Q&A w/ Swiftlane CEO Saurabh Bajaj Pt.2
Privacy and security for the office and smart cities, the future of commercial office space
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Okay, on to my conversation with Saurabh!
A Long Thing:
If you missed part 1 of the conversation with Swiftlane CEO Saurabh Bajaj, you can check it out here. Swiftlane makes a modern, touchless access control system for offices. They recently launched a new Health Check product for checking for COVID symptoms. In the second part of the conversation, we chatted about smart cities, what kinds of companies Swiftlane is working with, and more.
JT, Urban Tech: I would love to hear what the traction has been like for the Health Check product? What types of companies are you working with to provide this service?
Saurabh Bajaj, Swiftlane:: We launched Health Check about a month ago. Since then, we’ve had around a dozen companies using it already. And we have a massive pipeline of interest. What we're seeing is that this is the biggest problem that every business is looking to solve. And so we're seeing that going forward. Typically we're also seeing all existing customers starting to use health check. Not everyone has come back to work. A lot of them are still working from home, but their IT team, their facility managers, are starting to go in.
Certain businesses require people to still come into work. Essential businesses or in states where they're opened up. I still see a smaller percentage of employees come back. So I think the pandemic is going to be here for another 12 months or so. I think we're seeing essentially everyone is looking for solutions that have integrated access control, health check, staggered scheduling, and remote first management of access.
I think it's not directly tied to the health check product, but people want systems that they can remotely grant or revoke access without having to have an in-person key exchange or keycard exchange.
There are two types of impact that we see just to kind of split it out. One is that there is a negative impact. Where commercial real estate usage has gone down in general, and a lot of uncertainty on it. But on the other hand, there is a strong need and desire to deploy a modern system. So it's accelerated in the market for access control and physical security, to make sure that any equipment being put in an office is remote-first, and supports all these new workflows going forward.
JT: That's super interesting. Talking to people, particularly on the commercial side of things, they share similar thoughts. They've said that really COVID just accelerated these trends that we already saw. I would like to shift a little bit and take a step back.
Less COVID specific, but I think something in this space that's important is the Smart City. That concept has been around for a while. And I think people are still kind of waiting for it to happen. And there's a lot of companies working on different solutions and different pieces of it. But, privacy and security continue to be the biggest hurdles that remain. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on privacy and security a little bit more generally.
SB: There are a few challenges. I think there are both positive and negative shifts happening when it comes to security and privacy. Let's talk about privacy. So there are two types of companies. Like what worries companies specifically in the access control business. But then there are companies that provide video surveillance, and large scale crowd monitoring software, check-in monitoring software, provide face recognition for large or like criminal database tracking software that is fraught with many privacy concerns. And so a lot of issues are dealing with bias.
Why there are issues is that you're doing mass data collection on people and tracking where they're going, either outside in an IoT city context, or through a network of dome cameras. Would you want to work in an office where every movement inside the office is tracked? So you can see where someone is present? How often they're going to the kitchen, how many hours they're sitting, is that something that you feel comfortable?
I doubt it right. Like I think it's a very, very bad scenario. And a lot of those products are being sold with the mindset of "you can get higher security if there's an intruder, or you can get a better heat map on space utilization." But it comes with an extreme cost of privacy erosion. And so I think I think that's something that every company should evaluate, I would strongly believe that that's not a good direction. The value does not outweigh the drawbacks of a system like that, if that makes sense. And I think I think that's something that every company should evaluate ultimately, and end-users and employees are more privacy-aware.
We live in a world where privacy has taken a hit over the last few years. And people have become more aware of it. So I'm optimistic that the end customers, the employees will drive the conversation and continue to course correct. For such applications. Our goal is to enable the most privacy oriented, safe way of using technology that empowers new use cases without invading critical security and privacy.
So I think we already have a strong mindset and stance around it. I think we really do not like mass surveillance and tracking products and companies because it's a big invasion of privacy.
