Season 2 / Episode 6
Haniel Lynn, CEO of Kastle Systems | Redefining touchless experience with focus on the end user | 40:22
Transcript
DA: Welcome to TEN, the Tenant Experience Network. I’m your host David Abrams. In this episode, we are connecting with Haniel Lynn, CEO of Kastle Systems offering state-of-the-art security solutions to more than 2 million people across 10,000 locations globally. In this episode, we will learn about Haniel’s journey to his current role where he brings his engineering, business consulting and startup experience to the work that he does in building out a platform company. We will tap into his learning around operating in the grey and taking advantage of opportunities to drive creative solutions as one of his keys to success. Hear about how Kastle is redefining touchless experience and gain insight into why he thinks we have to focus on the end user experience. We’re excited to be sharing this podcast with you so be sure to follow TEN. So you never miss an episode of the Tenant Experience Network. And now I’d like to welcome Haniel to the show. Really glad you could be with us today.
HL: Yeah, thanks for having me.
DA: Awesome, let’s start with your journey to your current position as CEO of Kastle Systems, offering state-of-the-art security solutions to more than 2 million people across 10,000 locations globally. How did you get started? Walk me through it. What did it look like?
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HL: So, yeah, you know, I guess my broader background I have a pretty traditional, you know, in some ways background, I have an engineering degree, I worked at GE, I went to business school. I spent time in McKinsey Consulting firm, did a startup and then I was lucky enough to have had a 16 year run at an information services company. So not in the security space or the property space at all called Corporate Executive Board or CEB. And I was a part of the leadership team that went from about 100 million in revenue up to a billion before the company was sold to Gartner. And then I was lucky enough to find Kastle because I met the majority owner of the company, this guy named Mark Ein and Kastle having, you know, spending time in DC as I have, Kastle’s got an amazing reputation here because it is a DC founded company. And it’s almost like Kleenex with respect to the Kastle card or that Kastle key that everybody knows in DC obviously we’re much beyond DC now, but with this sort of amazing reputation, what Mark said to me is that he thought about this as very much a platform company and wanted to have a CEO who could help to build a long run enduring enterprise which I thought was such an amazing opportunity. And I spent time looking and doing research on the company of course, before I came here and I found that the way Kastle at the time, talked about customer service, talked about focus on innovation talked about focus on culture and people. And if you run into me in an alleyway somewhere like, hey what are the things that matter the most in terms of driving great companies and great growth I would have probably given you those things and companies can talk about anything they want to talk about, I happened to talk about the things that I cared about with respect to, again, what drives for great companies and great organizations. And so I thought that it was such a good alignment of things that I had done and things that I’ve experienced and then also what the company was and where I wanted to go, that made it make sense very much. And for the now two and a half years almost that I have been at Kastle it’s been a really fantastic journey, much opportunity, much work to be done across all these dimensions but looking forward to some amazing stuff ahead.
DA: Right well, I’m sure you’ve found that it’s really unique. The fact that you were with a company as long as you were and then looking for a new opportunity to find a company, you know, not that you necessarily were the founder but that you could align so closely with the founder and with its way forward is quite unique I suspect.
HL: Yeah, you know, I think everything happens as a function of just alignment, right? And so Mark and then the prior CEO of Kastle, his name is Piyush Sodha, The two of them are the owners of the company. And they had acquired the company about maybe 14 years ago now roughly from the founder of the company. And the company has been around for 48 almost 50 years or something like that. And everything is again just, how do you see where you want to go and then how can you help enable and impact that and I feel really fortunate to have lined up with these guys; really smart, thoughtful guys, really great investors and business builders about where we are in our journey at Kastle and where they want to see it from here, so yeah, very much.
DA: Excellent, so why do you think you were so uniquely suited to this opportunity? What helped you to become successful? Whether that be skills or mentors, colleagues, influential books that you’ve read?
