This week’s interview is with Sébastien Lucas, Co-Founder and CEO of Bricks.

Sébastien has been working an architect for 7 years before he started as an entrepreneur and self-taught web developer. His goal was always to make architecture a collaborative practice. He first developed Openbricks, a platform to share and find open source architectural projects and designs.

Then, inspired by GitHub, he developed Bricks. Bricks is an app for architects that focusses on providing collaborative solutions for architectural design. The public beta of Bricks will be launched this month.

Continue to read to learn more about SaaS, business models for open source and of course about Bricks and how it could help your practice.

Enjoy the interview!

What made you decide to found Bricks? Was there a particular moment that sealed the decision for you?

Since the beginning of my entrepreneur journey back in 2006, when I was still working as an architect for agence TER, a well-known French landscape architecture studio, my motivation is to improve the way architects collaborate.

I developed Archiref in 2010, a platform to share images of architecture,  and then Openbricks in 2014 to make it easier to find open source elements for architecture.

Those two projects seek to encourage architects to share their library of inspiration and projects. In order to save time, build a community, and communicate their work in a way that is useful for everyone. With Bricks, I was also at the design side of the development.

Software developers have GitHub, where most open source software are built and shared. Github is both a working tool and a huge library. Inspired by GitHub, I was motivated to develop an app for architects that can be useful daily and help in making the design process collaborative, in essence, the GitHub for architects.

I met my two associates about a year ago. One of them, François Muzard is a BIM manager. He introduced me to the BIM world and the fact that the BIM ecosystem needs apps to help efficient communication among project stakeholders, task sharing, and even discussions…

All Bricks associates have experienced agile methods in the fields of web development and BIM collaboration. So the idea arose to quickly build an app that would integrate not only all the benefits of Agile Methods, but also adapt to AEC and closely integrate to the growing BIM ecosystem.

You have just launched Bricks app. Could you give us some examples of how the tool is used and how it helps architectural practices?

Architects lose a lot of time for external and internal communication. After a meeting, everyone seems to be all clear on what needs to be done. But how to track progress and answer questions before the next meeting? How to keep the project momentum and maintain flawless communication day after day, and keep everyone involved motivated and informed?

Communication is usually a mix of emails, phone calls, and maybe some paperwork… but it takes time and never provides a clear state of the work to be done.

With Bricks, we propose a shared platform to communicate and exchange ideas about tasks before and after the meeting.

You can then:

• plan tasks for the next meeting
• assign them to your team or external collaborators
• discuss the tasks in greater detail
• follow their progress and hierarchize them with a kanban board

We will release a new meeting module soon. It will allow you to invite meeting attendees assigned to specific tasks. It also generates a report to send out automatically to all the attendees.

Compared with other architecture project management tools, Bricks is based on Agile approach. More than just tracking tasks, we also aim to give everyone a clear idea of what how far along they are on the project.

Of course, you can manage privacy too, thanks to our group feature. It allows creating separate project groups where you can share specific topics to just your engineers, the client, or to everyone on the project.

In which development phase is your app?

The public beta of Bricks will be launched this month. This version is the result of nearly one year of development and iteration on the product. We have decided on a clear roadmap, giving priority to the ease of use and simplicity along with specific attention to the quality of the user interface.

Though BIM and 3D model integration are important, we have decided to orient our first product on task management, as it is at the core of agile methods. Also often the simple, such as sharing comments and images, is more efficient than the complicated, like discussing a complex 3D model. Indeed the 3D model environment could be overwhelming for many people and not accessible under bad internet connection contexts.

We will make a demo of the app at Web summit, the biggest startup event in Europe, held in Lisbon this November. We will animate a few specific user workshops in our network of innovative architectural practices. Our objective is to gather as many feedbacks as possible to improve the app for its next iteration.

The next feature we will develop is a new module that handles meetings efficiently and integrates with task management seamlessly. We expect to launch it before the end of the year.

After which, we will launch the final v1 version and payment plans at the beginning of 2018.

How did you finance it?

Since the end of 2016 and until now, we have financed the Bricks app project out of our own pockets. We are looking for public and private funding to move with the project even faster. As in the startup world, completion speed  is a key factor to success!

Further I wanted to ask you about a project you launched earlier, Openbricks. Could you tell us a little about it?

Openbricks is a platform to share and find open source architectural projects and designs. These past few years have seen open source architecture gaining momentum, with a community like the Wikihouse and the Pritzker prize Alejandro Aravena who shared four of his social housing designs under the Creative Commons license.

I have the chance to be both an architect and a web developer, so I know very clearly how open source contributes in development – it simply revolutionizes everything!

While big tech names like Google and Facebook also contribute to open source framework, a software collaboratively developed by a community of people can eventually get bigger and more powerful than the software developed by powerful companies. It is a way to democratize the knowledge.

But now to get back to architecture, the open source movement face several roadblocks that prevent its viral development :

• A clarification of licenses
• A clarification of responsibility for the design
• A simple way to find and participate in open source design
• A business model to share the benefits to contributors
• …

With Openbricks, we wanted to solve the problem of the fragmentation of open source architecture projects to create a standard that facilitates discovery like GitHub did in its time.

We, of course, want to advance in a better model and improve the tool. But for the moment, the development of Bricks is our current priority.

Open Source means that knowledge is shared at no costs. What is the business model for Openbricks?

Openbricks is completely free!

Open source platforms can have several business models. Let’s take two examples. First is the Noun project, a platform of quality design icons shared by the designer community. They offer free license of the icons they share, all within the Creative Commons framework. Most people don’t pay, but the professionals do and contribute for the others.

