Engineering ArchiTECHure Mayur M Mistry

In this interview, Kyle Vansice, co-founder of Cedar, shares his inspiring journey from architecture to building a design tech startup. Kyle discusses how his background in architecture and structural engineering, along with his passion for computational design, led him to start Cedar with his co-founders. The conversation delves into the challenges of developing a scalable software product for the architecture and construction industry, and how Cedar is addressing the complex problem of infill housing and mixed-use development. Kyle emphasizes the importance of establishing credibility, understanding customer needs, and finding the right balance between servicing customers and building scalable technology.Throughout the interview, Kyle provides valuable insights and advice for architects and designers looking to start their own companies. He highlights the significance of mentorship, learning to value one's skills, and the potential of AI in democratizing high-quality design. With an optimistic outlook on the future of Cedar, Kyle envisions a platform that enables AI-driven site planning and encodes design knowledge to build better neighborhoods on a citywide scale.

Checkout : https://www.cedar.build/

Here are the key sections and chapter timestamps for the video transcript:

00:00 - Introduction and Kyle's background
01:33 - Kyle's architecture and engineering journey
05:47 - Challenges navigating architecture and engineering fields
10:01 - Phases and excitements in Kyle's architecture journey
13:20 - Role models and favorite buildings
16:01 - Transition from corporate job to startup
19:04 - Early days of developing the startup idea
22:59 - Strategy for getting early adopters
27:48 - Challenges of building a startup in the AEC industry
30:11 - Difficult choices during ideation and development of Cedar
32:47 - A day in the life of Kyle and managing responsibilities
36:47 - Cedar's journey with Antler and experience
39:59 - Vision for Cedar one year and five years from now
43:20 - Advice for computational designers or architects starting a company
49:03 - Kyle's fun fact and co-founders
50:27 - Importance of mentors and mastermind groups
51:23 - Rapid fire round


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The interview covers Randall Stevens' career journey in architecture, 3D graphics, and software development. Stevens graduated in architecture in 1991 and became interested in 3D modeling, rendering, and computer graphics. He started the company Arc Vision, providing 3D graphics services, and developed innovative technologies like RPC (Rich Photorealistic Content).
In the 2000s, Stevens recognized the need for simplified 3D modeling tools for a wider audience, as evidenced by SketchUp's success. He has focused on the "democratization of technology", making tools accessible. In 2013, Stevens had the idea for Avail, a content management platform to unite information from the many applications used in architecture firms. Avail was launched in 2017 and now serves leading architecture firms globally. Stevens discusses Avail's visual interfaces, universal content access, integration capabilities, and search functions. He shares his views on AI, focusing tools on quality inputs to get accurate outputs, and content management needs created by new technologies. Overall, the interview covers Randall Stevens' career, insights on technology adoption, and the development of innovative products addressing needs in architecture. It provides perspective on creating accessible tools and managing information in design firms.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:00 - Early Days in Tech
02:00 - Emergence of Key Technologies .
10:00 - Anticipating Future Trends
19:00 - Student Dreams and Ambitions
25:00 - Origins of Avail
35:00 - Funding and Business Models
50:00 - Pricing Considerations
57:00 - Daily Routine as CEO
59:00 - Avail Demo Randall provides a demo of Avail, showing its visual nature for architecture content and capabilities like search, metadata, and previews.


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Richmond Newman, CEO of Modulate, shares his background in architecture, his journey into technology and founding Modulate, as well as advice for entrepreneurs. Richmond studied architecture in college but was exposed to critiques of architectural software tools by his computer science roommates, sparking an interest in improving them. He gained experience at architecture firms and saw firsthand the inefficiencies in drafting tools like Revit. He co-founded Modulate to build 3D architectural design software from the ground up, focused on a better data model and semantics to automate drafting and detailing. The software is built on Unreal Engine for advanced graphics and collaboration.He shares insights into building a compelling startup vision and translating it into a successful enterprise software company.

Here are chapter timestamps :

00:00 - Introduction
00:41 - Education and early experience in architecture
02:02 - Dissatisfaction with architecture software tools
03:34 - Working at architecture firms and identifying pain points
07:02 - Forming the idea for Modulate
08:48 - Modulate's innovations and technology
11:13 - Adapting to changing market conditions
13:23 - Demo of Modulate product
21:15 - Integration with Revit and future roadmap
25:54 - Technical details on representing building details in Modulate
31:30 - Distribution model and enterprise focus
36:02 - Advice for architecture professionals interested in startups
40:05 - Building the initial Modulate prototype and fundraising
48:03 - Tips for fundraising with a functional product
57:43 - Advice Rich would give his younger self


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The video features an insightful interview with Devin Bhushan, CEO and Founder of Squint. He shares his background studying computer science, working at Yahoo, Splunk, and ultimately being inspired to start Squint to leverage AR's potential to surface helpful information to users.
After extensive research into manufacturing's challenges, Devin built Squint's initial product to address the industry's training inefficiencies. He describes Squint's AR ability to guide operators through procedures and leave contextual notes, reducing training time by 86%. Devin discusses Squint's fundraising, go-to-market strategy, being part of Sequoia's ARC accelerator, and most proudly hearing customers share how Squint enables them to accomplish goals more easily. He offers founders advice to stay laser-focused on users' needs. Overall, the video provides a fascinating overview of Devin's journey founding an AR startup and delivering immense value to enterprises.

