April 20, 2023 • 31 mins
Alexis Rivas is the co-founder and CEO of Cover.
His problem is: How do you build houses in a factory, the way you build cars? And how do you do it so they're cheaper and better than a traditionally built house?
Cover is following the Tesla model: starting with a high-end product but aiming for the mass market. "Nail it and scale it," he says.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Houses in America are too expensive. There are a
lot of reasons for this. One reason that we've heard
a lot about in the past few years regulations, regulations
that make it hard to build enough housing in the
places people want to live. But there are other reasons
(00:35):
that we've heard less about. One other less discussed reason,
building houses is an inefficient process, and it's not getting better.
Over the past several decades. As so many industries got
so much more productive and more efficient, home building stayed
largely unchanged. People have been dreaming of transforming home building
(00:56):
for like one hundred years now, dreaming of using modern
industrial techniques to mass produce houses and bring down the cost.
In the nineteen twenties, for example, Buckminster Fuller even started
a company to do that, but it never really got
off the ground, never really worked. In the decades that followed,
other people tried similar things, and you know, we got
(01:16):
mobile homes and we got manufactured houses, but nobody has
really succeeded in fulfilling that vision that Buckminster Fuller had.
No one has figured out how to make beautiful homes
at scale in a way that is optimized for factory
mass production. Someone could do it If someone could figure
that out, it could go a long way toward bringing
(01:39):
down the cost of houses in America. I'm Jacob Goldstein
and this is What's Your Problem, the show where I
talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
My guest today is Alexis Revas, co founder and CEO
of Cover. Alexis problem is this, how do you build
(02:01):
houses in a factory the way you build cars, and
how do you do it so that a factory built
house becomes cheaper and better than a traditionally built house.
Cover is based in La in California, and like basically
every other startup making physical things, they're following the Tesla model,
starting with a low volume, high end product with the
(02:22):
dream of scaling to the mass market. In other words,
today Cover sells expensive backyard studios to rich people in LA,
but their dream is to sell affordable houses all across America.
Alexis was interested in architecture from a very young age.
He told me he drew his first floor plan when
he was in first grade. He went to college and
(02:42):
studied architecture, and like so many people before him, he
got captured by this dream of building houses in a
factory and there are companies in America that build houses
in factories now, and so Alexis went off to intern
at one of those companies.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I saw a problem with conventional construction and thought, well,
what about building ups in a factory. So I looked
that up and I actually went an intern for a
company that built homes in a factory, so a prefab company,
and they were basically doing it conventionally. It was like
two by fours in drywall, right. But what happens is
that when you add in the transportation, when you add
in the overhead of actually running a factory, you know,
(03:20):
to the customer, the price gains or the quality gains
aren't really noticeable. It's not a meaningfully better product or
a meaningfully cheaper product.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Well, and is part of is part of the reason
that the transportation is expensive. Because they're making it like
a conventional house. It ends up like a three D box, right,
They're not making like flat panels. It's not an ikea house,
it's a It's a house that you put on the
back of a giant truck that is very expensive to
hire and us a lot to move. Is that part
(03:51):
of the issue.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
That's definitely part of it. That's definitely part of it.
And then and then once it gets to the site,
because it's this large, you know, like you said, you know,
almost container size, you know, or even bigger than a
container size room that needs to be lifted into place.
You need a massive crane and those cranes can be
twenty thousand dollars a day, right, So that alone is
a huge cost. If you need a creat for even
one day, that's twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I just want to clarify one thing that I realized
might be ambiguous, and that is we're not talking about
mobile homes here, right, We're talking about houses that are
manufactured in kind of a similar way. But it's a
full house. It's not a mobile home. It's not like
a trailer park house. It's a house.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Correct, It's a house, and it's built to the same
building code and building standards as a conventionally on site
built home. Okay, And that's what I saw, and so
you know, I saw a ton of opportunity to improve,
right like I thought. I actually when I worked there
thinking these guys have the solution to the problem. And
I left that innership thinking this isn't the solution. And
(04:48):
I actually started that's when I started researching all the
other companies that were doing precou and learning about their approach,
and no, everyone was basically doing the same thing, which
was build homes in a factory but convention. And that's
where I realized there was a huge opportunity to solve
this problem. And that's when I started chatting with my
co founder Jim Well, So, you know, went back to
architecture school and said, hey, I think I think there's
(05:10):
this huge problem. And there's kind of two parts to it. There's,
you know, how do we build homes in a factory
more like how cars are made, so like you know,
true design for manufacturability, designed for scale, and designed for automation. Right.
And then there's a second part, which is how do
you do that? You know, while you're not building the
(05:31):
same car or same home one hundred thousand times, there's
some amount of variation that is necessary to serve the market.
And this is where the customization comes from.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Right, And I think so there's kind of two parts
of the problem. Build homes like cars and uh and
and enable some enough enough customization that you can actually
serve a large enough market.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
It has to be more customized than a car, yes,
but but kind of with the manufacturing principles of a car,
where you think, not what is what is my dream car,
but what is a car that is great that we
could make a million of exactly the same.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Exactly And so that's that's when we started chatting, and
that's that's when we started Cover. So we started to
cover while we were still in.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And when was that? That was twenty fourteen, Is that right, correct? Yeah,
so a long time ago. A key moment for me
that's interesting both in the life of your company and
in sort of the housing story more generally, is when
California passes this law that makes it easier for people
to put what's technically called an ADU, which is basically
(06:30):
like a little backyard cottage or apartment on their house.
Is that the right moment to talk about next?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah? So yeah, we you know, we we started the
company while we're still in school, graduated, moved out to
California the day after graduating, basically three months after graduating
that law was passed, Okay, And interestingly, at the time,
we had realized that instead of focusing to start on
(06:58):
entire you know, single family homes, right, call it a
two thousand or three thousand scriffed home. We should actually
focus on backyard you know, little backyard offices or guest homes.