HL: It’s hard to say that I’m uniquely suited here but I think each of us brings a different skillset to whatever leadership role that we step into or get tapped for. And I am not sure that I am unnecessarily, anybody is ever necessarily uniquely suited because everybody brings their perspective into whatever challenge that they’re going to work through. And so I think there maybe are certain attributes that matter for a leader or maybe a particular leader at Kastle right now, you know, the ability to break apart problems, perspective to understand what really matters and what maybe matters less, experience in helping to and maybe watching a company scale and grow and build listen and rally people around that common cause to get us to the other side or to get us to that outcome. And so those are some of the things I think would matter at the scale of where Kastle is an opportunity that is here. And so I bring some modicum of some of all of those things and hope to be able to help bring those ideas and those perspectives to bear as we get to the next horizon of growth for the company. So I would say maybe as a thing that as I reflect on my set of experiences we’re all a function of the experiences that we’ve had. There are a couple of things that I think I took out of my set of experiences that might be particularly helpful here. So, you know, I would say that my engineering background helped me to think logically about how to break apart problems. McKinsey taught me the most, probably about how to do business problem-solving rather than just abstract problem-solving overall or breaking down problems. I had this fantastic startup experience, that was a tough one, but fantastic where I worked for a guy in the property space really Herbert Miller who founded the Mills Corporation. And I remember Herb taught me very much about how entrepreneurs operate in the gray to keep options open and how to take advantage of opportunity and continue to drive different creative solutions. And then my 16 years at GE as I described before it taught me how to grow and scale a B2B recurring revenue enterprise, recurring revenue business which of course Kastle is. And you know you kind of look back on all your relationships that you’ve had with all of these different people that one was lucky enough to work with. I was lucky enough to work for and with, and you’ll learn a lot about how do you lead people, how you work with people how you get things done through people and what you want to do as a part of a team. And that I spent a lot of time here at Kastle thinking about how to get the most out of everyone, how to unlock people’s potential, how to listen to them, to understand what they see to understand how we can be better. And one of the things I say a lot in my company as I walk the hallways is some people think by virtue of my title I’m somehow smarter than everybody else or something. And it’s unfortunately very far from the truth because I’m the almost definitely the farthest point from where things happen. And the thing about like the coalface of the customer or to our operations, to real value delivery. And then yeah, I get called all the time to make decisions about the stuff that matters if you will. And so unless I can create an environment or unless I can have the kind of access that allows me to really understand what is happening, what the real problems are, what are the real opportunities are, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to get after the right stuff or solve the right problems or you know, get after the real right opportunities for the company overall. And so that matters a lot to me as respect to how I think about engaging. And I learned a lot of that just by virtue of experiencing things myself and seeing how other leaders lead across my career journey.
DA: Right well, you’re the quarterback, right? And you can’t do it all, you can’t play every position. So, you know, it’s really essential that you have all those players around you and give them the latitude and space to do their job. And you’ve got to be the one to sort of make sense of it all. And that kind of sounds like what you’re good at doing.
HL: I don’t know how good I am at it. That’s what I try, I’m sure that’s the kind of role that you have as well to bring people together and get people around a common belief set and common opportunities so you can work it, right?
DA: Absolutely, you know, obviously on a smaller scale but that’s something I think about a lot. And I think about, you know, each member of our team and, you know no matter how, where they are, you know, in the hierarchy and we really try to keep that hierarchy as flat as possible, but giving everybody an opportunity to shine and to learn and to contribute. And I really value everyone’s contribution and their role recognizing that I can’t do it all. And I’m only going to be successful, you know, if I continue to empower them to do their best. So it certainly is a journey. And it sounds like all of your combined experience over the years has led you to be really an effective CEO in this new role.
