The Exchanges

Q Wow. All right. So you get this, you make it in time to, um, unveil your, your company and your business at South by Southwest, and you've got this house out. Meantime, what happens to Treehouse? Did you, what happens to the job there?

A Yeah. So actually, uh, the, the, the chairman of the board of Treehouse came to the unveiling of the house. Uh, his name is Garrett Boone. He was one of the founders of the container store, and he was like very proud and happy. And it was clear that all of a sudden, like, I had a decision to make. Everything from let ICON go its happy way, let trails go its happy way, try to be the CEO and president of both. So, uh, had some long prayers and walks and talks with my wife, and, and we decided that we felt like with, with the lives we've been given, like, the most impactful thing we could do would be to pursue, continue to pursue this, like, construction automation, the, the, the sort of, the path that ICON had laid out for us. And so, I resigned at Treehouse, uh, with gratefulness and thanks, uh, and they brought on another CEO to run that company, and I, uh, went full-time at Icon.

AI assessment note: “I resigned at Treehouse... and they brought on another CEO to run that company”

Q So on the strength of that, you were able not only to raise money, but you had this promise from this nonprofit, this Y Combinator-backed nonprofit called New Story, to build, to work with them. I guess they wanted to build inexpensive, resilient homes in a poor part of Mexico. And this is going to be your first project, I should mention, right?

A That's right. It's going to be our first sort of scaled project. Now, what happened between them is New Story was very proud and excited, like ready to Let's pack it up and go. Let's go to Mexico. And we said, actually, like, that was rather painful. There's a few changes we would like to make to the printer. Uh, for instance, the pumping system completely crapped out and like, it never worked. And so we were actually like with buckets, hand loading the printer. So our joke to this day is like, it was an artisan, three D printed house. Um, and, and so we, we sort of said, Hey, if we could have a little bit more time, there's some like real upgrades we would like to make before we head down to Mexico.

AI assessment note: “That's right. It's going to be our first sort of scaled project.”

Q And, and what was the cost of each finished home?

A So the, I think the, the, there are four, all four different sizes. I think the, the cheapest of them was like in the 400,000 dollar range. And the most expensive was like in the seven or 800,000 dollar range, if memory serves me correctly. It's sort of like plus or minus The median house price in Austin, right? And so that was a huge success for us, right? That, um, you know, you believe in what you're doing, of course, but will people actually put, like, several 100,000 dollar commitment is real belief, right? Uh, people are making, like, decisions about their lives and with real resources. And so that was sort of, like, another big moment for us, that the house could get appraised, that it would have, you know, like, all the sort of things you had to do to, to build and sell houses on the open market. And one thing that was beginning to eat us at that moment was, You know, people were pointing to homes they knew and asking us to three-D print those homes.

AI assessment note: “cheapest of them was like in the 400,000 dollar range”

Q talk about homelessness for a moment. I mean, um, I imagine that there are lots of organizations and groups like the one, like the one you worked with, um, in Mexico that have approached you and have said, look, can we do this? Can we build like villages for people, uh, to house them? What, tell me about those conversations or that interest that you've had, if, if at all.

A Yeah, we, we, we definitely have them, and in fact, like, we'll have hundreds of more homes for the very poor and the homeless coming online, uh, in the near-term future, um, with some partners you've heard of and some you haven't heard of yet, um, but again, that's sort of, like, their news to share, so that, and that continues to be, like, a very important part of the work of Icon, and, and, and, like, a big reason why the company exists. Uh, one thing we have done that we have talked about is, uh, Again, this idea of architecture and like the three D printing makes some new kinds of architecture possible, even for, or maybe especially for the very poor who typically get sort of like no architectural attention whatsoever. Um, we launched a year ago, uh, a global design contest called initiative 99 with, uh, a million dollar prize to design homes that could be built for 99,000 dollars or less. Um, And people are like, why not? Why such a big prize or whatever? It's like, because I wanted the very best of their attention and their work. Um, typically when architects do work for these kinds of projects, like pro bono, it's on the sign. They use the interns or the junior partners. Like, I want your very best work, creativity, and possibility. And to get that, you need to feel like you could earn the same kind of money that if you, you would earn if you won a major commission. And…

AI assessment note: “we definitely have them, and in fact, like, we'll have hundreds of more homes”

Q uh, and, and of course, three D printing technology, you know, was, was coming online and, and, and people are starting to even have little three printers at home. Um, A lot of the material used at that time, and even now, was plastic-based, right? You are thinking about, ok, can this be environmentally sustainable? So, initially, what materials were you thinking that would be used to build these homes?

A Yeah, I, I definitely initially thought you would want to use more conventional residential building materials. So like, uh, things, things related to the things I know that we can build houses out of. Um, I had, as a person who'd been following and involved in like technologies for a bit, like I had long sort of suspected, like there's some like misapplication of three D printing technology, right? We were using it to make small things that were already mass produced, uh, very affordably. Like a lot of times people were, three printing coffee mugs and spoons and stuff. It's like, we already have a lot of those and they're made really cheaply. It's like a, it occurred to me that like, three D printing would actually be super valuable when something was large, bespoke and made very slowly. Like that would be an opportunity. And so a house is a, is a perfect use case, right? Houses are quite large. They're constructed rather slowly over months and years, and they're very expensive. And so that would be an opportunity for three D printing to actually make an improvement, uh, on the way that we build. And so And so I started working on that, and then I, you know, sort of called my old partner in crime, Evan Loomis, and he and I started meeting with anyone we could just to, like, learn fast. We took little classes on three-D printing. We ordered every book on three-D printing off of…

AI assessment note: “initially thought you would want to use more conventional residential building materials.”

Q So how did you come up with the material that could build this prototype house?

A We, we had some smart friends and advisors and like we were just doing just good enough, right? Like material we used then passed every single test that the city of Austin and every permitting authority and the structural engineers threw at us. Uh, but it's not the material we use today. So we've continued to improve. So we got it good enough, but you wouldn't have known that for sure at the start of the project, right? I mean, it was, as a matter of fact, we got halfway through the house and some, we were buying sort of the concrete as a dry mix, like a dry powder. And, uh, it was dewy in the mornings and the bags were sitting out there on the job site and it ruined a bunch of the bags of the concrete. And then we like last minute had to order more concrete because we had already announced that we were going to be unveiling something special at South by. So the clock is running. And so I, when we were out of money, all my credit cards, I called my wife and said, Jenny, I think we are going to finish this house, but I actually have to go get another credit card and I'm going to immediately max it out. And she did not bat an eye. She was like, this is so important, Jason. Like, like, let's go. Like, like, we're in this together. I mean, her, her, her whole energy and enthusiasm was like, uh, of course, dummy, like, that's why we're married. And so, um, we got one more credit car…

AI assessment note: “We had some smart friends and advisors and like we were just doing just good enough”