183: ‘An Appetite for Transformation’, with Natalia Bakaeva

Episode Transcript
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Evan Troxel (00:07):
Welcome to the TRXL Podcast.
I'm Evan Troxel, and in thisepisode I welcome Natalia Bakaeva.
Natalia is a registered architect,artist, and placemaker passionate
about creating physical forms thatreflect diverse cultural influences.
She's worked on residential,commercial healthcare, educational
and public space art projects.

(00:28):
Born and raised in the far east ofRussia, her global journey includes
Japan, Spain, Moscow, London, andToronto, where she currently resides.
Her dedication to the sustainabilityof architectural practice and diverse
background led her to co-foundARKI focusing on incorporating
AI agents to eliminate tediouswork in design workflows, which

(00:51):
you're gonna hear more about today.
In this episode, we explore the topicsof rethinking data process and innovation
and discuss the challenges of redundantwork, the myth of spontaneous innovation
inside firms, the value of knowledgeretention, and how AI and purpose-built
tools like ARKI are transforminghow architects access information.

(01:13):
Natalia shares her personal journeyfrom practicing architect to tech
founder offering insights intosoftware design, user behavior, and
what it really takes to build a moresustainable and creative practice.
A key theme from this conversation,which connects to many of my
other episodes, is the challengeof talent loss in the profession.

(01:33):
Stay tuned until the end where I'llbreak down this critical issue and
share concrete examples of whatleadership needs to address and
hopefully reverse this concerning trend.
As usual, there's an extensive amountof additional information in the show
notes, so be sure to check those out.
You can find them directly in yourpodcast app if you're a paid member and

(01:54):
if you're a free member, you can findthem on the website, which is trxl.Co.
Lastly, you can really help thepodcast by sharing the episodes with
your colleagues and by commentingand sharing my LinkedIn posts.
You could also leave a comment overon YouTube for this episode and engage
with me and other listeners there.

(02:14):
I came away from thisconversation, energized.
It was amazing.
And so now without further ado, I bringyou my conversation with Natalia Bakaeva.
Thank you for coming onto the podcast.
It's great to have you.

Natalia Bakaeva (02:34):
Uh, thank you for having me, Evan.

let's start by talking about how you got to becoming a

Of course.

founder, co-founder.
I'm not like, I want you to tellthe story, but, um, I know you
have a history in the architectureindustry that is wide ranging.
So give us, uh, your background.

Thank you Evan.
So my story starts, um, infar east of Russia in Vostok.
That's where I was born.
If you know the Berian Railroad,um, that's the city where it ends.
So if you think about, uh, getting toMoscow, which is the capital of Russia,
it's about eight and a half hours flight.
Just to give you a scale and perspectiveof where I'm actually from, uh,

(03:14):
that's where I went to architectureschool, uh, when I was 16 years old.
So for more than half of my lifenow, I've been an architect and
consider still myself an architect.
And, uh, it's been a passion of mine.
You know, I alwaystell, um, my peers that.
I was so obsessed withtechnology from day one.

(03:35):
Uh, I start using more tech when I waslike 18 to the point where one time
my professor professors even failed meand sent me to redo a project because
they wanted me to do it by hand.
And I did it on a computer, so I rebelled.

exactly the architectural profession that I went through as well.
It was like there was twopeople using technology and it
was like, what are you doing?
Why are you doing te?
Why are you using these tools?
We want you to use these tools.
And it was very much like dictated to youwhich tools you will use to do the job.

Exactly, exactly.
You got it.
So they failed me.
They sent me to summer to summer kindof resubmission, and I spent, uh, you
know, uh, the summertime just redo,redoing this project by hand this time.
Um, so that was, uh, my education.
We had a lot of, uh, you know,architectural physics, uh,
theoretical mechanics, uh, a lot of.

(04:31):
Very robust, like post-Soviet type ofsubjects, uh, that were brought basically
from Soviet Union, that's from engineeringschool, from civil engineering rather.
And uh, from there I thought that, youknow, I would like to see bigger picture.
I would like to be in Europe and,uh, continue my studies there.

(04:53):
So I went to do masters at, um,university, which is a joint program
between London Metropolitan Universityfrom London, uk and, uh, British
Higher School of Design, whichis the, was the school in Moscow.
And that's where I did my masters.
And that was the opposite ofeverything I saw, uh, when I was

(05:14):
going through my bachelor education.
It was, um, we have a site and youdecide what the problem is for this site.

Right.

So.
When we were going through,uh, the Bachelor, uh, you have,
uh, technical requirements.
You have, let's say a school andthe program is 30 classrooms.
Each classroom is forcertain amount of people.
This is the square footage and go fitit into the building on certain site.
Here I arrive into environment where youcan build a city or you can build a bench,

Mm-hmm.

doesn't really matter because if you decide that the problem
of this site, it lacks a bench, youshould justify and concept explain why.
So, so that was definitely a hugechange for me and a big personal
transformation that I had to go through.
And then from there I decided notto stop there and, uh, continue my

(06:12):
journey and go to North America.
Um, I heard that the standards ofprofession were pretty high and, you
know, going through license process wasappealing to me and I also knew that.
Just the kind of operationalflow and how things are done,
um, here in Canada or the us.

(06:34):
Uh, follow the standardsand kind of the guidelines.
And I, I wanted to learn about that.
I wanted to be part of that ecosystem.
So I came to Toronto.
I've been here for the past11 years, uh, practicing.
I got my, uh, certificate of practice.
I got my license as an architect here.
And, uh, throughout my career herein Toronto, I worked in small firms,

(06:56):
you know, everything from four peopleteam working in custom homes all the
way to, you know, multi-billion, uh,healthcare projects with, you know,
10 plus buildings and team of 60 pluspeople and 40 consultants on one team.
And, you know, it's likethose mega projects and, uh.

(07:17):
This is a very long answer to yourquestion, how I got to be a founder.
But essentially, no matter where Iwent, which geography or which type
of firm I saw the same problems.
Things we struggle with day-to-dayas architects, and this is applicable
to both principles and, uh, you know,technicians or intermediate architects,

(07:43):
they see those problems from differentangles, but they all revolve around
the same issues in my opinion.
And, you know, I kind of grew tobe obsessed with this idea that
I can do something about it.
And in architecture office, I alwaysfelt like there is not enough room for
innovation because we wanna be, you know,a hundred percent billable or as much as

(08:06):
possible to kind of squeeze that time.
And, you know, even it seemed likethere was a desire to innovate
inside the firms where I were.
Where I was, but then still therewas never time allocated to it.
So the only way for me tocreate this innovation was to

(08:29):
create a, A company on my own.
So that's how I end up on thisjourney where I'm still today.

It, it, you know, that that part that you
just said really sparks this.
Memory for me too.
It's like there's hope thatinnovation will just happen as
a byproduct of the really smartpeople working on the projects.
And we'll be able to capitalizeand leverage that future projects.
And as you said, like there's no timeallocated to doing those kinds of things.

(09:02):
And so what did you do about it?
Like you, it's not like you could makethat time unless you wanted to spend
that time on your own after hours

Yeah.

developing that stuff and then bring it back to
the firm question mark, right?
Um, because you're just so loyal to that.
Um, I think a lot of firms thinkthat that's just gonna happen.
Or, or maybe, you know, thisis like, the whole idea of
hope is not a strategy, right?
Like you can't hope this stuff willhappen and benefit the business where
you're not enabling that to happenwithin, from within the business.

(09:36):
And so what did you do?
You went off and you.
Started your own thing and I think a,a lot of people end up having to go
that route and these companies don'teven realize what, how much they're
losing by not incorporating that intothe practice at all on that level.

You are so right about it, Evan.
And I think that I have a coupleof points to make here based on
just what I learned, uh, in acouple of recent years doing this.
The work that I'm doing today is that forsome reason there is this illusion that.
If, let's say we hire software engineersas architects and we bring them to
the office, like, I don't know whereare we gonna find the budget for

(10:19):
it, but let's say it is happening.

Mm-hmm.

Um, then we will be able to just build a custom software
for every workflow, which I alsothink that's part of the same problem.
Um, you know, we lack innovation first.
We don't do anything about it.
But then we take this, um,extremely proactive measures.
And from what I learned from thosefirms who did it, it's not effective

(10:47):
either because you have to maintain thesoftware, you have to be able to speak
with software engineers, and you haveto be able to productize the workflow.
So make, make a thing out of it.
Right?
It's not an easy task.
And myself, I'm still learning every day,even though before starting this company.