HL: Yeah you know, we all do with whatever kind of situation where we’re in. I think the thing that I have found, I’m sure you have found in your position as well is, you know, so, I don’t know, like a McKinsey guy, right? And I’m an engineer so there’s very left brain newness into how I do a lot of what I do, but I feel like what motivates companies to push and grow and and do amazing things and stretch themselves to do things that they didn’t even think possible is the right brain stuff. And as you said, you know, you are, I am we are quarterbacks in this situation, or we’re kind of conductors of an orchestra. You cannot play the symphony until everybody understands how they fit in. And so then you start thinking a lot about what motivates people to get excited about where they are, what their ambitions are, what matters to them wherever they are in their own journey, whatever the reason is that they are part of our organization. And how do you connect that to the broader set of things that we aspire to do as a company, all of that is right brain stuff.
DA: Right, yeah totally, totally. All right, so let’s agree that living through a pandemic is absolutely horrible. There may be some great outcomes, but, you know for those of us, and it’s practically all of us that are living through it’s not been easy. That being said, I don’t believe we can use the pandemic as an excuse any longer. From our perspective this is the time to be better, do better and build something better. So to that end if I gave you an extra $100,000 of budget right now, how would you spend it and why?
HL: Yeah I don’t know what kind of answers you’ve been getting on this question actually, I’d probably go so a lot of like the soul of the person on this, but, you know, like I have to say I feel very fortunate during this pandemic that I have personally had the benefit of just, you know, being employed having good health, like the basics of just for me personally, largely been minimally impacted all of us, but in my case very lucky to feel like that I have not had the dramatic impact that others might have felt during this time. But I also appreciate that not everybody was that lucky. And certainly if I look at the Kastle side of things, we’ve had our share of the challenges with the same kind of uncertainty that every other business felt. I remember going into March of last year what was going to happen to the economy? What was going to happen to our customers? How are we going to deal with all of that? And I look at that in maybe a pretty matter of fact way that’s the journey that every company goes through. And there’s a reason that they call it a cycle as they cycle. And so at some point, a company will always have to deal with those kinds of things. And so at the Kastle side of it, we were lucky enough I think, to be able to turn the pandemic into a really great business opportunity for us to stay grounded and getting people back to work and feeling confident in doing it this thing called what we call a KastleSafeSpaces But anyway, but I think in the middle of that, as the world goes, I was personally and we were collectively at the Kastle side, you know, the fortunate ones. And there are so many people who were just not as fortunate. And so this pandemic hit so many people in such deeply personal ways like people died, right? And friends and family members they fell sick, they fell victim to COVID. People lost their livelihoods. They had to worry about their kids at home, getting food on the table, like everything that is actually what matters. So much of the population was impacted by it. And, a couple of weeks back, I was with my wife, I volunteered in one of the food lines. And it was just distributing basically, you know donated food so that people could put food on the table. And this was, you know, a month ago or something a couple of weeks ago. The line in, so it’s DC. So the line was a long standing line but also the car line to get all the food. And it’s an amazing perspective that you see ’cause you don’t think about it day in and day out until you’ve put that into perspective. And so if there’s a difference that I can make with $100,000 in any kind of small way, it’s not an amazing amount of money but it’s also resources I think about how you might focus. I think for me the part that maybe I just, I felt the worst for would be the kids, the children in this. The younger kind of in between self-sustaining, you know high schoolers and college kids like I have, like what kind of education were they missing out on? What kind of opportunities had they not got, who didn’t have maybe the luxury of the laptops a little I guess a lot of people gave laptops out, but maybe even the parents who can help them with the education. So how do you help groups of children and how do you think about putting volunteer armies of maybe teachers together, learning groups together social interaction groups together. I don’t know how you think about just even the small group of people that you can touch and impact, but kids grow up. And if you don’t think about the parts that impact them in formative years and help them shore that up, I think you miss out on not just this group of what they get to do now but also what they get to do for the world in the future. And that’s probably where I might’ve, would go back and spend a little bit more time.