We actually realized we should focus on this before that
lock came out. Interesting because yeah, and the reason for
that is is really, you know, taking the lean iteration
process of a startup, and how do you apply this
(07:20):
to this large, complex product. Well, start with the smallest
possible version of that product you can, right, the.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Minimum viable product. The minimum viable product is not a
two thousand square foot house. It's a five hundred square
foot studio with a bathroom.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
In a kitchen exactly. And so we realized that, and
then turns out the timing was just perfect because this
lock came out and we were already positioned, you know,
we were like, we already have the website. We just
have to you know, speak to this new regulation. And
so the market for what we were focusing on, you know,
I don't know what the number probably over one hundred
x you know, within three months of us starting there.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
So it was just good luck.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It was good luck. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, and like maybe a little bit like you're just
kind of in the zeitgeist. Right, that's the non pure
good luck part of it is kind of it was
in the wind.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah. We had our investors, you know, basically reach out
and say, did you guys like pass this law within
three months and we're like, no, we wish we could
take credit for it, but we didn't do anything there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So okay, so now you've got a company, you got
the laws suddenly on your side. What do you have
to do to go from that moment to actually sell
in somebody a backyard studio and putting it in their backyard.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So really, what we wanted to do is prove to
the world that not only could you build homes in
a factory, you know, efficiently and at low cost and fast,
but that you could build homes that are way better
than conventionally built homes. So you know, high end, you know,
(08:50):
kind of change people's perception of a home, of a
prefabricated home, home built in a factory, to something that's
that's actually desirable, that's better, right and noticeably, right, not like,
oh yeah it's better in these three ways that you
have to read on the on the brochure, right, No,
it's actually used. Look at it. You're like, Wow, that's beautiful. Well,
that's that's you know in the that it looks like
(09:12):
you was built by a starchitect, right or or you
know that kind of things. That's what we wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
In a minute, why Alexis had to hire people from
the car business to make Cover work and the problems
Cover still needs to solve to sell factory build houses
at scale. That's the end of the ads.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Now we're going back to the show.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So that's the that's the dream. Tell me about some
of the things you had to figure out to do
that to get from the idea to the thing.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah. I think one of the biggest realizations, you know,
we're starting to build this. My co founder and I
both have architecture backgrounds, and the more we built, the
more we realized the reason that this problem hasn't been
solved from within the architecture construction world is because some
of the core skills that are needed to solve this
problem aren't known and taught by most people in that world.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
And we realized that actually, if you want to build
homes like cars, you need people that understand homes, but
you also need a lot of people that understand cars.
Huh to be part of the innovation process.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
What specifically are the sort of skills or knowledge that's
that you need from the car industry.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I mean one big one is designed for manufacturability
and designed for assembly. So you know, you don't just
design the part for what it's going to do, what
it's in the car. You design the part with how
you're going to make it in mind, so that you
can make it incredibly efficiently and a low cost and
reliably and at a very high quality, consistent uh huh.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And like it has to be exactly the same every time. Right,
It's like a precision element I think of in cars
that is probably not there in conventional home building.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Right, that's right, even the units that you talk in right,
Like you know, when I was an architecture school, people talk,
you know, people talk, you know, oh, it's going to
be within an eighth of an inch or even an
eighth site tight, Right, Most people are like, you know, yeah,
within half an inch, within a quarter of an inch, right.
In in automotive you're talking you know how many thousands
of an inch? Right? And so and actually at cover
(11:24):
that's that's we talk in terms of Yeah, this tool
has to have this many thousands of an inch precision.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So it's orders of magnitude more precise. And that's because
it just has to fit together automatically. You're not going
to have a carpenter there to kind of just make
it work exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
And we actually we learned that the hard way, you know,
that's exactly how we learned that this is a problem.
We tried to build something ourselves. It didn't fit as expected,
and as we kind of went and root caused it,
we learned that, yeah, you know, being off by one percent,
you know, in a degree over eight feet like that
doesn't fit together at the end of the day. And yeah,
(12:00):
if you need someone on site to then you know,
send something or trim it down. That kind of defeats
the purpose because now you're building it once in the
factory and you're rebuilding it again once it gets to
the site. So defeats the purpose. It has to just
fit together right once it shows up on site.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So you figure it out eventually, right you do. You
are now making and selling little backyard homes or studios. So,
I mean, one thing we haven't talked about in the
sort of bigger why is home building inefficient? Why hasn't
it progressed? Part of it seems like the regulatory piece, right,
(12:39):
there's so many rules for construction permits you have to
get in some places, it seems to be captured by
the people who are being regulated.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So, as you are trying to figure out how to
mass produce these studios, is there a regulatory piece you
have to deal with?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Because we're building homes in a factory, there's a state
approval process for everything that's built in the factory, okay,
And so that's something that we have a relationship with
this agency. They go and look at our design and
our way of doing things, and they actually look at
our quality control process and our pulled control documentation. They
approve that as an overall process, and then yes, we're
(13:19):
an approved factory built home manufacturer. Okay, but we still
have to submit and get approval for each home from
the city. But the scope of what the city looks
like looks at is smaller, okay.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
And the city you're basically selling in La now right,
So when you say the city, is that basically of
Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, City of Los Angeles. Yeah, And and what they
look at is much narrower. It's basically, are you even
allowed to build this, you know, on this property? Where
on the property is it going to be located? And
is that acceptable? Right? And and things like how far
is it from the closest fire hydrant, right, and what's
the access like if there was a fire, you know,
basic kind of safety things, right. And so that's the
(14:01):
permitting process with the city, and they'll also look at
the foundation, right. So so the majority of the actual
building side of things is handled on the state level,
and then the local specifics are handled at the city level.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
When did you sell your first thing, your first studio, the.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
First actual backyard home with a kitchen and bathroom, right,
like a real home? That one we sold in twenty
seventeen and then we delivered it in twenty eighteen. It
took us a while to figure out the system and
engineer the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And where are you too now, Like how many have
you sold? How many do you sell per whatever, per
month or per year however you look at it.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, yeah, So we've built dozens of these, like, you know,
well over thirty of them, you know, across LA. We've
also built one in Joshua Tree. We've built dozens of them.
