Industries at the Intersection: Construction Technology

Michael Marks: Hi, everyone. This is the TechSurge Deep Tech podcast presented by Celesta Capital. Each episode, we spotlight issues and voices at the intersection of emerging technologies, company building, and venture investment. I'm Michael Marks, founding managing partner at Celesta.

This is the first in a series of episodes where we will look at industries at the intersection. While most every industry today is technology enabled, some have resisted the level of technology adoption necessary to be truly technology transformed. This episode series will examine the future of large staple industries on the cusp of big leaps forward, driven by increasing tech adoption.

So today we're going to examine construction technology and talk to leaders from three emerging companies in this space. So let me welcome our guests. First is Ash Bhardwaj, CEO and co founder at Onx Homes. Thanks, Michael. Happy to be here. Trevor Schick, CEO at Site. ai. Glad to be here as well. And last, Camillo Restrepo, the CEO at Biomason.

Thank you, Michael. Very happy to be here as well. Okay, thank you all three for joining. So, construction is a huge topic. I thought I'd just jump into the conversation by talking about some of the big challenges facing construction, of which there are many, and discuss why construction has proven so difficult to disrupt and what your companies are doing to buck this trend.

I'm sure everyone listening understands how important housing construction is to our collective well being. It is part of the fabric of our families, communities, and nations. It is also one of the largest industries in the world, and it faces some of the biggest existential challenges of any industry.

Home prices continue to inflate much more rapidly than wages. It has one of the biggest carbon footprints in the world, and its productivity has stagnated for a long time. In fact, for background, and those listeners who perhaps aren't deeply familiar with housing construction, It is well known to be one of the only major industries that has fallen in productivity over the last several decades while most other industrial sectors have become much more efficient.

There are many issues contributing to this. Heavy regulation, entrenched business models, fragmentation of different skills and trades, poor data capture and analysis, and material waste. But an overall lack of technology adoption is by far one of the biggest reasons. Now, technology has come into construction in some ways that you may be familiar with.

You see a lot of companies supplying or using tools, including prefabrication, 3D printing, virtual reality, drones, robotics, software tools, and so on. But so far, none of these have gained enough scale to move the needle. So let's jump in here. Ash, you're leading Onx Homes, where you design and deliver factory built homes.

Many companies have tried this general approach, trying to save time and costs. Essentially, all of them have struggled to get any scale and many have gone out of business. So why don't you tell us more about your approach at Onx? What have you learned from these other companies and what are you doing that is different?

Ash Bhardwaj: Yes. So thanks, Michael. I think that's a great question to start with, you know, Michael, one of the issues in the industry, like you pointed out, it's a. It's one of the oldest industries. And, you know, some of the big players in the industry have been around for the last 50 to a hundred years. And they have a business model that basically what they're doing is they have land pieces and they have designs and then they have, you know, subcontractors come and build those homes for them.

So they essentially are not building homes. They are land bankers. And once. The land is ready, depending on regional basis, they go and hire people, the contractors who actually go to subcontractors and it's been done like that for almost a hundred years plus. Okay. Same way, same style, same thing. And over and over again, there's no technology that has touched the marketplace.

Most of us in this room come from technology background. And as you rightly said, from the industries that we come in, you know, the prices of the product keeps going down every year. The features keep going up every year. Whereas in this sector. the prices have gone up and the features have come down.

Okay. So it's just like upside down on how it should be. And from our standpoint, you know, what we are seeing is I've visited a lot of factories in, in this space. A lot of people are doing 3d printing or people are trying to do taking stuff to the factory and building in a factory and bringing it to the sites to assemble.

But the approach that they're doing has got two fundamentals issue. And one is Most of these people who are trying this don't come from factory background. And, and that is very important. I mean, building factories and having factories operate at optimized costs at optimized efficiency is extremely, extremely hard.

And it comes from, I mean, our background, my personal background. Is from electronics manufacturing. And along with you, Michael, we build hundreds of factories in 30 different countries in the world. So, so supply chain, how, how everything comes together, how everything comes to the factory and how it has to get distributed is something that we have honed in and learned in our past.

Okay. That's one. Number two is the approach that these people are taking is they have, they are doing only one piece of it. Okay. In the sense that some of them have got factories, but they're telling, they're going back to the consumer who may own the land. Okay. Or they're going to companies which own the land and saying, why don't you buy from us?

And you know, here's, here we can come and assemble on your site. But the problem is they're not controlling the entire supply chain to be successful in this marketplace. And I'm talking about primarily on it from a single family home standpoint, we are controlling our destiny, not only by having factories, but also having supply chain.

At the same time, we're a developer, which means we buy land. We develop the land. We build the homes and we sell the homes. Okay, so technology piece is one element of it, okay, whereas the other elements. So a lot of technology companies have addressed the technology pieces in some given way, but have not been able to address the technology pieces that will be acceptable in the market in the right way, because you have to control your own destiny in this market.