DA: All right, that’s a great answer. And I think to be tuned into the impact that it’s had on you personally, the impact that it’s had on your business but also to be able to see that broader picture and the impact that it’s had on the community around you. I think that’s awesome. From our perspective, you know, HILO, which is all about creating community and connecting buildings to neighborhoods and to cities. And we think a lot about that side of our business and our intention is to sort of build out that social good component and not only help building to connect and create those communities, but also think about how we can give back to those communities. So I love the fact that that’s where you went with when asked that question, thank you.
HL: I think I love that you talk about that as well because I think for us, you know, security, right? Security is a thing that is so core to how people feel in day to day. And part of what attracted me to the company beyond now the technology part of PropTech and amenity and all that kind of stuff, which is also interesting and important, but there is a core kind of what you do in the community to make people feel secure, that matters a lot I think in the ethic of the company overall. And we do spend a lot of time in the company thinking about how we can contribute back. And so I love that you talked about that and that you focused on it too. It’s important.
DA: Well, I look forward to continuing that part of our conversation offline and seeing how our two companies can maybe work on that together, that’d be great.
HL: Excellent.
DA: There’s still a lot that we don’t know, and lots of people making these grand statements about what the future of work will be. I feel very confident in saying that there will be a return to the workplace, it will happen, it will be much slower than any of us first thought, and flexibility is going to, without question, continue to be an emerging and important theme in commercial real estate, recognizing that people will be working from everywhere going forward. This notion of work remote or work in the office it’s not going to be one or the other, it is going to be work from everywhere. And during the course of one’s work week you’re going to determine when and where is best to be doing the work that you need to get done. So just wondering what your thoughts are on all of that. Any opinions, any thinking that you’d be willing to share with our listeners?
HL: Yeah, so I very much agree with you, people are going to go back to work, it’s going to happen, it will happen. I think people want to get back together because people recognize that there is a certain thing that happens when people are live together and a level of creativity that you get, or productivity that you get or a different way of engaging and interacting than you get in a 2D format like this, like in a much more 3D experiential kind of way. So I believe very much that will happen. Now that said for a lot of people now, employees I think the genie is out of the bottle, right? So I think many people found that they can be as productive or even more productive maybe working at home. So the other day I went to the office and I’ve gone to the office kind of sporadically across my, you know, this last year, but I was like in this half hour commute, I was like, wow, what is going on here? I’m like, half an hour commute listening to the radio or something like that. I could be doing so many more productive things than this. So I think that there is now in this new light that people think about, like how can I use time, how can I think about it differently. And I think employers debate a lot, and I’ve talked to different people about whether people are more productive in the office or out of the office even though the genie is out of the bottle, even though maybe they found their way to Zoom or Teams or whatever, how do you do it now? And I think even reflecting on some of them the least technologically advanced companies that were out there, they’re very old school. They now probably could say that they are doing things that they never thought possible before. They didn’t think that culturally that was going to be able to do it or they didn’t know that technology was available to do it. And so I think you have this situation where the technology has enabled a certain kind of productivity. People want a certain kind of productivity. People have lived it now, so that they liked the flexibility of committing still to what the company needs but also having a schedule that might be more permitting and yet at the same time, you kind of know it’s better if you can get people together at work. And that creates a different kind of, you know, we talk about the hybrid remote work environment a lot, what’s possible there? And so I think the workplace and the collaboration piece retains value and it becomes to me a place rather than the place, if that makes sense. And so when you think about that so how will engagement work in that kind of environment, there’s like HR policy kinds of things that I’ve talked about our different clients about like when should you people come in, or how much should they expect them to come in and how much should they expect them to be even living locally because people moved away, you know, all those kinds of things but then it’s more like the practice part of it. What would you have them do when they came in? Do you expect them to come in as teams together so that they can collaborate? What would you want them to do while they’re not at home, are there expectations that are different from when and how, like they become not just policy issues, but I guess administration and execution type of issues. And to me, like, I think about a lot on, you know, probably your world and my world here is ‘how does technology then enable that differently?’ How do you think about the new way of work that has been accelerated through COVID and how do you think about technology being the underpinning to making that so where maybe three years ago, five years ago people wouldn’t have thought possible. It wasn’t possible, now it’s possible and people now have accelerated into, like how do I think differently?