And we're delivering homes every month.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So let's talk about where the product and the process are. Now,
how does it work.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
The way I think about is we have multiple production
lines for different parts of the home. So you have,
you know, a roof and floor panel production line, a
wall panel production line, a cabinetry production line, and so
these are running. We're making the individual parts, uh, where
we're we're doing quality control uh and then and then
we're getting the ready to ship and so these are
these all gets shipped on regular flatbed trucks.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
The sort of output of the factory is like a
bunch of like walls and roof panels and cabinets and
they like and the and the and the walls have
like pipes and wires in them. I mean, just just
give me like a little bit more detail of like
how this is actually working.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, yeah, so so so yeah, it's it's on the
production line. We're building you know, the structure. We're putting
the insulation in, we're putting the waterproofing in. We're putting
all of the connection mechanisms so that everything can can
connect quickly on site, and and we're also putting in
plumbing and electrical so.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
There are like pipes and wires just running through walls
that you're building in the factory.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yes, okay, Yeah, the goal, right is to minimize the
amount of complexity that you have to do on site.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
How long does it take to put the house together
at the.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Site we're right now, we're at about a month.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
About a month. That might be longer than I would
have guessed. I mean, I'm ignorant. I don't know why
I would have guessed less, but I was just imagining, like, oh,
it's just a bunch of lego blocks and you get
there and you're just snapping together.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, and actually we're working on making it even faster, right,
I think we can go even faster than that, and
so we're working. That's when we say the reason we're
not building one hundred homes per year, right or a
thousand homes per year, is because we want to get
it even faster before we go and scale not just
on site but even in the factory. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So presumably the person the buyer already has what poured
a foundation, and we do that as all of the
hookups ready. That is that that's like before the house
gets there from the factory obviously.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, that's the foundation, the hookups, the utility hookups, that's
all done before. We do manage that for our customers, right, huh,
so that they just come to us and we take
care of everything in the permit, the foundation, the manufacturing,
the installation. But yeah, the the assembly itself is yeah,
about a month.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So what is that? What is that month of work?
What are people doing for that month?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, So so the structure goes up relatively quickly, like
one or two days. And then and then you're waterproofing it,
you're installing the windows, you're installing the interior walls U
and then and then you're you have some plumbing, you
have some electrical in but you've got to connect it all.
You've got to connect it to the panel, right and
connect that to the to the utilities. Actually we installed
(17:43):
we we ship them with deducting and HVAC already installed, right,
but you still need to make connections. Test those connections,
make sure they're reliable. Right, go and install, and then
go and install all the finishes, all of the interior
interior wall panels, exterior finishes, you know, countertops, cabinetry, align them.
(18:04):
That's one thing that that that takes quite a bit
of time. And then and then while we do the
first code of paint from the factory today, we do
a finished code on site. And so that's another thing
you know, that'll take a few days, right, you know,
including letting it dry and all. It's still you know,
that's still faster than conventional construction. But we can go
(18:24):
even faster than that, and that's what we're working on.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So you mentioned that you're still sort of trying to
get the process right so that you can scale so
that you can sell ten times as many houses as
you're selling now or whatever. What's a thing in the
process that you haven't figured out yet? What's the like
a optimization problem that you're working on right now?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, I'll give you some one, like the paint right,
painting on site. To paint something well, it requires a
good eye, it requires craft, it requires attention to detail,
and so that requires sending a painter on site. You know,
when you're building a car, you don't want to be
reliant on someone's skill and craft aft. So one of
(19:10):
the things that we're trying to figure out how to
do is and we're going to is move the painting
process into the factory and then ship things in a
way where they're protected so that it all comes together.
When people are moving around with their you know, the
fridge or the cabinets and they accidentally knock on the
or scrub past the wall, it doesn't damage the painting
(19:31):
and require refinishing.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And so you're talking about interior painting.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Now, interior painting yet naively not.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Knowing anything about it, I would think, well, you could
just paint it at the factory. That shouldn't be that hard.
But tell me why it is hard. I'm sure it is.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I just yeah, we've done that. We've tried to do
both cotes in the factory, and then what happens is
that they get scuffed along the way right, or or
you know, there might be something that you know, one
part doesn't fit together and so you need to trim
it and that creates dust and I have dust all
over it, right, that kind of problem.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Is there some kind of like industrial scale sort of
saran wrap? Could you paint it and then put like
a plastic film over it and then not remove the
plastic film until the end.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, exactly right, that's that's the solution, right.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Probably not, but I don't know anything That's what came
to my mind. I mean, what have you tried.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I mean, we've tried just painting for the factory. That
doesn't work right. We've tried kind of protecting it in shipping.
And while that helps right from the shipping process, you know,
once you even saw it on site, there's some challenges there. Right,
a film right might not cut it right some of
the Sometimes what happens is, you know, that might help
for eighty percent of the scuffs, right, but if you actually,
(20:37):
let you know, moving a fridge and you hit the
corner of the fridge, that's going to create a bit
of a dent. So there's many things like that. It's
not like there's one big thing that takes a ton
of time. It's it's really like hundreds of small things
that need to be figured out and and from a
process standpoint and from a product standpoint to make this
(20:58):
you know, much more like like a car.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So let's talk about let's talk about cost and price.
What does one of your backyard studios costs today?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
You know, for a unit that has like a bedroom,
a bathroom, a kitchen, right, like a fully functional living space.
While you can go smaller and get under three hundred
thousand dollars. Most of them are going to be over
three hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Over three hundred thousand, so but that's.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
All in that includes the sixiensive.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
I mean, the median price of a home in the
United States is somewhere around there. So like, yes, you're
you're building an expensive backyard home.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Now we're starting off with a product that's very high end, right,
Like we've we include like sub zero wolf appliances, right,
which you know that a fridge and an oven there
can be fifteen thousand dollars, right, just just that, right,
So it's very high end, and we're proving to the
world that this is better than conventional construction. And then
(21:55):
as we ramp up production, as we build more and more,
we will lower the cost and be competitive with you know,
mass you could build the same home, like the typical
American home for the same price, right, Like, that's where
we want to get to.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
For you to get from where you are now to
where you want to be to building full size houses
for people who are not rich, you need to get
better at building the houses, and then the world needs
to discover you and want to buy your houses. Right,
those are the two sides. So one side of that
is you getting better at building those houses. You mentioned
painting as an example of a thing you have to
get better at. What's another example, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Mean another example is actually on the supply chain side.
So a lot of our supply chain historically has been
what I would call a prototyping supply chain. Who's close,
who can get it done fast, and who can we
basically go, you know, just drive to and if we
have feedback or we need to make changes because what
we've optimized for is speed of iteration. Huh right, But
as we scale, one of the biggest changes we need
(22:54):
to make is to say, you know what, we're gonna
lock down this design, not forever, but we're gonna say
we're gonna build one hundred that are gonna be the same.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, we're gonna stop, We're gonna stop monkey in with it.
We're gonna stop iterating on this one thing for a while.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
For a while. So we order one hundred the same parts.
