instead of reinventing the wheel, only do the creative part where it's needed.
Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host Ryan Willard. And it is my pleasure to introduce our esteemed guest today, Natalia a luminary figure in the realm of design and technology as the co founder of archy. The Thalia embodies a profound vision that reshaped conventional boundaries at the nexus of architecture and technology. Her relentless commitment to design excellent propels Archies mission to redefine the very fabric of architectural creation, transitioning from the traditional paradigms of architecture. The Thalia now spearheads a tech driven venture, pioneering innovation every turn at the forefront of her endeavors, lies the seamless integration of AI into architectural practice. revolutionising how we harness project data. Through her pioneering work, she orchestrates the convergence of artificial intelligence, and architectural design, rendering project information more accessible and actionable than ever before. In this episode, we talk about Natalia is own architectural journey, her career as an architect, and now a new venture as an entrepreneur and startup founder. We also talk about many of the mistakes and the challenges that architects face in their businesses, and why the integration and acceptance and utilization of artificial intelligence is incredibly important in being able to run a powerful architecture practice in the future. We also look at how AI is going to be used. And Natalia has beta group testing that she's currently doing with Aki and the wisdom hub that they are developing. So this is a really fascinating episode. If you want to be part of an Italian group, which she talks about in the episode, you can look through the podcast information and get in contact with her through there. So sit back, relax and enjoy. Natalia Bucha ever.
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Welcome to the Business of Architecture. How are you?
I'm great, thank you for having me. Absolute pleasure. And
I'm very excited to be speaking with you. You've had a very interesting and unusual career path. You're an artist and architect, a place maker, a startup founder, your career has taken you in many different directions and all of all of them in that kind of domain of architecture and supporting and serving the architecture industry. And I think today we're going to focus on your your most current endeavor, which is archy. Digital, and we're talking a little bit about what that is as a as a startup and as a kind of platform for institutional knowledge for architecture practices. So it's a pretty, quite an important piece of kit, or kind of idea that I think a lot of architectural practices are kind of struggling with problems where this platform could be a quite powerful solution to but let me first ask you So, how did your How did? How did arkivdigital come about? And how did your career start to take such a interesting shape? And
great question. You know, it's all about storytelling. Right? Exactly. I actually started architecture school pretty early, I was only 16 years old. And 16. Yes, I know, went to
art school, they let you in so early. So yeah.
So you know, we finish high school earlier. So I'm originally from Russia, we graduate when we were 17. But because I did not go to any art school when I was a teenager or child. Basically, they require you to pass very rigorous exams. And in order for me to pass these exams, I need to take a prep course. But that prep course was taught by university professors, it was pretty heavy load, I was spending about nine to 12 hours every week at the uni. And it would be evening classes where we would get to drawing to composition, you know, hand drafting, kind of cat style, but by hand, and that will be preparation for the exam. So I got to introduce to the school where I eventually studied for many years, very early. And you know, it's interesting, because it's a very relevant question for me, because as a person, at that time, I was studying Japanese actually went and study in Japan, I was studying English. And, you know, my family, none of them are architects. They wanted me to go to, you know, economic studies, they wanted me to go to foreign affairs, they wanted me to study, you know, I guess, again, Eastern cultures, that's hence the Japanese. And this architecture came out of nowhere, and at first was not received really well. Because design was seen as something not as fundamental. And then later on, when I elaborated and said, I want to study architecture, that kind of was recent better. But at the same time, you know, I was always wondering, Why did I come around architecture, what was the kind of the colon here, and funnily enough, recently, I was talking to my grandmother. And she told me a story that when I was a child, she would tell me that she wanted to go to architecture. And that was kind of her unfulfilled dream, which I totally forgot about. And she told me that when I was a baby, between, you know, five, like, maybe around that age, she would constantly talk to me about architecture about buildings. And I don't remember any of that. But I realized that on a certain level, maybe she programmed programmed me a little bit. And she kind of plays that thought in my head, then when I was about 1516, that kind of all of a sudden, that thought emerged, again, seems like out of nowhere, but I think now after this conversation, I have a bit more kind of understanding where this coming from. So very
interesting, I know that you spent some time in Spain, you're currently in Toronto, you've done some, you've spent quite a significant amount of time as well in the US. And initially, there was an interest in studying Eastern cultures, this is quite a unique global perspective on the world of architecture. How has how has that kind of global perspective shaped some of the choices that you're you've made in your career now?
