#27 - Aleks Gampel, Co-Founder of Cuby

0:00The biggest unlock is what happens on the actual construction site. People forget about that. That's the uncontrollable. That's the craziness. That's the chaos. We figured out how to solve that piece. Alex, great to see you again. Good to see you, Ty. Yeah. Let's start off with like last year, I think there was like a shortage in housing of something like 6.5 million homes. Has that like changed at all? Gotten better, gotten worse? No. It's really just the same? Yeah, it's always been bad for the last decade. It's going to continue to be bad. I'd say the recent change is obviously immigration policy has changed.

0:36A lot of our workforce are immigrants, not always legal. And I think that the bigger problem is still the aging demographic in construction, meaning there's a lot of folks that are retiring and not a lot of folks replacing them. And what percentage is that, like retiring the next 10 years? That's still the same one I referenced. It's seven to one. Seven retire, one replaces. I'd say about 40 % of the construction workforce is going to retire in the next 10 years. I think that's still true. But the housing crisis is bad. And what's interesting is over the last year, we've been spending a lot of time in non-U.S.

1:08markets as well. And it's not a U.S. problem. It's a global problem. Yeah, mostly in first world countries. That's where you see the biggest housing crisis. Is there any place that's like worse than the U.S. as far as lack of housing? That we've been surprised by? Yeah. Australia is very, very, very bad. Canada is very, very bad. Yeah. I know that Canada's prices are just like through the roof as far as cost of ownership. Supply demand. Australia also one that has surprised us and has been one that we've been forced to focus on just because of the amount of inbound we get from Australia. What does that look like?

1:39Australia is a market. I don't know exact numbers, but massive shortage and really massive cost associated where people's incomes is just not even anywhere near to where housing gets built out today. So there's a big affordability crisis. yeah uh has there been any like shift in the past few months since the like new administration came in i know that we're looking to build america again so um in regards to like building or like solving housing solving housing i think it's the new administration has been a massive tailwind for us specifically because we hit two birds with one stone in the u.s right it's uh it's this manufacturing concept of how do we manufacture things how do we industrialize things here but also we helped solve a bit of the housing crisis, which those two conversations are top of mind.

2:25I think the election highlighted a lot of the housing crisis. And I think, you know, this administration has stayed focused on that. And it's been a very much a focus of a lot of governors, more specifically versus the federal government. But that too, they're solving it in different ways. I think I told you before, the problem is twofold. It's bureaucratic, meaning like how hard is it to actually go build a home and the permitting and, you know, certain regulation around, around building and I can't solve. Neither can Oleg, my partner, the deregulation around building. But that's one issue. And the second one is the skilled labor piece.

2:57That's where we step in. By the way, the other surprising countries are the Middle East, but they have a very different problem. Yeah, if you take like Saudi Arabia, they need 5 million units of homes. What? Yeah, it's just an insane... And like the US is 6.5. So that's almost the entire US. Yeah, I mean, obviously that matters like what time cycle you take. But the Middle East has been really surprising to us because they need a lot of homes, a lot of net migration, a lot of like growing economy, etc. What's interesting is they don't have any labor. So they import labor from like Pakistan, you know, Bangladesh, etc.

3:31Some poor countries. That labor is cheap, but it's not skilled to the extent that they need to build the things they want to build. So that's been a very interesting one, too. Have you had any conversations with any of those guys? Yeah. What have those been like? Quite a lot. um middle east is interesting um conversations to term sheets to execution take a long time less less transactional market more relationship driven um they have their own set of nuances for example in the middle east very stuck on building with concrete uh just it is the way it is and that's like no answer to it just this is how they do it um so we don't yet do precast concrete, but we will.