(11:09):
I, for year and a half, had a chance towork at the property tech startup myself,
where I learned about startups, I learnedhow to speak with software engineers.
I learned, learned about customersuccess and how to, you know, build
in public and deliver products thatconstantly changing and evol evolving.

(11:30):
And it's not an easy thing to do.
And you know, I feel sometimes weas professionals first go from a
point where we don't have time orwe don't do anything about it, and
then we go to the next extreme tryingto imagine those complicated pieces
of software that we will develop inhouse and we will maintain, we'll run.

(11:50):
And very often I have to tell, youknow, those, those prospects of those
customers, that's not how it works.
I have a software engineer,engineering team working with me
and it's still extremely hard to.
Continuously maintain to build, tomake sure that there is no bugs and,

(12:11):
and, and we are software engineers.
Imagine doing that inthe architecture office.

Yeah, there's little room for, for those kinds of
problems on top of project problems.
Right.
Um, and, and so, okay, so bear with me fora second because like, I am potentially
making a really weak connection here,but I I this idea that you experienced

(12:37):
do over when you were in school, right?
You, you gave a project,you, you did it digitally.
You used digital tools, right?
And then they said fail.
Go back.
do it by hand.
Okay.
I'm sure.
Well, I'm not sure.
I would be curious to hear whatyou learned by doing it that way.
If you found any value in kind of goingback and doing it again in an analog way.

(13:03):
And then I want to draw connection towhat you just talked about, which was
like, this, there's this perceptionthat we can just jump to the end.
We can envision this grand thingand that it just appears, right.
I think that's what kind of professorsused to think happened when you
did stuff with digital tools.
It was like, oh, you cheated.
Right?
You didn't use the same tools thatI used when I was learning how to.

(13:26):
How to be an architect.
Right.
Um, and so therefore, I wantyou to do it how I did it.
And, and okay.
So there is value in that.
I, I bet.
Right?
And at the same time, it's notlike we're never gonna go back to
doing things the way they were.
And now this weak connection potentiallythat I'm, I'm drawing here, is like,
that's what you're telling architects.
You're saying, no, no, no, no.
Like, we're not gonna skip to the end.

(13:47):
That that actually isn't a thing.
We have to fully understand the problem.
We have to develop the problem.
There's gonna be bugs, we'regonna have to address those.
Software development is hard,just like architecture is hard.
And we need to somehow find a wayto kind of marry these together.
So let's go to the beginning of my,my, my query here, which is like,
did you learn something by goingback and doing it again by hand?

(14:09):
Or did you feel like it wasa complete waste of time?
I mean, you probably felt things, but thenthere's like the real that may, you know,
maybe you did learn something in there.

Uh, great question.
So I think to begin with, I was veryupset, um, because I, I knew that

Yeah.

like they were holding me back and, you know, I,
when I started architecture school,I thought that design is everything.
Design is God and all the other thingsthat history of art or we, we had like
million subjects again in, in thismore traditional education back home.

(14:47):
I thought that they were all unimportant.
So when they told me to redosomething that has been already
created and do it manually, Iwas not happy to say the least.
But in the same time, I was always soobsessed with design that for every
project I had, like several conceptsthat I wanted to develop because

(15:09):
I was, I was just like so hungry.
I would lock myself in theroom and I would just spend
hours working on my project.
You know Evan?

design some more.

Yeah, exactly.
You know what's so funny?
Uh, a few years ago, my mom, we weretraveling, um, somewhere in the world
and she, out of the blue, tells me, youknow, daughter, I was worried about you.
You could have studied less.
You know how many parents cansay that about their children?
I was shocked.
I'm like, you should be happy.

(15:40):
Look at me.
I'm so, uh, dedicated to my craft.
Exactly.
And she's like, I was actually worriedabout you that didn't look very healthy.
I'm like, you just

Yeah.

describe,

you.

describe architecture school in a nutshell.

Wow.

Uh, so yeah, so I get to design another concept that I have
developed and I think that was, eventhough it was in the summer and I really
didn't wanna do that, but, you know,I, I remember this project so well just
because I think you right to connectit to what I do today because it stuck
with me throughout my career, throughoutmy life that, that episode that I knew

(16:18):
that I'm very dedicated to technology.
I was always.
Testing things, trying thingsout, and talking to my peers
and promoting them around.
Let's try this, let's try that.
And that was kind of my, alwaysmy, uh, agenda, if you will.
Um, so I, I did use a completelydifferent set setup for this project.
So, you know, if the first one wason the white canvas, then the, the,

(16:44):
the second one was like an inversion.
It, I took a black piece of, uh,cardboard and I drawn it in a white chalk.
So I, I completely reinvented thewhole thing and I quite frankly
designed the whole new building for it.
So, so it was just, uh,another exercise for me.
Um, and, uh, I think Ienjoyed it at the end.

(17:06):
'cause it's all aboutcreativity for me at that time.
And, uh, tying it to thesecond part of the question.
I think Evan, you understood it reallywell, and I know because you speak
to a lot of, uh, professionals whoare in tech in this industry, that's
probably why you, you sense it so well.
Because I think the, the dangertoday is that people hear the word

(17:28):
technology or the word ai, and thenthey think that everything is gonna be
now produced automagically for them.
You know, we go from not having thingsfiled at all, just floating on the
server to, can we just generate itby clicking a button, you know, it's

(17:49):
a, and the gap, as you can imagine,it's, it's absolutely massive.
And, uh, I have to sit down andgo through the process where every
single feature, every single button,every single thing we do has to have
a using and a problem behind it.
Uh, we call it jobs to be done.

(18:10):
And for every job to be done, wehave secondary job to be done.
We have the consequences.
We have basically thepersona for it assigned.
And this is just kinda showing a littlebit behind the scenes, but we essentially,
coming from a generation of softwaredevelopers where we don't want to end

(18:32):
up with another sales force, we don'twant to end up with another Revit.
We want to build the software that isabsolutely clean in the sense things
that are needed, they will be there.
And if we can removesomething, we'll remove it.

(18:54):
And that's why we have thingslike reporting and, and maybe we
sometimes thinking how to eliminatecertain things and make them
lean, make them more intuitive.
So I would describe it asbeing closer to Apple, maybe.
In terms of how you approach thingsand sometimes sculpting, like
subtracting rather than adding, right?

(19:15):
So that's the way, that's theway I see it, uh, in a nutshell.

And I think those kind of design ideals go back to masters.
I remember following Johnny Ive at, atsome level and him always referring,
well, maybe not like outrightlyreferring to, but definitely far as like
ideally referring to de Rams, right?
Like these 10 principles of good design,

Yep.

it's like nothing is extraneous.
There's nothing else there thatthat shouldn't be there, right?
And this idea of subtractioncleanliness and all of those things
are definitely kind of in that designethos that you're talking about.
And so you're applying kind of very designcentric principles to software design

(20:02):
in an architectural a EC environment.
And then going back to my, my reallyweird question about kind of drawing these
parallels, like you also probably learned.
different approach and a differentunderstanding of how to create
using a different set of tools.
And I'm sure that that also appliesto you're doing now in firms.

(20:25):
Like you have a background as anarchitect and you're understanding the
problems that they're dealing with andthen talking with those individuals,
just like an architectural designproblem, to solve that problem for them
instead of, you know, saying, here'sthe package that sits on the shelf,
take it or leave it with all the extrastuff that you don't need potentially.

(20:48):
Right.
Usually, and we only need itto do these few things, but
you gotta buy the whole thing.
You're talking about craftingvery purpose built thing.
And so I'm, I'm curious if you couldjust kind of the audience here on
the kinds of things that, that yourcompany is building for architecture
firms, because I think we still haven'treally addressed that piece of context.

Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Sounds good.
So I think in a nutshell, the problemsthat I've seen in the industry
related to information and dataaccess, uh, I'll tell you a story,
um, that happened to me during COVID.
It was in the middle of pandemicand we were all locked up at home.

(21:30):
I was working for a, a very greatfirm, which is now a customer of ours.
And, um, I was an, an architect on anew project that we got and, and it
was a food processing facility wherethe construction didn't stop, didn't
stop during Covid because of, youknow, the immediate need at that time.

(21:56):
And because we had to rush intoremote environment and, you know, we
didn't really have processes for it.
And the project was very tough.
The client was tough and theconstruction was, you know,
chaotic as it typically gets.
And also plus Covid with all the delays.
I found myself one day at2:00 AM at home, locked up.

