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While remote video monitoring is a growing market, one competitor, California's Elite Interactive Solutions, claims it is the only one delivering "crime prevention," but how is that, and is that true?
In this note, based on interviews with Elite's Founder and CEO Aria Kozak and President Michale Zatulov, IPVM examines its approach and how it compares to competitors, including how it intends to "become a multi-billion dollar company" and believes one of its largest competitors is "on the verge of going out of business."
This post is part of IPVM's remote video monitoring series. For more on key competitors and business landscape within this space, please read:
While Elite says it is "fundamentally different" from any other remote video monitoring provider since it is able to do "crime prevention" while others cannot, we are skeptical. What the company described is, at least at a high level, similar to what its competitors also claim. However, Elite was the most aggressive and assertive in how it presents itself compared to other provider executives IPVM has spoken with.
Elite, which aims to be "a multi-billion dollar company" (in valuation), currently reports making $1.5 million in monthly recurring revenue, monitors ~13,000 cameras, and is growing at 30% annually. It told IPVM that it is going to "rapidly grow to $10 million in RMR and way, way beyond it.
In the next five years, Elite expects to roll out new geographies beyond the 14 states it now operates in while reducing cost barriers for customers. As an independent company that "prioritizes organic growth" over acquisitions of others and does not need outside funding to grow, the company may focus on being the best but would be constrained relative to competitors, who have aggressively used acquisitions to expand.
Elite Interactive Solutions' History
Elite Interactive Solutions was founded in the late 2000s by Aria Kozak, an Israeli immigrant who previously founded Universal Alarm Systems, which he sold to ADT in 1990, and the security integration business Intellisec, which he sold to a New York-based venture capital fund in 2001.
Kozak told IPVM about his vision in crime prevention when launching the remote video monitoring business:
The vision was very clear: [to be] an expert in crime and catastrophe prevention. I learned that at a younger age in the military, chasing terrorists and chasing criminals. The vision was to build this new company in remote guarding.
Calling himself the "father of remote guarding," Kozak referenced the panel company Radionic's technology he utilized in his previous alarm business in the 1980s:
I'm actually the father of remote guarding going back to about 1985. [The panel company] Radionics (acquired by Bosch in 2001) was the Rolls Royce in the late 70s. They also started the first video called Omega Vision by Radionics. And we used that in our command center around 1984 to 1985.
Despite its 15+ year history, Elite's technology stack, in fact, "did not mature until 2018," and thus, all of its claimed metrics are based on results in the past five years, the company explained to IPVM. 2018 was also the year the company's president, Michale Zatulov, joined as the chief operating officer (promoted to president in late 2023).
Now Making $1.5 Million in RMR
Elite reports that it monitors ~13,000 cameras, makes $1.5 million in recurring monthly revenue (a.k.a. $18 million in annual revenue), and is growing at 30% annually, Kozak told IPVM. This is a fraction of Stealth Monitoring's 80,000 cameras and $150 million annual revenue but of similar size to EyeQ's 25,000 cameras and $1.5 million RMR, Deep Sentinel's 20,000 cameras, and Netwatch's 30,000 cameras.
Elite also told IPVM that it has only a 1% attrition rate across the past five years.
Becoming a "Multi-Billion Dollar" Company
Looking into the future, Kozak elaborated on Elite's ambition to reach $1+ billion in valuation, how the company plans to achieve this goal, and how there are needs for Elite's solutions:
We are going to become a multi-billion dollar company. The traction; the market; there is a demand; there is a need. Corporate America is suffering from it big time.
Even with the guard companies, [they had] billions, trillions dollar of losses. We already solved that. We were not built overnight. We work very diligently behind the scenes.
We're going to rapidly grow to $10 million in RMR and way, way beyond that. But to do that, we needed to be patient and more patient and more patient to establish the technology, the portfolio, and the evidence.