And when you order a hundred parts from a supplier
versus you know ten, right, it's a huge difference in costs.
I mean, you're talking about you can you can reduce
the cost sometimes you know, fifty percent sometimes even more?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Right, And so are you there? Are you there yet?
Are you ordering one hundred at a time?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Now, we're close, We're close. We're now setting up the
long term supply check. Okay, we're kind of taking the
product from this prototyping phase to hey, we're ready to
scale this. Let's let's go build thousands of homes. That's
where we are.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
So so then there's the demand side, right, Is that
the other piece of people have to want to buy
these houses from you?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, people have to want to buy these homes from us. Fortunately,
there because we have a product that is much better
than conventional construction. Even at this price point. We've we've
always had a backlog of orders.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
So is the only thing keeping you from selling full
size houses right now your own desire to make your
process better before you do that?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, it is. It's it's the it's kind of like,
you know, nail it and then scale it.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Did you make that up? Or is that a thing
people say? Is that like a y Combinator thing?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
I didn't make that up. An investor friend said it. Actually,
it's like we love the nail it scalet approach. It
summarizes it. Well, when you.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Put it that way, it sounds binary. It sounds like
there will be a day when you're like, okay, let
a rip. But you know, the real world is often
not like that. Do you have a moment in your mind.
Is there a thing you're trying to get to when
you say like, okay, we know how to do this
well enough that we can we can let a rip.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah. The focus is really on the on site assembly
side of things. There Once that process can basically be
done by anyone. Right, So this is not necessarily people
that have extensive construction training. Right, we can you and
I can go build it, or you know, are as
someone who's currently working at Starbucks or at a restaurant.
You know, as long as they want to work with
(25:08):
their hands and and can you know, follow the instructions. Well,
anyone can build a cover. Once it's at that point,
the installation side of things can scale very well.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Oh right, because that's is that the binding constraint now,
I mean you were talking about the bottleneck is the
real bottleneck Now the skilled labor you need to install
the house on site once it's out of the factory.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
It is and and for most PREFIX companies even the
ones where they're shipping entire rooms, that on site process
still takes you know, they say, oh, it assembles in
a day, but really really what they do is they
put the parts together in a day, but then they
spend four weeks patching it up or six weeks thatching
it up. So even when they're shipping room size pieces,
(25:51):
that that's the bottleneck. And so yeah, that's the focus
is making it so that you know, that won't be
the bottleneck because then the complexity can mean the factory.
But there's a playbook for making factories more efficient, right,
Like any company that's had to scale up production has
had to learn how to make factories more efficient. So
there's much more of a playbook for how to do
(26:12):
that than there is for how to scale what's going
on on site.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Right, So the the real process improvement you need to
figure out is what can you change in your in
the factory manufacturing process so that assembling the house on
site requires less skill.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
That's right, and and and the result of that is
that it's also faster. But yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
At a certain level, what alexis uncover are trying to do,
you know, designing this thing so that it can be
made in a factory, so you don't need high skilled
laborers to assemble it on site. It reminds me a
little bit of the original Industrial Revolution in England more
than two hundred years ago now, where they did something
quite similar, but instead of doing it with houses, they
(27:05):
did it with cloth. That moment, you know, figuring out
how to produced something for cheaper with machines. That's really
the beginning of this era of technological progress that we've
been living through ever since. We'll be back in a
minute with the Lightning round, including Alexis tips for designing
a small space that doesn't feel that small. Now back
(27:32):
to the show, let's finish with the Lightning Round. I'm
just gonna ask you a bunch of questions. Yeah, I
read that you canceled all meetings for everybody at your
company on Tuesdays.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Is that true?
Speaker 1 (27:47):
It's true? So why Tuesdays?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I Actually I wasn't like big on the Tuesday. The
Tuesday thing was just that we had to pick a
day and I just had to Hey, it's either gonna
be Tuesdays or Thursdays, and we put it up to
a vote, and Tuesday one, surprisingly by like seventy percent,
So I was like, Okay, let's do let's just do Tuesdays.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Who's the most overrated architect of the last one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I think there's I think Frank Garry. Honestly, I think
Frank Aarry. There there's some I will say, there are
some very impressive things that he has done from a
technology standpoint, right as far as how his building, because
there's such crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Metal that looks like it's like rippling in the breeze
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, exactly, and and and and that metal actually like
they've done some pretty innovative stuff on it. So I'd
say from from a technology standpoint, he's actually very impressive
and inspiring. But but I just don't see why buildings
need to look like, you know, scraunched up napkins. Like
why this is controversial, but you know why.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
I like it. So, who's the most underrated architect of
the last one hundred years?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Oh? Uh, underrated, I'd say, you know, Knees, Vandero and
Lac Corboussier. So by no means underrated. They're i think
highly respected within the architecture world. But outside of the
architecture world, a lot of people don't even know about them, right,
And they One of the things that I think was
really really interesting about the work that they did and
(29:09):
the vision that they set out for the world was
they looked at the car as kind of this thing
that we should aspire to in architecture in terms of
making it affordable to people, making it a mass market product.
And actually they talked a lot about the vision of
factory made homes so that you could have incredible homes
(29:32):
for everyone. And I think a lot of that has
been lost.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
From your professional experience. What do you understand about houses
that most people don't?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, I think I think one thing there is is
not all square feet are created equal. And like the
degree to which this can be true shocks people sometimes, right,
people look at like, oh, how many square feet is
this home? Like you can have a thousand square foot
home that feels smaller than a six hundred square foot home.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
And and and I'm not I'm not exaggerating. So there's
a lot that you can do from a design standpoint
to make small spaces feel bigger. Right, So you know, again,
less is more, right?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
What's one way to do it? What's like one tip
for optimizing your your space.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, large windows is huge, large Florida ceiling windows. And
then and then just good layout where you don't have
a bunch of wasted space and kind of like transition
like hallways right or foyer's right, like you kind of
don't think about that space because you don't use it
all the time.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Do you think you'll run cover for the rest of
your career?
Speaker 2 (30:39):
That's all I want to do. I want to build
awesome homes and you know, whether it's backyard homes, single
family homes, multifamily that that's all I want to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Alexis Revis is the co founder and CEO of Cover.
Today's show was produced by Edith Russello, edited by Sarah Nicks,
and engineered by Amanda Ko. You can email us at
Problem at Pushkin dot fm. I read every email. You
can also find me on Twitter at Jacob gold STEAE.