DA: I agree, I think as commercial real estate continues to respond to this new world and rethinks the kinds of spaces it builds, rethinks how people navigate their way in and out of space, through space, the kinds of spaces that are available in terms of amenities, the various programs and services that need to be offered. I think technology is going to be a critical factor in how all of that gets packaged and delivered and communicated and then how ultimately people connect and interact. So I do think that technology is going to play a vital, a critical role in that entire, the evolution of what it means now to work from everywhere. And ultimately we’ll create some very exciting times. In terms of the real estate I do believe people will want to come back but I think to your point not only in the administrative side but programmatically what does your time look like when it’s spent back in your workspace? And I think that’s where companies are going to be re-imagining, the kinds of, you know, what do meetings look like, what do brainstorm sessions look like. What is time spent in the office actually needed to contribute back to productivity and so forth. So, there’s so much again that we still don’t know. I think this is going to continue to evolve at a very rapid pace.
HL: Yeah, absolutely, interesting to watch.
DA: Absolutely, let’s take a quick short break and we’ll be right back.
Commercial Break
DA: We’re back with Haniel Lynn. CEO of Kastle Systems. Thanks for being with us again today.
HL: Yeah, absolutely.
DA: So the CRE industry is moving faster and faster towards recognizing that their core business is not actually about just owning buildings, but rather it’s about creating the best customer experience for their tenants and residents. Buildings are for people, people come first. So just would love to hear your thinking around how we will define and deliver tenant experience in 2021 and perhaps beyond.
HL: Yeah, sure so Kastle has been a really strong advocate for tenant in the office or tenant resident experiences in multi-family for many, many years. And so we were among the first to truly get to a touchless experience where we launched our mobile credential app. You know what, it’d be five years, maybe six years ago now. And I think COVID accelerated the dynamic that was already unreferred in this area around amenity or around experience. And for us, when we say a lot is it necessarily just became the mother of adoption here. So we have seen ourselves a big uptick in interest in just the touchless credential motivated now by the need to feel safer or to feel like you’re in a healthier work environment without having to pod everything. But you know, we pushed ourselves in the middle of this technologically to continue to redefine what the touchless experience is, for example now being first to market in a touchless elevator control kind of situation so that you can call the elevator to your floor with a phone and then designate where you want to go. And then even more an elegant visitor management system that allows you to come in without doing anything just playing on again some instance and prior directions that we had taken in the past already. And the thing that to me is really interesting in this world is the bit of 10 degree pivot, if you will, not even a pivot tend to be step over around how you think on the world of what was security and safety to the world of health wellness in now the definition about experience and that all kind of matters. So these are all kinds of places that we have been swimming around and now coming out of it, I believe that the competitive environment for space is changing a lot and a bit of the year, I think as people are saying how much space do people really need anymore? How is commercial office demand going to feel given all this uncertainty? And so that places a bit even more pressure on buildings, owners and managers to upgrade and think about how to differentiate their space to modernize their experience for their tenants and their employees who I say sometimes like, you know all of us are spending too much time on technology devices and watching probably too much Netflix and Apple TV or whatever. We’re all spoiled by what Google has taught us to be an experience that we should expect from our digital devices that I think when you get into the commercial kind of offers work world it doesn’t match up, it’s not the same. And so how will that then lead to an upgrade and expectation and upgrade in what the owners and operators will have to deliver in order to match up with those expectations with respect to experience overall. And so, again, I would say that this is a trend line that we’ve been on because people have been talking about this for some time. And then again this necessity is the mother of adoption thing, I think it was just lifted up the trend line and trajectory for more people to think more actively about this for economic wellbeing reasons, for health and safety reasons, for expectation reasons. All of that I think is coming to now fruition in this kind of built environment that we’re in.