Now with security, you mentioned security. I mean, security is so important because, especially if you're dealing with smart city controllers, are biometrics data in terms of smart cities? I think big challenges exist in terms of IoT safety. In the last few years, we've seen a lot more work being done in improving the security of hardware. But not every company pays attention to that. And that can be a problem, especially if you're deploying traffic lights and whatnot and have the ability to control them remotely.
In a smart building context, again, the building technology has been a very legacy system for a long time. Keycard systems use unencrypted data formats for sending card data to buildings, which means anyone can easily replicate that or clone that using a cheap cloner on Amazon. So it's extremely vulnerable, but there's been complacency around it. What's within your products like Swiftlane and few others, I think there is a shift to more secure encrypted formats of cards more reliable forms of access. And I think that's all a very positive trend to improve the overall security of the systems.
JT: That's all interesting and great stuff. Well, I think those are the main items that I wanted to hit on. Is there anything else I didn't ask you or anything you want to leave readers with?
SB: I think this pandemic will push all real estate, commercial real estate, industry, and real estate industry in general to focus on new innovation and see the creation of smarter offices, because office life is going to change forever, and I think it will have a dramatic impact.
Offices were designed to be permanent and stable and with long five year leases, I think we're going to see a trend where offices shift. We've already seen that trend with a lot of our customers where office sizes are shrinking and then more dynamic schedules are getting created. So we're going to see more satellite offices, more pop up offices also as a concept potentially going forward, where companies are operating remotely and then they do a two week pop up office. And so I think real estate land building owners will need to continue thinking about how they can get ahead of the strand, how they can enable interactions, and real interaction.
JT: Absolutely, this flexibility piece is something I’ve covered before and is so important. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me, Saurabh.
What I’m Reading this Week:
CNBC: Airbnb has filed confidential IPO paperwork
The wait is over: “Airbnb on Wednesday announced that it has submitted a draft registration to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering.”
“The company did not disclose its financial information nor did it specify how many shares would be offered.”
“The filing comes after a rough year for Airbnb and the U.S. travel industry.”
There is plenty of speculation and analysis in coming issues for what the move means for not only Airbnb but the entire real estate tech industry, but first congratulations to the team there.
Airbnb, for better or worse for cities, has played a huge role in the travel economy. Empowered by the iPhone, the company has been private for 12 years, and there have been plenty of ups and downs and competition in the space.
Zillow: 2020 Urban-Suburban Market Report
New data from Zillow shows how suburbs and cities are doing as a result of COVID.
Are people fleeing the cities for greener suburban pastures? "Some faint signals may have emerged in certain places, but by and large, the data show that suburban housing markets have not strengthened at a disproportionately rapid pace compared to urban markets. Both region types appear to be hot sellers’ markets right now – while many suburban areas have seen strong improvement in housing activity in recent months, so, too, have many urban areas."
Bloomberg CityLab: Why Singapore Has One of the Highest Home Ownership Rates
We have a major housing problem in a lot of different ways in the U.S. We could benefit from learning from other countries. An interesting model to perhaps increase homeownership is Singapore.
CityLab’s Adam Majendie does a great job tracing the history of housing in Singapore. The country has prioritized housing for citizens in many ways that the U.S. has not for the last half-century.
The Verge: Google Maps is getting a lot more detail
Who doesn't love maps? And who doesn’t love better maps?
"Google Maps is being redesigned to make it easier to distinguish between natural features in the environment, whether they’re mountainous ice caps, deserts, beaches, or dense forests. Google says the new maps will be available in the 220 countries and territories currently supported by Google Maps, “from the biggest metropolitan areas to small, rural towns.” Google says that street maps are also getting more detailed in select cities."
Politico California: Kamala Harris and the Triumph of ‘San Francisco Democrats’
We need leaders who understand and want our cities to succeed for generations to come. It wasn't that long ago Kamala Harris was the DA of SF.
I'm hopeful a leader like Kamala with experience at the local level will pave the way for the next generation of urban leaders. We need them.
One of the best writers in California politics, Jeremy White, explores how San Francisco produced defining political leaders in our current moment.
Thanks for reading! Talk to you next week.
JT