So, so from our standpoint, we are trying to control it from start to the end. And I think that's an approach that has been missing in the past. Okay. And I think that's what we are trying to change. And I think companies like Onx, Onx and Onx like companies are going to be the future of, of the silver stream.

Michael Marks: Well, thanks for that. You know, we've certainly seen a lot of these other companies go out of business for the reasons you talked about, and we'll, we'll get into a couple of other aspects of what you're doing, but it's great to, it's great to see how you're approaching the market. So Trevor, let's changing direction a little bit.

Let's talk about the relative lack of digitization and, and intelligent data use, you know, in construction. That's a, that's been a big area of productivity in many industries and hasn't been so much in the construction industry. And a lot of different programs and point solutions have come to market in the last several years.

Can you tell us about Slate's platform and how you're approaching this, this problem?

Trevor Schick: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as we, as you said, right, there's a lot of point solutions, you know, there hasn't been a lack of new systems coming into the space. The problem has really been is they only solve one point of the problem.

And what we've really ended up to, which is almost staggering is 90 percent of the data that's collected in construction is unstructured. So it's separated and 95 percent of it goes unused. So, you know, they're collecting a lot of information, but they don't have the tools in place to go use them. And really what it's led to is almost inefficiency in the model with 30 percent of people's time being driven, trying to find data.

And so that's really where Slate came into the market. We came in to be a platform that sits on top of all these systems. We're able to use a fundamental AI model. That brings together all the data. So we ingest all the information from the BIM models, from their scheduling models, from their issues models, and bring all that together.

And what the real sauce of Slate is, is we connect that data. And so now a user can go in and they can start really with conversational AI digging into the data. So rather than having to go to one system, understand when your windows are going to get installed. Another, whether it's a Whether there's an open RFI for them, you can get all that information in one place.

This leads to a vast amount of efficiency as people are looking into it. And then it also allows us to use predictive AI to really start figuring out the problems because once we can link all that data to the schedule, we can start looking ahead and finding out where those schedule problems can, uh, Exists and even come back with recommendations.

And so we've, we've been able to really build out that model that allows us to do that. And while we did it, it really then allows people to come in in the mornings and understand where's, where are the real issues. We take all the noise out of the system because, you know, every day somebody comes in, there's a hundred problems on the job site.

And what we're trying to do is say, these are the top five or the top 10 you need to focus on. And by focusing on that, you'll have the largest impact on your schedule. You'll have the largest impact on the cost for that project. And the whole goal of it is to be able to deliver buildings at a better cost and more efficiently from a timing perspective.

Michael Marks: So you mentioned a little bit about AI. So let's talk about that for a minute. As Everybody who's listening and our guests on this podcast know generative AI is the latest buzzword. Everybody's talking about it. Can you talk a little bit more, how important is the AI to what you're doing? And what does it really mean for improving productivity?

Trevor Schick: Yeah. And I think the way we look at it, right. And I, There's a lot of buzzwords out there, right? And so generative AI for us, we use it really in two main places. One, one of the things we're able to do on the platform is, you know, if you think of historically how a building is designed, somebody comes in and you have, you know, have a problem they need to build, so they'll come in and say, we need to build a new data center.

You then have an architect and engineer that goes and does a lot of the design work on the data center. They then go need to help pass that off to your estimators, who then get you a cost on that data center. And then it goes to the schedulers. They get the schedule and give you the timeline on that.

Generative AI allows you to take all down and really optimize your workflows, right? What we're able to do now, we're doing this real time with customers today inside of Slate, is go to them and allow them to put in a set of parameters. You know, it might be from an electrical perspective, from a mechanical perspective, civil perspective.

But once they put in that set of parameters, we can actually go generate out what that, uh, that model looks like. We can create a BIM model for them. We can get the estimate and we can get the schedule built. And you are now taking process. They used to take weeks to months, and we're literally bringing that down to, I'll call it 10 minutes to get that done.

And so the generative AI piece of this allows you to do that because it's now looking and saying, I understand how these schedules come together. I understand how this data is linked, and now I can actually go generate that next step in the process, being the model first, and then the schedule and the estimate.

And so it really radically changes the model from a timing perspective, but what it also allows us to then do is, as the building gets built, We're able to go look and say, where did we go over under budget? Where did with the schedule not line up to what we thought it was going to do? And this is where machine learning comes into place.

We're able to feed that back into the front end. So the next time we go do a generation of the model, we actually have those learnings and we get more, you know, more information in there and a better schedule and a better estimate. And so as we continue to build out these models. Every time we build a building, we increase that, uh, the capabilities of the model and actually deliver a better, more cost efficient building.

So it sounds like you're actually using generative AI instead of just talking about it. We are one of the guys that, uh, there's a lot of talk and we actually bring it to the table as we speak. That's awesome. Okay, changing subjects a

Michael Marks: little bit. Let's talk about sustainability. So sustainability and carbon footprints, another big issue in construction.

Many companies are trying to address those issues. UN put out a report showing that buildings in construction account for 37% of global emissions. This is made up of both operational emissions, which are the electrical and mechanical systems used to run the buildings, and also the emissions embodied in the materials themselves in the manufacturing of those materials.