Value Proposition: Interlace Off-The-Shelf Technology
As a "remote guarding" provider, Elite does not manufacture products but "connects" security products to offer security services with similar functions to security guards, Elite's President Zatulov told IPVM:
We look at how we combine the technology that's available. We use off-the-shelf technology. The only thing proprietary about Elite is how we interlaced the technologies. The interconnectivity between the different tech is unique to Elite. What we do is we use equipment that is readily available that we've selected so it [can be] Axis devices, Hanwha devices, SightLogix devices, and a couple of other manufacturers like ExacqVision in order to create this mix.
Elite is "Fundamentally Different," the "Tesla to the Security Industry"
Even though Elite is similar to others in remote video monitoring in utilizing off-the-shelf security technology, Elite's co-founder and CEO Kozak still said that Elite's offerings "do something completely different" from others and that:
The way Tesla is to the automobile combustion engine Elite is to the security industry.
Elite provided the following deck to specify how it is different from other remote video monitoring (RVM) providers:
Nevertheless, other RVM providers are, in fact, equipped with some of the functions marked as a cross in the above chart. For example, EyeQ, Deep Sentinel,Netwatch, Pro-Vigil, and Stealth Monitoring all said they have certain forms of "live audio" functions.
Even though Elite claims that its solution is "completely different" from others, IPVM discerns that its approach is of a similar nature to its RVM peers. However, it is possible that Elite executes its system designs better and thus could deliver outcomes better than others, as the company so claimed. We have not yet attempted to analyze lower level details of Elite or its rivals.
Overall, Kozak emphasized that Elite's value focus lies in "four pillars," including "crime prevention," "advanced [technology] calibration eliminating noise," "first UL-approved command center," and "law enforcement partnerships."
"Endorsed by FBI-LEEDA"
Elite said in the above chart that it is the only "law enforcement endorsed" remote guarding provider. By "law enforcement," Elite refers to the 501(c)3 non-profit organization FBI-LEEDA (The FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Association) whose members are made up of law enforcement professionals. Kozak explained:
We are the only company endorsed by the FBI-LEEDA, which has over 8,000 police [officer members]. I personally know over 300 of them. There is a reason for it because we solve the problems. No false alarms.
Elite, like its competitors, uses its own operators to filter the many false (or nuisance) analytic notifications it receives and hopefully or optimally aims to pass no false alarms to customers or the police.
Kozak: Stealth is "On the Verge of Going Out of Business"
On top of general comparisons between Elite and its competitors, Kozak gave specific comments about Stealth Monitoring, which is eight times bigger than Elite, including saying that the firm is "on the verge of going out of business":
When you're taking Stealth, they probably have many platforms, many VMSes, a lot of noise, millions of alerts a night, and multiple call centers with people sitting and clearing false alarms, they cannot do crime prevention in real-time. They cannot.
We are in crime prevention. They are not. We have data to support it.
The fact that Stealth will come to you, and those guys [will] tell you, oh, we do it. Of course, they're going to say they do it, but if they're doing that, why do they have 1000s of people sitting in a command center? Why are they losing customers left and right? Why are they on the verge of going out of business? Because they don't do that [crime prevention].
On the contrary, we see no signs of such problems for Stealth and found Elite's comments to be highly abnormal.
"Forensic Engineering" is the Secret Sauce to Reduce Noise
The way Elite is "fundamentally different," according to the company itself, is how it designs its technology stack. Kozak elaborated on how he considers forensic design critical in replacing guards and preventing crime:
We did a forensic reevaluation, and our design was completely different. Now the difference between us and everybody else is a common problem, which is noise reduction.
Remote guarding is supposed to be remote "guarding." You replace their guard with remote guarding, but you're supposed to prevent crime. The difference lies in how we design the system forensically and how we complement it. With the devices, how do we eliminate all the noise from false alarms?
Elite's president, Zatulov, then explained how Elite conducts its designs in practice through its "forensic department," which is a division of Elite's command center:
We train our account executives to go on-site and look for crime areas and markings of intrusion. Then, they create an analysis of the layout and where the crime is coming from. Then, it's sent over to a forensics department.
