Rishi Sharma

Founder and Podcaster

I grew up in the security industry. My earliest memories are warehouse floors stacked with cameras and cable, ride-alongs with technicians, and customers trusting us to protect what mattered most.

That experience shaped how I lead today.

Over the years I helped scale a video surveillance company from a family business into a national brand, and we achieved a successful exit. It taught me how rare durable companies are and how important it is to protect the people and culture that make them work.

Today I run NextGen Live Security, focused on live video monitoring, security systems integration, and fire life safety. We build on the foundation I was raised in, combining disciplined operations with modern technology.

Security is changing fast. Customers expect seamless monitoring, smarter analytics, and faster service. The heart of the work has not changed. It is still about people who show up, respond quickly, and keep promises. Our job is to blend both worlds. The craftsmanship of legacy operators and the precision of AI driven systems.

We focus on practical improvements that compound over time. We train technicians to master tools that reduce false alarms and improve awareness. We simplify quote to cash workflows so every install, upgrade, and service visit runs smoother. We standardize checklists and feedback loops so quality stays consistent as we grow.

I have run P and Ls and managed field teams. I have learned that great systems do not replace good people. They amplify them.

This industry raised me and I am proud to keep building in it. If you operate an integration firm, manage a monitoring center, or lead security for a facility, I would love to trade ideas and compare what is working.

Email me at Rish@Nextgenlivesecurity.com

Mentor

The Founder Institute carefully recruits 20-40 Mentors per semester, and we typically only accept Mentors that have built or led technology businesses. Our Mentors lead the weekly training sessions, and their mandate is to help our participants by sharing their experience, outlining the latest tactics, and providing critical feedback. In addition, through the Founder Institute's Shared Liquidity Pool, Mentors are strongly incentivized to help our companies after Graduation, and many have become formal advisors to our Graduate companies.

Rishi S.

True story from a security company I work with.

Customer calls in.
"Your cameras keep dropping offline. We're done."

$4,200 a month in RMR. Gone.

The team ran diagnostics.
Cameras were fine.
NVR was fine.
Software was fine.

The building's Wi-Fi was garbage.

They installed six IP cameras
and a cloud access control system
on a network held together
by an $80 consumer router
in a utility closet.

And nobody thought to check that
before the install.

This happens ALL the time.

We sell cloud-connected everything now.
IP cameras. Smart locks. Remote monitoring.
All of it running over networks
we never even look at.

One integrator I know started adding
a basic structured network install
to every single proposal.

Runs about $800 to $1,200 extra per job.
Customers barely push back on it.

Service calls dropped.
Churn dropped.
Margins went up.

Because the stuff they installed
actually worked the way it was supposed to.

If you're still treating the network
as "the customer's responsibility,"
I'd rethink that.

It's your name on the system
when it stops working.

#SecurityIntegration #PhysicalSecurity #RMR #SecurityBusiness #MindfulCapital

From Video Surveillance Exit to NextGen Live Security | Helping Founders Transition with Care & Unlock Growth in Physical Security

Your sales team is busy.

But busy doing what?

I've watched reps make 50 calls a day in the security industry.
Tons of demos. Tons of proposals.

And still lose deals they should have won.
Not because the product was wrong.

Because they pitched features to someone who couldn't sign a check.
Here's what nobody trains sales teams on:

How businesses actually work.

Where budgets come from. Who controls the money. The difference between capital spend and operating spend.

Most reps are trained as order takers.
They wait for a request. Quote a price. Hope it closes.

That's not selling. That's clerking.

The best reps I've seen think like operators.
They ask: "Is this funded?"

They ask: "Who else needs to say yes?"
They ask: "Does this fit your capital plan or your monthly budget?"

That one question changes everything.

Because when you understand how money moves inside a company, you stop chasing bad deals.
Your pipeline gets cleaner. Your close rate goes up. Your forecast stops lying to you.

And here's the real shift:
Stop selling projects. Start selling recurring revenue.

The install isn't the finish line. It's the onboarding.

Train your team to think like business people — not product pushers.

Business literacy is the most underrated competitive advantage in sales.

What's the one thing you wish your sales team understood about how companies actually buy?

The biggest threat to your central station isn't competition.

It's your false alarm volume quietly burning out your best operators.

One central station VP recently said 80% of their outbound alarm calls go unanswered. I believe it. I spent years listening to operators dial number after number into voicemail. Same script. Same dead air. Same look on their face by hour six.