Excellent question actually even come into today's date. I think that what what I'm working on right now, I came to realization about certain problems in the practice by actually spanning myself almost cross countries and cross practices and cross standards, right? And kind of seeing this repetitive issues that we as architects dealing with no matter where we are in the world. And I think that part of the thesis that we are exploring today, and what we're working on, is that that problem is universal. We're not talking about Natalia problem or you know, architects and I know, we are talking about some fundamental issues about Business of Architecture, that sometimes we fail to recognize, unfortunately. So
your career then you've trained studied as an architect, you've worked as an architect, in your own practice, you've worked for other people's practice. Can you just give me a little bit of a kind of understanding of your key insights from being a practicing architect? And and again, the kind of the context for some of these the kinds of innovations that you're part of so I've
been here in Canada for past 10 years. My education is coming from Russia as a bachelor degree of architecture and urbanism then I studied across unit between Russian school and schooling UK actually, London Metropolitan University. Okay, great. And I graduated with architecture and urbanism from two countries masters, and then essentially, I landed in Toronto, and I did Old graduate studies. And that's where the realization kicked in, because I was studying construction management. And we would only talk about business, I was always inclined into design heavily. But I was always interested in tech, and how things come together. But while going through architecture school, I could never find, you know, outlet of those things, those things because, you know, we would never talk about tech, because everything's kind of self taught, you know, we want to do things in Revit 3ds Max, right now, you have to go and learn it yourself. Now, I'm fully self taught and all the tech that I know today. And the same about business, right? Like, we never talk about price, we never talk about budget. And that's, again, going back to being in multiple countries. And it's the same problem, it's universal, we have a luxury of designing for, you know, between five to eight years, depending on the length of your education, in this complete isolation, and this, you know, imaginary universe. And then by the time we arrive to practice the reality hits, so for me studying a bit of a construction management and getting this business certificate degree, I realized that there's a lot of things that are missing. So when I started working for multiple firms, I was very fortunate to meet great people and great mentors, but I always felt like there was something missing that piece where I can make my own decisions where I can make money, that's what I was seeking. So design was there, you know, the nice projects, they were also kind of, like, I had a variety of technologies in my portfolio. So it was all there. But at the same time, I was felt like, you know, this decision that's coming from another person felt heavy on me. So that's how through, you know, try and moving between firms and moving between typologies, I did everything from residential to healthcare, you know, very deep and clinical planning. And then I couldn't see myself there. So essentially, once I started one practice, I was feeling way better in terms of decision making. And, you know, it was heavy responsibility. And I'm the sole founder in my architecture practice. So it was definitely a lot to take on. But at the same time, I felt that I can be in control on my own decisions, and responsible for them at the same time. So that was a good part. At the same time. The second piece of that equation was the scalability issue, I very quickly realized that, you know, for me to grow architecture practice, which is, you know, quite a legacy profession, right? I need to either hire more people take on more projects, and basically, event, eventually, I'm going to be selling my hours for money, right? Whether you on a fixed fee or an hourly fee, at the end of the day. That's kind of what you do, right? And then I realized that the scale and the speed, and kind of enablement, for me is not there. So that's how I turned to tech. And that's how I started exploring, how can we create this combination of this pure design or art and aesthetics that we are so driven by, and this technology technological piece that is available for us today, that unfortunately, architects are not using and not leveraging in their day to day practice. And essentially, it now I'm only focusing on the tech simply because, you know, startup journey requires full attention. But as an end goal, I see myself being in this extremely technically established firm, where you can, you know, streamline maybe business processes, you can streamline proposal process processes. And as a result, that design as well, to a certain extent.
Interesting, interesting that you say that about the kind of relationship that architects often have of technology and how we're not necessarily kind of taking advantage of what's there. And this, this fascinates me, actually, because at university, I've always found that this is one of the great things that happens in university is that there is often a romance of architects and technology, and we see quite a lot of interesting speculation, experimentation, pushing the envelope, people building wild and weird imaginative things. And then in practice, something happens. And we kind of go backwards. And you know, I often jokingly say to many of the clients that we work with, or architects that I speak with, that when somebody sets up their own practice, that they that's normally the point where they stop learning anything new about technology. And we'll see architecture practices who they're using Vectorworks, for example, because we had somebody we had Jonathan Reeves recently kind of training people on Vectorworks and we'll often see people using Vectorworks, but from 2012, and they're using the same workflow that they used in 2012, then they're using four or five different bits of software. They're not utilizing the 3d capabilities of the software that they're paying 1000s of dollars or pounds for, and it becomes quite, sort of regressive. So, tell me a little bit about, and I appreciate as well, what you're saying of the the kind of scope to make an impact and scale that there's that you've that you found more options or possibility in the world of tech. Is that right? Is that what you're saying? Yeah.