4:11It's something we're working towards in a different version of our technology. But it's been kind of like a preference thing that we've been navigating there. But we're looking to do some pilot units in the Middle East. Is this one of those things where I know with like actually Isaiah, he's going to, you know, the Philippines or another country to go talk with the government and kind of create a V1 of his product, right? The first reactor to minimize the time it takes to turn it on. Is that something that you guys are thinking about doing? No, we don't need that we built around that so nuclear is very much uh constraint not on the technology there's been like you know i don't know much about nuclear but there's you know many many iterations of nuclear versions and none of the problem has been technological the problem is regulatory related um although we play in a space that's highly regulated and people you know sometimes they think like nuclear they get it they're like oh yeah that should be regulated people forget housing is a highly regulated space building is there's 26 000 different zoning codes in the us which is funny to think about right like your neighborhood versus your friend who you competed with you know in your high school basketball team in a different neighborhood might have a different zoning code um which is kind of like weird because it's 20 minutes away yeah but that's how the u.s works so it's a highly regulated space um do you know why it evolved that way um it's one of those things that wasn't like a federal thing it was like a locale thing um so it was mandated like on a low very very local level um i don't know the reason why just like we started getting more stringent around the safety of like obviously it just wasn't as regulated back then you can build a building in a certain way and then like over time it's like this got regulated this got regulated and just like a combination of things um but anyway going back to the nuclear verse kind of us we don't although we play in a regulated space the way we chose to build our business we don't have any regulatory risk.

6:02We look deceptively at traditional construction. Actually, what's funny is the way we put up factories, we're trying to bypass certain regulation, actually. We figured out a clever trick, which is why we make factories the way we make them. But no, we don't need to go to like some country that's like less stringent to do what we do. In fact, the best countries for us are the most stringent where the R between that cost of labor, the regulation versus how we build using unskilled labor and violin manufacturing is the highest. So like it's best for us to be in places like the US, Australia, Canada, Europe, etc.

6:35Yeah, I know like you're probably the most efficient company that I've ever come across as far as we try we take that as a compliment. Not every investor appreciates it. But I was like, amount of, you know, research and development time that you've been able to, you know, spend versus the dollars used to get that research development. How is that going to shift over the next few years as you actually start to build these things and have the mobile micro factories all over the place actually creating homes? Yeah. Well, first, I think I made a joke to you is we try to be a cockroach. That's the phase of business we're in is in the sense like we really care about technical de-risking per dollar.

7:15That's like our one metric. I don't remember exactly when we did your other interview but i reckon we were somewhere at like 350 000 engineering hours we've since doubled that just about um that has to do with like our hiring where we're now almost 200 folks on the team or actually i think we crossed the 200 mark um and i think we're as a mostly eastern europe yeah it's the most capital efficient way and it's like that's not an easy thing to do that you have to like you can't outsource that technical ip has to come from you know one of the founders that's my partner um you have to culturally be from the place that you're doing that you have to have physical setup there we have 30 no we have now 40 no 45 000 square feet worth of space there um our first of a kind is there so our first iteration of the mobile micro factory we have a separate documentary coming out about that and it's you know a scaled down version of what we're doing and you know our first commercial deployment nevada um but yeah look it's it's very important i think and we get thrown into deep tech but we're not deep tech to me deep tech is like nuclear it's like mining asteroids right like that's deep tech it has binary outcomes i don't think we're that uh but we get thrown into that just naturally because like oh you build a lot of hardware like yeah so you get to me deep tech is a catch-all in venture ecosystem everything that isn't software basically or if it's like consumer yeah yeah there's like very defined things um but yeah i would say that we're just execution tech just need to do really well exactly exactly and just i mean it does take a lot of engineering but it's engineering not that hasn't been done it's taking things that have been done before combining them and just spending that sheer amount of engineering hours we happen to do in a very capital efficient way so yeah we're about 690 ,000 engineering hours into this oleg thinks we need to get to about 750 maybe like 850 to really feel good about our commercial deployment in Nevada.

9:11Interesting. And how did that commercial deployment in Nevada actually come together? Our business model warrants that we go anywhere we're wanted and we can. So just serendipitously ended up in Nevada, basically. Did you basically talk with the government there and they were more supportive of engaging early? I think there's definitely an angle where we start engaging with public sector a bit more, like what governor wouldn't want to solve their state's housing crisis, right? While also creating 260 unskilled jobs, while also producing, you know, $100 million plus of tax revenue, etc. We have all these stats that we show, but like, we don't ask for anything at this point in time, our factory is so capital efficient from a launch perspective, it doesn't warrant getting anything from anyone.