We treated it like weather. Just something you dealt with.

But here's what that "weather" actually costs you.

Your best operators quit inside three months because they spend entire shifts chasing noise instead of handling real emergencies.

Municipalities start issuing fines because your false dispatch rate is out of control.

Clients stop picking up because they've been conditioned to assume every call is another false alarm.

It's a flywheel spinning in the wrong direction.

The central stations getting ahead of this aren't hiring more people. They're using conversational AI to triage the noise before it ever reaches a human. 

False alarms get filtered. Systems get put on test. Dispatches happen without an operator playing phone tag for twenty minutes.

This isn't about replacing your team. It's about protecting them.

Every minute your best operator spends chasing a false alarm is a minute they're not on a real one.

AI doesn't make operators unnecessary. It makes the job survivable.

Most businesses are using AI to do the same work cheaper.

Faster proposals. Fewer callbacks. Leaner teams.

Real gains. But here is the problem: your competitor bought the same tools last Tuesday.

When everyone rows harder, nobody pulls ahead. Margins compress. The customer captures all the value.

The businesses I keep watching are doing something different. They are using AI to change what the customer is buying. Guarantees. Bundled outcomes. Pricing tied to results instead of hours.

That is not an efficiency play. That is a positioning play.

In this week's Mindful Capital, I break down the difference between rowing and sailing, why the market misprices efficiency, and where pricing power actually comes from.

If you are an owner running a service business, this one is for you.

#AI #SmallBusiness #PricingStrategy #EntrepreneurshipThroughAcquisition #MindfulCapital

You cut headcount. Automated proposals. Shaved two days off your quoting cycle. Then a prospect tells you they got a lower bid from the outfit down th

Open article: Sailing vs. Rowing: How AI Creates Pricing Power, Not Just Cost Savings by Rishi Sharma • 5 min read

Sailing vs. Rowing: How AI Creates Pricing Power, Not Just Cost Savings

The security industry talks about RMR the way real estate talks about cap rates. Everyone knows the number. Few understand the mechanics underneath.

RMR is not a business model. It's a moat, if you build it right.

Most operators stop at contractual switching costs: multi-year agreements, monitoring contracts, maintenance terms. That's layer one. It gets you in the door but won't keep competitors out.

Layer two is operational. Manage credentials, firmware updates, compliance logs, remote diagnostics. Switching vendors now means real operational disruption, not just a contract penalty.

Layer three is data. Every incident, service call, and site record builds an intelligence edge your replacement won't have. The more you process, the harder you are to displace.

This is what separates a low-margin integrator from an infrastructure partner with real pricing power.

SDM reports the range of RMR models has never been broader: cloud, subscription, managed services. SIA's 2026 Megatrends puts AI-driven managed services at the top of the transformation list.

The risk: treating RMR as a billing cadence without building the workflow depth behind it.

Revenue recurs on a schedule. Moats hold because they're earned.

Pop quiz for security integrators:

When was the last time you updated firmware
on a customer's NVR?

Or changed the default password
on their IP cameras?

Or put their security devices
on a separate VLAN from the office network?

If you're being honest, the answer
for most companies is "never."

And that's a problem
that's about to get really expensive.

Every IP camera you install
is basically a small computer
sitting on someone's network.

Every cloud-connected door controller
is an access point.

Not just for people walking through the door.
For anyone on the internet.

We sell "security" for a living.
But most of us don't secure
the systems we install.

I think the next few years
are going to force this conversation.

Insurance carriers are already starting
to ask questions about connected devices.
Customers are going to expect
cyber hygiene as part of the package.
Not as a premium add-on. As standard.

The integrators who figure this out now
get to set the terms.

The ones who wait
get to explain to a customer
why their "secure" building
got breached through a camera
with the password still set to admin/admin.

Where does your company stand on this?
Honestly want to know.

#SecurityIndustry #Cybersecurity #PhysicalSecurity #VideoSurveillance #MindfulCapital

I keep having the same conversation
with security company owners.

"We need to grow. We need to add trucks.
We need to start acquiring."

Okay. Cool.

What's your gross margin
on your top 10 accounts?

"...I'd have to check."

That's the problem right there.

Not the lack of growth.
The lack of knowing your own numbers.

I've looked inside a lot of these businesses now.
The pattern is always the same.

The ones growing the fastest?
They spent a year or two doing boring stuff first.