So Camillo at Bio Mason, you're working to make cement with much lower carbon. There's a lot of companies working in this area. So can you tell us a bit about Biomass's technology? What makes it unique and how it contributes to carbon reduction? Absolutely,

Camilo Restrepo: Michael. And, um, and great for everyone listening to the podcast to understand a little bit about cement and its impact on the, on CO2 emissions.

So let's start with, with the facts. So 4 billion tons of cement are produced and used every year by society. 4 billion tons. Of those 4 billion tons, we get 3. 4 plus billion tons of CO2 emissions in the manufacture of all the cement and concrete. So you, you were mentioning the 37 percent of the global CO2 emissions in buildings.

So of those 8 percent are coming from the cement and concrete. So the total emissions are 37. 5 billion, 2 billion tons of CO2 and 8 percent are coming from cement. So we absolutely have to find a better way to manufacture or to do cement. So Biomason is reinventing cement. We are not cement, nothing related to the chemistry.

or anything of the cement or cementitious materials like slag or fly ash, commonly known as SCM's, Supplementary Cementitious Materials. Biomason is a unique company with a unique technology that uses biotech to produce bio cement, an alternative, 100 percent alternative to cement in concrete with products.

with zero percent cement. Yes, zero percent, absolutely no, no Portland cement or SEMs. And then we produce biocement with the use of bacteria and sources of calcium and carbon to produce a calcium carbonate crystal, which is what binds the aggregate together. So we're building those crystals and binding the aggregates that are normally bind.

by cement and the hydraulic reaction that occurs when it's mixed with water. So it's a completely different science. This technology is inspired in nature and it's using the same process which coral or limestone are formed by. In fact, limestone is made of calcium carbon, right? CaCO3. And that's where the CO2 could play a potential interesting role in all this formation of the, of the crystalline structure of the calcium carbon.

So the limestone is the main material in cement production, and that's how you get the CO2 emissions that are account for the 8%. So in fact, when you're producing a ton of cement, you're producing almost a ton of CO2, but biomason does not break that limestone down. It builds biocement that performs as or better than limestone.

So we're not like the other cement, green cement companies. We're the only company that is currently producing product out of biocement, a 0 percent cement based product. And we're currently producing tiles at a small industrial scale and expanding to a Capacity that is going to be sufficient to, to run a company and then roll out that into other existing precast manufacturers.

It is important to mention that the products that we're currently producing are generating 4, 000 plus PSI and more than four megapascal flex. So people, people listening to the, to the podcast. Might know that your everyday concrete, your concrete that you use for sidewalks or similar materials or similar elements are going to be in the 2, 500 to 3, 500 PSI range.

And this is the bread and butter of the construction industry. So Biomason's products are already in the 4, 000 PSI and above and also pass other standard tests like the free stop test. So Thank you. Biomason and its technology contribute to CO2 reduction compared to OPC, with a reduction of 60 percent emissions with comparable products.

And the reduction comes from less emissions from the raw materials, currently the sources of calcium and sources of carbon, which are calcium chloride and urea. And we are also working on further reducing those emissions as well. But clearly, in comparison to other cement products or or competing cement products.

The CO2 is bound in the calcium carbonate and will remain in the crystalline structure forever, right? So it becomes a permanent carbon sink.

Michael Marks: Okay, so this is a very interesting and unusual approach. As you, as you pointed out, there, there are many companies that are trying to do green cement. You have a very different approach.

Are there barriers to, to widespread adoption? We have something new like this and if so, what are they? Yes, there,

Camilo Restrepo: there will also be barriers. always be barriers, uh, Michael, but then I think the potential is very interesting, right? The 60 percent reduction of, uh, versus OPC. And then we have also achieved 6, 000 and 8, 000 PSI and upwards of seven megapascal.

So in terms of performance, there would be limited barriers to To the adoption, because it performs as or better than concrete, and it's it's the natural crystalline structure of calcium carbonate that is there based on on the current performance. So from there, the further potential CO2 reductions that we're working on.

is working on alternative raw materials, which have a lower CO2 footprint, and this will continue to drive the emissions down. And then going into the potential of using, for example, captured CO2 from industrial processes will sequester these carbon into a product that will be used in, in the build environment.

So Biomason will be able to potentially Gap, the U in the CCUS, which is carbon capture, use and storage. So we are trying to build that, uh, that gap in the, in the u. And the biggest barriers for the scaling is of course, a, a new process and a new technology that stems from biotech into an industrial process is always going to have barriers.

into scaling up. And the second large barrier, as I think many of these new technologies face, is market adoption. And as we, as you well mentioned it at the beginning of the podcast, the construction or the building material industry, the construction industry is very traditional and normed and is performance based.

And this is clear, right? We need buildings that perform to what is expected of them. But I would say that at this point, biomasin products are capable of performing. So we're not working on getting the scale and the product that performs consistently to the standards so that we have better acceptance from, from the market.