The forensics department is the one that really puts the secret sauce on it. They know the system's capabilities and augment the design to close the gaps where we've identified a crime on the property. After the forensic design has been completed, not by the sales rep, which is one of the differences between us and the others, it's by a forensics team that represents the command center. We then approach the client with a solution recommendation and act as their consultant. Then, we design the layout and do the traditional side of integration. [Emphasis added]
We have sales reps and account executives who do sidewalks, and when they do a sidewalk, they essentially send up the design to our quality control department, which is part of our command center. So, unlike most, I think everyone in the industry, we focus on the command center before the sale is done. So that way, when the system goes online, our team is fully informed about where the crime is happening, what areas need to be protected, and what to do.
"16 Layers of Analytics," Including Calipsa
Zatulov emphasized that Elite uses "16 layers" of analytics in its design to enable noise reduction:
Our command center comes first when we do the approved final layout; the technology layers that we add on top of the camera systems include 16 separate levels of detection, from stream analytics to detection, in order for us to be able to do event-based monitoring successfully.
Zatulov elaborated on how Elite works with manufacturers to integrate different technology systems:
When we go to the manufacturer and customize the firmware to get different alarm rates in different sections of the signal, we need three seconds before [and] we need three seconds after for the detection to analyze. The manufacturers work with us, and they come up with a modification to their firmware. Then, we integrate that into the other systems that we use. For stream analytics, for example, we use different levels of detection. We can go into that different call times.
One of the 16 detection tools Elite uses to reduce noise is Calipsa, a real-time, cloud-based false positive alarm analytics acquired by Motorola in 2022. Kozak expanded on how Elite uses Calipsa as part of its technology stack:
Calipsa came to us and said we can eliminate 80% of your noise. We implemented it [and] they reduced our noise down to 6% because [of our] proper design, proper equipment forensic analysis by the command center for the command center, and then you layer on additional stream analytics detection on top of Calipsa.
Calipsa is a great technology. They took artificial machine learning and implemented it into our industry. But it's not about the technology in its own right.
Using Fewer Devices
The above-mentioned "forensic design" and "proper use of analytics" help reduce the number of devices needed and thus reduce costs for customers, Zatulov said. He gave an example to explain the rationale:
It reduces the amount of equipment we need and improves the quality of the detection we need as well. If I have one guy in a square and four cameras in that area, and they're all looking at the center, anybody in the middle of the site is going to create four separate alarms. Our objective is to use a 90-degree camera on one of the corners to detect the whole room using one device.
Leaner Command Center Setup and Real-Time Crime Prevention
Such use of technology also allowed Elite to have "significantly lower staffing," with eight people a shift at its only command center in downtown LA covering all of its 13,000 cameras, Kozak told IPVM. Zatulov added that this lean setup enables Elite to make real-time responses:
If you come and visit our command center, you will see that our people are not sitting and clearing alerts.
Based on our portfolio, where are our 500 people sitting in a call center? There is no. we have approximately eight people per shift. The reason is that we successfully do not miss an event and are not busy with millions of alerts a night. How can you prevent crime in real-time if you are busy with millions of alerts?
Zatulov further quantified that "real-time" means "sub-10-second" responses and said that Elite's competitors in the space are not able to do so:
We're able to eliminate events because we are proactive. We're able to detect quickly, and if an event gets triggered, our agent will respond in 10 seconds. That's a major differentiation.
If you look at a company like Ring or even a competitor, they will have multiple levels to go through to get to the agent who then voices down on site. So, all of what makes Elite special is speed.
Kozak also laid out to IPVM how Elite believes others process events through multiple layers, including overseas sites, and how Elite's process is more simplified as they better utilize technology:
The event occurs when the camera alerts, the computer detects motion, then it sends it through an analytics filter. The analytics filter identifies it as a vehicle or an individual, then it sends it to an individual person's eyes in the Philippines, [the] outsourced command centers, and then they identify if it's a malicious intrusion, or if it's intended to be there. In our particular case, the way that we do it differently is that we use these layers of technologies in order for the technology to identify.
Some RVM providers, such as Stealth Monitoring and Pro-Vigil, do have overseas command centers, but that does not directly point to a company being more labor-intensive and having fewer technological efficiencies.
