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548: Should Architects Fear AI or Embrace it? with Taylor Schmidt of Corbu | Otter.ai

548: Should Architects Fear AI or Embrace it? with Taylor Schmidt of Corbu

Enoch Sears54min

Speaker 1

00:00

I remember using their software and after five years, I just was told a new command that would have saved me a year of my life.

Rion Willard

00:07

Hello, and welcome to the Business of Architecture. My name is Ryan Willard, and I'll be the host for today's episode. And I'm very excited to introduce our esteemed guest, Taylor Schmidt, who originally hails from the vibrant city of Chicago. Taylor's journey has taken him from the heart of the Midwest to the technological hub of Silicon Valley. Taylor's passion for innovation led him to immerse himself in the realm of artificial intelligence back in 2022. But before that, it's a little have a little bit of a look, because before venturing into the realm of AI, Dale has roots lie deep within a third generation construction family, instilling in him a profound appreciation for the craft of construction, architecture and design from a very young age. His pursuit of architectural excellence led him to the esteemed halls of the School of Architecture at the University of Notre DOM. Here, he not only learned the principles of classical architecture, but also honed his skills in the intricate art of furniture design. Taylor's professional journey saw him traversing through the bustling landscape of both Chicago and Los Angeles, where he lent his expertise to four distinguished high end residential firms. However, true to the spirit of innovation, he eventually charted his own path, founding his architecture design consulting practice. But here's where the plot thickens. In 2022, Taylor embarked on an exciting new venture temporarily shelving his traditional architectural pursuits to embark on a groundbreaking startup named KUBU. With kobu. Taylor envisions a future where architecture transcends its conventional boundaries, acting not merely as a design service, but as a genuine design assistant. Through the fusion of AI and architectural prowess. kobu aims to elevate both the architects creative process and the clients experience to unprecedented heights. In this episode, we talk a lot about the potential of AI how Kobe was integrating AI the future of architectural practice, that is using AI very powerfully to unlock new business innovations, as well as design workflow innovations. We talk about some really wonderful ideas of how AI can be used to assist in the marketing and relationship building of an architecture practice, as well as creating visual representations and actually being used as a design tool. I think it's really important for us as architects to be embracing the world of AI, the founder of chat GPT, Sam Altman, recently said that he can envision in the future billion dollar companies being run by a single person. Now, that's quite an extraordinary thought. And I posit that here for what could be possible for architecture. So sit back, relax and enjoy Taylor Schmidt of Corfu. This podcast is produced by Business of Architecture, a leading business consultancy for architects and design professionals. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architectures flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment, and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com. Or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how we might be able to help you, please follow the link in the information. Hello, listeners, we hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it without the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner, or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month interested in becoming a sponsor, please send us an email at support at business of architecture.com Taylor, Welcome to the Business of Architecture. How are you?

Speaker 1

04:08

I'm good Ryan, happy to be here. exciting

Rion Willard

04:11

to be speaking with you. Now, you've had a very interesting career, a departure from traditional architectural ledger education and the architectural path. And now you're a startup founder and Maestro of the world of artificial intelligence and how it's integrating into architectural practice and how you know, profession can be utilizing and capitalizing on this kind of the next revolution, if you like of technology of technology, and the potential that it can unlock. And it's an interesting conversation to have because I speak to a lot of architects at the moment and certainly some of the more mature clients that we have Um, you know, it's not uncommon for us, when we look into a business, we'll see lots of antiquated workflows and ways of production. I mean, even if we just look at CAD, you know, I'll often say that, when a founder of an architecture practice sets up their practice, their CAD education tends to kind of stop, and then it gets, and then that, that way of doing stuff that happened in 2011, okay, kind of gets magnified. And the rest of the team gets trained in doing it like that. And they never really unlock the potential of the software or technology that's available to them. And, you know, this is, this is actually quite a significant issue for a lot of practices where you know, what you can do with a team of two to three people now in 2024, versus what you could do 15 years ago is absolutely extraordinary. So we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. But let's start with your own pathway. And, number one, how, how would you describe what it is that you do today? And number two, how did you get there? Yeah,