And then when I say scalability, I'm not necessarily talking about, you know, growing this massive international firm. What I'm trying to basically tackle here is that we don't realize that the technology today gives us an opportunity to be very small practice and very efficient one, and design in different magnitude. And again, I'm not taking, I'm not talking about taking on more projects, but rather streamline this process, the workflow, right exactly what you're talking about. Because, as we know, from Sam Altman, who is the CEO of open AI, he recently said, and I truly believe in that, that, in the recent coming years, we will see a $1 billion company which has one employee. And that's essentially the type of mentality that I'm trying to kind of wrap around my head here, where we are smaller practice on any project with like, small or large, if it's a small project, we can apply so many details and be so in control of this process. And if we willing to take a large competition, we also are able to do that. But we're able to do that not because everyone, everyone now sleeps in office 24/7. But we're able to do that because our processes are so robust that nothing can break them.
That's just blown my mind that quote, you just use the from Sam Altman that, that in the future, we'll be looking at organizations that have one employee, and the rest is completely leveraged through technology. And these businesses will be able to be having revenues of a billion dollars or more, that's, that's really quite inspiring, actually, for, for an architecture practice, to just to start to recognize what could be possible, and how much fat there probably is in their existing workflows. And we often use a number of business architecture like a benchmarking number, which is the amount of net operating revenue, or net fee income per full time equivalent employee in the business. So it was basically the amount of money that businesses bring in per full time employee. And that's a very interesting ratio, because we often see certainly with some of the very design focused organizations is that they've got large teams of people doing a lot of doing a huge amount of work. But it means that there's a kind of cap or a struggle to be able to charge higher fees, and we get this kind of implosion of a business. That's, that's, that's very, very difficult. So yeah, maybe you could talk a little bit about about that, and and how it's kind of informed some of your decisions. And
now I think that I just want to echo what you're saying, because I think that inherently being the profession, there is not very high margin, high earnings kind of high efficiency. I think when I hear that people tell me, No, we don't have a problem, we just do things like that like this, like we did 10 years ago. And I'm like, this is actually what the problem is, because you think that there is no problem, that everything is perfect. So there is a bit of a this kind of egocentric attitude that, you know, we know better, because we've went through this fundamental education, and I understand that certain merit. And we do study pretty hard. And, you know, no matter which country I was at, I was studying, maybe two, three times harder than my other friends who went to law school, you know, history, any other profession, right. But at the same time, I think that we don't have a luxury of chicken of sitting around and just keep repeating what we're doing. Because we're going to be left out, we're going to be left out in our own profession. And we're going to be left out as an industry, we will not be able to apply our skill and knowledge that we gained through this years of education, simply because we were not able to recognize that things are changing. And instead of kind of looking in and on the focus on yourself, you need to take all this learnings and be able to look out and be able to be open for these innovations and for those implementations in your practice. Because I think that when I hear the firm's break Even or they even kind of operate in a loss. And then they don't tell. And then they tell me no, we don't have a problem with efficiency, we don't have a problem with the server, we don't have a problem with our standards. It's just been kind of numb to what you have into your day to day. And it's very unfortunate. It really
is. And I find it amazing actually, that often, I'll have come across businesses that are in the architecture space, their, let's say, their home design companies, but they're not owned or operated by an architect. And I'll give you an example. A few years ago, we had a client who came to us who had already made a lot of money in tech. And they had sold, some kind of software company decided that their next foray was to be in architecture. And I find this interesting because there's a number of people that I'm coming across, who are starting to see the architecture space, as having a lot of potential and possibility as a good solid business, but they're not architects. And so he he had come in, and he had developed a business, he'd written a piece of software, which was, which at this point was about 25 years old. And it was an ugly looking piece of software. But what it did was it allowed him to go in and interview a client, and basically type in some numbers. And this piece of software would spit out a space plan. And then he had a piece of another piece of software that basically translated that space plan into some CAD drawings. And he had maybe 2000, pre made, draw, like an archive of ready made drawings. And it was very, very easy for him to kind of create a full set of drawing plans and then sell them to developers. He was very selective, he found a like a niche somewhere in I think it was Texas they were operating in, and with a team of maybe it was, I think it was three people, and they were both his children. So they were kind of working half time. And he was bringing in over a million dollars a year. And it was fascinating, because it was wiping the floor with like, financially, in terms of what all the other architecture practices, were the kind of thing that I'll often see. But that's leveraging technology. And it's interesting that it took someone who was kind of an outsider, to architecture to start seeing that. And if as architects don't, don't do this, don't embrace what's possible, we're gonna, we're gonna get ourselves into trouble.