I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
(31:12):
another episode of What's Your Problem.
Pushkin. Houses in America are too expensive. There are a
lot of reasons for this. One reason that we've heard
a lot about in the past few years regulations, regulations
that make it hard to build enough housing in the
places people want to live. But there are other reasons
(00:35):
that we've heard less about. One other less discussed reason,
building houses is an inefficient process, and it's not getting better.
Over the past several decades. As so many industries got
so much more productive and more efficient, home building stayed
largely unchanged. People have been dreaming of transforming home building
(00:56):
for like one hundred years now, dreaming of using modern
industrial techniques to mass produce houses and bring down the cost.
In the nineteen twenties, for example, Buckminster Fuller even started
a company to do that, but it never really got
off the ground, never really worked. In the decades that followed,
other people tried similar things, and you know, we got
(01:16):
mobile homes and we got manufactured houses, but nobody has
really succeeded in fulfilling that vision that Buckminster Fuller had.
No one has figured out how to make beautiful homes
at scale in a way that is optimized for factory
mass production. Someone could do it If someone could figure
that out, it could go a long way toward bringing
(01:39):
down the cost of houses in America. I'm Jacob Goldstein
and this is What's Your Problem, the show where I
talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
My guest today is Alexis Revas, co founder and CEO
of Cover. Alexis problem is this, how do you build
(02:01):
houses in a factory the way you build cars, and
how do you do it so that a factory built
house becomes cheaper and better than a traditionally built house.
Cover is based in La in California, and like basically
every other startup making physical things, they're following the Tesla model,
starting with a low volume, high end product with the
(02:22):
dream of scaling to the mass market. In other words,
today Cover sells expensive backyard studios to rich people in LA,
but their dream is to sell affordable houses all across America.
Alexis was interested in architecture from a very young age.
He told me he drew his first floor plan when
he was in first grade. He went to college and
(02:42):
studied architecture, and like so many people before him, he
got captured by this dream of building houses in a
factory and there are companies in America that build houses
in factories now, and so Alexis went off to intern
at one of those companies.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I saw a problem with conventional construction and thought, well,
what about building ups in a factory. So I looked
that up and I actually went an intern for a
company that built homes in a factory, so a prefab company,
and they were basically doing it conventionally. It was like
two by fours in drywall, right. But what happens is
that when you add in the transportation, when you add
in the overhead of actually running a factory, you know,
(03:20):
to the customer, the price gains or the quality gains
aren't really noticeable. It's not a meaningfully better product or
a meaningfully cheaper product.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Well, and is part of is part of the reason
that the transportation is expensive. Because they're making it like
a conventional house. It ends up like a three D box, right,
They're not making like flat panels. It's not an ikea house,
it's a It's a house that you put on the
back of a giant truck that is very expensive to
hire and us a lot to move. Is that part
(03:51):
of the issue.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
That's definitely part of it. That's definitely part of it.
And then and then once it gets to the site,
because it's this large, you know, like you said, you know,
almost container size, you know, or even bigger than a
container size room that needs to be lifted into place.
You need a massive crane and those cranes can be
twenty thousand dollars a day, right, So that alone is
a huge cost. If you need a creat for even
one day, that's twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I just want to clarify one thing that I realized
might be ambiguous, and that is we're not talking about
mobile homes here, right, We're talking about houses that are
manufactured in kind of a similar way. But it's a
full house. It's not a mobile home. It's not like
a trailer park house. It's a house.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Correct, It's a house, and it's built to the same
building code and building standards as a conventionally on site
built home. Okay, And that's what I saw, and so
you know, I saw a ton of opportunity to improve,
right like I thought. I actually when I worked there
thinking these guys have the solution to the problem. And
I left that innership thinking this isn't the solution. And
(04:48):
I actually started that's when I started researching all the
other companies that were doing precou and learning about their approach,
and no, everyone was basically doing the same thing, which
was build homes in a factory but convention. And that's
where I realized there was a huge opportunity to solve
this problem. And that's when I started chatting with my
co founder Jim Well, So, you know, went back to
architecture school and said, hey, I think I think there's
(05:10):
this huge problem. And there's kind of two parts to it. There's,
you know, how do we build homes in a factory
more like how cars are made, so like you know,
true design for manufacturability, designed for scale, and designed for automation. Right.
And then there's a second part, which is how do
you do that? You know, while you're not building the
(05:31):
same car or same home one hundred thousand times, there's
some amount of variation that is necessary to serve the market.
And this is where the customization comes from.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Right, And I think so there's kind of two parts
of the problem. Build homes like cars and uh and
and enable some enough enough customization that you can actually
serve a large enough market.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
It has to be more customized than a car, yes,
but but kind of with the manufacturing principles of a car,
where you think, not what is what is my dream car,
but what is a car that is great that we
could make a million of exactly the same.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Exactly And so that's that's when we started chatting, and
that's that's when we started Cover. So we started to
cover while we were still in.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And when was that? That was twenty fourteen, Is that right, correct? Yeah,
so a long time ago. A key moment for me
that's interesting both in the life of your company and
in sort of the housing story more generally, is when
California passes this law that makes it easier for people
to put what's technically called an ADU, which is basically
(06:30):
like a little backyard cottage or apartment on their house.
Is that the right moment to talk about next?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah? So yeah, we you know, we we started the
company while we're still in school, graduated, moved out to
California the day after graduating, basically three months after graduating
that law was passed, Okay, And interestingly, at the time,
we had realized that instead of focusing to start on
(06:58):
entire you know, single family homes, right, call it a
two thousand or three thousand scriffed home. We should actually
focus on backyard you know, little backyard offices or guest homes.