DA: Yeah, I hadn’t really thought of it from that perspective but the, you know, with all of us now working remotely, working from home and our dependence on technology and many different types of technology. Interesting that you point out that when we go back to the workplace, our expectations are that, you know, some of that experience will be just there when we get there. And you’re right, maybe historically it didn’t necessarily notch up or align but, you know, if we’ve been able to do so much right now you know, through various, you know, through our smartphones and engage with each other, we’re going to have that same expectations. That’s a very interesting sort of motivation as to why we really need to look at the experience that we offer in the physical space and make sure that the match or there’s going to be like this, hey what’s going on when you get there, right?
HL: Yeah I think sometimes we forget, and then, you know, we call them employees or we call them like our customers or whatever that they are actually consumers first.
DA: Right, absolutely.
HL: And so what they see and what they experience they would experience everywhere or want to experience everywhere. But then sometimes we don’t live up to that expectation.
DA: I have that challenge in our own speak, when we talk about our platform, and we talk about, you know, how we want to help commercial real estate operators deliver better, you know, sometimes we say tenant experience, sometimes we say customer experience ’cause we like to emphasize that their tenants are really their customers but to your point, they are a consumer first and foremost. So we like to say that we built HILO to be a consumer brand, a consumer platform and really understand ‘what does the consumer need and want’. And then build out what they experience on our platform that ultimately meets the needs of our real estate partners. But sometimes it’s challenging to convey to the commercial real estate industry that the people that we serve are actually consumers.
HL: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the thing I might also say about what Kastle has done over time is because we have focused so much on the experience and then end user experience, whether the end user is the mobile app person, who’s the tenant employee or the billing property owner-operator. At the end of the day we actually control our own technology stack because we wanted to make sure that we could deliver the best experience possible at the end. And so, as you think about the consumerization of technology, I don’t know if that’s the right word but the consumerization of this and people don’t connect the dots again. And then people are not as focused as maybe you and we are on what that experience ends up being for that consumer. You can tell when there’s a great experience and when there’s not a great experience. I guess it’s not rocket science and that you just have to see it and feel it. And so then at some point you just have to have people feel it and see it to understand why, you know, you don’t want to be in a place where you have to hop on one foot and then you’re like, gets around and then you can open the door, like that kind of stuff just isn’t acceptable. So lots of people who work, again, consumer expectations where they are.
DA: Absolutely, absolutely. Can you share any details about something new you’re working on or a challenge you’re facing in light of the current world circumstances, something you think our listeners might find interesting.
HL: Yeah, so here we continue to work to get our clients and it may not be known broadly but our focus is on Kastles focuses on class A, class B, plus central business districts, CBDs, commercial multi tenant buildings and the tenants inside those buildings as well. We also do pretty good a bit of work in multi-family as well. But as we think about our core kind of client like getting people into the space into work is really important. And so we have been a big champion of this as I said earlier, the KastleSafeSpaces framework that we came out with a year ago now, almost a year ago was because people didn’t know how to get people back off. That was by the way back then when we thought we would be two months and done on that thing, but so that was then. But I think the same kind of ideas hold true now. People are looking for guidance and expertise about how to return people to work safely. And so we continue to build on this KastleSafeSpaces idea. And maybe I’ll just take a step back if you don’t mind. I’ll just give you a little bit of what we talk about with respect to this framework. So KastleSafeSpaces we talk about five different component parts of it. And much of it is enabled by access control which is what we do as a company at some part of the center of us. So the five pillars, one of them is what we call screen in screen out which is just screening out people who are sick and screening in people who are safe. Everything is touchless. So we talked about the touchless access control but beyond that into visitor management or elevator controls and all things to make it a much more elegant experience to get in without having to touch everything. There are social distancing capabilities within that as a part of the pillars because you can use underlying data to understand whether too many people are in the