Tremendous

An angel investor's take on life and business

  • Would You Take a Pig Heart?

    106,036 Americans are waiting for an organ transplant. 17 of them die each day. But what if we could give them pig organs?

    From the Seventeenth Century to Modern Science

    The first attempted xenotransplantation, or animal-to-human transplant, was done in 1667. Jean-Baptiste Denys gave sheep’s blood to a 15 year old boy who, somehow, survived the risky procedure. But two more of Denys’ patients soon died, and the procedure was banned.

    Doctors continued to attempt xenotransplantations for centuries. They began to have some success in the 1960’s, with an American patient surviving 9 months post-op.

    But it was not until the 2020’s that xenotransplantation truly accelerated. What changed was the invention of CRISPR gene editing.

    The State of the Art in Xenotransplantation

    Xenotransplantations are usually done with pig organs. There are lots of pigs around anyway and pig organs are about the same size as ours.

    But humans tend to reject even human organs. Animal organs often face an even more intense immune response. What’s more, pigs have certain viruses called Porcine Endogenous Retroviruses (PERVs) that can be very dangerous to humans.

    CRISPR lets us genetically modify pigs. We can take out the PERVs and make the pig organs more suitable for humans.

    In recent years, genetically modified pigs have been the main source for xenotransplantations.

    Pig Organs Save a Life

    In January 2025, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital transplanted a pig kidney into Tim Andrews.

    Andrews had end stage kidney failure. He had been on dialysis for over 2 years.

    This operation was his only hope for a normal life.

    Luckily, Andrews’ operation was a complete success. He was discharged from the hospital just a few days later, with his new kidney functioning just like a healthy human one.

    Andrews is doing so well that in June, he threw the opening pitch at a Red Sox game in Fenway Park!

    Scaling Up

    This is an outcome beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. What if we could scale this up to all people who need kidneys and, eventually, all organs?

    Several companies are hard at work to make it happen.

    Companies like eGenesis and United Therapeutics are producing genetically modified pigs. Those pigs are the source for xenotransplantations. eGenesis provided the kidney for the Andrews transplant.

    In February, the FDA approved a clinical trial by United Therapeutics to evaluate its pig organs in humans. I can’t wait to see the results!

    Wrap-Up

    I imagine a future with farms full of genetically modified pigs. When one of your organs breaks down, you just check into the nearest hospital and they get you a fresh, new one from the farm.

    Humans could live decades longer if we master xenotransplantation. And we’re closer than ever.

    I’m excited to meet startups working on genetically modified pigs and xenotransplantation. If that’s you, let me know!

    More on tech:

    Meet My Latest Investment: Zeon Systems

    Is Biotech Having its ChatGPT Moment?

    How We Can Rewrite Our Genetic Blueprint

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • My Secret Weapon for Helping Founders Raise Millions

    I never show this spreadsheet to anyone. 54 top investors. This is my secret weapon.

    My money is no greener than anybody else’s. So if I want to invest in the best founders, I need to bring something else to the table.

    This spreadsheet makes it happen.

    Meet “The Sheet”

    Startups are always raising money. And because VC’s almost never invest in cold pitches, warm intros are critical.

    So when one of my companies is raising, I consult The Sheet.

    I don’t open The Sheet for every founder. This weapon is for folks I’ve invested in only.

    I don’t want to be sending random dealflow to investors. Every deal I send out, I’m investing in myself.

    That makes the messages valuable and rare, instead of frequent and spammy.

    How I Use The Sheet to Help My Founders

    Let’s say “Icetech” is raising money. They make POS systems for ice cream trucks.

    I look through The Sheet and find investors that love vertical SaaS. I make sure they invest at Seed, since Icetech is at Seed stage.

    Then, I ask them if they want to meet one of my investments: an incredible company called Icetech.

    Most of these VC’s take me up on the offer. Soon, a founder has a raft of warm intros to VC funds in their inbox.

    The reason uptake is so high is because I don’t send the same deals to everyone. I make sure that the deal fits their criteria.

    I’m not going to send an American deal to an investor who only does Europe. I’m not going to send a Series A to a pre-seed fund.

    Making Your Own Sheet: For Investors

    If you’re an investor, keep track of every other investor you meet. Find out what they invest in and add it to a spreadsheet.

    Here are some columns to include:

    • Name
    • Title
    • Firm
    • Sectors (Vertical SaaS, spacetech, etc.)
    • Geographies (US, Europe, etc.)
    • Check Size
    • Best contact method (e-mail, iMessage, etc.)