9:54We are entering there. And then if someone wants to engage us and be helpful, we take it, but we didn't need that to date. Yeah. How is the, like, I know that you really look up to your co-founder, Oleg. Yeah. How has that relationship evolved over the past year as you've just continued to execute? We have separate lanes, Oleg and I. Very, very separate lanes and we stay out of each other's way. But like Oleg doesn't make mistakes and he goes really fast. I think he is what, I think if I was in deep tech, I would be backing the Olegs of the world, people that can make 51 % correct decisions, 49 % incorrect, but do it very, very fast to ultimately iterate and get to kind of endpoint as quick as possible.

10:37Because a startup, especially in our category, like all you have is a limited amount of time and a limited amount of resources. We can get to that like commercialization point the quickest. And that takes like insane resource constraint and focus. So he's been really good at the focus piece. I know that, you know, you're building homes and I imagine the like iteration cycle isn't days. Yeah. But how do you think about getting a really fast iteration cycle on a larger product like this? That's a good question. So our product is maybe like defined in three things or three categories. Like our software actually is it's quicker, but also it's tied to the hardware.

11:16So it lags based on the hardware lag, if that makes sense, because to test the software, you have to go out in the field and build home. Actually do stuff. Yeah, exactly. That's the only way you test it. And we built quite a lot of software since we last spoke. I'd say like the biggest progression has been on the software side. And our hardware is really two things. It's like the factory itself, which is our product that fundamentally is like where all the IP is. And then it's what that factory produces as a byproduct, which are a kit of parts, either we're making or prepping, which then make up a home.

11:46Then there's some hardware that actually lives on site as well, like on the construction site, which is its own thing. But we iterate very quickly on the factory because our R &D center is attached to where we actually build the hardware. So like we have a bunch of folks that will design a piece of machine or some like some equipment. We'll go build it, test it, throw it out. If it doesn't work, do it again. We do that a lot. So the factory iterates a lot. um has there any been any uh situations in the past year where you just were like very surprised or got some major unlock that you weren't expecting um i wouldn't say like a major unlock i'd say like when we're building homes on site there's been things that we thought would go well but they're like okay this someone this we're always solving for unskilled labor can unskilled labor execute following a set of digitalized instructions which are dynamically changing all the time because you have different builds.

12:41So if in practice unskilled labor isn't able to do something on site, that has to go in the trash. So what Oleg has done is he's defined, let's say there are stages to building a house. Let's say there's, you know, three dozen stages. Those stages have sub stages that forms like, let's call it like 10 ,000 steps you need to do from factory to building a house. and he's defined those any of those that aren't binary like done done or not done meaning yeah i'll give you an example like painting a wall is very subjective how is that like a thing you did well or not well like it's just subjective so any stage that requires subjective thinking you throw out to then make sure it's a binary like one zero so he's done a very good job deleting tasks that or figuring out how to do tasks that become binary or subjective so that was like an important learning um what else there's things that we learn like certain equipment doesn't last long on site like okay so one one interesting thing people solve in off-site construction or modular prefab to reprinting they're trying to solve for off-site processes the biggest unlock is what happens on the actual construction site people forget about that that's the uncontrollable that's the craziness that's the chaos we figured out how to solve that piece so you're just trying of you know delete chaos from the system or remove it yeah and and then like what's interesting is people can produce a kit of parts sure people can produce volumetric boxes etc but like it's still some third party installing it the whole point of our system is we're if a general contractor had a baby with all the 22 subcontractors who then had cousins that are manufacturers next door like that's what kubi is it's an entire end-to-end system and it can't be any other way we believe as a solution to creating efficient, fast, cheap housing or building methodologies.