fitness center, too many people are in a bathroom. How many people you wanted in a density kind of controlled environment to not have too many people on a floor, etc. So that’s the third one. Fourth one is you can use the same underlying data and information to understand how to do contact tracing in case Haniel is on the floor and David was there and we want to make sure that David knows that Haniel is sick, how do you figure that out and inform people? And then the last one that we spent much more recent time talking about with our clients is the air quality notion or that we know that transmission happens through the air and working with a lot of our clients to understand how you can understand the cleanliness of a space to visualize that, to clean it, to then think about whether you want to tie it to access control or not to limit access when the space isn’t as safe as you’d like it to be. And so these are the dimensions that we talk about with respect to KastleSafeSpaces. Again, much of it is making sure that we are helping our clients return their customers, their clients back to the office, their tenants back to the office. The most interesting thing that we’ve done recently, actually literally this week, we built on our screening pillar to enable clients to tie access control to vaccine status. And so that, you know, as you’re seeing a broader release of vaccine distribution now going below in the US here depending on the state below the 65 year old threshold maybe down into a broader general population version, now people are feeling like it might be time to get back to work. And so to what degree might you be able to use that information to help administer some of your policies? Not that everyone will decide that it’s mandatory or you know by any stretch, but there’s an opportunity to use that information to help advance your policies so much like the first version of screening was the health attestation question. So the three questions you asked, were you feeling sick? Are you exposed too? That kind of thing. This is just another step in helping our clients maybe administer a different policy but the way that we continue to work on it and think about whether it’s safe to return to work. People are going to want to get back to work. They want to feel confident that they can do so safely. And so what are the steps that our clients whether they are the building types or the employer types, how do they arm themselves to enable their policies to be acted upon so that people feel like, okay, now I can come back.
DA: Right, well, if we were to describe your business it would be certainly something far more reaching than just simply a security business. So it is interesting to just to see how all of the natural extensions that now, you know, come out of that in the areas of the business that you need to play in and be expert in and help support your clients in.
HL: Yeah, you know, I think that I’ve said to a lot of our different clients is this, people appreciate now I think especially the most progressive of our clients that security has moved from the backstage to the spotlight. And it is no longer the utility that you think about that you actually don’t want to hear anything about. Because that means that something has gone wrong when you hear something about it. Into a world where it enables amenity and then enables experience, allows you to do different kinds of things and solve different kinds of problems. It happens that the infrastructural backend is the basic security but that’s actually not what we’re about.
DA: Well, I think your business obviously is going to play a big role and be a big piece of that whole tenant experience offering certainly lots of opportunity. I would imagine still even yet to imagine and it’s going to be an interesting ride to see how it all falls out.
HL: Yeah, that is up, thank you.
DA: Definitely. Our closing speed round, a couple of fun questions for you. If you could have one superpower what would it be?
HL: It has to be teleportation, that commute time made me think of that.
DA: Yeah, totally. What city or country would you travel to first when you can and why?
HL: Well I told you I love Toronto cause I have family there but I would say that I haven’t had a chance to visit my mom out in the Bay Area for a long time and I would love to spend some time with her up there.
DA: Great. When you are not working, what are you doing?
HL: I have unfortunately been watching maybe too much Netflix recently,
DA: We all have.
HL: But I try to read and to catch up on things that I don’t know about, but that’s always a good way to spend time as well.
DA: Absolutely. Number one thing you miss about the workplace?
HL: You mean beyond the great coffee that we get everyday? It really, it has to be just the opportunity to bump into colleagues without having deliberately to call somebody to talk about something which already just formalizes everything. And you get to know people better that way in just kind of informal settings, I miss that.
DA: Absolutely, all right. Back to your earlier comment, your favorite recent TV streaming movie or series.
HL: Yeah, so I’m watching this thing called “The 100” now. I think our kids started to watch it and I started to watch it with them, and now they don’t like to watch it and I’m still stuck watching it. So that’s probably the one.