And you know, I have multiple comments here, a lot of things that you said, really resonates with me, because so first of all, today, my co founder is a software engineer. So looking from a lens, from a very kind of new profession compared to architecture and how things are done in a completely different way. One of the examples would be when architects receive a project, and they send the proposal, you know, the scope is this big. And then during the duration of the project, typically, it kind of expands and sometimes explodes. And scope creep is real thing, which is not what architects are good at. And the software engineers, they work in a way where they start with a large scope, then they time bounded, and then they try to substract it, to get to the essence of it and deliver the results rather than a drawing package or, you know, something that they produced. This is just one example of how now, this multidisciplinary team that we are in trying to kind of balance between the knowledge that we know about the industry coming from my side, and then the software engineering knowledge, but at the same time trying to level it trying to find this common ground with first of all this wealth of knowledge and architect architecture. And second of all, super rigorous framework and this technical, when I say technical, I don't mean code, I mean, technical frameworks, that help build this, you know, mega companies and run them, like have them run as a machine. Right? Just one piece of it. And then in terms of what you said about this developer person, and you know, kind of running this as an outsider from the not coming from the industry, right? And destructors it actually doesn't surprise me. And that is why now partner was a software engineer, I would never choose otherwise. Because I think that when I when we speak with architects and you know, as in the realm of our startup today, we interview hundreds of people and I still do discovery calls, you know, every day just because the the knowledge is always there. I think what I hear a lot is architects argue that all the projects are unique. And when I tell them, we are building this corporate wisdom hub where you don't need to redraw something that you created in the past? And you can just go ask this all know it all person, this kind of machine? How have we done this? How did we do it and have a conversation with it, sometimes copying details, sometimes just looking at the details, they tell me, you know, that's not going to work because every project is unique. But I'll actually challenge that. And I think this is one of the problems that as a profession we probably struggling with. Because it is, it's simply not true. Not every project is unique. And even if it's unique, you will still have some commonalities, you will still have barrier free washrooms, you'll still have grab bars, you will still have foundation details, there's probably not going to be very unique, but we fail to recognize it. Right?
That is so so so key. And it's often a very common myth in architecture that every project is like completely unique. And it's a bit of a late, it's a bit of a lazy excuse that makes that in the end isn't really not that lazy. Because it makes so much more work for the architect. Yes. So, so very interesting. So perhaps we could talk a little bit now about arkivdigital. And, and what it what exactly is, and what are the some what are some of the problems that it's looking to solve for practices and the industry. And then perhaps we could talk a little bit about, you know, the process that you've gone through and actually creating this organization, and some of the challenging challenges and successes that you've had so far.
Sounds good. So I think, for me, going through, again, multiple practices, different size of practice, everything from four people to 250 people over four cities, I could see the same problem of architects who are individual contributors to let's say, whether they're new hires, or they've been in the firm for a couple of years, already, I've been so many times in the situation where I'm sitting my desk, I have a task that I need to complete in a certain timeframe. And I would know, I would have no resources for me available, you know, the only resource that would be my either project manager, my principal, or my direct fear on the same project, right. And then I would notice that, you know, I asked principal for reference, and then principal would spit out something super quickly on their way to the meeting or something. And they would say, just go look at this address, or project number, and they will tell you something that you not necessarily can just take as a data and input, you have to now go and search and you can't find that you go talk to another person. And then that person talks to another person. And then, you know, in some instances, it would even go to like accountant, because they couldn't retrieve the project number, they know the address, but they don't remember the project number. But on the server, it's all coded so you don't have the project names. So codes. So you know, 10, people after you end up with it, who now go to archive server, and it's only read it read only. So now they have to retrieve it from there. And, you know, days after, and we just looking for one reference. And by the time you arrive to this reference