Noise Reduction Metrics
Emphasizing its ability to reduce noise and false alarms, Zatulov quantified that capability by indicating that Elite can compress 2000 alerts into 1:
What makes Elite really stand out is we are uniquely capable of condensing noise from our customer accounts to a ratio of roughly 2000 to one.
We watch 101 million hours of online events on an annual basis. Our system compresses that roughly 2000 to one, so our small team of [30] agents is able to address 101 million hours of streaming per year by not focusing on noise. The game is reducing noise. We specialize in compressing the volume of alerts to address the true crime prevention that happens here in our Los Angeles office. Which means we don't need that secondary level of eyewitness assessment of the situation.
Zatulov further broke down the math behind the 2000-to-1 ratio with the total hours of footage recorded and the total man-hours invested in the past year:
We recorded 101 million hours of footage. We only have 55,000 man-hours [of] staff, and they're not always busy. So, about 60% of this number is what we actually utilize to prevent crime. That's 30,000 hours from 101 million hours of footage. Imagine if we had to live-monitor that. So, consider the concept of live monitoring. That's somebody looking at 101 million hours of stream.
Events and Arrests
On top of how Elite reduces noise and increases monitoring efficiencies, Zatulov expanded on Elite's metrics in actual crime prevention:
From that 30,000 hours of actually utilized staff hours, we prevented 73,000 crimes by voice-downs without law enforcement intervention. We call law enforcement depending on the various law enforcement divisions 1700 times, and that resulted in 1,000 arrests and detainments last year.
On the false negative side, Zatulov said that Elite missed two events in total in the past year.
"Zero False Alarms" To Law Enforcement
On top of the above achievements, Elite "addresses 96% of criminal incidents without law enforcement being contacted," according to its website. Kozak emphasized that Elite made zero false alarms where law enforcement got called by error in the past five years, which he believed nobody else could have done:
We are the first and only company that has eliminated false alarms in law enforcement. 100%, not 99%. How can you do it? How is it possible? Did you know of anybody who accomplished such a thing like that?
The zero false alarm rate was achieved partially with the support of a "law enforcement advisory board" at Elite's command centers, which verifies each incident, Kozak added:
A law enforcement advisory board that actually reviews all of the command center incidents that go to law enforcement every single day to make sure that you know things are going as they need to go.
Pricing
Not disclosing pricing details on the record, Zatulov told IPVM that the cost of Elite is equivalent to one-third to half of human guarding costs.
He added that Elite has three tiers of monitoring subscriptions, ranging between $1,000 to $2,000 a month. It also charges for service per device, with all-inclusive labor for the life of the contract. Elite also sells/rents equipment as part of its income.
Adding up the above three subscription payments (assuming the customer is renting equipment), Zatulov said that an average subscription rate could be close to a few thousand a month on a site.
Market Opportunities - Blue Ocean
Calling the remote guarding market a "Blue Ocean," Kozak elaborated on how Elite is attracting customers from traditional guarding services:
All of our clients migrated from ADT, Johnson Control, Securitas Group, all of those traditional [providers].
Kozak also said Elite's clients have been happy since moving to Elite and that they have since had "no claims to the insurance company":
They migrated from one company to another because they were not happy. And since they migrated to us, they are very happy. Some of them are on the third time contract, which means the same five years, then another five years, and another five years. How do you measure success? No claims to the insurance company.
Client Profile - Enterprise Level
Elite now operates in 14 states and 16 verticals, and Kozak told IPVM that its customers are mostly "enterprise, multi-billion dollar clients." More specifically, Zatulov said that 65% of its portfolio is "derived from its enterprise account." He further expanded on Elite's client profile:
Most of our clients are in the middle market. We work with some small businesses. Most of the customers are mid-market focused, and we have quite a few large enterprise accounts. We're primarily in the housing and commercial [real estate] industries. We do very little construction, but we do construction before the sites are built to keep the site safe while we're basically cabling up the whole building. And then we do vehicle storage.
Regarding geographic presence, Zatulov said Elite's main hubs are in Nevada, Texas, and Florida. He further expanded on how Elite operates in these states:
We've been in Florida for about nine years. We have a couple of pretty large HOAs, a major distribution center [there], and several car dealerships, so we have a fairly healthy [business there]. It's primarily in those four states and then ten other small satellite [state presence].