We actually realized we should focus on this before that
lock came out. Interesting because yeah, and the reason for
that is is really, you know, taking the lean iteration
process of a startup, and how do you apply this
(07:20):
to this large, complex product. Well, start with the smallest
possible version of that product you can, right, the.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Minimum viable product. The minimum viable product is not a
two thousand square foot house. It's a five hundred square
foot studio with a bathroom.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
In a kitchen exactly. And so we realized that, and
then turns out the timing was just perfect because this
lock came out and we were already positioned, you know,
we were like, we already have the website. We just
have to you know, speak to this new regulation. And
so the market for what we were focusing on, you know,
I don't know what the number probably over one hundred
x you know, within three months of us starting there.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
So it was just good luck.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It was good luck. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, and like maybe a little bit like you're just
kind of in the zeitgeist. Right, that's the non pure
good luck part of it is kind of it was
in the wind.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah. We had our investors, you know, basically reach out
and say, did you guys like pass this law within
three months and we're like, no, we wish we could
take credit for it, but we didn't do anything there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So okay, so now you've got a company, you got
the laws suddenly on your side. What do you have
to do to go from that moment to actually sell
in somebody a backyard studio and putting it in their backyard.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So really, what we wanted to do is prove to
the world that not only could you build homes in
a factory, you know, efficiently and at low cost and fast,
but that you could build homes that are way better
than conventionally built homes. So you know, high end, you know,
(08:50):
kind of change people's perception of a home, of a
prefabricated home, home built in a factory, to something that's
that's actually desirable, that's better, right and noticeably, right, not like,
oh yeah it's better in these three ways that you
have to read on the on the brochure, right, No,
it's actually used. Look at it. You're like, Wow, that's beautiful. Well,
that's that's you know in the that it looks like
(09:12):
you was built by a starchitect, right or or you
know that kind of things. That's what we wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
In a minute, why Alexis had to hire people from
the car business to make Cover work and the problems
Cover still needs to solve to sell factory build houses
at scale. That's the end of the ads.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Now we're going back to the show.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So that's the that's the dream. Tell me about some
of the things you had to figure out to do
that to get from the idea to the thing.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah. I think one of the biggest realizations, you know,
we're starting to build this. My co founder and I
both have architecture backgrounds, and the more we built, the
more we realized the reason that this problem hasn't been
solved from within the architecture construction world is because some
of the core skills that are needed to solve this
problem aren't known and taught by most people in that world.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
And we realized that actually, if you want to build
homes like cars, you need people that understand homes, but
you also need a lot of people that understand cars.
Huh to be part of the innovation process.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
What specifically are the sort of skills or knowledge that's
that you need from the car industry.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I mean one big one is designed for manufacturability
and designed for assembly. So you know, you don't just
design the part for what it's going to do, what
it's in the car. You design the part with how
you're going to make it in mind, so that you
can make it incredibly efficiently and a low cost and
reliably and at a very high quality, consistent uh huh.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And like it has to be exactly the same every time. Right,
It's like a precision element I think of in cars
that is probably not there in conventional home building.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Right, that's right, even the units that you talk in right,
Like you know, when I was an architecture school, people talk,
you know, people talk, you know, oh, it's going to
be within an eighth of an inch or even an
eighth site tight, Right, Most people are like, you know, yeah,
within half an inch, within a quarter of an inch, right.
In in automotive you're talking you know how many thousands
of an inch? Right? And so and actually at cover
(11:24):
that's that's we talk in terms of Yeah, this tool
has to have this many thousands of an inch precision.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So it's orders of magnitude more precise. And that's because
it just has to fit together automatically. You're not going
to have a carpenter there to kind of just make
it work exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
And we actually we learned that the hard way, you know,
that's exactly how we learned that this is a problem.
We tried to build something ourselves. It didn't fit as expected,
and as we kind of went and root caused it,
we learned that, yeah, you know, being off by one percent,
you know, in a degree over eight feet like that
doesn't fit together at the end of the day. And yeah,
(12:00):
if you need someone on site to then you know,
send something or trim it down. That kind of defeats
the purpose because now you're building it once in the
factory and you're rebuilding it again once it gets to
the site. So defeats the purpose. It has to just
fit together right once it shows up on site.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So you figure it out eventually, right you do. You
are now making and selling little backyard homes or studios. So,
I mean, one thing we haven't talked about in the
sort of bigger why is home building inefficient? Why hasn't
it progressed? Part of it seems like the regulatory piece, right,
(12:39):
there's so many rules for construction permits you have to
get in some places, it seems to be captured by
the people who are being regulated.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So, as you are trying to figure out how to
mass produce these studios, is there a regulatory piece you
have to deal with?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Because we're building homes in a factory, there's a state
approval process for everything that's built in the factory, okay,
And so that's something that we have a relationship with
this agency. They go and look at our design and
our way of doing things, and they actually look at
our quality control process and our pulled control documentation. They
approve that as an overall process, and then yes, we're
(13:19):
an approved factory built home manufacturer. Okay, but we still
have to submit and get approval for each home from
the city. But the scope of what the city looks
like looks at is smaller, okay.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
And the city you're basically selling in La now right,
So when you say the city, is that basically of
Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, City of Los Angeles. Yeah, And and what they
look at is much narrower. It's basically, are you even
allowed to build this, you know, on this property? Where
on the property is it going to be located? And
is that acceptable? Right? And and things like how far
is it from the closest fire hydrant, right, and what's
the access like if there was a fire, you know,
basic kind of safety things, right. And so that's the
(14:01):
permitting process with the city, and they'll also look at
the foundation, right. So so the majority of the actual
building side of things is handled on the state level,
and then the local specifics are handled at the city level.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
When did you sell your first thing, your first studio, the.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
First actual backyard home with a kitchen and bathroom, right,
like a real home? That one we sold in twenty
seventeen and then we delivered it in twenty eighteen. It
took us a while to figure out the system and
engineer the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And where are you too now, Like how many have
you sold? How many do you sell per whatever, per
month or per year however you look at it.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, yeah, So we've built dozens of these, like, you know,
well over thirty of them, you know, across LA. We've
also built one in Joshua Tree. We've built dozens of them.