14:29Are there any, I guess, you know, there's obviously the regulation side, right? And you have to solve for that and tackle that. But is there any other, you know, part of the, you know, chain of actually getting houses going from having raw materials to getting houses built where people are kind of, or some person, I don't know how to describe this. Something is fighting you yeah like the thing we can never control which is why we're not the developer yeah not the group that's buying land permitting the land you know sometimes subdividing or changing zoning etc it's the permitting side so it's that bureaucratic side we can't control uh when a developer gets the green light after submitting like and saying i want to do this in my landing a bid well not a bid but submit when they uh when they buy the land they you know basically they go through a certain process which this is too technical to get into but they get into a certain process where they tell the local municipality here's what i want to build here's why i'm allowed to go do this here's like all my proof points around that then it takes a certain period of time and it might require certain you know feedback corrections feedback corrections because before uncle sam on that local level says hey you can build this that's when we step in only when they're ready and we can't control and a developer can't control when they get that green light that's something that needs to change and that needs to be standardized i wish there was like a national code, not like 26 ,000 different zoning codes.

15:49And like a place like Nevada or Texas are much simpler to build than like California, right? Or even New York or PA or whatever. There's definitely a blue red state thing here. There's definitely a pattern. Do one of the, you know, does do blue states have more regulation than red states? Yeah. How does that work? Yeah. So like I would say governor and city mayor skewed on the left tend to be a lot harder and more strict versus a place like, you know, Texas or some of the southern states. Yeah, for sure. Does it really impact the like amount of time? It's just time. Yeah. Yeah. It's just time.

16:28All else being we don't really have an issue of regulation. Like, again, we built all around that a lot of folks in our category, they're technologists, they're architects, they step into the space and trying to reinvent the wheel. But reinventing the wheel requires kicking down the door of regulation, which is really hard in this category. Remember, we haven't changed the way we build for 100 years, right? So like, it's a pretty hard task. We didn't want to play in that. So we built around it. Yeah. I know that you've been like at this for a few years now. What, like, when you're first tackling, you know, a big company like this, like a big problem.

17:05Yeah. I imagine you have some plan in your head. And I also imagine that as soon as you actually try to execute that plan in the real world it in big ways probably just falls apart yeah you businesses like this you you just have to be directionally correct and you have to pick a big enough tam where you can slither your way into different directions and still ultimately end up it's like having the correct vector alignment and then ending up there versus like you're never going to predict every little chapter um we have we still have in reference like a four phase master plan. It's two pages. That hasn't shifted a single time in our four and a half years.

17:41There might've been things that have shifted. Like, you know, for example, we just, we just iterated in our factory slightly based on some feedback we got in Nevada from the local municipality, like easy, like that is still directionally the same thesis, but those are, it's like when you get an engineering problem, you just solve it. That's all. Like you got a problem, you go solve it. It's no different than in anything in life. But you just have to be directionally right. And And I think directionally, we're still very much right and haven't shifted from that four phase master plan. Things sometimes take longer, cost more, you know, like you wish they were more linear, but they're not.

18:16But I think you just have to be directionally right. Is there any part of that that is like extremely memorable to you on you expected, you know, the company to go a certain way and it just, you know, geared off? Yeah, for sure. Like probably stuff we wouldn't disclose. um but i wouldn't like it's weird to say but like i wouldn't we don't have like the type of stories where like it's like oh you know we were a day away from like not having any capital and like we don't yet have stories like that but i think it's also because i think and i hope i think olig and i have like experience from the past that allows us to navigate certain mistakes that might be careless or call it like first-time risk if that makes sense i don't know if that's the correct way of putting it we've been able to navigate pretty well to date um you're like more thoughtful about all that's included i think we are i think we have experience i think we're thoughtful like i think we're pretty methodical um we've been really selective before cap table um we don't love venture necessarily as like a long-term plan because of just how we're set up but you know today we're de-risking our cost of capital um we want to be one of the earlier stage businesses to unlock massive project finance, which is a form of cost of capital that's asset level backing, meaning like we don't ever want to be using venture to launch factories.