principle, just blanked and it was completely different thing. And that happens so many times. And like just looking at this as inefficiencies that everybody just kind of running around. And if we have already quite low profit margin, right, like if we want a fixed fee, we have our salary, we have our overhead, then we have a profit, right. So by the time we are running around, if you imagine this is a bar, that profits just getting squeezed, and it just keeps getting squeezed to the point where there is no profit left. And then now you start eating into your overhead. And we just started the project, we haven't arrived to the middle or towards the end, what ends up happening is that by the time you and your construction documents are close to construction, there's no fee left. And that's where everyone starts, like pressuring Stan over time, you know, running low on resources, like pulling more people into the team. And essentially, the quality suffers, right. And then we arrive to construction sites and pardon my English but look like idiots, because we just, we just didn't have so because we don't know how to draw it. We just didn't have time. And we didn't think ahead, what might happen if we're going to be trying to think that everything is drawn from zero or trying to you know, spend too much time upfront just to gather the data. So after seeing this problem, I spoke to maybe 50 to 60 Architects very early on and 90% of them told me themselves without me asking. So always when I do discovery calls, I try to not ask their questions. It's like what is the worst part of your day? What you struggled if you ever quit your job? Why was it and 90% of the people told Hold me, it was because I was sitting at my desk, I have nothing available to me. I know for a fact we draw it at least five times. And I will try to draw this concrete curb detail souls soul extractive type of work. And no one would be there for me. And this issue multiplies. When you think about new hires, people who just come in out of university who sometimes are not confident, to ask the question, they would feel like they're gonna lose their job. When we talk about newcomers. Like for example, in Canada, we have so many immigrants who are coming from different countries, and they're trained architects, but they're not necessarily know all the details of all the language or the application materials and methods of care of country here how it's done, right? And you end up in this loop, where everyone knows this knowledge exists. No one knows where it is, and are just running around and like trying to figure it out. And the worst part of this, it's always done ad hoc, what is the value of hiring an architecture firm that existed for 60 years? If every time they start a project, they do everything, like for the first time, then you might as well just hire start a one person team? Like, what are we paying for as a client hiring this established practice is already established knowledge is just in once person had. That's
pretty, very, very interesting. And, you know, the assumption would be from a client's perspective that they were, you know, getting a high level of experience or expertise on a project. And, you know, sometimes the reality of it is, when you're, when you're building these teams out on a practice that you're, you're using people who don't have that experience on it. And yes, and it's quite right as well, that it culturally, in architecture, this is all deemed totally acceptable. I mean, even the experience of setting up your own practice. And I know from my own my own kind of personal experience, I was kind of number one, there was a big kind of shock and horror, at the lack of actual core construction knowledge and science that I just did not know, and had not been exposed to during my time at university, which is a whole other conversation about that. But it you know, and, you know, I, when I left university, I went to work in big large firms, like Rogers, Grimshaw amazing places, but I didn't really know how a brick wall went together, I didn't really know anything about insulation, I didn't know anything about, you know, waterproofing and all these sorts of basic construction details that when you set up on your own business, and, you know, certainly a young small practice, the first port of call normally is residential, that there weren't any resources available for this kind of, like, you know, where all these details kept, you know, there are, you know, there aren't kind of websites or collections, but from other architects or, you know, I wanted to be able to see the details drawn from other other projects, you have to, you know, you can get them. But I was often finding myself, asking other architects for their details, or for examples of drawings and kind of starting to build up my own libraries, and was kind of just kind of shocked that this wasn't an open source type of resource that was more widely available, and the amount of, you know, the, the amount of kind of learning or reinvention that was that was needed to unpick a lot of these sorts of things. Whilst it was, in a way, kind of good for my own development as an architect. It it didn't need to be that mysterious. And yes, I can see this happening in lots of practices, where that that information, just where is it? Where where is it being held inside of the business?