And we're delivering homes every month.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So let's talk about where the product and the process are. Now,
how does it work.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
The way I think about is we have multiple production
lines for different parts of the home. So you have,
you know, a roof and floor panel production line, a
wall panel production line, a cabinetry production line, and so
these are running. We're making the individual parts, uh, where
we're we're doing quality control uh and then and then
we're getting the ready to ship and so these are
these all gets shipped on regular flatbed trucks.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
The sort of output of the factory is like a
bunch of like walls and roof panels and cabinets and
they like and the and the and the walls have
like pipes and wires in them. I mean, just just
give me like a little bit more detail of like
how this is actually working.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, yeah, so so so yeah, it's it's on the
production line. We're building you know, the structure. We're putting
the insulation in, we're putting the waterproofing in. We're putting
all of the connection mechanisms so that everything can can
connect quickly on site, and and we're also putting in
plumbing and electrical so.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
There are like pipes and wires just running through walls
that you're building in the factory.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yes, okay, Yeah, the goal, right is to minimize the
amount of complexity that you have to do on site.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
How long does it take to put the house together
at the.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Site we're right now, we're at about a month.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
About a month. That might be longer than I would
have guessed. I mean, I'm ignorant. I don't know why
I would have guessed less, but I was just imagining, like, oh,
it's just a bunch of lego blocks and you get
there and you're just snapping together.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, and actually we're working on making it even faster, right,
I think we can go even faster than that, and
so we're working. That's when we say the reason we're
not building one hundred homes per year, right or a
thousand homes per year, is because we want to get
it even faster before we go and scale not just
on site but even in the factory. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So presumably the person the buyer already has what poured
a foundation, and we do that as all of the
hookups ready. That is that that's like before the house
gets there from the factory obviously.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, that's the foundation, the hookups, the utility hookups, that's
all done before. We do manage that for our customers, right, huh,
so that they just come to us and we take
care of everything in the permit, the foundation, the manufacturing,
the installation. But yeah, the the assembly itself is yeah,
about a month.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So what is that? What is that month of work?
What are people doing for that month?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, So so the structure goes up relatively quickly, like
one or two days. And then and then you're waterproofing it,
you're installing the windows, you're installing the interior walls U
and then and then you're you have some plumbing, you
have some electrical in but you've got to connect it all.
You've got to connect it to the panel, right and
connect that to the to the utilities. Actually we installed
(17:43):
we we ship them with deducting and HVAC already installed, right,
but you still need to make connections. Test those connections,
make sure they're reliable. Right, go and install, and then
go and install all the finishes, all of the interior
interior wall panels, exterior finishes, you know, countertops, cabinetry, align them.
(18:04):
That's one thing that that that takes quite a bit
of time. And then and then while we do the
first code of paint from the factory today, we do
a finished code on site. And so that's another thing
you know, that'll take a few days, right, you know,
including letting it dry and all. It's still you know,
that's still faster than conventional construction. But we can go
(18:24):
even faster than that, and that's what we're working on.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So you mentioned that you're still sort of trying to
get the process right so that you can scale so
that you can sell ten times as many houses as
you're selling now or whatever. What's a thing in the
process that you haven't figured out yet? What's the like
a optimization problem that you're working on right now?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, I'll give you some one, like the paint right,
painting on site. To paint something well, it requires a
good eye, it requires craft, it requires attention to detail,
and so that requires sending a painter on site. You know,
when you're building a car, you don't want to be
reliant on someone's skill and craft aft. So one of
(19:10):
the things that we're trying to figure out how to
do is and we're going to is move the painting
process into the factory and then ship things in a
way where they're protected so that it all comes together.
When people are moving around with their you know, the
fridge or the cabinets and they accidentally knock on the
or scrub past the wall, it doesn't damage the painting
(19:31):
and require refinishing.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And so you're talking about interior painting.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Now, interior painting yet naively not.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Knowing anything about it, I would think, well, you could
just paint it at the factory. That shouldn't be that hard.
But tell me why it is hard. I'm sure it is.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I just yeah, we've done that. We've tried to do
both cotes in the factory, and then what happens is
that they get scuffed along the way right, or or
you know, there might be something that you know, one
part doesn't fit together and so you need to trim
it and that creates dust and I have dust all
over it, right, that kind of problem.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Is there some kind of like industrial scale sort of
saran wrap? Could you paint it and then put like
a plastic film over it and then not remove the
plastic film until the end.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, exactly right, that's that's the solution, right.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Probably not, but I don't know anything That's what came
to my mind. I mean, what have you tried.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I mean, we've tried just painting for the factory. That
doesn't work right. We've tried kind of protecting it in shipping.
And while that helps right from the shipping process, you know,
once you even saw it on site, there's some challenges there. Right,
a film right might not cut it right some of
the Sometimes what happens is, you know, that might help
for eighty percent of the scuffs, right, but if you actually,
(20:37):
let you know, moving a fridge and you hit the
corner of the fridge, that's going to create a bit
of a dent. So there's many things like that. It's
not like there's one big thing that takes a ton
of time. It's it's really like hundreds of small things
that need to be figured out and and from a
process standpoint and from a product standpoint to make this
(20:58):
you know, much more like like a car.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So let's talk about let's talk about cost and price.
What does one of your backyard studios costs today?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
You know, for a unit that has like a bedroom,
a bathroom, a kitchen, right, like a fully functional living space.
While you can go smaller and get under three hundred
thousand dollars. Most of them are going to be over
three hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Over three hundred thousand, so but that's.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
All in that includes the sixiensive.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
I mean, the median price of a home in the
United States is somewhere around there. So like, yes, you're
you're building an expensive backyard home.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Now we're starting off with a product that's very high end, right,
Like we've we include like sub zero wolf appliances, right,
which you know that a fridge and an oven there
can be fifteen thousand dollars, right, just just that, right,
So it's very high end, and we're proving to the
world that this is better than conventional construction. And then
(21:55):
as we ramp up production, as we build more and more,
we will lower the cost and be competitive with you know,
mass you could build the same home, like the typical
American home for the same price, right, Like, that's where
we want to get to.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
For you to get from where you are now to
where you want to be to building full size houses
for people who are not rich, you need to get
better at building the houses, and then the world needs
to discover you and want to buy your houses. Right,
those are the two sides. So one side of that
is you getting better at building those houses. You mentioned
painting as an example of a thing you have to
get better at. What's another example, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Mean another example is actually on the supply chain side.
So a lot of our supply chain historically has been
what I would call a prototyping supply chain. Who's close,
who can get it done fast, and who can we
basically go, you know, just drive to and if we
have feedback or we need to make changes because what
we've optimized for is speed of iteration. Huh right, But
as we scale, one of the biggest changes we need
(22:54):
to make is to say, you know what, we're gonna
lock down this design, not forever, but we're gonna say
we're gonna build one hundred that are gonna be the same.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, we're gonna stop, We're gonna stop monkey in with it.
We're gonna stop iterating on this one thing for a while.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
For a while. So we order one hundred the same parts.
And when you order a hundred parts from a supplier
versus you know ten, right, it's a huge difference in costs.