Speaker 1

06:05

amazing, so many things to talk about today. So super excited. My own pathway. So it is a very natural process to get to where we are, quite literally literally just grew up in a construction family. So really around architecture from my earliest memories. The running joke in the family is, of course, you know, at five years old, I was kind of told, this is what you do when you're building stuff. And by the time I was seven, I realized if I become an architect, I can start telling my family what to do. And that kind of stuff, atone for how to how to live life, right? Because if you decide really early, I'm going to be an architect, like many of us, you know, your path is kind of set. And I was lucky to have a neighbor who was an architect that kind of guide me down that path I was sketching, you know, before high school kind of drawing up spaces and becoming very spatially aware. So all of that kind of led me to a great education in architecture, was working mostly in high end residential, both in Chicago and LA. And then in 2021, started my own practice. And in that practice is where I first discovered AI. And this at the time was just using Dali, which is an image generator to go from text to image that was act as like a super Pinterest, which, of course, was very helpful. But something I noticed is really, this is a shift in the way we design. Because as soon as you have that idea, you can start to generate it and talk about it. So that was like all the poison I needed to really get going on a deep dive into AI. And my blue colored jeans kind of kicked in a year later, I ended up moving out to Silicon Valley from Chicago, and just took a super deep dive into AI, the whole world of startups. And I thought to myself, Okay, this technology is changing the way I design, then I'm probably not the only one who's gonna be going through this. What I noticed though, is there weren't really tools specifically built for architects. And my curiosity got the better of me to understand like, Okay, I know, we have Adobe, which is like design tools for everyone, right. And with an architecture, there's no escape, which is like a verticalized tool for, for architects. So although there's these horizontal AI tools, for every designer, there's got to be these verticalized AI tools for architects. And I couldn't really find, I couldn't find anything that I liked for my design process. So started to actually build the software, I was open using my own my own practice. And that's kind of like the ultimate goal here. I think at some point, I do want to go back into the profession. This is just a current opportunity that I think someone should do. And I do see myself as having the skill sets and the drive, the ambition and the youth to tackle this problem.

Rion Willard

08:41

Let's have a little look and then of the kind of things that AI is offering in architectural workflows currently. And and and in your own explorations, what were you using it for and, and things like mid journey and Dali, we've kind of started to see architects use these things. I must say that it doesn't take much. Certainly if you're if your eye is saturated with a lot of these images that you can start to pick out AI cliches if you'd like. Maybe not to somebody who's not looking at architectural images, it's a bit more hard to distinguish them and I must say is it is, you know, the quality of images from dolly or Mitrione is pretty extraordinary. But they do have a kind of AI flavor to them. What sorts of things are you seeing, like, where architects can really be using AI? And, you know, on the on the some of the software that you've been developing? Where does it depart from things like mid journey and Dolly?

Speaker 1

09:47

Yeah, great, great question. So you're tackling almost the exact problem we're solving with what we're building, which for context, that the software is called core boo and part The idea is just to name it after Laker boozy, a who helped pioneer modern design and we're pioneering that next wave of architectural design. But also touching on this idea of architects having a real design assistant, which is helping them design versus the software that you're facilitating. I think there's gonna be a beautiful back and forth between the architect and the designer. And there's a great book called The architecture machine. From the 1960s. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yes, yes. So if you haven't read that yet, I really encourage people to kind of understand what people were thinking in the 60s, because I think today is actually coming to fruition. It's a beautiful future of architecture. Right. So the the problem that that we noticed is that a lot of these foundational models like dolly and MIT journey, didn't touch on the needs of the reality of architects, which is we're dealing with real spaces. So the the foundational model that does address those issues is stable diffusion, and specifically a paper called control net, which allows the designer to actually keep control of the input geometry, so then affect the output, staying true to that geometry. So what we're working on is allowing designers to take the existing real world geometry from either a renovation project or the 3d model that they made, and then have that act as the base for the rendering. Because, like, the classic, you know, mid journey is like a cathedral kitchen. And it looks like a cathedral kitchen is beautiful. But that's not realistic. It's really just a toy. And maybe it helps you kind of, you know, build up your creativity in your mind's eye of what that could look like. But the truth is, sometimes we just need a normal looking kitchen, right or a kitchen that and it would win when you're working. Right, buildable and within budget. So what we really want to emphasize is, so much of design is facilitated by the image. But we do agree that AI can impact that visualization process. But the outputs have to be rooted in the reality of the project versus this fantastical output that doesn't necessarily that wouldn't necessarily ever be built. It's just something to help with your imagination.