And very good point. And I think, to build on that conversation about the historically low kind of lower margin industry, right, if we compare for example for was tech or even other some other industries, right? I don't, again, I don't think we have the luxury of even reinventing those details. It's almost like in my head by default, if we exist in the practice, we are talking about mentorship, we are talking about collecting knowledge, we are talking about building fundamentals and then building on top of them. We don't have time or space to not be using this details or not be using this information. And it's almost like we are robbing ourselves of this time, right? Because if you done a template if you preset something, the next time you're going to engage with the new client, you're going to save this time that you're going to put into profit the unit you're going to hopefully either grow your business or start an adventure as a like experimental Studio. or whatever, maybe you go home earlier. Also good. You know, some architects, like majority of the artists are really guilty of, you know, not taking care of themselves. That's that's a completely different conversation as well. But I think that for us building this mind map, building this continuity in your practice, instead of reinventing the wheel, only do the creative part where it's needed. If the machine can suggest you a detail, and bring you to 50%, and then you can take it from 50 to 100. Why not? If we know the tools today, can be trained to a level of sophistication where the tool can tell you, it's a two bedroom apartment because they're too bad. It's a powder room, because it's only a sink and a toilet, there is no bath. If it can tell you it's a terrace versus balcony, because terrace has a different hatch unit. Why are we not using it? And it's not technologically I can hear a lot of architects tell me, it's not possible. I'm like, There's a software engineer sitting next to me, let him worry about it. Just the fact that people are not willing to open their mind. And that's why kinda we're looking for this early adopters. And there's people who are truly want to innovate in their practice, not just to say on their website that they are innovating, but actually dedicate time and resources and part of their research and firm to this innovation, and stand by it because they see a bigger future for the profession. And that's very challenging, because and I ask myself this question, almost every day, we are our as a creative profession, we are so good. Taking a napkin and drawing a 50 story building and imagining the lobby, the common areas, how the you know, the elevator lobby will look like the rooftop all of these things right in our head carrying this heavy load. But then when it comes to something as simple as business frameworks, knowledge transfer, imagining like this, for example, the software that we're building can exist, we hit a bit of a wall, because I don't know why it happens, because we are technologically challenged, or because we are so wrapped up and there's so much responsibility on our shoulders, that we are not able to kind of open ourselves up to this greater invent adventure. Right? So
it's, it's so it's so so interesting. And, you know, for architects or smart people, as well, right, it's a very intelligent profession, where people with a lot of, you know, analytical skills and technical skills and ability to synthesize complex ideas and reside in the unknown, you know, and that that's, that's all of this, this kind of mental thinking discipline is, is it's very intellectual. And very, it's hard, it's hard to kind of craft it, but then the lack of thinking about the production of architecture, or the business aspects of it, or how this type of technology can be, can be implemented as just, it is it's quite baffling. But on the other on the other hand of this, one thing I would kind of say is that part of it is like, it's almost like a mindset problem, or a cultural problem that the industry has. And just yesterday, I was talking to somebody, and we were talking about b2b Corp. and and they were, you know, was trying to get some reports from them to show the finances that we could look through, Oh, I haven't got that sorted out yet. I'm gonna sit down at the weekend and figure it and figure it out. And, and my first question was, like, Well, why don't you just hire, why don't you just get the pay, pay for some training or hire like an implementer, to come in and sort out the BQE core for you and get it set up. And their initial response was like, I don't know, I'm really good at this kind of stuff. And I'll sit down and figure it out. And I was like, I know that you can figure it out. And that you're smart, and you will be able to figure it out. And you'd better do a good job. But you've got 200 Other things to do. And this is not going to get done. And this is the world of the architect is almost like the the challenge is being talented and smart. Whereas an entrepreneur who comes in who doesn't know anything about architecture, they have to hire expertise, they have to figure out a way of getting expertise working to deliver something with a limited kind of pool of resource as well. Whereas the architect will try and do everything themselves and solve it. And often they can solve things and do things very well. But they can only do one of the 200 that's needed. Yeah. And then the business starts to sink
that resonates with me so much because as part of our journey, building the software, we also hear a lot from pupils, we already have Revit library, or we are currently building our own intranet or catalog or like we have this 1000 projects that now I'm going to put in PDF, and it's going to be my guide. And I actually argue that they should do that, because they don't have time or resources like exactly, you're saying, you are not able to run your software engineering team inside of your practice. And even if you hire software engineers, as an architect, do you know how they can deliver the result? Do you know what frameworks to apply, to help them to help you. So essentially, what we see in is that when someone comes from the team to work on a template, or you know, to catalog, the project, catalog, the knowledge, they work there for maybe a couple of months, and then very quickly the deadline hits, and all the resources being pulled from those activities, templating library, and then they just been thrown again on the deadline, and then these people never go back and continue their work. So you know, with our key, we essentially offer this service where we help you just identify what you already have. And not only identify, but catalog it, but don't catalog it manually, like a lot of people do today, catalog it with the technology, if we're able to train the machine to recognize architectural patterns on every stage of design. And then we can quickly search for those assets in our own internal database. Why are we not doing it? If I have drawn 10, multi unit residential buildings, and all of them are in the same location? And all of them would have one bedroom? Maybe 70% of the building? Would that would be the scope to why do I need to draw this floorplan every time and I hear that they are people who spent four to five months to draw all the units in a condo. And this just blows my mind. Because, yes, they're going to be some customization. Yes, they're going to be shaft, yes, the core is going to look a little bit different. But 80% of the time, we can just do fit it, we can do the Fit end of this unit super quickly. And the same applies to details. The same applies to graphics. The same applies to specification. The same applies to sometimes even your legends and some other pieces, right? Because people reinvent the wheel all the time at all stages, simply because when they need to draw something super quickly, there is no way for them to find it super quickly. Wow.