(22:17):
My family's back home, you know,I don't have family in Canada.
And uh, at 2:00 AM I was drawing a simple.
Kitchen for a staff lunchroom.
And I was just thinking tomyself, this firm is 65 years old.
They've done great projectsall around the city.

(22:38):
They've done all sorts of typologiesincluding like, you know, universities
and some, again, training facilities.
Many things.
And I'm sure what I'm drawing right nowhas been drawn at least a thousand times.
And I'm,

times.
Yeah.

and I'm tired and I'm exhausted and I'm here by myself
and I'm probably gonna make a mistake.
And it's a very tough client, soit's probably gonna become an issue.
And then it's probably gonna bealso changed 10,000 times where,
you know, there are improvementsto be made, which we also didn't

(23:19):
track because I'm sure if we drawnit a thousand times, we learned 99.
A hundred times, you know, uh,99, 999 times we, we learned
something about this detail.
So with all of this, uh, itkind of stuck with me and that's
essentially what I brought to ourCTO Medi, who is my co-founder.

(23:44):
And I was like, listen,this is what we do.
This is how we do this.
And we jumped on a call with hundreds ofarchitects and we flagged this hypothesis
that, you know, potentially data isa problem, data access is a problem.
And, uh, that led us to about 85%validation of all the questions we asked.

(24:11):
And we never asked the right questionslike, would you use this software?
We said, what is the, we asked them,what is the worst part of your day?
How do you.
You know, why did youquit your previous job?
And you know, when people go throughthis, uh, we call it the mom tests, right?
So you kind of ask them basic questions.
When you hear them start swearingor really express their emotions,

(24:34):
that's where yeah, that's where youknow, and you start digging deeper.
That's how we came up with theconcept that, you know, we think that
internally there are thousands of unitsof information that each firm has.
We have a technology today that isallowing us to tap into this knowledge.

(24:58):
And then, then, as I already said, wehave different stakeholders in each firm.
And for each stakeholder, thatwould mean a different thing for
an architect's architect or draftin personnel, that would mean that.
You know, they can be more empowered.
They can feel like they join this newteam and they can really, you know,

(25:21):
be excellent and find those insightsand very efficiently leverage them
and come prepared to the meetings bysourcing this information ahead of time.
You know, for principles and decisionmakers, that would mean that they are
able to predict the projects better.

(25:42):
They know how much information theyalready have, they can leverage
versus how much of the new datathey need to produce or create.
And at the end of the day, if the teamis more productive, maybe they can
either take on more work or maybe theycan let the staff go home earlier.
They can be more sustainabledesign practice, which, you know,

(26:04):
majority of the architecturaloffices really struggle with.
And at the end of the day, ifwe are a medium sized firm.
And we use the technology effectively.
Maybe we can even scalewithout growing the headcount.
Maybe we can compete with largerfirms or sometimes, uh, we can even

(26:25):
think of retiring architects, right?
So retiring architects,they exit in the workforce.
And what we hear today is that internarchitects or junior architects
who joined firms during pandemic,they didn't get proper training.
They didn't get that, you know,situation where you have your principal
sitting by your side and sketchingthat detail and explaining to you the

(26:48):
workflow how these things come together.
And they really lack that knowledge.
At the same time as retired, ifretired architects, they exist in the
practice, they are not able to transferthat knowledge, that information.
And you know, if we are talking aboutjust the digital, uh, leads and, um,
you know, kind of IT stuff and anyonewho is dealing with technology, we

(27:10):
see that there is a huge problem withfragmentation and not being able to
sometimes compile information effectivelydue to different formats due to the
way the data is organized and storedand just the way we set up the practice
today and how the search works, right?
So with all this information in mind,with all those angles, with all those

(27:34):
stakeholders, we came up with an idea ofa platform where you can access, uh, your
data from any device you don't wanna bepigeonholed to, you know, either Autodesk
ecosystem or you know, windows ecosystem.
You can see your data on pc, on Mac,on iPad, on your phone, if you're

(27:58):
on site and you can use just thehuman language to explain to this
machine, what are you looking for?
If I'm drawing a kitchen counter detail,I don't want to go and talk to 10
people asking me, asking them about thisspecific one detail that we have done.
I want to just type kitchen counterto my search engine, and whatever

(28:23):
data exists will be pulled up.
And why we are different is that todaythere is a literal search, right?
You can essentially search forthis data if it's tagged, if it's
labeled, if it's certain, certain way.
Because today with AI, we cansearch semantically and we can

(28:43):
also search visually that whatgives us this incredible advantage
of something is not being noted.
Like, let's say a grab bar, but existsin the drawings, you can still able
to search for it and retrieve thatpiece of information that in today's
day, if it's stored somewhere far, youwill never be able to identify that.

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And now let's get backto the conversation.
I just wanna point out, Natalia,that you just mentioned, element of a

(30:10):
design that I think is so reassuringfor you as a software developer.
You, I mean, you talkabout a grab bar, right?
In a bathroom stall, and it'slike, you know what that is, right?
Like, that's gotta bereassuring for architects.
Um, the, the thing I want to the,there's this mental framework and I
think it might help here, which is.
There's data, like you said, thataccess to data is, is kind of

(30:31):
the, the common pain point, right?
And so there's, there's data and thenthere's information, and then there's
knowledge, and then there's wisdom.
Like that's kind of the informationhierarchy that I think of.
And data is, is one of a, thesmallest, low level piece of that.
And then wisdom, right, iskind of this high level.
We don't even understandhow that really works kind.

(30:54):
It's kind of magic at some level.
It's like, because it has experience, ithas a lot of experience, years and years,
decades of experience tied into it of realworld outcomes and mistakes and failures
along the way to get to that point.
Right.
And what you're talking about is kindof, you're, you're kind of hitting all
those levels, and I think you're usingthe, the same word though, data, right?

(31:16):
Or, and, and you said informationmaybe at one, one point there, but I
really think that, you know, when youare talking to somebody who's, uh.
A BIM technician, right?
Sometimes they're looking fordata and sometimes they're looking
for knowledge and sometimesthey're looking for wisdom, right?
And, and when they're coming preparedto a meeting with the right information,

(31:38):
it's like, because this is the wayarchitecture has been practiced forever.
And you're talking about people whohaven't had the opportunity to sit in an
office and learn through osmosis of havinga principle over their shoulder saying,
move the toilet three inches that way.
Here's why.
Right?
Or, you know, you're, you're dimensioningthese studs and you're not thinking

(31:58):
about all of the different treatmentsthat are going to be applied to that
surface, and then all of a sudden it'sgonna bust your a DA requirements, right?
And so it's little things likethat, that, that you're right,
people haven't had the opportunity.
And so I wanna find.
An example, but I also wantto understand that example.
Right?
And so when it comes to capturingthat information, we suck at that.

(32:23):
We don't capture it.
We, we pass it on verbally, we pass it onthrough red lines without an explanation.
There's a lot of different waysthat that information makes its way
through the generations of architects.
And it's nuanced andit's complicated, right?
And, and you kind of haveto live it at some level.
And so I, I'm just curious from, fromyour point of view, like what, how do

(32:46):
you, when you're talking to leadershipin firms who are paying for your
services or paying for tools or, youknow, making those decisions, like
how do you that kind of information?
Because they aren't, like, sometimesthere's a, there's a sentence in an
email that, that explains that sometimesthere's, you know, a conversation
and, and it's like, how do they.

(33:07):
Capitalize on those people who are walkingout the door with all that information.
I mean, I recently had a, an interviewon the Confluence podcast with Rob
Otani of Thornton Thomasetti corestudio, and he talked about like, they
had this incredible resource, they hadthis project engineer who had decades
and decades of experience and he gotto the point in his career where they

(33:29):
actually said like, don't work on anyprojects explicitly, just, you know,
be in the office and answer questions.
And he would, in a very detailed way,explain in emails why things were the
way they were when somebody came to himwith a question and they were able to
capitalize on that and build an AI systemthat kind of answered questions based on

(33:51):
years of his emails with his blessing.
Right.
Um, I'm curious how you convey thisto your clients or just now on the
podcast to people who are out there.
It's like, like this is a.
Like you're staring at a mountainright now of like, where,
here's where we want to get to.
How do we get there?
Climb the mountain, right?