19:31That's not smart or good. Unless you're like, and they're all where your cost of capitals are so cheap at this point that like it is probably as cheap as like borrowing, you know, bank debt at this point, just because the valuation is so high. Still probably not correct, but like you can get away with it at that point. At what point do you flip from using, you know, the venture equity to - We want to be now. Just right now. We now are in the works of this. We have a project that the returns are strong enough, actually very strong for project finance to find it exciting and take risk on asset level backing.

20:04What that means is they're taking risk on that underwritten factory versus the Opco or anything else, which is project finance by definition. I think you've got this 200 ,000 homes built goal by 2031 or something like that. yeah is it somewhere around there yeah um well the goal is like 200 factories each factory can do about 200 homes a year you know plus minus yeah at scale meaning each one has to ramp up remember i said directionally correct right our business it's either going to take 10 years or 20 years and somewhere in between we can be a 50 billion to 100 billion dollar outcome yeah that's based on that four phase master plan phase one we want to be the aws for home building the infrastructure needs to get out there.

20:50It needs to get rooted. That's all the factories we want to put out. We figured out a very scalable, capital efficient way to go launch factories like McDonald's, SOP, right? You can just launch these retail things on repeat right now, these storefronts. That's phase one. Phase two, once we have all this infrastructure out there, we can supply all the materials to the factories because each factory consumes about 550 different SKUs of bill of materials. Why can't we supply all those materials to our own factories, right? So that's several billion in top line right there at 30 % margin. That's very typical for materials.

21:23Phase three, once all those factories are out there around the globe, why can't we be 20 % of the offtake, 30 % of the offtake per each factory, meaning we will smoke our own supply and become the home builder, right? That's phase three, and we're excited about that. I want phase three to happen as soon as possible, and so does Oleg. How are you making that happen faster? There's going to be some lucky things that will happen along the way for that to happen. it's a cost of capital equation. That's all it is. And just staying focused and like. So does the like general market environment actually have like an impact on?

21:56No, it's more like, it's more like getting the cost of capital down through proof points of the factories going well to then borrow different cost of capital for becoming a home builder, I guess. And then there's like phase four, which is like rinse and repeat and other asset classes. We don't just want to be doing home building. We want to have other versions of our technology for home building, other asset classes, et cetera. Interesting. Are you eventually going to be, you know, building the factories to build factories? We're already started. So I think that's another update since we last spoke.

22:27So we're building out our Papa factory right now as we speak. That's going to ramp to three factories per year, then quickly to eight, then to 20. That's the actual Papa factory to build the mobile micro factories. Yeah. Yeah. Are you going to be building those like pop-up factories for other people? No, just one pop-up factory owned by Kubi to make factories that then go anywhere in the world. Does it work to just have that also right next to your R &D place in Eastern Europe? No, we're going to China for that. You want to China? Yeah. What's the like reasoning behind that? I think we're kind of contrarian on China, right?

23:07Because that's been not the consensus at the moment. We looked at India. we looked at Mexico, we looked at the US. The thing that we make and mass produce is not something that China wants to steal. China likes to steal the thing that they can make billions of times. We make specialized OEM and machines. Not that exciting to go copy. And we need to make them in the cheapest place possible. And does China have like way more skilled labor for building this type of thing than anywhere else in the world? We're setting a base in Sindau for that.

23:45if I want a CNC machine, right, and I want it custom tooled with my logo, I can go to like 20 different people around the block and have them all compete on price. And we've done that. And I'll give you like concrete examples. There's things that we try to buy here. There's things that we buy there from OEMs directly with our logo on them for 12X cost reduction. People can cry and debate all they want, but our goal is to put up 100 something factories in the US. so we have to take two steps back to make the factory as cost effective as possible to actually make the unit economics make sense to launch here we will do that because that's 10 steps forward despite taking two steps back um interesting yeah i mean look it's we need to make we have like we have like at this point like 700 different positions that go into a factory like of stuff everything from like a trash can all the way through like custom racks that it's just like a line item kind of thing yeah like like there's a lot and guess what what's our container i mean what's our factory made of i just gave it away oh just like a bunch of like metal and plastic and stuff you've seen our factories made up of a ton of containers yeah where are the world's containers made oh china yeah so does it make sense to make our machines send them to china to package and send we might as well just make them there right it doesn't make sense to send our containers somewhere else to pack them like you just do it there oh and do you also have like the advantages of, you know, China's just really good at shipping everywhere kind of thing?