Rion Willard

12:27

Let's take a step back, actually. And I'd be very interested to hear how do you define what artificial intelligence actually is. And it was very interesting that you brought up the book, the architecture machine, Nick Negroponte, it was a book that I was, he was professor at the architectural Association. And that when I was at university, I was very interested in second order cybernetics, Gordon, pasque, Cedric price all these characters that were associated with the architectural Association and the idea of, of what intelligent architecture looks like interactive architecture and what were the and it was very interesting, because they were speculating about the possibility of machine derived architecture. And now were, at this point where we're using the word artificial intelligence to describe something, what is that something in your mind theme of

Speaker 1

13:23

books, I do want to bring up the opposable mind by Roger Martin. And he dives into this, this discussion around integrative thinking, and looks at great leaders in the business profession, and how what they were excellent at is taking two opposing ideas, synthesizing it and coming up with a third idea that takes the best from both. So instead of A or B, you kind of create your own path for C. And the overlap there for designers is that's quite literally the design process. That is our entire education, right? You look at, you know, the work of some precedents in Amsterdam, and you apply it to another work in Berlin, and then you come up with a new design. And there's contextual architecture, and the fabric buildings of our of our place, it's looking at the buildings around your site, and then incorporating new elements. So when I look at artificial intelligence, I can't help but also acknowledge what it's really good at is taking these opposing ideas, synthesizing it and making a new idea, right, that cathedral kitchen. Not too many people have probably sketch that out. But if you go on the mid journey and type out, show me cathedral kitchen, it actually looks pretty good. So I think it's important. I think it's important for us as designers to lean into the creative touch that this technology can bring, instead of a shy away from it. Because that's kind of our superpower. Right? Like As designers, we are open to new ideas. And we understand that you need the bad ideas to get to the good ideas. So when you look at professions like health care or law, and you overlap AI to that, sometimes that's an issue. If you get these hallucinations in law, well, maybe someone goes to jail like that, that could, that could be pretty bad. But in design, if you get these hallucinations, about, you know, a window being misplaced on the wall, you could look at that critically, or you could be like, does that work. And I think artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, which is the actual act of coming up with these new ideas, is really here to help act as an extension of our thoughts and an extension of our hand, not here to compete with us, right, because it still needs these inputs from the designer, is just here to speed up the creative process, which almost allows generative AI to act as its linchpin. Because if you're not using it, then your feedback loop stays where it is today. But as soon as you start incorporating into your process, you get a faster feedback loop. And what we know from design is that, the more the more feedback we get, the better the design gets. And I this was something that I really wished I had as a student and as a young professional, because the value add and the efficiencies that brings is allowing you to focus on what actually matters in the project.

Rion Willard

16:23

Interesting. So the kind of capacity that what you're saying here that AI has is to be able to be part of this iterative process of design, and almost has this capacity to speed up iteration. And feed us back ideas be part of this kind of, you know, the analogy you use there of the AB interaction, you know, one person's got an idea a and other person has got an idea B, those two come together and you get C and that actually AI is is the is either the other person or is the blender, if you like, for creating the see. So what's interesting is that the word artificial intelligence, like how we're languaging it, this often causes a lot of fear for architects, because if you don't know what it is, or will come up some of its mechanisms, then there is the apprehension that it is a kind of a new entity or sentient machinery that's coming over to wipe away the need of the architect. Do you think that's, you know, is that an accurate fear to have? Or is it gross misunderstanding of what it actually is? And is artificial intelligence not really that intelligent? It's more like a very sophisticated search engine that's kind of able to, you know, that you use the word generative as well, I think that's very interesting. That's what's different about it than a search engine, right?