Yeah, great question.
And this, as you can imagine,comes up every day and, uh, when
we do demonstrations or we talk.
Talk to prospect firms.
The concept of archive is not newconcept and, uh, storing the data
and searching through the data.
So we get this question that, you know,what is so special about you guys?

(34:35):
And, uh, because we used this tocertain way as architects, as engineers,
sometimes it takes more work to undowhat we think is right than actually
explain from this blank slate.
Because the problem today is that we stilltreat our data as a conventional archive.

(34:56):
Yes, it is tagged.
Yes it is labeled, butessentially we do the same thing
we do in a physical library.
And before we put this book away,we assign a number to it, and
now it can be found essentially

Mm-hmm.

what we do.
And you're right, we are currentlyin the data ingestion mode.
That's exactly how it worksbecause that's a step number one.
And that's what I always try toexplain to people we work with.
Because you cannot skip steps here,even though there is AI in the mix, even
though the technology is way more capabletoday than used to be, there's still data

(35:36):
pipelines, there's still steps in theproduct development that needs to be done.
So when you ingest the data, what wedo differently essentially is that
we process the data on the backend.
So there is no manual work for you to dowhen you want to file your information.

(35:57):
And you know, we started withconstruction details just because
it's a kind of simple unit thatexplains work and it's applicable
throughout geog different geographies.
We are working with five countriesnow throughout different type of firm.
If you are.
You know, working in healthcareor in corporate interiors, you're
still gonna draw a bunch ofdetails to describe your work.

(36:19):
So we moved away from constructiondetails and uh, now we also include
sections we include in large floor plans.
We include, uh, different types ofinformation that can bring value, right?
Because what we wanna do as a stepone to ingest the data and the time

(36:39):
that we save on manually tagging thedata we can now use to actually start
layering that information so we canmove to wisdom exactly like you said.
And by layering the information,you would be added notes, which
we currently already providing.
And that came from a notionwhere I always saw principal

(37:02):
architects or senior architects.
At my firms where they sawRevit, they never worked at it.
They saw PDF drawings, they brieflysaw them, and then they had an email.
That's where they communicated.
So I felt like there's never aplace to layer up the business
data to the drafting data.
What it actually mean toexecute this detail when we

(37:26):
build it previous time on site.
Did it work for us?
Was this product maybe discontinued?
Maybe the code has changed.
How do I deposit this knowledge?
Maybe detail is okay, maybe I just needto change the thickness of the insulation
and it's gonna be good to go, butwhere do I place that knowledge today?
How do I attach it to the piece of,uh, architectural engineering data?

(37:46):
And then from here we can startcollaborating on the data.
That's something that we alsomissing today as architects in
these firms, because again, it'seither Revit or it's file server.
Or maybe we communicate on teams or email.
I wanted to create a place where as ateam we can bring bunch of learnings.

(38:12):
Maybe we worked on different projectsbefore and now we wanna join our forces.
We want to create this compartment wherewe add those pieces of information and
then we have a conversation, right?
We, we now can start from50% and take it to a hundred
instead of starting from zero.

(38:33):
All of this, and as yousaid, needs data, right?
Like we know those, thosesystems are data hungry.
We have the big data problem from day one.
Day one, because for it to workwork effectively, you need to be
able to add information there.
Like you need to have agood sample size of data.
And if we are talking about the visionand the roadmap and where we going,

(38:55):
that's where wisdom comes in because.
What we are working on today, andthis is an active development, we
wanna be able to quantify the businessside of things and layer it to the
architectural and drafting side of things.
Because today, I think the biggestproblems, and that's why, for

(39:17):
example, investors criticize us.
They say that architects and engineers,they struggle with profit margins.
So it's very hard to build, tobuild a software for someone who
is struggling with making a profit.
We are going directly after that problem.

(39:37):
We wanna be able to layer up thebusiness data with the drawing
data and almost assign a price tagto every unit of information, or
the time tracker or some sort of.
Quantifiable measure that willtell us how we can predict future

(39:58):
projects with our internal work today.
That's our North Star.
We wanna create a value in between that.
Currently they do not have accessto because you know, like you
can still figure out a way how tostore the details you do on PDF.
Maybe you do it on, you know, paper,like there's a work around that.

(40:18):
If you really committed to it, right?
You can spend way more time.
You can talk to 10 people, butmaybe you'll find that, maybe
not, but there's a chance.
What we are really excited about isdelivering value that currently is not
being able to be extracted in house.
Um, maybe looking at Revit metadataand layering it over business

(40:44):
proposal data and figuring out thecommonalities, figuring out the
patterns, figuring out what can be.
Learned here that can helpus to be more successful when
we work on future projects.

That sounds really complicated.
I'm, I'm curious how you're doing that,because often these are in very silos

Yeah,

of an office, not

I,

technology wise, but people

yeah.
Yeah.

too.
Right.

Yep.

you do your thing, we'll do our thing.
We're a well-oiled machine and I cantrust you to do your thing, but there's
literally a tiny amount of crossovertypically, you know, even, even
physically, if I think about like, precovid offices, it was like somebody might
walk over to that other department totalk to somebody about something or, or

(41:36):
hit them up on, on a call or something.
But I think most of the time it'sjust like, nope, we're, we're just,
we've got this system working.
We're going to trustthat it works because.
We've spent all this investment intothe construct that and, and the,
the, shared trust that it does work.
And so I'm curious, like, howare you actually doing that?

(41:57):
Because, um, you are basicallybreaking down the established
ways that that firms work.
And I'm curious how open they are to that.
Um, versus, versus not, but also howyou're actually accomplishing that.

So.
To sum it up, it's not a very easy task.
And uh, as you know, construction isestimated to be about 25 years behind
on digitalization, uh, as an industry.
I don't know if that's a stat thatyou heard from any of the other
guests, but we know that thereis a lot of work to be done here.

(42:32):
And we also know that professionals inour industry, myself included, sometimes
I'm having a hard time changing myown patterns because we are so used
to just repeating what we are, um,what we have established already.
And I think it also has to do withliability and, uh, professional insurance

(42:53):
and all the things they have to carry.
So we almost default to the ways we know

Mm-hmm.

to be sure that, you know, we are not exposing ourselves
to something we don't want to.
And I think for us it's very important to.
Find firms who are not just sayingthat they're created for innovation.
They're completely self-awarethat you cannot put Genie
back back in a, in a bottle.

Mm-hmm.

not so much about we are changing the workflows a little
bit or completely revamping them.
The firms that are working with us,they understand that technology will
change the landscape, and I'm notsaying click one button, rendering
ready, mid journey stuff, likethat's not the way it's gonna go.

(43:42):
The firms understand that they canuse technology as a sales vehicle.
They can differentiate in front oftheir clients and they can communicate
to them that they are enabled andthey are en, they're enhancing
their productivity day-to-day, andthat is helping them to win work.

(44:03):
Because the clients are interestedin hearing that because that's
how, that's how they build thisdifferentiator for themselves.
Other firms, they want to be betterthan the firm next door, just
literally, they want to be ableto compete at the higher level.
That's their goal.
Um, and I think that they understand.

(44:23):
They're, again, self-aware.
They understand that that will takecertain disruption and that is why
we are working so closely with them.
Because as a, as a startup, as acompany that is constantly building
and evolving, we are so intertwinedwith their processes today.

(44:44):
And our initial goalis not to disrupt them.
We actually try, and that's whywe built integration with Revit.
That's why we are working with firms whoare in ArchiCAD, AutoCAD, you know, any
software because we actually wanna learn.
There is a value there.
You cannot just come, come in with anax and just like chop everything up and
then say, okay, now you do it this way.

(45:05):
It's never gonna work in this industry.
And me being on a team is extremelyhelpful, as you can imagine,
because software engineers half ofthe time don't understand what we
are talking about when we say grabbar and we say, you know, those,

Right.

especially when we start using the lingo and getting
really, um, hard on acronyms and, um,

Yes.

uh, I have to go sit down and decode all of this, uh, for my team.

Hmm.

And they've been extremely good at, at, at, uh, learning
about architecture, but still, likewe understand that it takes a person
coming from the industry to be able toexecute this work because those processes
so complex, they're so intertwined.
So I think my short answer tothis, it's a process and, um.

(45:58):
To the firms that are thinkingabout innovating, thinking about
their five 10 year as strategy.
My advice, always start early.
Don't wait on next best tool.
Figure out what values you identifywith and just start working on it.