I mean, the the the kind of possibilities here of having a intelligent, trained, just like a decent curation system. I know there's a lot of architects at the moment and a lot of creative, so we're very fearful of AI. And my perspective is that you don't, then you're not really understanding what it is because it's not like you're going to be replaced by anything. But you'll probably be replaced by an artist or an architect who's using AI well, because they're they're using it as their tool. It's not, it's not something to come in and like, you know, remove the architect. But it is something that that's there to make your workflows just way, way, way more efficient.
I'm glad you mentioned this, because this is one of the things that we are not hearing a lot. But I think a lot of architects, again, minute, maybe they're not early adopters that we're looking for, but there may be a bit more like you said, it's a cultural thing. Recently, I came across this very large company, about 250 employees and I spoke to the principal sit down, we sat down and had a very nice conversation about this topic of AI and kind of how it's implemented and practices. And, you know, they have in their office, got a user group where they pick the new software, and they test it. And that's essentially the model that we are looking for to run right you find the firms who are early adopters, they have this testing, like almost like sandbox environment, they take your software, they kind of work with you, they build it they tested and then they make a decision whether they want to continue using it. Here, they basically started using me journey. And then the hype was unreal, everybody was like typing prompts and rendering their projects and kind of like doing this conceptual design. But then very quickly, it all kind of died down. And he's telling me that we realized that it's taken away the most fun, the most creative, the part of the process that everyone enjoys, we're early on you're not bound to this requirements, you can kind of think a bit more freely have a bit more air around you right. And I saw identify with the statement because why do we think about AI taking away the creativity when in reality if you think about the way the language, the large language models are set up the way there are AIS, which is accessible for us today structured is, it's good at going through a large amount of data super quickly and providing the results. Answers, right. So that's exactly the philosophy philosophy that we're using for our key because we are not trying to tell you what to do with it. We're not trying to force you to reuse it, copy it, or, like render it for you. All we're trying to say is that you have it just find that and then you decide what to do is
amazing. Very, very interesting. So can you tell me a little bit about the where you're at with the with the company, how long you guys have been going for? And what it's taken to even begin to develop a software platform of this kind of innovation? If you like?
Yeah, very good question. We've been working at this problem. for about four months, we spent the first four months only focusing on the problem. One thing that startups are struggling with, or some companies that are really not very good at, is identifying the problem first, before coming to solution. It's not about you know, ideas, ideas are cheap, as we say, you know, I have million ideas a day, but it doesn't matter if the problem does not exist. Software is very expensive to build. So if you try to force a solution of your user, that will never work. So for months, we spend researching, talking to users identifying fights, fine tuning, the problem, can be very open minded looking at it from different angles, we were part of the startup incubator. So we did secure the funding to go on the journey. And essentially, we are VC backed, we raise the precede that allows us right now to work and, you know, bring some help in terms of software engineering, and also just kind of sustain the company. Before we get first, you know, paying customers in terms of the solution itself, after we were 100% Sure the problem exists. And we were ready to build a proof of concept, we jumped into solution space. And that led us to end of January, when we release the first version of our prototype. It's not the MVP yet, but rather, a tool for us to deliver the value to show the value to help architects who we are bringing on board as our design partners, to understand what is the problem and what we are solving for them. Essentially, from this version, the next step would be partner with those early adopter firms and continue developing the product together. So it's their baby, as much as it's ours, we have couple of firms who are already working with us, and we're looking for three more. Essentially, the spots are limited, we only can serve five firms today, just because we're two people and there is a lot of work for us to two of us to do, essentially, we sat down for this brainstorming sessions every two weeks, and then we communicate on the weekly on a weekly basis basis with them. And then essentially, we build the software, we show it to them. And we ask for their feedback, the worst thing you could do in the niche environment like we are in to build in isolation, and then try to force it on users. And unfortunately, a lot of software in our space that's been developed or done this way. So I actually argue with my colleagues is, uh, do you want the software to be done by architect? Would you prefer a bunch of software engineers get together and then force it on you, and you have no choice to use it? Because now we are so behind that we have to just jump on this, you know, kind of last train that is departing. So that's why we're building this very integrated, very kind of innovative, very novel project, we kind of see that some architects are skeptical. And that's why I essentially mentioned that being the early adopter mentality, not just you know, on your website on paper, but being early adopter, in your essence, being able to allocate time to r&d, being able to show up to imagine how your life can be better with the software, and how it can bring value to you in the future. Yes, today. It doesn't exist yet. But it's happened with every startup. You have to kind of get on board on the promise. And a lot of people tell us, you know, you build it, and then we buy it. And I'm like, that's not how it works. You have to invest your time and your resources to show to be committed. Ready to endorse us, because you believe that profession needs it not because, you know, maybe you needed to save some money or you know, to be more efficient, but in the bigger picture, that's where we need to be going. And by jumping on board, you're essentially almost signing this, you know, agreement with yourself and with the industry, that we agree that we need this.