25:10No, you can do that anywhere. Logistics is like not a problem anywhere. And just obviously tariffs are an interesting thing right now. But even with tariffs, it's just so much cheaper. Like we're talking like magnitude cheaper. But look, I mean, it's the Papa factory, ironically, is more capital efficient than our actual mobile micro factories. So we can move at any time somewhere else. Yeah. Are you going to build it in China and then ship it somewhere else? Or are you going to build it in China and just leave it there? The Papa factory? No, that's a stationary thing. The Papa factory is not a mobile micro factory.

25:45Yeah. Are you going to be doing like multiple of those at some point in the future? Maybe. Like when you talk about like true vertical integration, Olga and I were talking about this. Like we always joke that we will at some point have to lease like entire cargo ships, like literal cargo ships. and when you think about it there's a precedent to that byd just built the world's largest um car transport cargo ship have you seen this thing i haven't seen the ship i know they just built the biggest factory this thing is insane the ship itself is insane it looks like you just put like the world trade center on the side and there's like a ship so you got to look it up at some point so like when you talk about real vertical integration it's like you want to get there like that's what you want to be doing.

26:28So we'll vertically integrate as much as we can. But again, like 10 to 20 years. Is there any outside of like Elon, and I guess BYD, is there any other companies that you like really look up to and want to kind of not necessarily copy their model, but definitely emulate it? I mean, we like reference a couple companies, I think along the way. I mean, Tesla is definitely like a good reference point. But I don't think for the housing industry, you can compare like housing to the automotive industry, because they make five products and they're all the same that's not what housing is it's like regulated completely differently and just housing is a different product you want everyone wants their own custom house no one wants their own like different camry right you just get to buy the same camera and have some different specs and that's it so like auto manufacturing are very like stale uh production systems meaning like they just produce one thing to change like a different version of a camera or like the model y refresh right that was like years in the making because you have to invest like billions of dollars into capex of that production line ours needs to be like high volume um and high customization production lines that's why we standardize the parts and then they come together on site in different permutations so like all this to say tesla is not a good analogy but the only good analogy from tesla is that the product is the factory that's true like that's what you have to get to that's a company we obviously look up to but most of the principles actually come from toyota's production system you know like tps and lean manufacturing from toyota like all of that is really just what we recycle um ikea is a good example because they're very good at packing things and like in small giving instructions and you know it's a good example but you know um it's hard to like i don't like giving analogies of companies because then someone like claws back at one specific thing is like why it's not an analogy like here ikea is not technically an analogy because it's not like we hire third-party labor to show up and assemble the home.

28:18Like it's our unskilled labor that's putting it together, but also following a set of digitalized instructions. I guess you can reference like Lego, you can reference McDonald's because, you know, the goal is SOPs to copy and paste factories like they do, you know, store out, you know, storefronts, et cetera. There's like a little bit of you can pull away from a lot of places. Interesting. Has hiring changed at all in the past year? um yeah i mean one one i think like super fun exciting hires we hired a chief of staff uh he's awesome danny he's uh he's uh we had a one of our investors helped us with hiring and we gave uh we gave her a very weird specific task we said amazing engineer like unbelievable engineer who hates being an engineer and doesn't want to be an engineer anymore also speaks russian uh and new york based that's like a very weird box a rare combination yeah very weird box she killed it on this uh so he's been amazing and been super helpful to us but a lot of our hiring is still like you know r &d focused in eastern europe um yeah that's been that's been like majority we'll start hiring now for our nomada facility in advance because we start hiring folks 12 months in advance of launch we start training them all because like like he's literally put together like these are like 400 page sops for launching a factory what needs to happen like you know he's really he's really good with this stuff so we'll start hiring for that pretty soon so what is uh what's on your mind typically when you wake up in the morning um we start our day with two things uh we get a lot of fires that we need to put out and generally a lot of inbound that's distracting we've now started kind of uh we ask two questions in the morning or relative to every task assignment thing, like it falls into two buckets.