(46:20):
Start wrapping your headaround how things work.
Like we meet with our customersevery couple of weeks, sometimes
every month, and we just tell themwhat's happening in the industry.
And they, as architects, they don'thave time to, to go and research,
but half an hour call with us.
They feel like they're already upto speed, even though we are talking
about our product development.

(46:40):
But we would always mentionsomething about what we saw, what is
happening, you know, what they saw,what they tested, and how it can
be potentially used in the future.
And we are experts in this.
That's what all what we do.
Um, so I think that.
It's not so much about changing everythingfrom the get go, it's about understanding.
It's gonna take us a verylong time to get there.

Yeah, I, I'm curious because you say you can't just go
in and start chopping with an ax.
Like what has the transition processbeen like when you're kind of going
alongside them and how, like, becausethey're the idea of disruption, like
I, it sounds to me like these firmsare interested in transformation.

(47:24):
They are interested in evolution.
And like, there's differentways to accomplish that.
Like burn it down, start over, right?
There's

Yeah.

and then there's the ex, there's the non extreme of like,
oh, we'll just, we'll just takeit in little bite-sized chunks.
Eventually we'll eat the whale.
Right.
Kind of a thing.
Um, sounds like you're somewherein the middle of that because
you have these firms that arelike ready for transformation,
at least from a leadership level.
They want to see that happen.
They understand the value that itcould at least for the next five

(47:57):
to 10 years, and, and that they'llbe in a better place sooner.
So I'm just curious, like what hasbeen the appetite of transformation
for these firms and, and what are, whatfeedback are you getting where it's
like, oh, the light bulbs are going off?
Because I'm curious to tellthat story to the people who are
listening to this, who are in firmsthat are not doing that at all.

(48:18):
I mean, that's the low, let's,let's aim for that lower end because
they're the ones who are yet tokind of see the possibilities there.

Yeah, great question.
I think that.
It's somewhere in the middle,like you said, but it's more
of a discovery for us today.
We are still learning.
We are asking questions every day andnot because I don't know how it's done,
it's more for us to, one more time,get to why, why doing this this way?

(48:47):
We are asking five whys and reallytrying to uncover what is they're
trying to actually accomplish.
Because there is a lot ofbuildup, like you just mentioned.
I admit myself, we justused to do it this way.
That's why we are doing it this way.

Mm-hmm.

think that the main theme here is to go, uh, lead with
collaboration, lead with education.
To give you an example, when we use,um, visual search engine that we
built, it is searching semantically.

(49:24):
In your data.
So you have access to your visualinformation, textual information,
metadata about the project.
And we kinda combine all of this andwe build a semantic cloud of meanings.
And then out of those meaningsyou'll be pulling the answer.
For example, if the drawing is labeled,Hm, you know, stands for hollow

(49:48):
metal and you type hollow metal, oursystem would know even if there is.
Hm.
That's what it means.
So that's like that informationthat we like, it's data and then
information that we are adding.
And then wisdom is the nextstep, like you said, and, and
kind of I elaborated on that.

(50:08):
And I think to be able to communicatethings that never existed before and how
they can use them, that's the hardest.
That's the hardest part because.
If we are used to just go onservers, spend three hours,
try to figure out information.
If we used to talk to 10 people,like, I'm not exaggerating.

(50:31):
Throughout our interviews we had oneinstance where a person told us if
they need to retrieve informationfrom the past project, they need
to first talk to their manager.
And then the manager willtry to memorize like remember
which, which project I was on.
And then they don't remember.
So they go to accountant and then theytry to find it in the accountant system.

(50:53):
Then once they find it, they go to it,it has to make the file not readly, but
actually downloadable from the old server.
And then they have to go and spend a bunchof hours trying to find like a classroom
layout from that one type of projectthat they've done several years ago.
So that's a way we used to do it.

(51:14):
So when I come to them and I tellthem, just type whatever comes to
your mind and you'll get an answer.
All of a sudden we don't knowwhat we're searching for.
And that's been the hardestchallenge just to guide the,
the team through the process.

Explain that.
Explain what you mean by we don'tknow what we're looking for.
Is it, is it like, well now Ican't even think of a problem.
Like what are you, what are youtalking about when you say that?

So they, like, let's say, okay, so just this week
we have a customer who have theirtypical details set up on sheets.

Mm-hmm.

And for them to find them, they download that
PDF full of details or annotationor you know, the data there.
And they just flip through sheets andthat they memorize which detail on which
sheet and that's how they search for it.
So when I come to them and I, Iwill tell them, just type what

(52:16):
you're looking for in the search.
They're like, oh, but I'm used to,

I browse, I don't search.
It's like, yeah, you, it's howyou go through a magazine, right?
Oh, I'm

yeah.

for anything in particular.
I'm just looking to see what,what might catch my eye.
It's a completely different approach.
And so what you're saying islike they're kind of at a loss,
like what do you mean search?
I don't know.
I don't, I don't search.
I

Exactly, and that's where we come in as a team.
And you know, I always bring my technicalteam as well, and I explain to them as
an architect who would use the softwarein my practice, I tell them, you create
the collection, you share it with yourteam, you code it and name a certain way.
And then you use precision search.
That's another thing that weallow to do is similar to Google.

(53:01):
If you put air quotes, uh, you cansearch for exactly the name of the
view or title of the sheet that,that, that, that you're looking for.
And I educate them about that as well.
Um, sometimes I have to remindthat that's the option as well.
And uh, I offer them best practices.

(53:21):
I guide them through thisprocess of transformation.
And I think that's why I always tellthe, the firms that are deciding whether
to go go with us or not, it's not onlyabout the product that we are delivering
today, it's about the best practices.
It's about what we learn fromthis, hundreds of people we
talk to in different countries.
Everything from Singapore,South Africa, Europe, north

(53:45):
America, you know, south America.
Like we, we've done it all and uh, we canhelp you to, to, to do better in general.

I mean, yeah, you're talking about this educational component, right?
Where it's like, like theyactually have to relearn.
I'm curious what you call this, like Iwould call this a behavior change, but
I don't think people like that word.
They don't,

Yeah.
No.

don't need, I don't need you to change my behavior.
What my

Yeah.

What are

Yeah.

about?
But, but that's how I kind of havealways previously categorized it.
But this idea that they need to learna new way because like even growing
up on the internet like I did, right?
It's like that wasn't athing when I was a kid.
And then it became a thing andwe had to learn how to use it.
And now I have behaviors.
I have to relearn in the age of AIbecause I search Google with keywords,

Yep.

Like that.
I don't even, it was so funny.
At one point I'm like,how would you find this?
I asked my wife, how wouldyou find this on the internet?
And she's like, well, I wouldask this question on Google.
I'm like, what do you mean?
You ask a question?
This was like.
10 years ago, you, what do you mean?
You ask a question on Google?
I I've never searched, usedGoogle like that before.
And she's like, oh yeah,I use it all the time.
I actually literally just ask aquestion and, and now AI is, is

(54:59):
even different than that, right?
Where I think people are still veryrudiment rudimentarily using it like that.
Where it's like, how,how, tell me about this.
But no, there's like waybetter ways to use it.
And you're actually holding theirhand and saying, I realize that you
used to maybe search for hollow metal,but here's what I would do, right?

(55:19):
And now in this context, it's different.
And so that educational component hasgotta be, I mean that you, you're right.
It's not just the product.
Here it is now use it.
Everybody like that actually doesn't workin a EC if anybody's still wondering.
Um, but, but you actually have to.
people, and I had a previous colleagueon the show, Cody Winchester in an

(55:39):
episode to talk about that specifically.
It's like, no, let's take the burden onourselves to actually train our employees
how to do all this stuff and how to keepthem up to date with the latest things.
Because if we don't, you can'tjust expect them to figure it out.
And then we're spending all this money ontools that they're actually not gonna use
because they don't know how to use it.
Right.
Why would you use somethingyou don't know how to use?

(55:59):
Right.
So,

a hundred percent.

curious how you kind of, what, what do you call that?
Do you call that a behavior shift orwhat you just, I mean, you said best
practices, maybe you call it that.