And that reduces the barriers to widespread adoption. Okay, great. Well, let's hope that that works. So Ash, in a related subject, the homes you're building today are made out of concrete, also light gauge steel. So how are you thinking about sustainability in Onx's homes? What are the things you're doing now? What are the things you're thinking about in the future?

Ash Bhardwaj: Yes. So, so Michael, we have a couple of approaches around that. First of all, 80 percent of the world is built with concrete. I mean, I'm not even talking about homes. I'm talking about, you know, even the commercial spaces as well and the tall buildings and roads and infrastructure stuff.

And what we are doing in Onx is we have our proprietary mixes. Okay, that we use. Okay, which helps to bind the concrete in a way that reduces the carbon footprint. So we have paddings around it. We have proprietary mixes, not only on doing the concrete portion of it, but also how we do the foundation, how we do, how we do the walls, how we do the stair, stair walls.

So these are all different kinds of mixes that we have. And we use it based on what would be the best use in the environment that we are building the homes in. Okay. So, uh, that's one. Number two is in homes, carbon footprint also rises through use of energy. And if you, if you make the homes, which are well insulated and can also, you know, make sure that can withstand any of the climate conditions.

Okay. Also helps in from the, From the carbon footprint side. For example, our homes are built to last for a hundred plus years. And as you know, there's a lot of things happening in the world on climate change where, you know, fire, blood, hurricanes, earthquakes, okay, that, that cause damages to the homes over a period of time.

And I mean, just to give you a stats, Michael, you know, a fire. In the United States, about 800, 000 homes built every year and fire or fire related damage is consumes about 340, 000 homes a year, okay. Which is like almost one third, I mean more than one third the number of homes get fire damage in some given way.

I'm not saying they completely burn out but also I mean like some portion of the homes could burn and stuff. So that's, that's the That's a huge number. So by building in with country that we're building, we're avoiding that fire damage to go away. We have less flood damage. We have a really good country.

We have, uh, less hurricane damage. Really good country. So, resilience is a big piece of resilience. Also, You know, if the building is more resilient, it contributes less to the carbon footprint in my opinion, because you don't have to keep building the same building again after, after it's been affected by the climate conditions.

Okay, that's one. The other thing I want to point out, Michael, is there are about 300 companies who are working on concrete, okay, to how to make that carbon neutral. Okay. And we participate with some of them, okay, in the sense that. We go on and, you know, McKinsey did a study on us, uh, how we are helping that industry.

At the same time, I was able to go and see some of these companies, what they're doing. And I believe that this, this carbon neutrality around, around the country is happening faster than we all predict. I mean, companies like Biomason, we are partnered with Biomason here as well around that said, we are, you know, we are a small investor in the company and also observing that and seeing where it's, where the technology is heading.

And my, and I personally believe there's a mandate by 2040 for, you know, carbon footprint to be reduced dramatically or zero carbon footprint. And I think it's going to happen faster than everything. Okay. So, so we are adopting all the newer technologies by investing in R and D from our side at the same time, investing and looking at the companies who are participating in that.

And there's a lot of work going on around that area. Also, within the company, Michael, we have systems in place that, for example, we're working on HVAC systems, which reduces energy usage in the home, that also contributes less carbon footprint. And, uh, you know, we just finished a McKinsey study where they said that we are about 20 percent less carbon than, than similar homes in the country.

And they are saying that in five years with our, how our HVAC And other things, recycled steel coming into the play that we believe that we 40 percent less carbon than than similar homes in the country. And the goal is as the new technology comes in, as the new mixes come in, as more companies like bio mason come, come up, okay, to be able to get rid of carbon footprint completely in the next 10, 15 years.

Michael Marks: Okay, great. Fascinating. There's going to be some relationship to those comments as we get into this next subject. The next subject is affordability. So I want to talk about housing affordability. It is one of the most discussed topics in many forums around the world. You know, the lack of affordability of housing.

There's a lot of issues around this that are worth talking about. Part of high home prices is a supply issue. Part of it's about rising costs of land, labor, and materials, which drives up new home prices. And of course, we're in a period of high mortgage as well. So a great deal of this is out of the control of any, any homeowner.

builder. But again, let me start with you, Ash. How does the factory approach help with affordability?

Ash Bhardwaj: Yes, Michael. Michael, there are, you know, a couple of things to do from, from that standpoint. One is, you know, homes is, uh, there's a price that you pay for the home when you buy the home. So that's upfront cost.

Okay. And then there's another cost, okay. Which is on a monthly basis. Okay. Your, what you're spending on the mortgages, what you're spending on insurance, what you're spending on maintenance of that. Okay. What is, what, what is your spend on, on keeping the upkeep of the home? Okay. So, And, and, and a lot of people focus on the first one, but forget that the second one is getting more and more important as we go forward.

And I'll give you examples why on the upfront costs. Okay. Let's talk about it. Okay. The land price is land price. Okay. It's a, it's a, it's a market driven pricing around that. So we buy the land and then we have to go and build homes on that. So what we are doing is, I mean, we've been in the business in the last 10 years, we've Uh, last two, three years, and, you know, last year, year, year and a half, we have delivered 600 homes and about, you know, 600 families are living in these homes as we speak and growing very rapidly around Florida and Texas as well.