30:02Either we're reducing burn by monetizing our existing first of a kind facility, which can already produce homes and they could have parts anywhere in the world. And we don't like doing it, but we build model units that way in different parts of the world. We get to monetize, cover our burn. So one, does it reduce burn? That thing that we're doing that day or some assignments and project, et cetera, using our first of a kind. Second is, does it move the needle to launching our nevada facility quicker yes no um like we're moving pretty faster i mean our land the six acres of land that we bought in nevada i don't know many founders that went from zero to four weeks later owning the perfect site in the most cost efficient i don't want to talk about our structure there but like the most cost efficient way possible um with great partners like four weeks that's not how'd you get that done like what were your what were the things I come from real estate so yeah yeah you know it's a bit yeah a little bit of an advantage yeah but just it was also serendipity worked out like we'll talk more about it in like a full press release that we have coming soon but yeah like we're I would say we're moving faster I want to move even faster but like there's what's stopping you from just going full throttle you know pedal to the metal it's a combination of things like we really want to unlock cost of capital correctly so going out and raising the project fans there's like an order of things that need to happen um also like the slowness is good because it allows oleg to test a bunch of things in our first of a kind where we don't have to make those tests in a full commercial like scale uh you don't want to make those mistakes or those tests there you want to like show up and be like okay we're ready to go so that that time is like both a um uh it's both like a butter knife but also a sharp knife i guess yeah um the butter knife is that like hey like moving slowly sometimes helps because you can melt the butter better.

31:50Then the sharp knife is like, oh, shit, you can cut yourself a little bit because you're moving slower than you want. But it's moving how it's supposed to. Like that's, you know. Yeah. Is there anything that like is weighing on your mind a lot? I think, you know, just two founders always thinking about capital, thinking about, you know, the sheer responsibility of like overselling, but then over delivering. I think it's important. And just we've got to solve for those two things. We want no dependency on anyone else. Therefore, we want to basically have revenues equal burn. That's a really good place to be in.

32:27And then second, we want to, you know, go launch this thing that's never existed in the world. Just as soon as like you can do this third interview and I showed you what the Novato one is going to look like. As soon as like we can do it there, this is a very different company. This has never existed in the world. and it's funny because a lot of people have been drawing parallels between what Elon has done to reduce the regulation risk of him having to expand this Fraymont facility and putting up these temporary structures and putting a you know putting the tent up and all that stuff if you think about it I guess and squint really hard that's what Kubi set out to do day zero so we just figured out a much better way to do it do you think that you're going to be able to deploy the factories much faster as once you have the Nevada factory done?

33:14Actually, we're moving pretty fast in Nevada. We have a lot of public sector support. Like there's a couple of things. We figured out how to actually do it from a regulatory perspective fast. That's not the problem. We're constrained on it takes us 10 months to make the factory. And then it gets sent. And this is what the China situation will unlock. Yeah, it'll be faster. But I don't think it's ever faster than like six months of production. yeah and you have to like plan out you know is that the main constraint for timelines on you have to you know if you're in goals to just ship lots of homes then you have to have these factories and so you know if it's six months lag time are you gonna be able to build more than one at the same time yeah of course okay well for sure that's what we're underwriting like again the best no one's ever scaled factory building right because most folks they don't have decentralized factories they have a centralized factory that does a ton of volume yeah so they don't need to go scale factories.

34:07Like you take even like a car manufacturer, they might have 10 factories. That's it at most. Right. And those are billions of dollars and took like 10 years in the planning and making, et cetera. Our business is a bit different. That's more akin to like McDonald's as an equation that works. There's regional folks that are responsible for regions. There's local folks in those sub regions that are responsible for launches. Like that just becomes a function of SOPs, right? Like the standard operating procedures that are required to launch those things and I rinse and repeat. And it's an equation that works well.