We call it best practices.
We call it AI strategy.
I always try to use the words thatare already, uh, people familiar with.
I don't want to reinventthe new terminology.
You know, architectsknow what best practices.
Are, and we are essentially implementingthis, uh, this lingo in the same time.
Evan, I think it's, um, it's amultifaceted, um, question because

(56:32):
we also build a thing called ArcheAcademy, uh, short videos where we
explain to them how to use the software.
And, uh, it's done very interactively.
It's not a stale content.
Uh, you can always add more, and weactually want firms to be able to
add their own content, how they usingARKI or how maybe ARKI spills out

(56:55):
into other processes and then that'ssomething they learned because we
are learning from them every day.
As you can imagine, they'll try tobreak our software every single day.
But that's good because we are going then.
Diving into the logs and allthe information that we have on
established like to track all this.

(57:16):
And, uh, we are improving every day.
And that, that's wonderful.
So I think the patients, the ability tosee the larger picture, the ability to
see the outlook, the ability to see thegoal, I think that's what we should be
focusing on in this game as professionals.
It's not instant.

(57:36):
And I think we shouldn't be in themindset where, you know, today we
have nothing and then tomorrow wejust have it all fully established

Mm-hmm.

is working again, out automatically.
It's never gonna be the case.
And um, I think in terms of likejust communication in general
and um, being able to, we callit build in public, right?
Because if you see myLinkedIn, I always talk about.
Things we have done and, um,things that are upcoming.

(58:09):
Essentially, it's not a easy taskbecause you get criticized, you get
a lot of, um, positive feedback, butalso, um, you know, it's not, it's
not, um, it's not as comfortable asjust locking yourself up in the room
and just assuming you know everything.

(58:31):
So, but in the same time, we de-riskour decisions because we come up with a
concept because we know there's a problem.
And then we go and we sit down withour customers and we source feedback
from, you know, five, 10 firms.

(58:53):
And based on that feedback, then wedigest it and we decide what to do next.
And not to say that we always justtake what they tell us and we just.
Digitize it because that's another problemwith, uh, some of the existing, uh, pieces
of software that we have in the industrytoday that, um, it feels like we are just

(59:13):
digitizing the processes that we know of.
The goal is to hear the feedback, havean ability to digest it, and that is
why for me, it's very valuable to workwith, uh, our CTO who is coming from 15
plus years of pure software engineering.

(59:34):
And one of the companies where hewas a lead engineer at is Salesforce
in Tableau, and then essentiallybuilding the best software practices
inside of our firm as well.
Because a lot of things that we havetoday access to, they unfortunately do
not rely on those best software practices.

(59:54):
To give you an example, uh, ourRevit integration is evergreen.
We never want our beam managersto chase their team and being
like, update this, update that.
Like, this is a new release.
We do it all for you.
We send you a change log, you justrestart your Revit and it's there.

Evan Troxel (01:00:16):
right?
And the, the app is updatedautomatically, kind of a thing.

Natalia Bakaeva (01:00:20):
And Evan, in full transparency, sometimes it means that
we say no to certain things becausewe know that maybe it feels on the
surface like it's gonna solve something,but if there is no real use case
for it, there is not truly a provenkind of record of this workflow or
this uh, piece of automation that isneeded, we will sometimes not do it.

(01:00:42):
And this is part of going backto being an apple of AC software.
Um, we just very protective ofwhat we put in the software.

Let's take a short break from the conversation to invite you to
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Composed of in person events and a podcastco hosted by yours truly, Confluence is
designed to foster conversations betweenAEC firms and technology companies so
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(01:01:20):
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(01:01:40):
com.
My thanks to Confluence for supportingthis episode of the TRXL podcast.
And now, let's get backto the conversation.
I'm actually glad to hear that becauseI think there's probably a lot of ideas
that it's like maybe someday, right?
But as a startup, you have tofocus and you have to put your
energy to what does the most forthe, the most amount of people.

(01:02:03):
Right.
So I, I'm curious, you said earlier, um,so maybe a couple more questions here.
Um, you said earlier that, like you talkedabout the idea of removing buttons, right?
Or removing features.
Have you done that?
I mean, maybe you have an exampleof that kind of a thing throughout
ARKI lifetime, because I.

(01:02:23):
just curious if the rubber meets theroad there because it's like I've,
I've lived through software products.
I mean, talking about Apple, like atone point they had to com, they, you
know, keynote was a great PowerPointcomp competitor and it was super
featured, but it was on the Mac only andthey wanted to bring it to the cloud.
They wanted to bring it to iOS devicesand at that time, iOS and the Mac

(01:02:47):
were completely different developmentecosystems uh, basically like set fire to
keynote as everybody knew it and the wholekind of productivity suite and said, we're
going to regress so that we can then.
Put it on all of these platforms atthe same time with the same feature

(01:03:08):
set, and then we will rebuild it.
And I, everybody screamedwhen they did that.
Like, what are you talking about?
And of course, they still let the oldversion live while they did all that.
But then it was different,but it was for the better.

Yep.

they had to go through that kind of painful process for their users,
but, and ultimately to serve their userswhen it, when it, when everything kind
of came back to quote unquote normal.
And so we lived through that.
Like, oh my gosh, this is, doesn'thave the features, it doesn't
have these buttons, it doesn'thave these things that I rely on.
But it also gave them the opportunityto say like, wow, we really had

(01:03:43):
a lot of scope creep and featuresthat like nobody was using.
Let's get, let's actually neverput those back in, for example.
So I'm just curious in your historyhere with Akey, what, have you done
anything like that to actually removesomething because it wasn't valuable
enough or not enough people were using it?
I don't, there's a lot ofways you could frame that.

Yeah.
Uh, great question.
So.
The answer is yes.
And I will give you a few examples.
When we were starting to build ARKIand me as an architect coming with
my brain from the industry, um, Iwanted to bring as much information
from the project, from the initialproject to Akey as we possibly can.

(01:04:28):
Like, I wanted to have as manyparameters, so it's as descriptive and
you know, it has the address, it has,the client has all the consultants.
And, uh, my initiallist was extremely long.
And then we just started tochip in away from that list.

(01:04:49):
And then we realized that thelist that they care about our
customers, it's actually very short.

It's a different list than yours.
Yeah.
Right.

And, uh, that's just to, that's just to, to kind of.
Show you an example, you have to beable to have confidence to do that
too, because it's not always a nicefeeling to, to be in this situation.
Um, but ex you have to be extremelyopen and also extremely flexible and
be able to hear from your customers,but at the same time be able to

(01:05:29):
truly understand whatthey're trying to tell you.
And I think that's what I'vebeen learning myself and kind of
personally, that have been a huge,uh, steep growing curve for me.
Because, you know, you hear something likewe used with our, you know, customers,
clients, um, on the design side, right?
Like they tell you something,you try to implement it.

(01:05:51):
Of course you check the code andeverything, but you generally
try to make them happy.
You try to make it work for them.
Here, same thing.
We also want our customers to beextremely happy, but in the same time.
Because they're best product practices,because we have software engineering
expertise, sometimes what it seems,it's not what it's gonna be at the end.

(01:06:12):
And I actually really appreciate that andthat's why I like this multidisciplinary
collaboration because if I would partnerwith another architect, we probably
just gonna build another softwarethat already exists on the market.
And, uh, we have this uniqueangle of bringing those, um,
this expertise in house today.
And I think another exampleI wanted to give you is that

(01:06:36):
what we saw in the industry and whatis available for our customers today
is something that, you know, on thesurface might solve the same problems.
But I think with the technicalcapabilities that we.
Discovered and we were able to build,we came up with, uh, something like,

(01:07:00):
um, asset deduplication with AI andasset versioning with ai and that
I think initially we didn't realizethe depth of the asset versioning.
And when I say asset version, meaningthat, let's say you have a floor plan
or a construction detail, let's say,and uh, you want to take a snapshot

(01:07:20):
of that information and you wannakeep tracking it as you develop this
detail, maybe as it changes, right.
Initially we thought about itas, you know, you put a data
on it and it's good to go.
But then we realized that, you know.

versions that day.
Yeah.

And there are also some typical details that are seen in
multiple projects and there are alsovariation of that, the same detail,
just because something changed, butmaybe not by 30%, but maybe by 5%.

Mm-hmm.

had to develop a new framework, new way of
thinking about this problem.
And today, with the visual search anduh, be able to visually deduplicate
and, uh, timestamp those assets,it's actually working way better.
But again, if we haven't made thismistake early on, we wouldn't be
able to be where we are today.

Yeah, I, I'm curious, you've talked a little bit about kind of
solving problems for firms and there'sthis kind of industry wide, or, you
know, you con you, you, you're workingwith firms in, in lots of different
countries and, and you're getting,ideas and feedback into your software
that then, I don't know, I want youto explain, does it benefit everybody?