Zatulov also expanded on Elite's growth potential with existing enterprise customers:
[Our portfolio] is fairly small at 13,000 cameras, but all of those accounts are enterprise-level businesses that allow us to scale to the tune of about 70% to 80% without new logos.
Target Customer
Kozak then told IPVM Elite is targeting customers with the following needs:
Number one is that they have a lot of crime and don't know what to do with it because they're not getting a response from law enforcement. Number two is that they have guards, which have proven ineffective, and therefore, they're getting losses.
Kozak also said that Elite typically does not work with those who just want to upgrade or redesign their security systems.
Future of the RVM Space: Technology Consolidation
In the next two to five years, technological advancement and consolidation would further enable noise reduction and increase monitoring efficiencies, Zatulov said:
As we look in the next couple of years, there are going to be new, new systems that are coming out that are essentially taking what we do from 16 separate levels of technology and compressing it to the point where I can use significantly less expensive equipment and get better prevention and crime detection essentially by innovating AI presentation. Right now, we use a separate PSIM, a separate VMS, separate analytics, and a separate stream detection. The future of this industry within the next two to five years is the consolidation of technologies.
The Holy Grail in this industry is the technology that allows us to get better results using fewer devices and [have] fewer problematic areas that create service issues.
Riding this trend of technology advancement, Zatulov said that Elite is "at the forefront" because of its ability to do "quick updates" across a site:
We're uniquely positioned to be the only company in the space that has the ability to use one quick update [to] round out the entire portfolio.
Zatulov further expanded on how Elite plans to consolidate technology to succeed in the next five years and to grow via further marketing:
Our next five years are looking for ways to take this mess of different tech and compress it to one pure source of information and then essentially put it out to the marketplace.
The future is to advance the technology stack and improve how we communicate through the press and media to attract those new logos.
Expand Geographically and Reduce Customer Costs
In more specific future plans, Elite is going to expand geographically within the US and reduce customers' costs under the premise of yielding its current level of performance, Zatulov said:
My goal is to expand geographically and look for new technologies that would allow us to get the performance and standard that we've set, and as long as we can maintain that standard, we will reduce the cost barrier for the customer to enter it.
Zatulov expanded on how Elite plans to reduce customers' costs by requiring fewer devices and increasing the feasibility of using existing infrastructure:
My goal would be for the remote guarding cost to remain at the same ratio of guard cost, meaning we're still between a third and a half of a guard, but at the same time, the operation is able to use their existing infrastructure.
For example, if they have cameras on site, it's very hard for us to come in and take over [now]. We could do it, but it requires us to install new devices. We still need to roll out trucks. I would like to be able to remove that barrier in the next five years. So it doesn't matter if you have a $100 camera or a $1,000 camera, [regardless of it's] Avigilon or Lorex, I can go in there and be able to monitor that to the level and standard that we're currently doing because we're a force multiplier to law enforcement.
No Command Center Expansions but Invests in Operators
While ambitious in expanding customer counts and camera counts, Zatulov said that Elite does not plan to expand the command centers since there are still more rooms in its office as it hires significantly fewer operators than its peers. Beyond the 30 command center operators Zatulov mentioned, he confirmed that Elite has 75 employees in total. ~49 of them are on LinkedIn:
In comparison, EyeQ, which makes about the same annual revenue as Elite and also only operates domestically within the US, said it has ~130 employees.
Zatulov explained how Elite can scale and meet increasing customer needs easily without expanding its command center, only by hiring more staff:
Our expansion plan is that we don't need to invest in our command center other than staff. I have eight people per shift, and I have about 20 desks. So, theoretically, I don't even need to buy desks; I just need to hire more bodies. If I can do 500 sites with eight people, I can do 1000 with 16, so I can double the company count very easily with the same quality without incurring much expense.
Elite can afford to invest more in its operators because of its efficient technology stack and making the operator experience gamified, Zatulov said:
We're able to hire better people and train them, and we train [them] alongside a senior member of LAPD dispatch. [He] comes in once a month [and] works through the program, the presentation of how we're talking to law enforcement. Everything's recorded. Everything's audited. As we climb that scale, we can use the profits to train and hire better personnel and invest in our people [since] we are comparing ourselves to guards, and guard costs are exponentially higher than video monitoring and CCTV costs.
