Construction technology is the next great frontier ripe for innovation disruption. Productivity hasn’t improved since 1950 though the cost drivers of labor and materials has increased significantly. If you’ve purchased and/or remodeled a home in the last 20 years you’ve experienced the meteoric rise in home prices and/or construction costs. Worse if you’re a first time home buyer you may have been forced to the sidelines because of sticker shock.
Thesis: Labor shortages, rising materials cost, and regulation have made home building an onerous process that rolls downhill to buyers in the form of ever-increasing prices. Automating the construction of houses with 3D printing technology at its core is a requirement not only to offset the shortage of labor; but also compensate for the rising cost of materials and regulation. Prices must come down if we want home ownership to remain part of the American Dream.
Current 3D printing technology only addresses part of the home cost problem and even at that they are not the types of homes people have become used to living in. Additionally, simply forming the structure of a house won’t get us across the goal line as “finishing construction” is where all the character we desire in a home comes from. Our solution will be driven by beautiful design (emotion) and executed with elegant engineering (objectivity) delivering low overall cost of ownership (value). Creating familiarity will shorten the adoption cycle and speed the pathway to scale.