    The best way to meet investors is to contact the folks who invested alongside you in prior deals.

    Put a particular emphasis on investors who are in your best deals. Those are the most able folks you know.

    Soon, you’ll have a spreadsheet with some awesome names in it. When one of your companies is raising, match them up with the right VC’s from the list.

    Making Your Own Sheet: For Founders

    If you’re a founder, you should be building a secret weapon too…

    Put every investor you know that invests in companies like yours into a spreadsheet. Find more using an LLM or tools like Crunchbase.

    Be sure they invest at your stage and in companies similar to yours. For example, you don’t want to pitch a SaaS VC if you’re a biotech startup.

    Then, work your way down The Sheet and pitch those investors. If you targeted your list well, you should start closing some checks in short order.

    Wrap-Up

    Getting $5,000 or even $25,000 from me is not going to change anyone’s life. Getting intros to funds that invest millions…that just might.

    Helping founders is a lot of fun! It lets me feel like I played a small part in building one of the great companies of the future.

    That’s a lot more exciting than just sitting back and hoping for a return.

    If you’re an investor, you should be creating your own secret weapon. And if you’re a founder, building The Sheet could bring in millions for your startup.

    Not a bad return on a few hours work.

    P.S. Want to be added to The Sheet? Drop a comment below and let me know what you invest in...

    More on tech:

    Meet My Latest Investment: Zeon Systems

    My Biggest Lesson from Four Years Angel Investing

    Are Hackers After Your Brain? — The Rise of CogSec

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Meet My Latest Investment: Zeon Systems

    What happens when you lower the cost of something? You get more of it. My latest investment, Zeon Systems, is doing that for scientific research.

    Zeon lets you automate experiments. Just describe the experiment in natural language in a ChatGPT-style text box. Then, the robot arms carry it out!

    There are around 1 million research scientists performing experiments in America today. Training a new one takes many years. But building a robotic arm takes just a couple of hours.

    I first heard about Zeon on X during its YC launch. I knew immediately that I had to meet these guys.

    I cold messaged them the next day and set up a meeting. Frankly, I’d have met them at 3am on a Tuesday if that’s what they wanted.

    You have to be aggressive when you see a great investment. There are only a few really special startups per year.

    When I met with Founder & CEO Brontë Kolar recently, I was struck by how much she cares about this problem.

    She was researching antibiotic resistance with her co-founder Tahir D’Mello after their workdays at Latch Bio. When they realized that it would take years to begin to crack the problem, they knew they needed to automate the lab work.

    So they founded Zeon.

    I want a future with hundreds of millions of Zeon robotic arms, all conducting experiments 24/7. Powerful AI models will direct them to the most important research problems.

    If we can do that, all the dominoes will fall: cancer, heart disease, dementia, you name it. Eternal health, eternal life.

    Not a bad vision for a startup.

    Check out Zeon and get your lab running 24/7! 

    More on tech:

    My Favorite Startups in YC X25 (Part 1)

    Meet My Latest Investment: Sent.dm

    My Biggest Lesson from Four Years Angel Investing

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Why I Love the Most Hated People in Silicon Valley

    These are the most hated people in Silicon Valley. But if you’re spending time trashing them, you’re wasting your life.

    A young techie in San Francisco put up a picture of himself and pals having dinner at a nice restaurant. The caption: “went to a fancy dinner in SF and everybody went to Harvard (or Stanford).”

    The photo has 17.6 million views and counting. Thousands of people are trashing them in the ugliest terms imaginable.

    You don’t have to love these people. But any minute spent attacking them is a minute wasted.

    You don’t know them. They don’t matter to you. And you don’t matter to them.

    Yes, they went to elite universities. But that doesn’t take anything away from you.

    I went to state school, University of Wisconsin-Madison. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy for these young people who went to colleges higher ranked than mine.

    If they had failed, do I get something? Does a guy show up at my house with one of those giant checks?

    No. So stop hatin’.

    There’s an especially ugly element to this particular internet mob. Many of the comments about these young people are about the fact that they’re (almost) all Asian.

    People hate successful Asians.

    Many Asians have done well in America. And good for them!

    But what if they hadn’t? Then, people would deride them as welfare cheats.

    They can’t win.

    Now, Can I claim to be St. Francis who’s never talked trash about someone? Certainly not.

    I know I’ve said unkind and insensitive things in my life. I try not to, but sometimes I let myself slip into it.

    In the end, the people I’m trashing probably don’t know or care what I think. But I still try to stop myself from this petty behavior.

    Why? Because it’s a waste of life.