Speaker 1

17:52

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's two ways the think about that, that answer. One is you can look at the profession on this long timeline, right. And one could argue that there has been a trend of the architect moving beyond just designer, because if you think back to like, Renaissance row, right, the architect was the master builder. And Brunel esky designed the dome of Florence, but also the scaffolding to get a bit. And then over time, you know, where we are today is we've really siloed these different aspects of being the architect, you know, you have the builder, and you have the designer, and you have the design consultant, and the lighting consultant. So I think one could view that as, you know, AI is almost that impetus of the pendulum swing, that's going to push the profession back towards being the master builder, or the architect plus something. And we see that with, you know, architect and developer, right architect and real estate agents. Design Build is common now. And I think one could argue that this is really a time where AI is just speeding up that that swing of the pendulum, and you almost have to start doing architecture plus something else. Because that's just been a race to the bottom for so long. Um, so I think that's, that's one way of viewing it. So I'm the other train of thought. I think a lot of designers understand that. Architecture is more than just the pretty picture. And if you get AI to generate all these new images, and all these new ideas, you know, it seems to be rooted in reality. And the shots be that translation of what the client likes about that image back into the reality of their budget and the site constraints. So I think, I think inherently as a designer, no, because we spend so much time on that beautiful sketch or that beautiful watercolor are 10 hours and Inscape to get this perfect rendering. We see an image get generated in two seconds and we get concerned because we know the effort that took to get there But I think if you get beyond that initial fear, or maybe even jealousy to some extent, you understand that there's so much more to design than just a pretty picture. And that's the value you're bringing to your own clients. So the two modes of thought here are AI could be accelerating, this transition of the architect needing to do more than just design, or AI is here to remind us that architecture is more than just the pretty picture. And there's so much more into the profession that goes on, beyond just generating ideas from Pinterest. Because if you do view images, just as a super Pinterest, I mean, historically, clients have come to us with images saying, Hey, I like this. We all know we're on Architectural Digest, looking at the top architects and the work they did and applying it to our design. So I think maybe there's just going to be more of that, in the idea of transferring, transferring design decisions through the image. But I'm, I'm open to how AI is actually going to impact the profession, of course, with the lens of it's going to be good either way. I, I

Rion Willard

21:07

think it's really important for these sorts of dialogues to be kind of spoken about in the architecture industry. I remember when I was at university, and we were talking about the potential of an artificial intelligence in architecture or an interactive architecture, or what did that mean, this idea of, could there be a machine that actually spits out buildings for you, and Negroponte kind of starts to point towards, actually, the complexity with which this is what architects do is we're dealing with unknowns, and we're dealing with huge amounts of complexity. And a lot of these decisions are happening kind of intuitively and based from our own paradigm that we're living in and bringing to a project, which is a very human thing to do. And any tool is going to help us make decision making processes. And what we're starting to see AI being available for is really putting the architect, like you say, back in the seat of being master builder. And it just empowering an architect to become an editor, or a curator of ideas, and can expand the scope of being able to deal with more complexity, as opposed to it just being like a formula of like, here's, here's exactly the right solution for the for the site. Because it's doesn't it's not as it's never as simple as that, you know, I remember going to university and I was looking, my first year, I was naively looking for a book that was called how to design a building. You know, and I just, I just wanted a simple like four step formula, here's what you do to design the building. And it didn't exist, and it didn't exist. And that I always think back to that because it was in my as a young student, I just, I just was like, where's the beginners book, where's the where's the 123, all of this stuff that you is talking about is so convoluted and complex. And there isn't such a such a book. And the consideration that goes into any site, and also the complexity of you know, human interactions is what makes it it's so interesting. So in your, your, your startups in kobu. Tell us a little bit about how that came into being. And then some of the processes that you've gone through to building it to where it is now. And it's and it's kind of overarching mission.

Speaker 1

23:40

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, there was maybe six months of really trying to figure out what's going to be that initial use case for designers. And it started out being a questionnaire that you would send to a client. And they'd answer questions about what they like what they don't like, and then AI would generate these ideas. Turns out, that wasn't the best approach allowed, designers want that initial control, or working with their clients. And it's been really interesting kind of having our, our own ideas about how AI might be affected, how AI might improve the process for designers, and then actually getting that in front of practicing architects and getting their feedback. So one thing that we did was actually looked, we looked at history to kind of understand what what might be happening here. And one thing that came up was at the advent of the photograph, there was some initial backlash with designers and photography. It's really interesting, because at the time, you know, let's think back to the etchings of beautiful architecture, right? The person doing that sketch or that etching, now they had freedom to add better landscape, right or to add people into the view that really added to it and you know, the classic birds, right? As soon as you do Fatah geography, what you're getting is a realistic representation. And what if a photographer comes around and takes a picture of that building before the landscape is built in. So, you know, going back, this was like maybe 100 years that there was a pause to incorporate photographs into the process of architecture. So overlapping that with what we're dealing today is this idea of these AI models. And one thing that we're curious about, and working towards is this idea that the same way today, companies have photographs that represent their work that they then show to clients, that then helps them get more work, which the photograph also makes up their own style, right. So this is what we're striving towards, for the Pinterest board. We think this might also be what happens with these own AI models that have been trained to understand the style of a firm. So what that looks like is, internally, these models are being used by the design team. And after 612 months, what's happening is each designer saying I like this image for this project, and you're getting all this data that can then be used to retrain that model. And over time, you actually get a pretty good representation of what that firm describes as good design. Because the ambiguity here is, the way you describe classical architecture is different than the way I describe classical architecture. And the truth is, the way it is described is with an image or with a sketch or with an idea. So what Corbeau is providing is a platform for firms to start training their own AI model. And that's something that's super effective internally. So of course, partaking the visualization process with renderings and ideation. But over time, we see that there's probably going to be an interaction of different stakeholders with that firms model. And, you know, think back to the 1960s, and photographs of works of architecture, were only shown to the client, when you went in the front, and they would flip through the book with you, right, you know, this is our best work. And there's still some of this, you know, projects being under NDA, or not every project is shown on the website through through photographs, but often it is your best work and you are promoting it. So we think right now, there's going to be some hesitation with models being used externally that represent the firm. But over time, that's going to go down, and the comfort level of letting others interact with your own artificial designer, your own core, boo, let's call it Yeah, is going to allow the architects client to partake in that design process and have a more delightful experience. It's going to allow, you know, in RFPs, there's not going to see

