The Built Environment Bulletin with Jeremy Turkel, Forsight

Welcome to ‘The Built Environment Bulletin’, with Sydney Bushberg, our Q&A focused on the North American Built Environment.

Our Q&A series is an opportunity for our North American team to discuss all things Built Environment, Start-ups, and Career with different founders from across the region. Each week we will ask Built Environment innovators burning questions and quiz them about their products. We hope you find it insightful and enjoy getting to know the founders as much as we have.

This week we have been in touch with Jeremy Turkel, Senior Vice President, Customer Operations at Forsight.

Headquartered in New York, NY, Forsight develops AI software solutions for construction safety, security, and remote management. Jeremy Turkel joined the Forsight team in August 2022 as the new Senior Vice President, Customer Operations after working on developing wearable safety technology for construction sites at another ConTech startup. Jeremy has a long-standing passion for creating, building, and growing a business within the ConTech environment. 

What was the original mission of Forsight and how has it changed since you’ve been with the company? 

Forsight originally started with an emphasis on safety, specifically, identifying hazards on construction sites. Since then, we’ve expanded our offerings and built the first intelligent video management platform purpose-built for the industrial customer, including not just safety but also intelligent security and operations monitoring. Prior to Forsight, site cameras were reactive. When an incident occurred, people would arduously comb through hours of footage for evidence or claims. Our technology transforms any camera – whether already in place or a camera we help install – into a proactive AI camera that detects and predicts issues as they arise, in real time. Our AI does this through detecting and analyzing a large variety of objects including people, vehicles, fire, and license plates. Also, our platform now builds entire workflows to help automate processes through solutions such as automated timecard tracking or gate monitoring.   

What is the value prop of Forsight against its competitors? 

Forsight is the first video management solution built specifically for the industrial site. Our technology is incredibly easy to deploy to the most challenging environments or to retrofit to existing sites. We then detect and alert in real-time and automate manual, labor-intensive processes. It doesn’t take the person out of the problem completely, but instead provides the alert for a proactive, personnel-based response by giving crucial people the tools to solve problems quickly and focus on the issues that matter most. In summary, we make it incredibly easy to implement our technology, detect issues as they arise, and automate menial tedious processes.  

We see that Forsight was backed by TakeOff Investment; how do you go about partnering with a VC Firm? 

We look for strategic investors whose vision aligns with ours. Our cofounder and CEO, Ariel Applbaum, came from the VC world and only took investment from investors he had strong relationships with, trusted and knew would bring immense value, including partners like 8VC who helped scale Flexport, Palantir, Oculus, Anduril and more. Another example of a valued partner is TakeOff, who has deep connections and a strong understanding of the construction landscape.  

What is the future for Forsight? 

Forsight is focused on providing incredible service and building powerful solutions for construction and industrial customers. We are going to continue to build deeper relationships with existing customers in addition to servicing new partners. Forsight is closing a fundraise round to help do that and hiring more technical talent to continue to grow the team and product.