Amazing. So if anybody's listening to this right now, and they want to kind of be part of the beta group, if you like, what would what would they need to do,
they would just need to send me an email, it's Natalia at get archy.com. And at ALA at, get archy.com, through straightforward email, we'll put it all in the information. And we are essentially, we have 50 people who are doing the better clothes, better testing. And they essentially give us feedback are we implemented, and we can enroll that way. But we are looking for design partners who are firms. So those people are individuals. And our goal to have endorsement from a firm, where, you know, we sit down with them, and they also take a piece of software, and they try to break it in their own user group environment. And they kind of go back to it every day. And they're like, you know, I think this can be a little better. Maybe we implement this feature here. And you know, through this push and pull, movement, we move forward. Amazing,
very, very exciting. I love them just as hearing about the evolution of the business itself, and the kind of process that you guys have been going through and the fact that you spent the first, you know, few months just trying to pinpoint what the problem was. And I was listening to an interview with what's the name, there's a, there's one of these UberEATS style companies, that the one that whatever the one that was the preceded UberEATS, I forget the name of the of the app in the US. But it was developed by, you know, four guys from Stanford. And they told the story of how they literally spent the first year interviewing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small businesses in their area, just trying to circle down, what's the problem? What's the problem. And eventually, they kind of, you know, saw the small restaurants were having lots of issues, and the all of them wanted to deliver food or have food delivery services, but they didn't have the capacity to be able to actually provide it. And then that kind of, you know, so much work getting put into identifying the problem, then means that, you know, you've done, it's such a good starting point for designing a solution. And as you're saying, you know, you're expanding that problem, conversation by having architects as collaborators, so that they're constantly giving feedback and allowing the software to, to evolve. And I think that's really interesting just for architects to, to hear. That's how startups work. That's how software companies evolve themselves. Because I speak to so many architects who don't necessarily even think about what the problem is, for the clients, for the people that are paying them money. And we talked about charging higher fees, and, you know, just just a basic level of foundational efficiency will get your fees, right. And you can have a better shot at getting your fees, right, if you're really clear on what the problem is that you're able to solve for the for the for your clients. And
actually the way we see our product in the same angle that that you're describing right now about predictability, because if you know that those digital assets exist, and if you know, you've done it in a previous project, you plant some of them in, you tweaked some of them, but there are a certain amount that you can reference or quickly access, you're better predicting your fees. And you will collect them the historical data may be attached in the future, this historical data to each individual unit of architectural information and saying, you know, we track this detail, take us half an hour, and then almost build in this puzzle, not only it's either Excel or drafting software, but almost like intertwining those resources and having a smart look smart way of integrating them and extracting this data to be more enabled. Because I mean, at the end of the day architecture is one of the least construction in general and architecture is a part of it. One of the five least digitized industries. And this is very, you know, hard to wrap your head around that.
Yep. No, it's amazing. Amazing. Amazing to hear everything that you're doing and Thalia absolutely fascinating conversation. Perfect place for us to conclude and I'd like to invite you back on the show, maybe in a in a year's time and and hear how Oculus straw has has evolved. And, of course, any listeners to the podcast, get in contact with with entirely and get involved, be really, really excited to hear
thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to speak with you. And thank you for all this insights that you shared as well. Because I think what I really like about Business of Architecture, it always makes me think differently about the knowledge that I had in the past. And it always almost turns your head a little bit and you're like, Ha, I didn't think about that. So I hope that the conversation today would be a good addition to, you know, this portfolio of insights that you guys already have. Thank
you so much, amazing. And that's a wrap. And one more thing. If you haven't already, please do head on over to iTunes or Spotify. And leave us a review, we'd love to read your name out here on the show. And we'd love to get your feedback. And we'd love to hear what it is that you'd like to see more of and what you love about the show already.
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