Rion Willard

28:00

to see, so you're suggesting like a like a, like a prospective client could come and have a conversation with kobu. And start generating ideas in the style of if you like, use the word style kind of loosely here, but I kind of it will start ideating an approach that is akin to how this the the office works as a case zactly.

Speaker 1

28:25

Exactly. And if that's the future, if that's the future ready for come talk to us. Not everyone is ready for that future. And that future might not ever happen. But I think if you look at history and understand how the photograph was used, yeah, AI models is the same thing. And some people are ready and excited for that. Others think that is completely ridiculous. And I think that's a really good sign that we're moving in the right direction.

Rion Willard

28:56

I love that as as, as an idea as a kind of way of, you know, proactively prospecting with clientele and having a, having a kind of ai ai generated assistant, if you like, that is able to, you know, provide value for prospective clients and help them look at problems and help them think about stuff. And then, you know, it draws you in as the consultant and it positions you in a position to do in a very powerful place to start doing that kind of stuff. Fast, fast, very intelligent. There's a company I don't know if you know them in the UK called Brighton wood and Brighton woods. They they're kind of very heavy with their computational design. They've been going for a long time. They do a lot of very process. They work a lot of very heavy process driven clientele. So infrastructure, airports, pharmaceutical companies, these companies that are limited there's a very kind of linear process that of manufacturing something quite complicated, or managing a complicated process like boarding a aircraft with millions of people going through a big airport. And they've been very kind of intimately kind of, you know, pioneering Computer Aided manufacture. And this kind of relationship between cutting down the drawing package, and actually what's fabricated at the end. And they've been pioneering kind of open source details, if you like. So all of the projects that their clients work on, all the details is openly and freely available, and is shared amongst you know, other people can go in and have a look at them, they've got these massive databases. And they were saying that at first, particularly with some of these clients that have got a lot of, you know, very highly protected IP, like you might have in pharmaceutical companies, they were like, there's no way that we're going to allow our buildings or details of our buildings to be freely available. But over time, you know, they're kind of clients began to see the value of it, and that it wasn't a kind of, it wasn't as competitive as they thought it wasn't actually the sharing of data, between different projects and different clients actually meant that everybody increases and gets better faster. And actually, that becomes quite an opportunity. And I thought that was quite enlightened thinking. And they often use a lot of their kind of diagnostic computational data analysis tools, not even for designing, but for just helping clients diagnose problems, and that clients find it so valuable that they've actually got a floor in their building, which is just filled with kind of permanently located client representatives. So you know, they've got the, you know, ba, or someone working from Glasgow client, Smith, or something like that sitting on the floor. You know, amongst these architects, engineers, data scientists, computer engineers, and the the person from the, from the client side, might have a particular operational problem. And they take it to the architectural team or to the design team. And they're like, here's the problem, how can what other ways can we look at this, and they kind of begin that dialogue, where the result might not be a kind of change in a physical asset. But it's an analytical dialogue using computational tools. And it's, it's fascinating, and what, what I'm hearing here or kind of speculating here, what you're talking about is kobu actually becomes like the next level of that, where clients can kind of start to interface with a piece with with your own AI generated assistant and kind of start creating that dialogue and producing ideas for you from the from client side. You can even imagine clients kind of subscribing to these bots.

