Chief Information Officer & Executive Vice President, Vornado Realty
Search every verified Robert Entin interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Robert Entin, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Vornado Realty Trust, discussed the company's technology strategy and the broader proptech landscape in a 2017 interview. He stated that Vornado has been an early adopter of technology, using it to improve business operations, building management, and tenant amenities. Entin noted that the company was upgrading security systems, including implementing facial recognition at turnstiles, and investing in building networks. Entin described the current wave of proptech investment as larger than previous cycles, citing $5 billion in capital deployed in the sector. He observed that owners and developers are now more focused on potential returns compared to earlier periods, when there were more skeptics. Entin also raised concerns about the high failure rate of proptech ventures and called for greater openness from established vendors, arguing that the industry should push for the democratization of data to reduce friction for startups and improve outcomes.
“We've been a fairly early adopter and embracer of technology over the years believing that it's both helpful to run the business better as well as the operations from the building's perspective provide better amenities to the tenants and a more attractive product.”
“We're working on upgrading all of our security systems; we're doing facial recognition at turnstiles today which is a very big plus for tenants.”
“This wave of technological investments is bigger than anyone in the past and if you read the figures and you hear bandied about five billion in capital put into prop tech over the last few years.”
“Owners, developers, institutional owners are all more focused on what they can get out of this round whereas I would say in the past perhaps 2000 and 2005 you had a lot of non-believers.”
“With any wave of tech investments obviously a lot doesn't stick so that's normal but the question in real estate is why are the numbers higher in terms of the failures and things that won't stick?”
“Vendors have to have a better commitment to openness in the real estate prop tech industry. There have been handfuls of dominant vendors in the space over the years who haven't had the need to be open in the past.”
“With all of the fledgling startups around who need access to the data that are in their systems, there's a better need to be open.”
“If we as an industry can really continue to push the democratization of data and open this data, I think that would take away one of the really big friction points that I see is troublesome.”
Robert Entin, Executive VP & CIO at Vornado Realty Trust, explains that the wave of technological investment has never been ...
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