Got out of the truck themselves.
Started reviewing cash flow weekly, not quarterly.
Wrote down how things actually get done
(instead of keeping it all in their head).
Hired to a system instead of hiring to put out fires.

THEN they grew.

The ones who skipped all that
and went straight to "let's double revenue"?

They're the ones calling me stressed out of their minds
wondering why nothing works
even though they're busier than ever.

Busy and profitable are not the same thing.

What did you skip?
Genuinely curious. I've got my own list.

#SecurityIndustry #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneurship #MindfulCapital

Most people in security services are chasing the big contract. The whale account. The game changing partnership.

I get it. We did the same thing in my family's business early on.

But the thing that actually got us onto the Inc. 5000 list multiple times wasn't one big win. It was a pile of small ones nobody wanted to talk about at dinner.

Shaving two minutes off a dispatch workflow. Fixing an onboarding checklist that hadn't been touched in five years. Replacing a chain of back-and-forth emails with one automation that ran while we slept.

None of it was exciting. All of it compounded.

One small fix saves a few hours a week. Roll that out across forty client sites, fifty weeks a year, and you're looking at thousands of dollars recovered from thin air. Stack ten of those fixes and suddenly your "boring" ops improvements are doing more for your margins than that whale account you spent six months chasing.

This is what I think about constantly now as we build NextGen Live Security. The gap between a good security company and a great one isn't vision or culture or some proprietary technology.

It's whether the team has the discipline to make the business 1% less clunky every single week. To actually fix the bottleneck instead of working around it for the fourth year in a row.

Compounding isn't magic. It's math. And most operators leave it on the table because the work isn't glamorous enough to post about.

Culture isn't a value on a wall.

It's what happens every Monday at 9am.

As an operator and investor in the security industry, I've talked to a lot of companies.

Alarm shops. Integrators. Monitoring centers.

The fast ones all have something in common.
It's not better techs. It's not more trucks.

It's rituals.

Named, repeatable habits the whole team knows by heart.

The best security companies I've observed do things like:

→ Monday morning standups. Review every open install, every stuck service ticket, every at-risk RMR account. Start the week knowing where the fires are.
→ Friday ride-alongs. Owners or managers ride with a tech once a month. You learn more in one truck ride than ten reports.
→ Weekly pipeline scrubs. Sales and ops in the same room. Kill the dead deals. Move the real ones forward.
→ Quarterly "what broke" reviews. Not blame sessions. Honest looks at what failed — a lost customer, a bad install, a missed renewal. Then fix the process so it doesn't happen again.

I learned this concept from Shishir Mehrotra.

He says you can judge a company by the quality of its rituals.
I believe that.

Because most companies have meetings.
Great companies have rituals.

One drains energy. The other compounds it.

The security companies that scale don't do it by accident.
They built the machine on purpose.

What's one ritual that keeps your team sharp?

I picked up John Malone's memoir expecting a standard business book.

It wrecked me in the best way.

Not because of the numbers (though taking a near-bankrupt company to a $48B exit is wild). But because the frameworks he used to build the largest cable empire in America map almost perfectly onto the security industry I work in every day.

Malone looked at a fragmented, subscription-driven, infrastructure-heavy industry and saw a compounding machine. He invented EBITDA. He built an acquisition flywheel. He turned distribution into leverage. He structured every deal so the downside was survivable and the upside was enormous.

The security industry is sitting on the same kind of opportunity right now.

I wrote a deep-dive for Mindful Capital breaking down the mental models from the book and how they apply to alarm dealers, central stations, and integrators.
If you're in the security space, or any fragmented recurring-revenue industry, I think this one's worth 15 minutes.

#MindfulCapital #SecurityIndustry #EntrepreneurshipThroughAcquisition #JohnMalone #AlarmIndustry

I just finished reading John Malone's memoir. The playbook he used to build the largest cable empire in American history maps almost perfectly onto th

Open article: What John Malone's Cable Empire Teaches Us About the Future of the Security Industry by Rishi Sharma • 16 min read

What John Malone's Cable Empire Teaches Us About the Future of the Security Industry

57% of employees are using personal AI accounts for work right now.
One in three of them admit to putting sensitive company data into those tools.

That's not a Gartner prediction. That's a Gartner survey from late 2025.
It already happened.

So if you run a small or mid-size business and you haven't figured out your AI governance policy yet, your employees figured it out for you.

They're using ChatGPT on their phone to draft proposals, answer customer emails, summarize internal docs.