Speaker 1

33:00

Yep. Wow. And now you're talking about the Business of Architecture and the opportunities at hand? Because Are we being hired for the image be produced? No. We're being hired because someone has gotten a great recommendation of working with an architect, and you need someone to handhold you through this million dollar new home that you're constructing that you're doing once in your life, and as good as AI gets, is not going to be the one that's actually holding your hand through that process. And the value of the architect has to come in with their educated and learned opinion on what works in this specific situation. And do you need to be paying the architect their hourly fee? Or does the architect need to eat away at their margin? If the client wants to understand what a yellow couch could look like in the space? Or what this specific lamp could look like? Or what if the window moved over? Maybe maybe the architect is there for that. But I think AI is where it starts to fit into the process. And the client can go to the architect who they're paying a healthy fee for to say, Hey, these are the designs I came up with, with your architect with your AI with your core booth. And now let's talk about it. And it goes both ways. Because if the architect is missing some information from the client, why can't there be an artificial client rep that is interacting with the client and gathering additional information just as the project is requesting this information? And I think there's you know, you mentioned subscribing to these artificial architects. I think that's a beautiful world because what you're doing is getting more people to enjoy that process of designing their dream home. And maybe today you can't afford an architect and you just want to see what it would be like to work with them. And if you have a subscribed artificial intelligence that represents how we would be to work with your firm, you were never going to work with someone who had a budget of $10,000, but perhaps are willing to pay $100 Just to interact, what would be like to work with you? And I think we have this lens of what are the opportunities here and use that creative education that we've all been taught of taking the opposing idea of AI is replacing us right? And, and well, we have value we're delivering. So how do you look at the two things of the, the, the true value AI is bringing, which is the increase in this feedback loop and the true value we're bringing in and come up with that third idea, I think we just need to continue to understand that this technology can be used to replace us. And there are companies that are quite literally trying to do that with the tagline of fire your interior designer, and let's remove the need for the architect, and making all these crazy tools for the consumer. So our bet, and what we believe is that the architect won't be replaced by AI, they will be amplified by the productivity gains and the business opportunities. If you lean into that, I think

Rion Willard

36:10

this is wonderful. And you know, one of the things that excites me about the possibility of of AI in architecture, and again, it goes goes back to what you were your kind of proclamation of becoming, you know, returning back to the master builder. And yeah, there's there's all these tools that are available that mean that the the kind of churn grind work of the architect of making endless client iterations and changes doesn't need to happen by putting highly trained expensive employees to do, essentially glorified data entry. You know, this is a big this is a big issue in the architecture profession is that we have very highly trained expensive, people doing very low level work. And it's infuriating for the architects, that people who are doing it, and it's like, as a business practice, it's just difficult, it just becomes very difficult. So leaning into an AI solution is wonderful is, you know, really, really starts to free up. I love this idea of, you know, kind of a subscription service that that a client can have with your own very specially trained AI assistant, as a way of marketing and being very proactive with your clients. So when we talk about here, business architecture, you know, good marketing is good salespeople are finding ways to circumvent, you know, the traditional routes to winning a project, ie institutional projects, they'll go to an RFP, and it's very reactionary, you know, the, the institution has already decided these key decisions. And then at some point, they've decided to budget they've decided what they need, and then they go to, we need an architect to do X y&z. And by that point, a lot of the major strategic decisions have been made, the architect has been cut out. And now the architect is reduced to a position of just of just producing drawing collateral, which is undervalued, and there's a set price for it, and we're gonna compete, you know, who can give us the lowest price, and it's just very unhealthy, or something like this, you know, now you can use AI, to supplement, being proactive and reaching out to prospective clients, and having them engage with a kind of advisory strategic consulting conversation with a AI assistant. And they can kind of develop that relationship. And the value is just being created upfront, if you like, and then you can see it just being a very easy step two, like a consulting service, and then winning a larger project down the down the back of the line. So love it. This is this is fascinating, fascinating stuff. Tell me a little bit about you know, what you've done with kobu in terms of getting it set up? What is it? What is it taken for you to be a startup founder, and all of the complications of raising finance, and, you know, software development and that this is no, this is this is this is the real stuff now.