So what we did in this, I mean, we are able to build a home approximately 20 percent less cheaper as compared to similar homes in a factory approach. And, and what, what we decided to do was instead of taking that, and we wanted to do the homes by saving that cost by giving more features in the home. Okay.

So we've went and focused on the areas that other people are cutting. Our competitors are cutting on the cost, okay, to save that cost. And what we did was we, whatever cost we save in the factory, we give the updates to the consumer, which are necessary upgrades. For example, the hurricane comes in, in Florida.

Hurricane window is an upgrade in Florida by our competitors. Whereas, For us, it's a standard, because if the hurricane is going to come, let's just make sure that there's a standardized, you know, hurricane impact windows on the home so that there's less damage to the home when the hurricane comes in.

And the other thing is, in a lot of these places, the homes, half the home gets built in concrete, for example, in Florida, and the other half gets built in wood. So what's the point when the hurricane comes and half the home is gone and only the rest half, which is the one floor is left. Okay. So that's the problem.

And what we are doing is we are building in the complete concrete to be able to withstand any hurricane, hurricane five winds. Okay. So that's in Florida. Okay. And again, concrete also doesn't get affected by fire as much as the wood does. A wooden home gets on fire in less than. 10 minutes. Okay. Whereas concrete home doesn't get damaged in a fire that easily.

So what we're doing, Michael, is whatever we saving in the cost of the factory, we are providing the upgrades to the consumer at the same price. So the market dictates what the price is on a particular home. Okay. And they are, you know, the governments are working on it. You know, the PPP projects, which, which help reduce the cost, but that, that is primarily driven by the government and the jurisdictions.

Because that has effect on land prices. The other piece that I want to address is on a monthly basis, the cost. Okay, on a monthly basis, like we talked about insurance. Insurance, just for people in this room as well, I'm sure we have all been affected by insurance costs. I mean, my insurance cost in my California home has tripled.

Okay. Last year and a half. And, and that's a problem. Okay. Because people are seeing the pinch. Okay. People are seeing where they were paying about, you know, thousand dollars or 2, 000 in insurance costs on an average size home has gone to about 5, 000. So what we are seeing in Onx that insurance companies are offering almost 50 percent savings on insurance.

Okay. Okay. As compared to similar size homes, which is, which saves about almost, you know, average home insurance costs in the United States about 24, 2, 500. And if it's half of that, it's like you save 400 a month. The second area is maintenance. Our homes are a hundred year plus. Okay. We have hardly have any maintenance issues on those that we have built.

And we don't expect any maintenance issues for those homes for a long period of time. So most of our competitors are ensuring the homes for first one year of what they manufacture, whereas three to five years, these homes are not gonna have any maintenance sources. But just to give you an average, about one and half to 3% of the cost off a home on a yearly basis is maintenance cost.

So if you buy a home of half a million or so, your average maintenance cost is gonna be anything

in our case. That cost almost negligible. So people can save a big piece of this in a third piece. We are working on electrical systems and HVAC systems in the home that reduces energy uses by almost 40%. And it's going to go even further up. So that's average energy bill in the country is about. 250, 300 a month.

And if you take half of it, it's gone. It's about almost 250 a month, which is, turns out to be on a yearly basis, about 2, 000. If you add all that up, this is substantial saving. We are talking about six to eight to 10, 000 worth of savings a year for the consumer, depending on what kind of a home they have.

Okay. And, and what size of the home they have. And that's what is we making as a primary goal. Resilience, Saving on maintenance, saving on insurance, and saving on energy systems. Okay. Those are the, those are the pillars on which we have defined what Onx is. And those are the areas we can affect the most, and that's where we are spending our energy and our time to make sure that the consumer understands that the total cost of acquisition is much lower over a period of a lifetime.

Okay. For example, you know, if you choose to save that money and pay for your mortgage early, your 30 year mortgage goes down to you paying your mortgage off in like 17, 18 years or less. Okay. Depending on if you take all the savings and try to pay the mortgage off, those are the things we are focused on.

And we are very, very happy that consumer is seeing that and what we are doing. And this is also about educating the consumer around this. So it's actually working out really well

Michael Marks: for us. Well, look, I mean, obviously it sounds fantastic. Why would anybody want to buy a home from anybody other than Onx? So that's great.

Ash Bhardwaj: That's not for the year 2050, Michael.

Michael Marks: Okay. Trevor, one of your applications, it's about real estate insights for forecasting demand and optimizing land buying. Is there any impact from any of that on affordability? Yeah,

Trevor Schick: I will, uh, I'll talk a little bit about where it is today. And then I want to tie into kind of Ashley's comments about where it can go.

So yeah, real estate insights is one of the, one of the modules we have inside of slate, you know, quickly we're, we're bringing in 70 plus data sources into the model using our AI to link all those data sources together. Which then allows us to understand what is the home pricing in the market? How many homes are being sold?