(01:08:35):
How does, like, it, it sounds to me likethe data, the information, the wisdom,
the knowledge that is, is, is kept withina firm like a little bubble, but there's
these other things that apply to theplatform that everybody gets advantage of.
I'm just curious how kind of youseparate those things, uh, when
you're talking to different clients.

A hundred percent.
So each firm gets theprivate secure cloud.
We know that data is the mainsource of income for architects,
engineers, and we extremely.
Serious about how we treat it.
And each firm sits in their own, wecall information silo or data silo.
So once you log in, you log ininto your own ecosystem as a firm.

(01:09:21):
In the same time, if you submitting afeedback or if we are inviting you to
continue developing software with us,like for example, today we are building
a fee estimator proposal generator.
And, uh, we invite firms to join us.
And some firms actually enjoy,develop a software with us.

(01:09:42):
They don't get to do that very often.
And for them, that's another avenueto learn, um, to engage their maybe
junior or intermediate to senior staff,depending on what we are working on.
That's like a, it's like an activityfor them as well internally.
And, uh, essentially we,

(01:10:02):
we go about, uh, this, uh, process.
Very, very methodically, right?
So we hypo, uh, we have a hypothesis.
This hypothesis, and again, based onjobs to be done right, there's a, there's
a problem, there's a job to be done.
Uh, and there is solution thatwe assume should be there.

(01:10:24):
We come with this hypothesisto multiple firms and multiple
stakeholders inside each firm.
We talk to principals, we talk to,uh, senior architects, intermediate
architects, and then users.
So drafting staff.
Sometimes we'd bring abusiness person to the mix.
Sometimes we'd bring cybersecurity ITperson to the mix, digital practice lead.

(01:10:45):
And we, again, as I kind of startedthis conversation, we look at the
problem from different angles,depending on what that problem is.
We source the feedback and uh, weput this feedback on the canvas from
different firms, different geographies.
And then we digest it.
So we turn it into statements orfeatures or workflow processes

(01:11:06):
or workflow automation.
And then we go back to them and weask them, is that what you meant?
And then when they tell us that'seither yes or no, we continue.
And little by little we release those twoversions to them that they can play with.
Again, we source the feedback, weimplement it, and that's how we grow.

(01:11:29):
And that's how we've beenbuilding for past year and a half.
As soon it's gonna be two years.
And, uh, we planning tocontinue doing it this way.
As I already said, it's um, it's aninteresting process, not something
that I've done in the past, but asyou mentioned in the beginning of
this conversation, it's very similarto the way you design a building.

(01:11:54):
There are phases there are.
Processes that run in parallelthe processes that tie to each
other and they're sequential.
And I always try to map what we do tohow I would design a building, and that
really helps me to digest this information

I bet it helps you translate it to communicate
it to your clients as well,

a hundred percent.

language they speak.
So it sounds like you're constantlyiterating and evolving your product
instead of like a yearly big releasecycle with small patches along the way.
Is that safe to say?
I mean, this is, again, this is kind ofa shift that I think I remember somebody.
Really another version,like a new version of Revit.

(01:12:39):
Like why can't, and and they werefrustrated because every year
we change the version, right?
At Revs, Revit 20, 20,21, 20 22, 20, right?
And so it was like, and, and to me,like looking at my phone again as the
model, it's like, what do you mean?
Like this is happening all thetime and you're okay with it on
your phone, but you're not okaywith it in business like this.

(01:13:00):
The stakes are way bigger here, right?
So why wouldn't you expect that?
is a shift, right?
With.
Cloud-based kind of software development.
It's just constantly evolvingand constantly being updated.
And firms are, it's like,oh, the button moved today.
Right?
Um, where do I find it now?
I mean, uh, as an extreme level maybeof, of, of a kind of a thing they

(01:13:22):
would see, you know, probably not, youknow, most of the time, but it's like
there's this constant change going onversus once a year or once every couple
years, we might go through this process.
And I'm just curious kind of what are,are people talking about that when
you're, the way that you're developing,when you're working with these firms?
Or, or is this just expected now?

So, uh, great question.
I, I actually really love this,uh, stream of thought and kind of
this, uh, side of this conversation.
We do communicate to our, uh,customers and people who are on
trial or any sort of prospects.
Uh, our product updates, theygo out weekly and weekly.
We build new things, and this is again,uh, going back to software practices

(01:14:08):
and, uh, bringing the team that is comingfrom the software development background
and, uh, being able to bring the bestpractices, uh, and implement them here.
So instead of waiting, werelease, uh, those features
in a very small, digestible.
Bite-size, uh, chunks.
And that's good because they'reable to go test it right away.

(01:14:30):
Ask a question.
We release a feature, we set, senda product update, product update.
You can sign up on our website.
It's, it's like a one page, uh, summary,and they immediately go test it.
And they ask a question, that's it.
We answer.
It's done.
And we don't have to go through thispainful process of now we need to push

(01:14:51):
an upgrade, we need to install a hot fix.
We need to do all of that.
It's all taken care of in thebackground because we trying to
get to automation and, uh, goingthrough version updates every year.
That's, uh, the opposite ofthat, in my opinion, at least.

Yeah, I mean the, the once a year, um, release cycle can be really
painful for organizations to deal with.
I mean,

It is painful.

why it can be painful, right?
It's like, okay, we gotta educate userson how to use all these new features.
If there are a lot, maybe thereisn't, um, maybe it's a new ui.
Maybe it's like we have to upgradethe projects that, you know,
the data is that, that those of

Yep.
Yep.

And, and that takes time.
And there's so many thingsthat go along with that.
there's time, there's downtimeto actually deploy it.
You know, a lot of people had to getreally smart about deploying thing,
leave your machines on overnight sowe can do these upgrades and, and then
you have more behavioral changes there.
It's like, what do you mean I don'tleave my, my computer on all night?
Like,

Yeah.

things that our industry has gone through,

Yeah.

time.
And, and it's, it is just kindof a, it, it's, it makes sense.
I can totally see why you've designedyour business to work like that.
And then also your, your really strongpoint, um, I don't wanna skip over.
It's like, well now they onlyhave to digest it little pieces
that have at a time rather thanbig changes all of a sudden.

(01:16:17):
And it's like, what do you mean?
Like, I don't have time for that.
I'm not gonna upgrade.
Right.
Like that's what we've seen too becauseof the, you know, legacy software release
cycles that, that are still, stillhappening in, in many regards today.

Yep.

a pretty fascinating way to kind of, you know, it for,
for your, and it's good to hear that,that they're actually jumping in
and testing that right away and kindof, oh, let's, let's check this out,
because it is such a small hurdle right.
At that point, and it's,

Yeah.

something they can take on.

Yeah, we really try to minimize it because it's
already new software, right?
Like there are new thingsthat they need to learn about.
And if we again, go through this processgradually, it feels very natural, right?
Like we are not coming one day andsay, forget everything you knew.

Mm-hmm.

this.
And then adoption becomes a real problem.

Right.

they almost at the point where once they know more about the
software, it's more inviting for them.
Once they receive this productupdates, they're more engaged.
They can actually go and, um, you know,see for themselves, oh, I learned this.
Thing.
I wanna go quickly test itand you know, it's already
now kind of in my back pocket.
Next time when I need to do it, I cango and just quickly search or, uh,

(01:17:33):
use precision search like we, likewe said before, um, something that
I want to mention in terms of theinteroperability and rev versioning and,
you know, all the software versioning,that was one of the biggest problems
that we saw on day one as well,because everyone would talk about it.
Different tax stacks, you know,you switch between the firms,

(01:17:54):
things are done differently.
That is why we, even though today westarted with Revit as a first integration
and then expanded to CAD and PDF, but weare aware that for us to be successful,
we need to be software agnosticbecause we want to be able to bring

(01:18:16):
all these pieces of software togetherand cut through the silos of software.
Um, you know.
Uh, information that sits in different,um, in those different compartments.
And then what we did as a firststep, we allowed them to upload the
data without upgrading their models,and then we upgraded for them.

(01:18:41):
So once they bring the data forward andthey want to tweak it, they essentially
don't have to worry about any of that.
And once the data is being consumedagain for the future work, we just do
it for them and they don't have to be.

know about that and they're on board with that.
It's

Yeah,

I can hear some IT people and, and digital
practice people like what?
But obviously this is something you'reworking directly with them about.

yeah.

Yeah.

