Company Overview
Sam Tate is Founder at SiteSentry, a company that uses AI, computer vision, and connected sensors to help builders identify and manage risks on construction sites before they turn into claims. The platform turns what is happening on-site into structured, actionable data by identifying things like after-hours activity, theft, PPE issues, water leaks, flooding, fire risk, and other conditions that can lead to losses. Learn more at sitesentry.ai.
Can you tell us a little about your background before starting at your company?
Before starting SiteSentry, I was Director of Investments and Innovation at Material Capital Partners (MCP), a real estate private equity firm focused on residential development projects across the Southeast and Midwest. In that role, I focused on investment structuring and capital deployment, fundraising, as well as AI and new technology initiatives across the firm’s portfolio.
My interests have always been at the intersection of entrepreneurship and investing, and I’ve been very fortunate to spend a the last 5 years working directly for a real estate developer on construction projects and seeing firsthand where technology can improve the way real estate projects are built and managed.
I grew up outside of Boston and attended the University of Southern California, where I earned degrees from the Marshall School of Business and the Viterbi School of Engineering. While at USC, I started a travel company, which gave me my first real experience building a company, and was named USC’s 2019 Student Entrepreneur of the Year. After graduating, I moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where I started working for Material Capital Partners and began the path that ultimately led to SiteSentry.
How did you start at your company? What were the first steps you took to get it off the ground and how did you identify the need for your product/service in the market?
On large-scale real estate development projects, insurance carriers require builders and developers to install security cameras. But these systems are largely passive, and rely on remote human security guards to monitor feeds rather than proactively identifying risks or surfacing critical events in real time. They also don’t provide any protection against the issues that lead to the largest insurance claims on construction sites, water damage and fire.
At Material Capital Partners, we experienced this firsthand when our insurance carriers started requiring cameras on all of our construction sites. We believed there was a better way to use the cameras already being deployed, and we began exploring how AI and computer vision could turn existing cameras into proactive tools for security, safety, and risk management—ultimately helping insurance carriers reduce claims.
SiteSentry was incubated inside Material Capital Partners, which gave us the ability to build and test the product on our own active construction projects from the beginning. That was incredibly valuable because we could see firsthand what was working, what wasn’t, and what actually mattered to the people using it in the field. Earlier this year, we spun SiteSentry out as a standalone company as we started expanding beyond MCP’s portfolio and working with third-party customers.
MCP and SiteSentry maintain a very close relationship. We share an office, and we continue to use MCP’s projects to test new features, get real-world feedback, and shape where we take the product next.
What innovations or unique features set your company apart from others in the industry?
SiteSentry uses AI, computer vision, and connected sensors to help builders identify and manage risks on construction sites before they turn into claims. The platform turns what is happening on-site into structured, actionable data by identifying things like after-hours activity, theft, PPE issues, water leaks, flooding, fire risk, and other conditions that can lead to losses.
All of that gets pulled into a dashboard where builders and insurance carriers can see what is happening across their portfolio, where the biggest risks are, and what actions should be taken. The goal is not just to flag an issue, but to notify the right people on-site and give them a clear recommendation so they can address it before it becomes a larger problem.
SiteSentry creates a connection between builders and insurance carriers that really does not exist in construction insurance today, linking what is actually happening on a jobsite with the carriers managing and pricing that risk across Builders Risk, General Liability, and Workers’ Compensation. Today, much of that underwriting and risk management is still manual and based on limited information from the field.
A key part of the platform is SiteScore, our proprietary risk scoring system. Think of it like a FICO score for construction risk. SiteScore turns project data into a simple score that shows how risk is being managed over time. It gives insurance carriers a clear view of project risk, helps risk engineering teams identify issues earlier, and gives underwriters better data when evaluating a builder’s next project.
We are building SiteScore to become the standard risk score for construction, similar to FICO for credit or CARFAX for vehicle history. The goal is to give the industry a common way to measure risk based on real project data. Builders and developers with strong track records should be able to prove it and be rewarded with better insurance terms, lower premiums, and lower deductibles.
We have already seen this concept work in residential insurance, where homeowners can receive discounts for installing leak detection systems and automatic water shutoff valves. We think there is an opportunity to bring that same idea to construction on a much larger scale.
Ultimately, the goal is pretty simple: prevent losses before they happen, reduce claims and payouts, and give both builders and carriers better data to understand and price risk.
What has been the most effective strategy for scaling your business?
We are in a fortunate position because we can deploy SiteSentry on our own construction projects and continuously refine it based on what we see in the field. That gives us a tight feedback loop to build, test, and improve the product through real-world use.
Material Capital Partners has a large network of builders, developers, property managers, and other industry partners that we will continue to tap as we continue grow. We are also actively building relationships with insurance brokers and carriers, which we believe will become an important distribution channel as we scale. If you are a broker, carrier, builder, or developer/builder interested in working with us, I’d love to connect at sam@sitesentry.ai.
Looking ahead, what are your goals for the future of your company?
We are focused on improving our AI models, expanding to more third-party projects, and building relationships with insurance carriers and brokers. Every new site gives us more data to improve our detections, recommendations, and SiteScore.
As we scale, we want SiteScore to become the industry standard for measuring construction risk. The goal is to give insurance carriers better data and tools to reduce construction site claims by 10%+ and more accurately underwrite and price risk.