How long are they sitting on the market? And really able to look at all the big MSAs, the metropolitan areas of the U S and understand kind of where the best place to go start buying it. We then use our generative AI to then take that backwards look and forward forecast for the next five years. And so when we talk about affordability, as I said, part of it is the land buy.

And if I go and buy land today, that's ready to go, I'm really just paying about the same as everybody else, right? It's kind of a market out there and everyone comes in and bids. What we're trying to do is say, look out for five years and get in front of this. Where are those right places to be buying now that we can go get the land at a significant lower price.

And then by the time we get ready to build it, we're able to build it with a lower land cost on there. So I think that's important. That's important more to a company like Onx because they're able to get the land at a better cost. Then they can decide what they want to pass through. Or as Ash said, they can put better upgrades in because they're getting a lower cost base on the land.

So that's one piece of it. Where I think it gets more exciting. And I kind of loved Ash's comments about the insurance side of things because the next thing we're putting in. Into it is starting to look at, am I in a flood zone? Looking at the weather patterns that are coming through and starting to predict that going forward, because now what we can say is not only what's that land gonna cost, well, what's my insurance in those areas gonna start looking like because of flood insurance, because of fire insurance, all these other areas.

And now not only are we helping Onx by the land correctly, but their end user. We're able to start predicting where is that right place to buy land so that they get into an insurance model that's affordable to them. That's where it gets really exciting. And the last piece I'll put on top of that, and I talked about it a little bit earlier with the generative AI is as we're designing these homes on a great example, where our generative AI, you could.

Go and put in the location. You're going to build a home. It'll then do all the work of estimating of the scheduling of designing the home. So from a cost perspective, normally those are, those are tasks that takes people time and it takes money to go pay for those. We can simplify those down significantly, but then we can also look at things like maintenance that Ash was talking about, where do we see those maintenance issues, and then we can feed that back into the generative AI model.

So next time we go and design these homes, we're actually taking those maintenance issues out. And so now maybe going down half a percent, the next community building we can go down another half percent. And it allows us to get that machine learning that I talk about and build it back into those models, get a better model every single time. And then you're really getting the affordability side for your end customer, which at the end of the day is when people are paying the bills on these things.

Michael Marks: So Camillo, anything that Biomason adds to this affordability

Camilo Restrepo: discussion? Well, Michael, in terms of affordability, We're cost competitive to cement, and then we're looking for other alternative raw materials, which are going to drive the cost down.

And then with scale, that's also going to be something that's good. So we're, we're aiming at being not only good in terms of CO2 reductions and being alternative to cement, but also being lower in cost compared to cement. So that's where we're, we're working towards.

Michael Marks: Okay, super. I'm going to change the subject a little bit.

We've kind of all touched on this. You know, we, we are about innovation in this, in this podcast and it's us in general. Each of you has a very innovative product, which is different from, from what other people have. So the question for each of you, and we'll start with you, Camilla, is what are you doing from a marketing standpoint?

How are you telling your story? How do you get customers to pay attention to what you're doing when you're all small, innovative companies and you're competing with really big companies?

Camilo Restrepo: Let's start with you. Thank you, Michael. So first we're, we're going out there and telling the world what we do. Right.

And we've been doing that for a while, but we're going to start reaching out to different forums and publications and just showing how biomassive technology, the company is better and can perform better than, than cement. And I would say that. In terms of the way that we're approaching the market, since we already mentioned the construction industry is very traditional and I come from the construction industry, right?

I was an innovator in many of the things that I did during my previous 19 years in the cement industry, right? Including new processes and a lot of science within the production of cement. And the only way to approach a traditional industry is we have to get engineering compliance data and the practical form to the standards and norms, right?

That's how we get customer acceptance because in the case of the construction industry, seeing, believing, touching, and getting data is what actually is believing. So the first step to getting into the minds of. customers is, is data, right? It's performance. It's the 4, 000 PSI, which again, I think is, is very relevant from, uh, from Biomason, so we're just having the product installed, being able to see the compression, the flexural data breaks, the freestyle data, that's part of what, what we're doing, cause that's going to be the first step in getting into a consumer's mind to get them to make a decision in buying a Biomason and then get widespread adoption, and we all know the green only wins when green is bad.

better. And that's the key message is we have to outperform the products that are there. So we have to compete with cement in cost, in performance, and then, and of course, in usability as well. So that, that's what we're doing.

Michael Marks: Great. So Trevor, you you're competing with some pretty big names in your industry. How are you trying to stand out?

Trevor Schick: I think, you know, for us, the good news is, is people realize there's a problem out there, right? I mean, if you think about it right now, you know, rework alone on a job site causes a 15 percent of the cost, right? It causes 10 percent of the scheduled slips. And so people understand that there's a problem there and 52 percent of the reasons why there's rework because of poor data and bad communication.