DA: All right, well, we’re just knee deep, we’re in the fourth season now of “The Crown” Interested all in the monarchy on Netflix. It’s been quite enlightening even for a Canadian who should know more than perhaps I do. It’s been very informative.
HL: Yeah, we actually were watching that for a while too, so that is a great show.
DA: Listen Haniel, I’ve really enjoyed our time together. Getting to know you, and looking forward to continuing to collaborate with your company and your team and just obviously wish you lots of continued success, stay healthy, stay well and look forward to connecting soon.
HL: Yeah, absolutely David. Thanks so much for having me, and same to you. Good wishes on your company and health and everything with family, etc.
DA: Thank you. I want to thank Haniel Lynn for joining me on today’s episode of TEN and for sharing his journey from early beginnings, working at a startup to now leading the team at Kastle Systems. Great learning for all our listeners, an opportunity to gain insight in what it takes to become an innovation leader. Please be sure to follow TEN for future discussions with leading professionals and industry experts who all have something to say about the impact of technology on tenant experience in the built world. We love hearing from you. So if you enjoyed this episode of TEN, please share, add your rating and review us through your preferred podcast provider. If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on a future episode, please reach out to me directly at david@hiloapp.com. Until our next episode, I wish you all continued success in building community where you work and live. Thank you.
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Season 5 / Episode 13 / 44:20
In this episode, Adam covers a wide range of topics, including the impact of data on occupancy levels, how CRE is responding to changes in the marketplace due to the pandemic, and the realities of demand and occupancy in urban vs. suburban locations.
AI, data, and the future of sustainable real estate with Gary Chance | CEO | Nantum AI
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In this episode, Gary shares how his team is utilizing the latest technology and data to write better algorithms that save real estate tenants and owners more money, energy, and ultimately, to provide a better indoor experience overall. If you’re interested in AI and the impact it’s having on the built world, this episode is for you.
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Season 5 / Episode 11 / 31:51
In this episode, we learn that Ivo and his team are tracking an impressive 19,000 proptech companies to provide global market intelligence and insights on what’s happening in the industry. Keep listening to learn more about their data-led approach and Ivo’s passion for innovation in the built world.
Charting your path in CRE with Emily Hanna | Managing Partner, Investments | Crown Realty Partners
Season 5 / Episode 10 / 42:22
In this episode, Emily shares a wonderful story about how she actually wrote the job posting for her first job in Commercial Real Estate. It led to her joining the team at Allied Properties REIT, working under the watchful eye of Michael Emory, a previous guest on this podcast.
Unlocking CRE insights with Adam Jacobs | National Head of Research | Colliers
Season 5 / Episode 13 / 44:20
In this episode, Adam covers a wide range of topics, including the impact of data on occupancy levels, how CRE is responding to changes in the marketplace due to the pandemic, and the realities of demand and occupancy in urban vs. suburban locations.
AI, data, and the future of sustainable real estate with Gary Chance | CEO | Nantum AI
Season 5 / Episode 12 / 37:17
In this episode, Gary shares how his team is utilizing the latest technology and data to write better algorithms that save real estate tenants and owners more money, energy, and ultimately, to provide a better indoor experience overall. If you’re interested in AI and the impact it’s having on the built world, this episode is for you.
Global Proptech trends and insights with Ivo van Breukelen | Managing Partner | The Proptech Connection
Season 5 / Episode 11 / 31:51
In this episode, we learn that Ivo and his team are tracking an impressive 19,000 proptech companies to provide global market intelligence and insights on what’s happening in the industry. Keep listening to learn more about their data-led approach and Ivo’s passion for innovation in the built world.
Charting your path in CRE with Emily Hanna | Managing Partner, Investments | Crown Realty Partners
Season 5 / Episode 10 / 42:22
In this episode, Emily shares a wonderful story about how she actually wrote the job posting for her first job in Commercial Real Estate. It led to her joining the team at Allied Properties REIT, working under the watchful eye of Michael Emory, a previous guest on this podcast.