And it's also because it's done in chunks, it takes less time.
It's very digestible.
Again, we're trying to always breakthis big massive tasks and make them.
Very interactive, almost like small,so they don't, they don't feel as
overwhelming and this whole transitiondoesn't feel as, you know, painful.

Nice.
F Okay.
Final, let's wrap this up here.
I I, I'm curious kind of from a bigpicture perspective, like the why you, you
say, you know, you talk to these clientsand you ask the five why's, and I'm
curious why you're doing what you're doingbecause, um, you know, and, and I'll lead
the witness a little bit here, I think,and, and people might not like that.

(01:19:52):
I'm gonna say it like this becauseI am leading you in doing this, and
maybe we want to hear your actualauthentic reaction, but I'm, I kind
of have a sense because you're,you're like wicked smart, I can tell.
Right?
And, and the.
The thing that I want to put out in frontof you is like, why is this important?
What is the true value of an architect?
I think that's why, because it'slike, well, let's do the valuable

(01:20:15):
stuff and not the stupid stuff.
And we do so much stupid stuff.
Like, and, and stupid is, is a, it's anegative word, but, and, and, and like
we do, stuff we have to do is maybe abetter way to put it, like this is all
stuff that has to be done on a project.
Maybe we don't have to do it likethis, but because of contracts,
because of standard of care, becauseof insurance and risk and all of

(01:20:39):
these things, like there are still allthese things that we, we have to do,
which I categorize as stupid stuff.
So, so I'm just gonna throw thatout in front of you, why are
you doing what you're doing?
What, what is what, what is the goal?
Like, what are you trying to get to?
What are you trying to help firms achieve?

I have two stories for you.
We are in conversation with oneof the biggest firms in the world.
Can I say name here?
We can say names, right?

Yeah.

uh, we've been talking to Zaha, did architects for a while now, and,
uh, just learning about the challenges.
And this person who I met at one of theconferences last year, uh, just told me
and shared with me, uh, very candidly thatwe have the most creative, the most design

(01:21:33):
driven architects from the entire world.
They come to the Haid architects and theywork crazy hours because they love design.
No one wants to drawconstruction documents
so they see the value and tools likeAkey to help them bridge that gap.

(01:21:57):
We want to still have the most creativepeople in the world coming and helping us
to create this incredible project, but atthe same time, we are living in real world
and every design needs to be executed.
That is why if there's a way toshortcut this, they would love that.

(01:22:19):
And the same time when we cometo architecture school, and
that's kinda looping nicely.
Back to my first story,

Mm-hmm.

have promised this unleashed creativity.
This like infinite optionsfor design decisions.

Yeah.
Right,

And then you start literally on your job number one,
and the reality hits, and it's verydifferent what from what we promised to.
So I wish to our profession to beable to be more creative, to be
able to get and to remember whatthey come to this profession to do.

(01:22:56):
Great design, changing the world, buildingthe spaces that will change people's
mindset, do less redundant task, and,uh, just be excellent, profitable,
fulfilled professionals and just don'tquit their job and go work for developer,
but actually love what they do everysingle day and, and feel like what

(01:23:21):
they were promised to is what they got.

Isn't it interesting that somebody from, I mean, I, I'm
similar to you in the way of whatI'm about to say here, which is like
you went outside of the professionto, to help the profession, right?
I call it going from working in theprofession to working on the profession

Yep,

this idea of.
actually need those people who would'vethought, because it's so hard to do
it from the inside, it is so difficultto change firms from the inside.
Change the practice from the insidethere's so much pressure already.
There's so many things.
We, there's so many boxes tocheck, there's so many deadlines.
There's all these things thatyou're fighting with because that

(01:24:02):
is what you signed up for, right?
Like you're delivering projects.
But it's so hard tochange that from within.
Um, I've experiencedthat firsthand myself.
And,

me too.

are, there are people who are willing to stick around,
but in a different way, right?
And really try to make adent in the universe of the
profession of architecture.
So, well done, well stated.
Uh, I would love it if you would tellthe audience where they can learn
more about you and what you're doing.

Yeah.
Thank you, Avan.
This is a great recap of what I said, andI agree that we are on the same page here.
Um, our website is get ARKI.com.
It's G-E-T-A-R-K i.com.
Uh, my LinkedIn, uh, I write a lotabout the subject, about the, you know,

(01:24:54):
AI workforce and AI and AC and I'mvery critical about the buzzword ai.
So if that's somethingthat you are interested in.
You can just follow me or evensend me a friendly message.
And um, yeah, so that's the best,uh, channel to connect with us.
If you want to see what we do,you can subscribe on a website

(01:25:14):
and get in touch with us.
And I'm very open and showing andpresenting what we built so far and
hearing your opinions and thoughts.
It's not only about the good stuff.
Sometimes it's importantto hear some critic.
We are open to that.
Uh, yeah.
And stay in touch and Iwould love to hear from you.

Thank you, Natalia.
This has been a, a great conversationagain, that it's get ARKI.com.
I'll put links to that and toyour LinkedIn in the show notes
for this episode among thingsthat we've kind of touched on.
So thank you for taking the timeto have this conversation today.
It's been really, really wonderfuland I hope a lot of people
get a lot of things out of it.
And it's, I hope that it actually startsconversations like that to me is like

(01:25:57):
the overall outcome that I could hope foris that we have to have this discourse.
It's great to have it in publichere on the, on the podcast,
um, but I hope that it continuesbeyond this podcast, so thanks.

I hope so too.
Thank you, Evan.

Before you take off, in the introduction to this episode, I
mentioned that architecture firms arelosing talent because of a problem, and
the problem is the lack of innovationand poor knowledge infrastructure.
Natalia has shared multiple points inthe conversation that clearly explain
how the failure to innovate internally,especially around data access, process

(01:26:33):
improvement, and knowledge retention,is directly leading to burnout,
dissatisfaction, and ultimately lossof talent in architecture firms.
Let's break this downinto five key takeaways.
Number one, burnout fromredundant manual work.
Natalia has said, I found myselfone day at 2:00 AM drawing a simple
kitchen for a staff lunchroom.

(01:26:55):
I was just thinking to myself,this firm is 65 years old.
I'm sure what I'm drawing right now hasbeen drawn at least a thousand times.
She highlights the soul crushingredundancy in architectural work
done repeatedly across firms with noshared system to access or reuse it.
This inefficiency directlycontributes to burnout.

(01:27:17):
Number two, no time orspace for innovation.
She said that she always feltlike there was not enough room for
innovation because we want everyoneto be 100% billable, even if there
is a desire to innovate inside firms.
There was also never time allocated to it.
Firms are unintentionally stifling.
Creativity and innovation, thevery things that draw people to

(01:27:39):
architecture in the first place.
This disconnect pushes talent outof the profession or into other
industries like tech number three,knowledge is lost as seniors exit.
While juniors struggle.
Natalia mentioned how intern architectswho join firms during the pandemic don't
get proper training, retiring architects.
Are not able to transfer that knowledge.

(01:28:02):
A huge gap in knowledge transferexists and there's no systematized
way to capture wisdom, which meansnew talent isn't empowered and senior
expertise walks out the door every year.
Number four, digital toolsare here, but underused.
Today there is a literal search.
You can search if things are being tagged.
And because today with AI tools,we can search semantically and

(01:28:25):
visually, which clearly showsthat firms have the potential.
And number five, lack of strategic vision.
She said, you can't hopeinnovation will just happen.
Firms think that that's just gonnahappen without enabling it from
within the business Leadershipoften lacks the mindset or
systems to encourage innovation.
When firms don't invest in betterworkflows, purpose-built tools, or

(01:28:49):
even education around them, theirteams feel stuck and unfulfilled.
So in conclusion, with all of theanecdotal evidence and the reoccurring
topic with my guests on this podcast,firms are failing to support innovation
and meaningful efficient work.
Even though technology accessibledata and knowledge sharing
systems are all here right now.

The result (01:29:11):
architects leave, talent is lost and firms
struggle to grow sustainably.
Firms are bleeding talent and notbecause architects hate the work.
Well, they do hate some of thework, but it's really because the
practices themselves haven't evolved.
So like many of us that have movedadjacent to the profession that

(01:29:31):
we love, Natalia is building thesolution from the outside in.
I hope that you'll support whatshe and others like her are doing.
That's it for this episode.
Thanks again for listening andI'll catch you in the next one.
Bye.

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183: ‘An Appetite for Transformation’, with Natalia Bakaeva

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