    I’m 39 years old. Optimistically, I may have another 50 years on the planet. If scientists figure something out, maybe that’s 100, but we can’t count on that.

    Why spend minutes, hours, days denigrating someone? Where does that get me?

    Nowhere.

    Hating some random people in San Francisco I’ve never met won’t help me.

    I’m better off focusing on myself. And so are you.

    Have a great weekend, everybody!

    More from the blog:

    Talking AI, Biotech and More at the Single Family Office Summit

    My Top 3 Business Books

    The Swami Who Taught Me About Politics

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Why We Should Be Grateful for 10 Year Lockups

    Figma goes public today. Seed investors were locked up for 12 years. That’s a long time to wait! But here’s why we should be grateful for lockups…

    Every company goes through hard times. If we were allowed to dump our shares, we probably would!

    Then, we’d miss out on enormous gains when the founder figures it out.

    Figma in the Wilderness

    Figma is a great example. It took founder Dylan Field over 2 years to release a product.

    I don’t know about you, but if I’m an investor in a startup that’s taking that long to ship a product, I’m getting worried. “What’s the hold up? Will they ever ship?” I begin to wonder.

    Of course, Figma did release a product, and it was an enormous hit. Fast forward a decade, and they’re going public for almost $20 billion.

    Learning From My Top Investments

    Figma is not alone in suffering hard times before becoming a major success. If I look at any successful startup I’ve invested in, it went through a rough patch.

    A year of 0 growth. Loss of a major customer. Legal issues. Macro headwinds.

    It’s always something. And as much as I want to think I’m a diamond hands, I might have sold my shares had there been a market for them.

    That would’ve been a huge mistake. I would’ve been bailing out of the biggest successes in my portfolio.

    How Long Is Too Long?

    Of course, we all need liquidity eventually. I agree with Bill Gurley that companies should go public earlier, perhaps around the $100-200 million ARR mark. By that point, a company is a major success.

    Going public cleans up the cap table mess of numerous share classes. It provides important liquidity for your employees and investors. And it also introduces a new level of discipline.

    Without the public markets to scold him, Mark Zuckerberg might still be frittering away tens of billions on the “metaverse,” whatever that is.

    Wrap-Up

    Liquidity is great once a company’s a huge success. But being locked up early is a blessing in disguise.

    It takes a thousand twists and turns before a company hits the big time. You see today’s success. But you don’t see all the failure it took to get there.

    And during all that failure, it can be hard to keep the faith.

    So the next time you look at your portfolio and bemoan the lack of liquidity, take a step back.

    Being locked up can be nerve-wracking. But one day, it might put millions of dollars in your pocket.

    More on tech:

    Have You Seen These Valuations Lately?

    The Three Metrics That Could Save Your Startup

    Are Hackers After Your Brain? — The Rise of CogSec

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Watching the First AI Movie

    I just watched the first AI movie, Red Panda: Firefox of the Clouds. It was fantastic! And it makes me wonder what’s next…

    Red Panda is a full hour long film, made entirely with AI. Every element, from the visuals to the music, is synthetic. I spoke with the creator and he confirmed that even the script is AI-generated, although he edited and fact checked it himself.

    As far as I know, this is the first AI movie of this length. And let me tell you, it’s incredibly impressive!

    Don’t get me wrong — you can definitely tell it’s fake. The colors are a little too bright, the movement a little too smooth.

    But if a movie this good is possible less than 3 years into Generative AI, there’s no telling where we’re headed. I expect to see completely realistic movies within the next 5 years.

    Red Panda follows the adorable forest creature through its habitat in the Himalayas. You see stunning visuals of wild orchids, snow capped mountains and miniature deer.

    The film also gives us a peek into the nearby villages, which I particularly enjoyed. Folks live in homes clinging to the side of mountains, surrounded by nature.

    I would dearly love to visit one of these villages some day. It would be wonderful to sample a life so different from mine in such a beautiful setting.

    The most realistic part of the film is the music. The traditional erhu whines in the background, sounding just like a real instrument, at least to my untrained ear.

    Making this movie took the creator Crystalwizard a full two months. He used numerous AI tools, include Google’s veo-3, Runway, and Luma.

    I cannot imagine the prompting it took to produce these complex scenes, like wild orchids swaying in the breeze.

    Even though you can tell it’s fake, this movie is beautiful. It’s a true piece of art, and the mood is very peaceful.

    I didn’t want it to end! I highly encourage you to take a look and, if possible, watch the whole thing.

    More on tech:

    Will Open Source Win AI?

    Meta’s New Headsets: Is This VR’s Moment?