The command center also has gamification components to it. Imagine if you were in front of a screen. All you have to do during the day is clear alarms. You can go a whole shift without one single event happening to the cameras. You did that [for] six months, and then something happens. By that time [you are] so fatigued, you're never going to get to the response. Because we're able to eliminate all these false alarms, we're able to gamify the experience in the command center so our agents address events, and instead of them just sitting there clearing, they're addressing events and voicing down.
No IPO, Outside Funding, or Any M&A Has To Be a Strategic Position
Elite is an independent private company partially backed by Capital One and the Beekman Group, Zatulov told IPVM. He also said that Elite "prioritizes organic growth" over acquisitions by or of others since "it's been challenging to find folks that take security to the level that [Elite is] requiring in order to complement [Elite's] business."
Kuzak also expressed similar attitudes when it comes to any movement to Elite's ownership structure:
I don't foresee any kind of IPO or changes to our infrastructure. We will retain private status.
It's not doing flips and flips, buying, putting under the carpet, and sucking up to somebody again the way to build a real company with this kind of portfolio.
Zatulov added that Elite does not need outside funding to grow:
[We are in a] steady state. [Our] net operating cash flow is high enough to support the entire organization today.
While the company can be open to third-party funding or even potential acquisitions, Zatulov emphasized that "it has to be a strategic position for us to really entertain such a thing."
"Crime prevention" has been the general pitch in this space for quite a while now. And lots of central stations deliver on this very effectively.
Here is an old VideoIQ promo video built around this topic (and this site wasn't monitored by Elite):
We had lots of monitoring partners doing "crime prevention", along with live audio talk-down, and detailed incident reports to customers.
Stealth, which Elite referred to above, was one of my customers, and they appear to be doing very well right now (based on a conversation I had with one of their executives last week).
Elite has always been aggressive in their marketing, I think that overall they are trying to push the envelope, but in the end if your business is built around COTS products, there is only so much differentiation you are going to get.
IMO Viewpoint (now Proseguer) used to make a good pitch on the qualities and capabilities of their employees over the technologies they used. In the end, you can have all the tech-stuff and false alarm filtering products, but what you're really selling is your people and process in this space. Part of their approach, if I am remembering it correctly, was how they had the staff availability and capability for the remote guard to manage an incident from initial alarm through to police response/arrest, in some cases staying engaged for multiple hours on a single incident.
Your entire report avoids any mention, or comparison with Deep Sentinel
Deep Sentinel is literally the first link mentioned up top in a list of links of other companies we have covered in this space; screen capped below for reference:
It was a strange call. I am not sure what the CEO knows about IPVM but from what he said and how he responded to my questions / concerns, it did not appear to me he understood what we knew or who our audience was.
To be fair, we found the company's President to be far more reasonable and grounded.
This was hard to read...the level of audacity with their claims is comical. Just a few quotes to pick on...
"1700 times, and that resulted in 1000 arrests and detainments last year." Bull malarky - who do you have following up on these incidents?
"When we go to the manufacturer and customize the firmware to get different alarm rates in different sections of the signal, we need three seconds before [and] we need three seconds after for the detection to analyze. The manufacturers work with us and they come up with a modification to their firmware." Sure, I bet Axis, Hanwha and others make FW specifically for you and your 13,000 cameras....
Utter nonsense. Sure, RVM works at a car dealership or other verticals with defined hours...but go spend a night watching footage/events from the MDU world and your claims are going to be blown out of the water. RVM doesn't work without context sometimes...which you'll never get from a quick clip. Even if you can identify a crime BEFORE it happens, it's over within seconds...so your talkdown is only going to hasten their escape. With 911 response times at record high times, there is no way the police would ever get there in time. I could go on for days on this topic...
Again....comical....you've now turned me off from ever inquiring about your services.
Article mentioned Calipsa, that tells you all you need to know- it’s not live, crap ton of false alarms. Calipsa next to innovi are the two biggest money wasting platforms.
