it would certainly be a lot more challenging. I think having that relationship saying, ⁓ yeah, I’ve worked in the DAV in this previous industry, I’ll give them the opportunity. No one’s gonna sign your contract because of a relationship necessarily. At least I haven’t seen that, but they’ve given the opportunity to propose something which I don’t know that we would have had otherwise.
So that is so important and it’s also important just to be able to open doors, right? To have like introductions, know, introductions into the insurance industry. There’s a great and lovely broker named Michael Jeanette ⁓ that I worked with in my previous, previous life. ⁓ And so just, you know, based on that relationship that we’ve had then, he’s, you know, really been helping us and pushing us and making and trying to open as many doors as we can. And it was just, you know,
He’s not benefiting from this. There’s no exchange of financials, whatever. He’s just being a really nice guy and extremely appreciated. And he’s a really great broker. ⁓ But relationships is so important. And so if you have those 100%, you have to hone them and make sure you take really good care of them because you never know how that turns out in the future.
Q Edmonds (13:57)
Absolutely, no, I love that. So, man, I want you to give me a little bit about the name Pro Sentry. Where does it come from? It makes sense when I hear it, but I still want to know kind of like the Genesis, the origin story of it a little bit. So tell me about it, man, because it’s a cool name. Tell me about the name,Nadav Schnall (14:13)
Yeah, 100%. So, you know, the whole concept behind percentage is being proactive, right? Because when you think about it, if you’re a property manager, a building manager, asset manager, you know, you may not need this. You can say, you know, if I have a gas leak, well, I’ll deal with it, you know, and if I catch it early enough, you know, I’ll open the window, I’ll air it out andYou know, turn off the gas, right? But he wants to work that way. And of course I went to like an extreme, you know, but you can think about that for water. You can think about that for temperature. You can think about that for road. You can think about everything. And again, even as a property manager, you have your limitations, right? You there’s so much that you’re able to do because hey, ⁓ a league doesn’t start when you’re in during business hours. It’ll start at three o’clock in the morning when you’re sleeping. Right. And so.
Being proactive is the name of the game, right? That’s where you really differentiate yourself from, you know, the regular operation, so to speak, right? And so that’s the pro of it. And Sentry, you know, that’s, you know, we’re looking out for you. We’re protecting you. And so that’s how it all comes together, right? So it’s, being proactive, but we’re also keeping an eye out for you. We are doing the work that you may not be able to do, or maybe you can do it, but you’re just, you know, you got another million other things to do. And so we’re trying to do that and that’s Pro Sentry.
Q Edmonds (15:30)
Man, I love it. absolutely love it. Listen, is there any topic that I did not bring up that you want to talk about? Or is there any kind of inspiration, motivation, education that you want to give the people? I would love to hear it if you have.Nadav Schnall (16:26)
Yeah, so I think first of all, just to say that the biggest value add that I think people really need to consider is, you know, the potential insurance benefits that buildings have by using risk mitigative systems, whether it’s pro sentry or another system out there. That’s a huge advantage right now. know, water leaks is typically the top three, you know, causes for non-weather related water damage is typically for most insurers the top three.cost,
right, the highest dollar value. Many times it’s number one. That’s what a lot of these insurance carriers are battling with. And there is a very good, reliable, adoptable, not expensive technology that you’re able to save. know, if you look at, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you know, fire detection, some people had fire detection, some people didn’t. Some people used carbon monoxide, some people don’t. Today, when you go to Brown New Building, people are like, that’s that’s a no brainer, right? So
Just being aware that there’s a technology out there you wanna use for a century, you don’t wanna use for a century, that’s well, not fine with me, but that’s okay, of course. But knowing that it’s out there and knowing that you may be able to be eligible to get like substantial insurance benefit that gives a good ROI, that gets a good NOI for those rental properties out there. And so, yeah, I’d say that’s an important thing to bring out there.
Q Edmonds (17:49)
Absolutely. Well, listen, thank you, man. Listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,Nadav Schnall (18:01)
we’d love that. We do that all the time. We’re happy to speak to people. So first of all, ⁓ you can reach us on our website, is www.prosentry.com. That’s P-R-O-S-E-N-T-R-Y.com. There’s a contact us there. You can also reach us at [email protected]. Those are probably the two easiest and quickest ways to do that. We’re very responsive.Q Edmonds (18:24)
Absolutely. listen, man, I want to say three things to you. First, thank you for your time. think you know time is very, very valuable, right? You can spend your time doing anything, but I thank you for spending time with us today. Secondly, thank you. Yeah, absolutely, man. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for walking us through your journey, but also just telling us about how you’re doing things to really help people and why they need what you have. And so I appreciate you telling your story. And secondly, man, thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your mindset and bringing that mindset to this platform.I appreciate you being here today,
Nadav Schnall (18:56)
Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thanks again.Q Edmonds (18:58)
Absolutely.So listen you heard him. He got you got the value Check out the show notes get in contact with him get his sensory system in your building Let him save you a lifetime of heartache and just bury so check him out But definitely make sure you subscribe here. All right, because listen, I promise you we’re gonna continue to bring up amazing people So sir, I just want to say thank you again as everyone else. Let’s see you on the next time