Speaker 1

39:30

Yeah, yeah, it you know, the thing with the thing with architecture, and especially what you guys have done with the profession is shed light on how to get going, and to really push for, yes, there's designing architecture, but there's also the business and what does that look like? So I think when it came to setting up my own architecture practice, I had this template to follow and I had various successful architects in my own personal network and mentors that I could lean on. Right. And they, we could talk about setting up the contract. And, you know, ask for the retainer, just in case and all these small things that like you really think about when you first tried out, but there were people who had done it. So when it comes to being a startup founder, and creating a completely new company, with a completely new idea, there are templates that you see from different people in different industries. But every problem you run into is unique. And there isn't a oh, let's, let's look how this company addressed it. Because you're dealing with a new technology, with new consumer behavior, with new business behavior, with new ideas. And you can look to history that maybe helped inform that decision. But a lot of it has to just come from trial and error and intuition. So fortunately, part of my own superpower, is having that ability to sell. And what I had to do was come to Silicon Valley, and talk to people who knew nothing about architecture and convince them that this is an idea worth pursuing. So we have a great technical or CTO who, you know, worked at Microsoft for a decade and was doing enterprise AI before and he knows nothing about architecture. But I approached him saying, Hey, this is a really big idea. The really big opportunity, and it's serving is for an underserved industry. Because if you look at innovation in architecture, we have Autodesk, which doesn't really innovate. They are using underlying technology from the 1980s, that takes years to learn. And I remember using their software, and after five years, I just was told a new command that would have saved me a year of my life. And that was so infuriating. Like, why wasn't this just taught? You know? Why didn't I know about this when I needed to know about it? And and I think, you know, what I want to emphasize within the startup world and the tech scene in Silicon Valley is that we have technology perfectly suited for underserved industry. And the combination is not only like a beautiful and happy customers also beautiful and happy future when there's better architecture that's surrounding us. And, you know, I would still say we're in the early days, right? You know, this technology came out a year ago. So we can only have been around for a year. But this is something that has really turned into a passion of mine. And no every day, the most enjoyable part is when we've reached out to a new firm. And we show them the magic of what coreboot can do. And that beautiful future. And as they get excited, it excites us. I think when it comes to finding people on the team, there are advisors who have built AI companies before that can kind of give you a business sense or help you think through these decisions. Of course, you have investors as well. And the approach we took was trying to partner with people that understood that we're dealing with an industry that hasn't seen too many changes in their technology. So the approach you take might have to be slightly different compared to we call it FinTech but the financial services industry. He

Rion Willard

43:39

is it's a polite way of saying that architects are

Speaker 1

43:43

Luddites, I love the profession, and love anyone who's who's in it. I think we all are aware of some biases and underlying stigmas within the profession. Sure, sure. You know, we're definitely here to define the people who are ready to live in the future. And as we get more people in the future, they're going to help pull everyone else kind of stuck in the past to their future with us. So I think there's many traditional paths within architecture. And what you guys help shed light on is there are new and better ways to do things. So that's a similar mindset with how we approach our outreach to potential customers is, hey, I understand that you've been hand drafting for the last three decades, and you can keep doing that. But what would it look like if you start to incorporate hand drafting with AI, kind of encourage that creative muscle instead of that initial fear or jealousy of what AI can bring?

Rion Willard

44:46

Amazing with the width of kobu, for example, you've kind of started, you know, with a very practical application of ai ai And around graphics and visual visual production. And then, you know, we've kind of been speculating here about what the what the future is, how does the business model for a startup firm work, because it's very different, you know, it's very capital intensive, it's labor intensive to actually develop a piece of software. And then you've also got to figure out whether this software has market capability, or, you know, is, is, you know, it's not like you can sell one or two of the products, you've got to sell at certain amount of scale. Plus, you've still got to be researching because the software is, is, is probably coming up with new questions that are are of interest where you can apply the kind of next area of play or discovery, if you like, he talks a little bit about how you have to manage this kind of dance and balance if you like. And, and what sorts of investors do you look for? To come in to help you do that? Because I'm assuming that investors who get involved at this kind of stage, they understand that the business is finding, its you know, you're testing ideas, basically? Yeah,