    Grok 4: The Best AI Model Ever?

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Will Open Source Win AI?

    Open source dominates server environments and databases. But will open source win AI?

    This morning, I investigated which models are most popular among developers…

    America’s Next Top Model

    There’s no one place to go to definitively determine which models are most popular among developers. But one strong indicator comes from a company called OpenRouter.

    OpenRouter publishes rankings of the most used models by developers. Open source models take 3 of the top 10 spots this month. All 3 are from DeepSeek.

    If you look at the “trending” ranking of models that are growing quickly, almost all are open source. Alibaba’s Qwen, DeepSeek, and Llama dominate the list.

    The Benefits of Open Source

    An open source model may not be the absolute best model available. But if you’re building it into your app, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the best. It just has to give you the output you need.

    Once you have that, you optimize for price and platform risk.

    Closed source models can raise prices whenever they want. What’s more, a closed source model provider can cut me off at any time if they’re worried about me competing with them. Anthropic did this to Windsurf recently, although they later restored access.

    Who wants to deal with that if you don’t have to?

    Wrap-Up

    Assuming you can get output of the necessary quality, open source seems like a no brainer. As open source models get better and better, I expect to see developers adopt them rapidly.

    Ten years from now, I think open source AI will have won the war for developers.

    What are you using in your applications, open source or closed source? And which models do you prefer?

    More on tech:

    The Three Metrics That Could Save Your Startup

    Are Hackers After Your Brain? — The Rise of CogSec

    Grok Companions — Elon’s AI Girlfriend?

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • The Three Metrics That Could Save Your Startup

    The startup world has a million metrics. CAC, LTV, ROAS. But here are 3 key metrics many founders aren’t looking at…

    Burn Multiple

    How do you know if the money you’re burning is producing any results? You won’t, unless you calculate your burn multiple.

    Here’s how to do it…

    Burn Multiple = (Last Month’s Net Burn) / (This Month’s ARR – Last Month’s ARR)

    Let’s say you burned $100,000 last month. Your ARR right now is $200,000. Last month it was $150,000.

    That’s $100,000/$50,000, or a burn multiple of 2. That’s solid for an early stage startup.

    I compute this number for every investment I make. When I see burn multiples below 2 in early stage companies, I get excited.

    These guys are capital efficient!

    User Engagement

    User engagement stats aren’t just for social media companies. One of the best predictors of churn is a customer not using your product.

    If they’re not using it, sooner or later they’re going to go through their credit card statement and cancel. You want to prevent that.

    If you’re selling a B2B product, a customer should be using it most business days.

    Aim for 3 days a week minimum. Tools like Mixpanel or Amplitude can find this information for you.

    If a customer isn’t using your product, find out why. Are they not getting value from it? How can you improve?

    Those customer interviews are a treasure trove of information.

    Runway

    This is a simple one. But I cannot tell you how many founders ignore it. I’ve seen companies get down to a few months runway then desperately run out to raise money.

    Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

    So how do the pros do it?

    Take Rahul Vohra at Superhuman. He maintained 48 months runway at all times.

    This gave him options, through good markets and bad. And while many companies that raised big bucks in 2021 died during the down market, Rahul was able to get Superhuman to a juicy acquisition by Grammarly this month!

    Wrap-Up

    One of the great things about having so many successful startups is that you can derive a formula for success.

    No company can be reduced entirely to metrics. But if you’re capital efficient, have lots of cash on the balance sheet, and customers are relying on your product every day, you’re on the right track.

    What metrics do you track as a founder or investor?

    More on tech:

    Have You Seen These Valuations Lately?

    Housing Prices Are Ridiculous. Can Startups Help?

    Are Hackers After Your Brain? — The Rise of CogSec

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Have You Seen These Valuations Lately?

    Every pre-revenue startup is raising at $30-40 million right now. Making money on these bets will be next to impossible.

    A year or two ago, a company with little or no revenue might have raised at a $10 million cap. Not anymore.

    The price is going to be over $30 million. That cuts your upside by 2/3rds.

    The Math Doesn’t Math

    Here’s how I think about entry price…

    The bulk of your returns usually come from a single investment. In my “fund,” I have 35 primary investments.

    I need to 4x the fund to make the risk and illiquidity worthwhile. That means one of these little companies needs to go 140x.

    But wait…even 140 isn’t enough.

    If you’re investing at pre-seed and seed like I do, you typically lose 1/2 your gains to dilution. After all, the founder needs to raise a lot more money along the way.

    So that 140x becomes 280x. Round it up to an even 300.