And we're able to solve that problem. People are big model, though, we're not trying to come in and be a big replacement of all your systems. Like if I go into the biggest players out there and say, you need to rip out your scheduling tool and start using ours, I'm not going to win in the market. And so what we do is we go in and say, we can sit on top of this.

We can get you access to your data. We can get you conversational AI that allows you just to really. You know, talk to this system and get information back without even knowing where that data is coming from or what system. When people start kind of getting their head around that and seeing the tool in action, it's actually not a hard sell.

I say to people, if I have a conversation with them, I can guarantee they're going to want a demo at the end of it. Now, at the end of the day, the bottle's got to work. I'm going to prove that it's value add to them, but it becomes a pretty easy discussion to have with people. If this is what we can add, and then it gets interesting because you can have the conversation of, well, I do have a scheduling tool.

So why don't you just start looking at my scheduling tool? I do have RFIs. We can look at these. And so we play very much kind of land and expand platform, which is going to solve their problem. And then we believe we can solve a lot more of them, but really going hard at that, uh, that core problem, which is the rework and not having.

Michael Marks: All right. How about you Ash? You're also in a market with really big companies that everybody's heard of and they haven't heard of you. So how do you stand out?

Ash Bhardwaj: Yeah. So Michael, that's a, that's a really good question because you know, when we started the company, there were a lot of dead bodies in the industry.

Okay. So. When, when we started, we would say another tech construction company, right? So what we did was we said, we're going to lay low a little bit and just prove it to ourselves. So the first year was just to build the factory, prove it to ourselves, get the models, right. You know, once we started selling to the consumer, and in fact, the first area that we went was, was speed.

We were leading with the, the speed with which we can build the homes. less than 30 days. And that was actually worked really well from the consumer standpoint. Okay. In the sense that they got it that, you know, they have to wait for a year and a half to get the homes and here with us, they can get it for, for a shorter period of time.

But we kept it on the radar just because we want to prove it to ourselves. And once we had proved it to ourselves, when we opened up our factories to the business press, to outside world, and we just got an overwhelming reception around that. And at the same time, the trends, In the last couple of years has actually helped tell the story because it proved that not only the speed is important but also to be able to save the consumer on a monthly basis, to have a resilient story, to be resilient homes, to be able to withstand hurricanes, fire, earthquakes, and, and insurance companies who are pulling out of some of the regions for various very reasons, which But by the way, is always a big news on wall street or any major publication these days.

And we read it on a weekly basis and certainly that presence, certainly that interest is people are coming to us and saying, you know, tell us your story, how you're able to achieve that. So the good news is what we start off as a speed to our advantage. Okay, that stayed with us. But at the same time, the other trends that happen, you know, of resilience and of climate change and of saving the consumer on a monthly basis on the bills is a story that actually is resonating with the world as well as with our consumers.

We are a consumer company that says that our customers are buying other homes. So the way we, the way we are selling is completely different than, than our traditional home sales. people. Okay. Because our home sales people are basically our ambassadors to when the consumer comes in. So we've been telling our story to the, to the world.

We have been doing on a regional basis, Michael, primarily in Florida, now in Texas. And pretty soon, you know, uh, our aspirations are to be, to be national builder and maybe international builder at some point in time over here. And we're going to go on a national scale. And I think we have a lot of interest from all the various publications who are ready to cover us.

So we are just doing it on a very planned basis.

Michael Marks: Well, the one thing I can say, I mean, we look at lots of companies, as you all know, and all three of you have companies that, that have, you know, demand for your products and, and are growing, you know, quickly, which is not the case with all innovative companies.

So with that, I'm going to get to the final question and just a bit of a wacky one. But, you know, Technology is everywhere. Everybody's talking about it. You know, the technology companies, the most highly valued in the stock market, and everybody's talking about AI and all the things we kind of wandered around.

So just a wild one. Let's just hear what you think technology, what kind of an impact is technology going to have on construction? If you go out another 20 or 30 years, what might it look like? Start with you, Camilla. So

Camilo Restrepo: I think technology is definitely going to drive a lot in the development of construction, Michael.

I would say that in BioNation, technology is going to help us and maybe the other cement, uh, green cement companies in the, uh, industry solve the cement industry, right? It, it's technology, it's AI, it's other sources of, uh, of getting the pieces of the chemistry together to be able to produce something that does the job of cement, but does not have the CO2 emissions that are associated to it.

Right. So I think that that's where we're headed towards. I would also have a, a prediction of where technology is going to take us. Right. And then I think Trevor is, is touching into it. And of course, Ash is also working on it. I'm going to say most, if not all, the cement is not going to be used for ready mix.

It's going to be used for, uh, precast. So there's going to be a lot of, uh, transfer into precast into the future. And this is industrialization is a, a must for cost, speed. And efficiency logistics of house building or any other commercial building as well. And then my last prediction would be all of the cement is going to be a CO2 freeze and a permanent carbon sink.

And this is where bio mason and bio cement comes in, right? I think we're going to be changing the, the construction industry, uh, as we know it and we're making it happen.