Speaker 1

46:11

yeah, absolutely. So. So if you look at, if you look at what the venture startup space looks for, its companies like Uber, right. And it's this world changing 10 $20 billion company that can add a lot of value to the world, that's probably changing the behavior. A common theme we see is if you look at, if you look at a service that wealthy people get, and then figure out a way to democratize that, you actually end up with a pretty big idea, which quite literally is Uber with private drivers, home chef with having your own private chef. And I do wonder what that looks like for architecture. Like if only the most wealthiest people can afford these houses in Montecito with the world's best residential architects. Was that process? Was that process look like it was that software look like if you kind of democratize access to great design and great designers. And that's, this is the discussion that we have with investors to make sure that one that they they see a similar future, where design isn't just for the rich and famous, I think we all should have access to to great design. And also understand that, you know, you can't look at a startup as a spreadsheet. And what's your p&l? And what's the customer acquisition cost and all this data? Because when you're early, you don't have any of that data? So the data points you do have to look at are who are the founders? Who are the people behind the team? What's their resilience? resiliency? Like? No, are they doing this because they have user empathy and understand the actual problem being solved? Or are they doing this just, you know, they saw an opportunity that they're trying to take advantage of. And, you know, for me, it's, it's something that it's something that you can always lean back on, when you come from the industry, because I can only think of the endless nights I had in design school of where this software would help that. And all the students that have gone through that for the last three or four decades. And the exciting part is, I think it's gonna be very different for the next three or four decades and how students are taught education, and how the profession is practiced. So in these early days, with investors, you can talk about the business model. And subscription is like having some sort of recurring revenue with the subscription is kind of that that Goldilocks zone for investors. And that comes with running a business and figuring out the value you're providing and quantifying it and testing pricing points. But what we like to emphasize is that there's a bigger picture here, and that a North Star is what we need to be pushing towards. And fortunately, the investor is there to help you figure out some of that smaller data points to raise the first round and then get to the next round. And there are templates and other industries that you can look into Help Help follow. Another thing that came to mind earlier, which we didn't talk about is the, the firm in the UK that was open sourcing their details, right, this idea of open source is very normal and common in the computer software space. And part of that is what leads to the innovation for these world changing companies. And one of the stigmas in design and architecture is that your your designs your data is super private. Right like that. That's that's like your your uniqueness. And it can't be shared because this is your intellectual property. And you know, if you share it, and then someone uses it, and then the building collapses, you get sued. And a lot of people kind of go to like the the most extreme worst case, example of what can happen? Well, in software, you still have that. And the worst case example is someone builds code that has a backdoor into it that can lead to data issues and stealing people's information. And yet people still lean into the open source, because that's how you progress these industries. So I think it's great that the company you brought up is kind of leaning into that idea of open source and letting others build off of what they're doing. Maybe wrapping it, to what we're discussing earlier, I think having the alignment in some of these larger ideas and thoughts in the industry is like the number one thing you need to find both for people that you bring onto your team, from an employee from a co founder from advisor and of course, the investor. And then let's not forget the customer. I think, architecture firms who see a brighter future ahead, are starting to adopt this technology. And if we treat this as an opportunity to improve what's been done, and I think that the future is and can be a lot brighter.

Rion Willard

51:16

Amazing. I mean, it's a perfect place for us to conclude the conversation there really fascinating stuff that you guys are doing. If people want to engage with kobu. Find out more about the software, what's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 1

51:32

Yeah, they can reach me via email. It's Taylor at core boo.ai. We're putting in the Yeah, you got that you can check out our website. We're currently working with design partners that are helping craft the story and product of what we're building. Because what we don't want to happen is to approach companies with a product like Autodesk. That's super complicated. And you're not, you're not informing that that product design. No, we're approaching companies in the schematic design phase of the product, where they actually get a say for what DVD and CD looks like. So if any of that is interested, is interesting to you. And please reach out. We're we're always looking for people who are ready to live in the future.

Rion Willard

52:26

Amazing, amazing, really, really fascinating stuff there. Taylor, you, you excited me. So thank you very much real pleasure speaking with you. And I look forward to speaking to you later on and seeing how everything is developing and the innovations that you continue to produce. Thank you so much for your time today.

Speaker 1

52:46

Of course, this was very enjoyable and looking forward to talk to you soon.

Rion Willard

52:50

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. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architectures flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment, and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com. Or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how we might be able to help you. Please follow the link in the information. Hello, listeners. We hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it without the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner, or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month interested in becoming a sponsor. Please send us an email at support at business of architecture.com The views expressed on this show by my guests do not represent those of the host and I make no representation promise guarantee pledge warranty, contract, bond or commitment except to help you the unstoppable

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