Griot Technologies Inc. has announced that veteran technology executive Sean Miller has joined the Griot team as CEO and co-founder. Miller is a proven leader with 20 years of experience working with HVAC, general construction, plumbing, electrical, property maintenance, low voltage and security tradesman across companies such as Alarm.com, Generac, Voltec Industries and Belkin WeMo. Sean also brings 10 years of experience leading early-stage technology companies, across remote monitoring, residential smart home and commercial property automation.

"Griot is Union Labs first incubated portfolio company, and is built on the thesis that skilled trades are the next frontier for the connected workforce" said Chris Kim, co-founder and managing partner at Union Labs. "We are extremely excited to have Sean's combination of technology expertise and experience working with skilled trades at the helm leading Griot".

Prior to joining Griot, Miller was the president of PointCentral, an Alarm.com subsidiary focused on bringing IoT-powered smart property hardware and services to residential rental properties. During his time at PointCentral, the firm was regarded as a smart property pioneer and leader in the overall PropTech space. Before PointCentral, Miller led global sales and business development for WeMo, Belkin's smart home business unit, and launched Mobile Link, an in-house remote monitoring service, while at Generac. Both of these businesses were pioneers in their space, and helped solve problems using novel technologies.

"Sean brings an incredible passion, trusted relationships with numerous industry executives, and senior executive leadership experience that uniquely positions him to understand and address the challenges facing small and large skilled trade organizations today. We're excited to welcome Sean to the team!" said Nate Williams, co-founder and managing partner at Union Labs.

There are over 11 million skilled trades workers in the United States today. Unfortunately, the need for replacement workers exceeds the need to fill new jobs. Specifically, among the 1.3 million annual skilled trade openings, for each new job in the trades created annually there are 15 openings due to replacements. At this rate, by 2022, the number of U.S. skilled trades jobs is projected to exceed the number of adequately trained workers by 3.4 million. On top of this shortage of new personnel coming into the skilled trades, 70% of service organizations believe they'll be burdened by the knowledge loss of a retiring workforce in the next 5 to 10 years. Because most of these jobs require specialized, often intensive, training, it will take time to address this shortfall. Griot is on a mission to augment their in-field communication and knowledge sharing with modern AI and AR tools, so that skilled trades can be better equipped to get their work done on time and in one trip.

"No matter how good the upfront training is, or how far in advance a predictive maintenance model tells a technician of a problem, when a technician goes into the field to service a piece of equipment, there are always some unknowns." Miller said. "When those unknowns present a skilled tradesman with a challenge that they don't know how to immediately solve, helping that field technician figure out how to solve their problem in as little amount of time as possible, and without needing additional truck rolls, is critical."