Nobody asked permission. Nobody checked if it was safe. They just did it.
Gartner just dropped their top cybersecurity trends for 2026.

Two of the biggest: agentic AI creating new attack surfaces, and shadow AI usage running ahead of any company policy.

For SMB owners, this is not a "we'll get to it" problem.

Your team is feeding client data into tools you didn't approve on networks you don't control.

You don't need a 50-page AI policy.

Start with three questions:

What tools are people actually using? What data is going into them? Who decides what's okay and what's not?

If nobody in your company can answer those three questions today,
that's your Monday morning priority.

What's your AI policy look like right now? Or is it the "don't ask, don't tell" 
approach?

Curious how other SMB owners are handling this.

#AI #Cybersecurity #SmallBusiness #SMB #MindfulCapital

I spend a lot of time in the remote guarding space so I figured I'd share what I'm actually seeing in 2026.

The video surveillance market hit $71.6B globally this year. Growing at 10.6% CAGR.

The remote video monitoring segment alone is on pace to reach $8.2B by 2033 at a 13.2% clip.

The broader manned guarding market? It jumped $6.5B in a single year from 2025 to 2026.

But the growth isn't coming from hiring more guards.

Guard turnover still sits between 100% and 300% annually. The BLS projects 162,000 openings every year and almost all of that is replacement. People leave. Constantly.

That's the tailwind for remote guarding.

One operator with AI-powered analytics can monitor 30+ sites at once. Edge cameras now run 30 trillion operations per second on the device itself. 

Bandwidth drops 70%.

The big money is moving.

GardaWorld closed on Stealth Monitoring. Folded it into ECAM. That's a $100M+ recurring revenue business built entirely on watching other people's cameras.

SMEs are the fastest-growing adopter segment at 12.8% CAGR as cloud platforms kill the upfront hardware cost.

Now the headwinds.

Customer trust in "no boots on the ground" is still a problem.

Internet reliability at remote sites kills the model before it starts.
Response time without physical presence is a real concern for high-risk sites.

And regulatory frameworks haven't caught up to the tech.
This market doubled in value in under 5 years.

If you're an integrator or operator and you haven't figured out where remote guarding fits in your business, someone else in your market already has.

What are you seeing? Growing demand or still a tough sell locally?

#RemoteGuarding #SecurityIndustry #PhysicalSecurity #VideoSurveillance #MindfulCapital

I strongly believe in the power of friendship. Throughout my career I have had the opportunity to meet a number of brilliant people and the good fortune of becoming close to many of them. My relationships are more meaningful to me than anything else.

I have had a varied journey across multiple industries and am now fully ensconced in the world of restaurants and F&B. I have founded, led, and sold a start-up, played a leadership role in business development for one of the world's largest companies, and been the first employee at a Google Ventures backed start-up that raised over $100m.

I'm a Fractional Business Executive and work with select clients to expand their business development efforts with enterprise and mid-market restaurants, grocery, and retail.

Atul Sood

I would fly 1 million miles, and I would fly 1 million more. 

I hit the million miler club on United. Man, that’s a lot of flying. 

We do a lot of things for work. But flying a million miles is not something I’m proud of. It’s apparently taking me 25 years an 8 months. 

At Kitchen United I traveled 160 nights a year. At one of my first jobs, Trilogy, I was the Detroit Westin Airport’s #1 guest. 

It’s involved a lot of sacrifices. To family, to health and well being, to overall balance. I’ve pledged to myself going forward that I’ll travel only when necessary. 

Still, I guess it’s an achievement? Gold status for life. I’ll take it.

Food on Demand. 

As MURTEC kicks off I wanted to draw your attention to another killer conference that happens every year. 

I’ve gone every year but one since the inaugural event. Bernadette Heier will surely put on a good show just like Thomas Kaiser and Nicholas U. did! 

This year I’ll be moderating a thought-provoking panel at FoD in Dallas. 

Come join me.

No alternative text description for this image

Extroversion. 

I get energized by conferences. I get that a lot of people find them exhausting. The walking, the happy hours, the late nights. 

But for me, it’s invigorating.  I enjoy connecting with old friends. And, after a decade in the space, I am fortunate to have a lot of them. I also like broadening the network. I’ve already met a few new people in the industry. 

My goal at any conference is to come away with 3-5 new strong bonds that I can deepen in the months ahead. 