I mean, you're talking about you can you can reduce
the cost sometimes you know, fifty percent sometimes even more?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Right, And so are you there? Are you there yet?
Are you ordering one hundred at a time?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Now, we're close, We're close. We're now setting up the
long term supply check. Okay, we're kind of taking the
product from this prototyping phase to hey, we're ready to
scale this. Let's let's go build thousands of homes. That's
where we are.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
So so then there's the demand side, right, Is that
the other piece of people have to want to buy
these houses from you?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, people have to want to buy these homes from us. Fortunately,
there because we have a product that is much better
than conventional construction. Even at this price point. We've we've
always had a backlog of orders.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
So is the only thing keeping you from selling full
size houses right now your own desire to make your
process better before you do that?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, it is. It's it's the it's kind of like,
you know, nail it and then scale it.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Did you make that up? Or is that a thing
people say? Is that like a y Combinator thing?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
I didn't make that up. An investor friend said it. Actually,
it's like we love the nail it scalet approach. It
summarizes it. Well, when you.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Put it that way, it sounds binary. It sounds like
there will be a day when you're like, okay, let
a rip. But you know, the real world is often
not like that. Do you have a moment in your mind.
Is there a thing you're trying to get to when
you say like, okay, we know how to do this
well enough that we can we can let a rip.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah. The focus is really on the on site assembly
side of things. There Once that process can basically be
done by anyone. Right, So this is not necessarily people
that have extensive construction training. Right, we can you and
I can go build it, or you know, are as
someone who's currently working at Starbucks or at a restaurant.
You know, as long as they want to work with
(25:08):
their hands and and can you know, follow the instructions. Well,
anyone can build a cover. Once it's at that point,
the installation side of things can scale very well.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Oh right, because that's is that the binding constraint now,
I mean you were talking about the bottleneck is the
real bottleneck Now the skilled labor you need to install
the house on site once it's out of the factory.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
It is and and for most PREFIX companies even the
ones where they're shipping entire rooms, that on site process
still takes you know, they say, oh, it assembles in
a day, but really really what they do is they
put the parts together in a day, but then they
spend four weeks patching it up or six weeks thatching
it up. So even when they're shipping room size pieces,
(25:51):
that that's the bottleneck. And so yeah, that's the focus
is making it so that you know, that won't be
the bottleneck because then the complexity can mean the factory.
But there's a playbook for making factories more efficient, right,
Like any company that's had to scale up production has
had to learn how to make factories more efficient. So
there's much more of a playbook for how to do
(26:12):
that than there is for how to scale what's going
on on site.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Right, So the the real process improvement you need to
figure out is what can you change in your in
the factory manufacturing process so that assembling the house on
site requires less skill.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
That's right, and and and the result of that is
that it's also faster. But yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
At a certain level, what alexis uncover are trying to do,
you know, designing this thing so that it can be
made in a factory, so you don't need high skilled
laborers to assemble it on site. It reminds me a
little bit of the original Industrial Revolution in England more
than two hundred years ago now, where they did something
quite similar, but instead of doing it with houses, they
(27:05):
did it with cloth. That moment, you know, figuring out
how to produced something for cheaper with machines. That's really
the beginning of this era of technological progress that we've
been living through ever since. We'll be back in a
minute with the Lightning round, including Alexis tips for designing
a small space that doesn't feel that small. Now back
(27:32):
to the show, let's finish with the Lightning Round. I'm
just gonna ask you a bunch of questions. Yeah, I
read that you canceled all meetings for everybody at your
company on Tuesdays.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Is that true?
Speaker 1 (27:47):
It's true? So why Tuesdays?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I Actually I wasn't like big on the Tuesday. The
Tuesday thing was just that we had to pick a
day and I just had to Hey, it's either gonna
be Tuesdays or Thursdays, and we put it up to
a vote, and Tuesday one, surprisingly by like seventy percent,
So I was like, Okay, let's do let's just do Tuesdays.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Who's the most overrated architect of the last one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I think there's I think Frank Garry. Honestly, I think
Frank Aarry. There there's some I will say, there are
some very impressive things that he has done from a
technology standpoint, right as far as how his building, because
there's such crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Metal that looks like it's like rippling in the breeze
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, exactly, and and and and that metal actually like
they've done some pretty innovative stuff on it. So I'd
say from from a technology standpoint, he's actually very impressive
and inspiring. But but I just don't see why buildings
need to look like, you know, scraunched up napkins. Like
why this is controversial, but you know why.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
I like it. So, who's the most underrated architect of
the last one hundred years?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Oh? Uh, underrated, I'd say, you know, Knees, Vandero and
Lac Corboussier. So by no means underrated. They're i think
highly respected within the architecture world. But outside of the
architecture world, a lot of people don't even know about them, right,
And they One of the things that I think was
really really interesting about the work that they did and
(29:09):
the vision that they set out for the world was
they looked at the car as kind of this thing
that we should aspire to in architecture in terms of
making it affordable to people, making it a mass market product.
And actually they talked a lot about the vision of
factory made homes so that you could have incredible homes
(29:32):
for everyone. And I think a lot of that has
been lost.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
From your professional experience. What do you understand about houses
that most people don't?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, I think I think one thing there is is
not all square feet are created equal. And like the
degree to which this can be true shocks people sometimes, right,
people look at like, oh, how many square feet is
this home? Like you can have a thousand square foot
home that feels smaller than a six hundred square foot home.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
And and and I'm not I'm not exaggerating. So there's
a lot that you can do from a design standpoint
to make small spaces feel bigger. Right, So you know, again,
less is more, right?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
What's one way to do it? What's like one tip
for optimizing your your space.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, large windows is huge, large Florida ceiling windows. And
then and then just good layout where you don't have
a bunch of wasted space and kind of like transition
like hallways right or foyer's right, like you kind of
don't think about that space because you don't use it
all the time.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Do you think you'll run cover for the rest of
your career?
Speaker 2 (30:39):
That's all I want to do. I want to build
awesome homes and you know, whether it's backyard homes, single
family homes, multifamily that that's all I want to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Alexis Revis is the co founder and CEO of Cover.
Today's show was produced by Edith Russello, edited by Sarah Nicks,
and engineered by Amanda Ko. You can email us at
Problem at Pushkin dot fm. I read every email. You
can also find me on Twitter at Jacob gold STEAE.
I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
(31:12):
another episode of What's Your Problem.
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