A security mind, pointed at the walls of a building
Most people never think about the network behind their walls until it drops. Chen Konfino built a company on the opposite instinct: that the invisible layer keeping a building connected is worth designing, protecting, and measuring as carefully as anything else in the structure. That company is Younity, and Chen has led it as founder and CEO since 2018 from offices near Union Square in New York.
His route into real estate was unusual. Chen did not come up through construction or property management. He came up through security. Before Younity, he was product and IT manager at Vaultive, a cloud data-security firm that was later acquired by CyberArk. Earlier still, he served in the Israel Defense Forces' Military Intelligence - a background that tends to leave people with a permanent habit of asking what could go wrong, and who might try to make it go wrong on purpose.
That habit shows up everywhere in Younity's approach. Where many building-tech vendors treat WiFi as a box to install and forget, Chen treats the network as living infrastructure: something to monitor continuously, protect from intrusion, and keep ready for whatever ships next. It is a subtle reframe with large consequences.
Why is the WiFi in a hundred-million-dollar building often worse than the WiFi in a coffee shop?- The question at the heart of Younity's founding thesis
The premise is almost embarrassingly simple. Roughly nine in ten tenants now say fast, reliable internet is non-negotiable, yet buildings routinely deliver dead zones, tangled wiring, and connectivity that ages badly. Chen looked at that gap and saw not a nuisance but a business. If connectivity is the thing tenants demand most, then getting it right is not an amenity - it is core infrastructure, on par with water and power.
The PlatformOne system where there used to be five
Younity is built as a single software platform that pulls a building's fragmented systems into one place. Rather than stitching together separate vendors for internet, monitoring, and security, property owners get an integrated stack that Chen's team describes as an operating system for connected buildings.
The economic pitch is where Chen tends to win over property owners. Reliable, managed connectivity can be sold as a service, which flips a traditional cost center into a source of net operating income. Younity's own materials describe added income per unit and meaningful savings on wiring - the kind of numbers that make a CFO lean in. Better connectivity also tends to speed up lease-up and improve retention, because the thing tenants complain about most simply stops being a problem.
There is also a forward-looking argument. Buildings are quietly filling up with smart devices: keyless locks, sensors, cameras, smart metering. Each one needs a network that is fast, secure, and adaptable. Younity's open-platform design is meant to onboard those devices without ripping out infrastructure every few years - a bet that the building of the future will be defined less by its gadgets than by the network that carries them.
Connectivity is becoming the fourth utility. Younity treats it that way.- The through-line of Chen Konfino's work at Younity
Chen on the digital transformation of properties
In this PropTech conversation, Chen Konfino discusses how connected infrastructure is reshaping residential and commercial real estate.
The path to Younity
Serves in Israel Defense Forces, Military Intelligence - the foundation of a security-first, risk-aware way of thinking.
Product and IT manager at cloud data-security firm Vaultive, later acquired by CyberArk.
Co-founds Younity in New York and becomes CEO, setting out to reinvent building connectivity.
Younity closes a Series B round; Chen appears on the Real Tech Talk PropTech series to discuss property transformation.
What ties the story together is consistency of instinct. Whether he was protecting corporate data at Vaultive or designing a building's WiFi at Younity, Chen has kept returning to the same idea: the network is precious, and the job is to make it reliable and safe. The domain changed. The mindset did not.
Fun & insightful facts
The name Younity plays on "unity" - fitting for a platform whose whole job is getting a building's many systems to act as one.
His background is rare for PropTech: military intelligence and cybersecurity, not construction or brokerage.
Younity is headquartered near Union Square in the heart of New York City.
The founding stat he keeps returning to: 93% of tenants say fast WiFi is non-negotiable.