If you’re an introvert, I imagine you’re there mostly for the talks. Those are great (particularly the one Luke Kircher moderated today at #MURTEC), but I’m here for the people.

MBA?

I never got an MBA. I applied to Wharton, HBS, and Kellogg. They didn’t want me. Not surprising. My 2.67 GPA was probably not top 5pct. ;-)

I’m at a UCLA Business School retreat this weekend with my girlfriend. It’s interesting stuff. 

But I don’t know if I’d get an MBA if I had a chance to revisit my youth. I don’t think the cost/benefit is there. 

How about you? Do you have one? Do you need it? Would you do it again? (Asking for a friend).

AI in Restaurants. 

SignalFlare.ai is hosting today’s AI Summit at #MURTEC and I’m excited to learn from Tammy K. Billings, MBA and Michael Lukianoff. 

There’s a lot of noise about AI in our industry and it’ll be good to cut through the crap and see what technologies and approaches can really help brands like Curry Up Now.

Never Eat Alone. 

I was fortunate to hear Keith Ferrazzi share his thoughts on networking yesterday. He’s the author of the best selling book (and several others). 

He had great tips. Chief amongst them was helping others build their networks in order to build your own. 

That’s what I’m hoping to do with our Fractional Forum (next meeting this Thursday if you’d like to join). We’re up to 140 people and have a productive Slack group. 

Below are the other 3 tips. If you’d like help doing so, I’m here to share what I do. 

(RAP stands for Relationship Action Plan)

Technology for Franchisors and Franchisees. 

Coming off #MURTEC, I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on how to roll out technology at a Multi-Unit Chan. 

Take a listen to my thoughts as shared with Gary Liskovich of Harmonyze. I love what he and his team are doing to smooth communication and drive success in the franchise ecosystem.

Founder & CEO @ Harmonyze | Helping brands solve performance coaching

Rollout is not adoption.

Awesome time sitting down with Atul Sood to talk through one of the hardest problems in multi-unit brands: getting technology to actually stick in the field.

A lot of tech initiatives look successful at launch. Far fewer become part of day-to-day behavior in a way that drives real operational impact.

Atul has seen that challenge from multiple angles — including at the massive scale of McDonald's.

One of my favorite takeaways: the best brands are getting more disciplined about pilots, more thoughtful about who they roll out to, and more focused on building real buy-in from the field — not just pushing from corporate.

Full webinar link in the comments 👇

#franchising #franchiseops #restauranttechnology #technologyadoption #multiunit #fieldoperations Harmonyze

The youth in SF. 

I had a long conversation yesterday with a 19 year old who’s running an AI startup. It was fascinating. And frightening. 

14 hour days. Shipping product every couple of days. Fielding tons of inbound from VCs. Ambitious as hell. 

It made me reflect on the pace of change in the valley. In the restaurant industry we operate on 9-12 month sales cycles, 12-24 month deployment cycles, and painfully slow restaurant adoption. 

In Silicon Valley, it’s weeks. 

Mayin Joshi is smarter than any 19 year old should be  

It made me think we need to do better. We all know things are changing fast but I was blown away to see how fast they’re really moving. Restaurants need to change their buying patterns. 

I’m working with a few AI native companies. Can’t wait to get them off the ground.

Eating in Vegas. 

I inevitably gain weight in Vegas. I remember the days when there weren’t many good restaurants there. Just buffets. 

It’s all changed now. Any major restaurant? It’s there. 

This past week I hit Scarpetta and Beauty & Essex at the Cosmo (excellent Italian at Scarpetta), Amalfi by Bobby Flay with fantastic fish at Caeser’s, and Gjelina at the Venetian for pizza. (With my friend Collin Wiseman who can get reservations anywhere).  

Next up next time are Gymkhana and Cote Korean Steakhouse. 

What are your faves? What should I put on my list?

The King is You!

Those who’ve been following me probably realize I’ve turned into a Tom Curtis fanboy. I love how accessible, direct, and ambitious he is. 

The new campaign that launched with the Oscars last night is reminiscent of the Domino's ads a few years ago where they admitted they went down the wrong path. 

I think we’re on the cusp of a Burger King resurgence. I, for one, am a returning customer. 

Check out the commercial below:

 https://lnkd.in/gCjDtmq4

Open video: Burger King® | There’s a New King and It’s You. on youtu.be

Burger King® | There’s a New King and It’s You.

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The Battle

Rishi S.

Atul Sood

Followers

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Rishi S.'s LinkedIn Performance

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