I was going to leave this alone, but I just can't...
I interviewed for a sales job at Elite ISI in March of last year...I was told the job was mine...but I pulled my hat out of the ring before ever even looking at the offer. I can see from above posts that one could easily see why. BUT... this story deserves a small preface so read the few paragraphs below if you want a little more.
I started at Stealth Monitoring in March of 2012 as a monitor, then supervisor, and then one of their first salesman spanning a period of 3+ years. I loved my time there and was very proud of the work we did. The Charneys and folks like Mike Kaucher, and Randy Rutledge are who I would consider the founders of a large scale model of this business today. Part of me wants to regret ever leaving Stealth but that is a waste of time. ANYWAY.
I then worked for another monitoring company but under two different names in the sales role while also managing new project installs as this was a small outfit. This company had an amazing monitoring product and track record and represented what I thought was the next evolution of what the idea of preventive live video monitoring could offer to the market. I was also incredibly proud of the work we did and very grateful to be able to sell that product.
I love this industry and have VERY strong opinions about how it can be done and what it can offer to its customers. My vision and the owner of the last company's vision began to diverge so I started looking around for another home. While I am grateful to IK and MZ for their time and hospitality in LA, a few hours inside the Elite ISI operation...well the above posts show, no one is buying what they are selling. At least to folks with industry knowledge.
The feelings I left LA with were enough to drive me to build my own very small boat, and we are now sailing, but I am not here to shamelessly promote.
My real point is this, I am of the opinion that Brian Karas is dead right in his appraisal; "what you're really selling is your people and process in this space." I feel that there is an extreme trend towards leaning on tech in this business. I do believe that those who stay abreast of the latest innovations and apply them correctly to their processes will do the best job, BUT it is the people and the process using those innovations that will consistently deliver the best results and highest service levels to their clients. I don't think we will remove a large human component anywhere in the near future.
I have a very negative gut response to stuff like this from personalities/companies like this. I feel it makes what can be a VERY beneficial business, for both the public and the business owners/employees, look very bad. And I honestly resent it. We don't need anymore snake oil in security. Effective private security businesses are becoming more and more necessary to help support our law enforcement...
I will get off my tiny soapbox in my unlit corner now. I never post but I had to on this one.
Thanks again for this forum JH! It has been quite a thing to see IPVM grow since I first encountered it in 2012.
no one is buying what they are selling. At least to folks with industry knowledge.
I have zero alarm monitoring industry experience or knowledge... but it's hardly needed to be able to smell the smoke that this guy is blowing up peoples asses with the ridiculous claims he makes and the 'evidence' he claims support same.
personally, I wouldn't have been able to make it through any call with this guy without telling him directly that I think he is full of shit.
If they're trying to pull this on IPVM and the IPVM audience, what chance does the poor un/under educated end user have against such 'marketing' tactics?
Jeremy, we are doing a profile on your company as part of this series. We'd like to interview as part of it, please email us at info@ipvm.com or john@ipvm.com
DS/Deep Sentinel and Elite Interactive Solutions and Pro-Vigil share the same space in an important segment of this fragmented industry.Sometimes known as “Remote Guarding”, or “ProActive” and “ReActive“ Security, or other personal or regional names.Fortunately, Senior management of these firms, and counterparts, live and breathe and communicate in their language wherein some of us cannot participate. Much of their “exaggeration” is reality. Also, as noted with the appearance of the office and wardrobe of the Dave Selinger, founder of Deep Sentinel, basic lifestyles can follow their creativity. These firms, and few counterparts, now deliver templates for timely next-gen product and services. Thanks for their personal contributions so others now will meet some of this current market disruption.
I m system integrator, already have a monitoring unit, want to offer video monitoring solution, and want to know more about your bussines model, We are in Dominican Republic.
As a manufacturer of plug-n-play active deterrent solutions. Action-CS.com works with all the top Security Integrators & remote video guarding companies. They are are all different but all "Deter Crime" any claim to be the only one to do so, is simply delusional.
Not to mention, Stealth is far from "Going out of business"