    If I get in at a $10m cap, I need the company to hit a $3 billion valuation for the math to work. This isn’t easy, but it’s doable.

    But if my entry price is $35 million, this little startup has to exit for $10.5 billion minimum. That is a very tall order.

    There are not a lot of decacorns out there. It happens, but it’s rare enough that I cannot underwrite to it.

    Looking In the Discard Pile

    If you’re investing in B2B AI agent startups in San Francisco, everything is fully priced. Some of those companies will become huge successes, but the chance of success is already priced in.

    You’ll struggle to beat the NASDAQ, and that’s after 10-15 years of illiquidity. An investment like that is not worth making.

    So the place to look is in the discard pile…

    I found two awesome investments this week. But they’re not in hot areas.

    The first is a social media startup. Remember social media?

    The second is a robotics company based not in SF but in Connecticut. Mercifully, the plague of high valuations hasn’t yet reached the East Coast.

    I’m also excited about an area most investors truly hate right now: biotech.

    Many public biotechs are trading below their cash in the bank. And private biotech startups are the furthest thing from hot.

    But there are amazing things happening: robotic scientific research, AI models like Evo 2 and State that can help us discover new drugs.

    In 5-10 years, biotech could be as hot as AI agents are now. I hope to scoop up some of the best startups before everyone else comes knocking.

    I’m also interested in categories that don’t even really exist yet, like cognitive security or CogSec.

    CogSec is security for our brains. Sounds crazy, right?

    But patients already have brain-computer interfaces like Neuralink connected to the internet. Anything connected to the internet will be hacked eventually.

    The time to build and invest in those tools is now, not after a catastrophic breach.

    Wrap-Up

    “You cannot lose if you do not play.”

    That was Marla Daniels, a character in The Wire, one of my favorite shows. She was talking about the Baltimore Police Department. But it’s equally true in startups.

    Just because everyone else is investing in AI agents in the same 4 block area of SF doesn’t mean you have to. There are amazing opportunities elsewhere.

    There’s nothing wrong with dipping into that crowded pool once in a while when I see something exceptional. But the rest of the time, you’ll find me on a placid lake, fishing for the startups no one else wants.

    Have a great weekend, everybody!

    More on tech:

    Are Hackers After Your Brain? — The Rise of CogSec

    Is Biotech Having its ChatGPT Moment?

    Where I’m Most Excited About Investing Now

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Housing Prices Are Ridiculous. Can Startups Help?

    At $447,054, median home prices reached another record in June. Americans are priced out. But could technology save the day?

    This afternoon, I’m meeting with a startup that promises to make building a house way faster and cheaper. But before I do, I wanted to research the current state of the art in technology for construction.

    Here’s what I found…

    Mobile Factories

    One really cool approach to construction is to make houses in a factory. And best of all, the factory comes to you!

    Cuby is one of the most exciting startups taking this approach. They pop up a factory on the construction site.

    The mobile factory makes houses faster, easier and cheaper to produce. While traditional construction requires skilled labor, the Cuby factories do just fine with unskilled workers that are easier to find and cheaper to employ.

    3D Printed Housing

    What if instead of building houses, we printed them?

    Sounds crazy, right? But several startups are doing this today.

    The giant 3D printers extrude a material like concrete or plastic. Startups like ICON can even build multistory structures using these giant printers.

    Cement is great because it’s solid, unlike a lot of the ticky-tacky wooden construction I see today.

    Construction Robots

    Robots are everywhere these days. I even saw one at Shoprite on Tuesday, in the aisles taking inventory!

    Startups like Monumental, which I wrote about on the blog last year, are bringing robots to the construction site. Monumental’s bots can lay brick autonomously.

    What’s great about this approach is it doesn’t rely on new construction techniques. You can use the methods that are tried and true.

    You just have a robot doing it instead of a human.

    Wrap-Up

    Of all these exciting approaches, which one has the best shot at making housing affordable again?

    My pick is construction robots. You don’t need novel building techniques or new materials to make this work. You just need to get a robot to do what a human is already doing.

    However, I’m always open to founders showing me the future. Maybe someone has a better approach I haven’t seen yet. If so, I’d love to check it out!

    Here’s the future I dream of: anyone can afford a nice, spacious house in the location of their choice. Housing goes from being a focus of anxiety to a normal purchase, like buying a couch.

    The government won’t get us there. Technology will.

    More on tech:

    Your Next House Will Be Built By Robots

    Are Hackers After Your Brain? — The Rise of CogSec

    Where I’m Most Excited About Investing Now

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