Here are timestamped chapter summaries
00:00 - Introductions
00:57 - Devin's background
03:41 - How Devin got interested in AR and started Squint
07:33 - Why Devin focused first on manufacturing
11:08 - Building the initial product and getting first customers
16:01 - Video demo of Squint AR training app in manufacturing
18:14 - Video demo of using Squint for airplane preflight checklist
21:07 - Discussion of spatial accuracy and performance of Squint AR
26:00 - Future roadmap - integrating external data sources and plugins
28:00 - Fundraising process
35:48 - Typical day - sales calls in morning, team walks in afternoon for bonding
38:03 - Go-to-market strategy - LinkedIn, content marketing, outbound
41:02 - Started with top-down sales approach, future bottoms-up potential
43:00 - Building founding team with people you know and trust
49:00 - Timeline for fundraising
50:00 - Pre-seed valuations - more about investor-founder match than formula
53:00 - Overview of Sequoia Arc program format
56:05 - Excited about new product features, scared about scaling company culture
58:00 - Proudest moment
59:00 - Contact details, advice for founders to stay close to users


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Interview with Chloe Smith, co-founder and CEO of Mercator, a construction intelligence platform. Chloe provides background on her marketing and advertising career and how she came to start Mercator with her co-founder to bring data analytics to the construction industry. She outlines conducting customer interviews and POCs to validate the problem they were solving. Chloe explains how Mercator tracks construction projects through their full lifecycle and delivers insights on upcoming opportunities to general contractors, enabling them to get in front of projects earlier. She discusses focusing on specific customer profiles, building relationships with advisors, and taking an authentic approach to branding. On product features, Chloe describes the Mercator workflow of monitoring projects, companies and contacts with AI-driven alerts. Users can explore project details and connect with stakeholders. She positions Mercator as a unique, category-defining product bringing new strategic intelligence to construction firms. Looking ahead, Chloe is excited to grow their team, enrich data tracking, expand to new markets and build their product suite into a knowledge hub. She advises startups in construction to build what the industry needs based on customer conversations.

Here are chapter timestamps and summaries for the YouTube video transcript:

00:00 - Introducing Chloe and Mercator AI
00:22 - Chloe's background and journey into construction tech
01:19 - Meeting co-founder and starting marketer AI
02:21 - Validating ideas through customer interviews
03:40 - Strategies for talking to construction customers as an outsider
05:04 - Applying a data perspective from marketing to construction
06:21 - Meeting co-founder and initial hypotheses
08:01 - Pivoting ideas and focusing on construction opportunities
09:13 - Early mistakes and learning to validate ideas
10:10 - Importance of customer interviews and narrowing focus
11:02 - Challenges reaching construction customers initially
12:33 - Iterating on customer conversations
14:14 - Prioritizing feature requests from customers
15:04 - Using quick POCs focused on specific users
17:00 - Advice on aligning vision and customer feedback
18:24 - Building a focused product for target customers
18:48 - Strategies for assembling a strong advisor team
21:07 - Finding advisors willing to help without equity
22:11 - Proving credibility as industry outsiders
23:51 - Tips for building a brand (focus on authenticity)
24:29 - Overview of Mercator AI platform and user journey
28:09 - Category defining product and points of differentiation
29:51 - Roadmap and future opportunities
31:31 - Advice for construction tech startups (talk to customers)


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Hosted Chuck Driesler to discuss Nodepen, an open source project he has been developing to create a web-based version of Grasshopper. He provided a history of the project, which started in 2018 and has gone through multiple revisions. The current version utilizes Speckle technology to handle the 3D geometry and visualization, allowing Chuck to focus on the node-based logic and interaction. Key topics covered include leveraging React for fast rendering, integrating Grasshopper computation on the backend, and designing an intuitive user interface. While Nodepen started as a way to recreate Grasshopper online, it has now evolved into a more flexible visual programming environment. Chuck outlined his goals to simplify sharing and collaboration around Grasshopper scripts, support open source contributions, and explore capabilities beyond desktop Grasshopper.

0:00 - Introduction
05:10 - The beginning at a 2018 hackathon
09:15 - The first version of Nodepen
15:00 - User feedback inspires the second version
18:10 - The third version focuses on mobile
21:00 - Grasshopper 2.0 changes the project scope
23:30 - Using Speckle for the fourth version
29:00 - A technical dive into Nodepen's code
49:20 - The visual design process in Figma
55:30 - Wrap up and questions


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