Trevor Schick: So I, I, I'm going to kind of link all three of us together here because I actually, um, Anybody who followed my past, I'm a materials guy by trade.

And so I am very bullish on the advanced materials that are coming through in construction right now. And I say that because historically, anybody who asks me, I say, making new advanced materials for construction is a horrible idea because it's so hard to get adopted, right? And so you got a great idea, but you got to get a general contractor accepted, a designer to accept it, a developer to accept it.

All these different parties have. Read to it. And by the time they all agree to it, it never happens. So they build one building and it doesn't work. And so I actually think with companies like that Ash is building right now, they're the developer, they're the engineer, they're the architect, they're the builder.

And so suddenly when a great idea like Biomason comes along, Biomason's able to go in and say, guess what? Let's look at the properties. And as long as Onx agrees, They're all those people, so they don't need to get everyone on board on the product. And then you take something like Slate and the generator of AI, put it into Asha's model and say, I now want to go, you know, build homes in these markets.

It now allows you to build the right home for that market, right? The way you build a home in Texas because of the heat and potential of hurricane or sorry about tornado is much different than what you need in Miami. And so you need to optimize the materials for the markets you're in to drive down maintenance, to drive down insurance costs.

All the things we talked about earlier. And you really start getting to a model where Onx really drives it tools like slate allow you to really continue to optimize and, and, you know, by 2050, we'll be so good at this. It will be down to like, you know, the lowest insurance possible by market. And then you just need the advanced biomaterials.

You need things like translucent, um, aluminum. You need things like the self healing concrete, all these things today that when you look around and you see cracks in concrete or bridges need to be replaced, if we can make those last a hundred years, instead of 50 years. It just changes dynamic both from a cost perspective, but also from an environmental perspective.

So I actually think what we're going to see is really a taking off of the material side of the business, but it needs drivers like Onx , it needs drivers like Biomason to make this happen. And then I'll bring it all together with Slate to give you the best products on the market. So that's how I see it from that point of view.

Michael Marks: All right. Did they leave anything for you, Ash?

‍Ash Bhardwaj: Yeah. So Michael, I'm a consumer guy because I'm selling to consumers. So I'm going to take the consumer view a little bit on this one. Okay. First of all, I completely agree with Trevor and Camilo what they said. Okay. I mean, I think Zero carbon and net zero is going to happen in the next 10 to 15 years.

So it's not a 2050 issue. I think it's 2035 or 2040. We're going to be there on that. Now. So, so from technology standpoint, you know, we will get there and, and everybody is working on it to get to where we need to get to. Okay. But adoption of that is like Trevor said, uh, companies like us, companies like, uh, you know, uh, uh, biomass.

And, and, and Slate are going to make, uh, you know, the future of it happen faster than, than anybody else can. Okay, that's fine. Now, from a consumer standpoint, okay, from a consumer standpoint, you know, uh, you know, we've been in the business three years. Consumer taste has already changed. Okay, let me describe you how.

Okay, I mean, look at all the neighborhood that you guys are staying. Anytime a new home is built, It's not getting built in a traditional way. It's going to get built in a more modern or transitional way, you know, with, with, with better lighting systems, with better windows, with better, you know, uh, uh, uh, you know, the, the, the ceiling high, okay, with the COVID happening in post COVID people want more space for office work and, and, and in their, in their homes.

So, you know, we, we have seen this transition already happening in the last three years. So what's going to happen in 2050? I think. The world is going to be very different in 2015. Okay. I think there won't be any garages because you won't need cars because I will take you and take you somewhere else.

Okay. You will need a space to have a Amazon delivery happen through some chopper coming in, dropping it on your drone, coming in, dropping in safely. So it doesn't get stolen in, in some area at your home. Okay. So that has to get designed in by that time or, or even more. Okay. And I think simplicity is gonna rule the world, okay.

In the sense that make this, make the life simple for a consumer and more efficient. Okay. You know, the homes, I'll just give example. The home screens. The computer might be the computers, okay? In the sense that you just actively work with that and talk to that, and you get efficiencies and everything that you desire.

So. These are the things I think consumers are going to drive it to, okay, and, you know, in, in all next. That's what we are looking at to drive it to. Okay. That's, that's, we want to be the catalyst to drive it to where it is. Okay. And to answer your question, Michael, which I didn't answer yet, that is, I see, uh, Onx homes to be the future and bought by everybody by that timeframe.

I mean, that's our, That's our goal. And, uh, so Onx and Onx like, I should say, I mean, I should not be that cocky about it, but Onx and Onx is the future.

Michael Marks: Well, thanks for all of those insights. Look, this has been another fascinating, wide ranging discussion. I'm the lucky one here when I do these podcasts, cause I learned so much from listening to these innovative leaders and I hope the listeners.

Got a lot out of it. So let me, once again, thank our guests, Ash Bardwaj, Trevor Schick, and Camilo Restrepo. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been fascinating. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for tuning into the Tech Surge podcast from Celesta Capital. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to share it, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.

We'll be back every two weeks with more insights and discussions of all things deep tech.

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