Secondly GitHub, the hub for open source development projects. It is free for open source projects and does have paying plans for companies that want to use the same tools (code versioning, project management, etc) to manage their private projects.

In our case, Openbricks is a library of architectural elements that could be, at some point, integrated with Bricks app. Openbricks will remain free and what people will pay for is to use the Bricks app as a monthly subscription. This, in turn, will go to the services, formation, integration, and customisation that could be needed for architects to set up the app internally.

Do you have any advice for Archipreneurs who want to start and build their own business?

Don’t be afraid to study your project idea. We are all constantly overwhelmed by announcements of new apps, new startups. You may feel discouraged to launch your own project in such a competitive and dynamic world.

But do it :

• start small
• focus on one specific problem to solve, one that you experienced personally
• choose the right people to build and complete your team
• don’t be afraid to talk about your idea to anyone you meet
• show the product early for feedbacks and do not hesitate to change your initial idea

Experience has proven that ideas that seemed very similar at first can create a whole new experience and with continuous improvement, differentiate itself from the rest and find its target market.

Think about Instagram, who would have imagined that an image sharing app with a few filters could end up being so popular!

About Sébastien Lucas

Sébastien Lucas is co-founder and CEO of Bricks, a SaaS application focused on providing collaborative solutions for architectural design. Sébastien is an architect by profession and for 7 years worked for award-winning French architecture and landscape architecture companies.

In 2009, passionate about the web and with the idea to make architecture a collaborative practice, he developed several projects: Archiref, Openbricks and then, the Bricks app. He became, as a result, an entrepreneur and self-taught web developer with a specialization in javascript and frontend technologies.

He then worked 5 years as a freelance web developer to create web applications for other startups, media and web agencies. In 2013, he organized three Future Architecture Night events, a conference cycle inspired by TED’s or Pecha Kucha and offered the opportunity for more than 30 startups and architects to talked about their innovations related to architecture.

The post Design Together with Bricks: Collaborative Solutions for Architects appeared first on Archipreneur.

This week’s interview is with Michael Kohn, CEO of Stickyworld.

Michael had been working as an architect in London when he realized that there was a need for a better and easier collaboration between stakeholders in the process of building. He created Stickyworld, a web- and mobile-based tool that enables projects to be shared, commented on and posted with virtual sticky notes attached directly to the images. The tool makes it easier for everyone to understand the discussion at hand, as well as to capture and evidence new insights from participants during the design and construction process.

Stickyworld has since evolved into a universal participation platform, serving individuals and organizations within and outside the AEC industry who seek to involve others in general online engagement discussions or structured participation processes.

Read on to learn how Michael combined his passion for architecture and computing, and how he built a business from these interests.

Enjoy the interview!

Could you tell us a little about your background?

I studied architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture. But I had always been a little bit entrepreneurial. I built a house for my mum in my gap year, and after I had graduated I entered a lot of competitions for houses of the future.

As an architect, I was always looking for something slightly outside the norm, and I noticed my architectural concepts were verging more on product ideas than straight architecture. I thought of the architect’s role as an enabler to others to make space, rather than saying exactly how everything has to be. As a registered architect, I worked for Cullinan Studio on large building projects like universities and also masterplans.

I later returned to university to study computing: computational design, parametric, programming, and scripting. After I had finished my studies, I set up a computational design consultancy, selling specialist services to bigger practices whilst teaching professional studies at the University of London.

So, this period for me was a weird mix of part-time teaching the traditional practice of architecture to final year students, whilst myself, I was a total novice as entrepreneur, learning the ropes in tech entrepreneurship, mainly through winning funded research and innovation projects. I think I must be a continuous learner and that helps.

What made you decide to found Stickyworld?

In 2005 I cofounded a practice called Slider Studio together with Renee Puusepp. The practice is still running, although now only by Renee Puusepp. We studied computing together, and worked on 3D gaming technology as one of our technology ideas. We did a big project for the Birmingham City Council, delivered as a consultation gaming engine for a housing regeneration project.

The kids loved it because they could jump on a bus and look around and play swapping the architect’s designs around, rather than look at complicated architectural drawings. What we found, however, was that the adults didn’t really engage with the technology. Then somebody asked, “Why can’t I put a sticky note inside your virtual world like I can in the real world?” So that was where the inspiration and name for ‘Stickyworld’ came from.

We were also looking at how you can involve wider groups of people in feedback, discussions, and informing decisions.

There was an understanding that there was a big untapped market for technologies that involved those wider groups.

That didn’t necessarily mean citizens. For instance, when I was working in a practice it was really hard to get a client and the client’s clients and all those other stakeholders into one room so that you can get your drawings signed off and the team gets paid. We realized that there was a missing piece in the software market for technology that would focus exclusively on those wider groups.

How do you finance your startup? Any tips for our community on how you managed it?

It was a fairly normal method: At Slider Studio we took on some ‘normal’ architectural projects that kept us alive. In addition, I was teaching three days a week.

Then we started applying for research and technology grants and competitions. We won a couple of those, got some investments, and then Stickyworld was founded as a business. Since then, it’s been a mix of commercial sales and larger project work to develop the technology for clients and some more technology competition wins. It’s a real mix. You have to scrap in the startup world.

You developed a web- and mobile-based tool that allows more voices to be heard during the design and construction process. Could you give us some examples of how the tool is used and how it helps architectural practices?

Stickyworld gives a little bit more transparency to the types of issues that architects are grappling with. Because design is not a black and white thing, is it? It’s a negotiation.

And if you can get more conversations happening, it’s good for the whole process and for the design team because they get validation on what they are doing.

We’ve got an example where local authorities wanted to redesign the streets to improve conditions for cyclists and drivers. The architects used Stickyworld to present maps and photos of the existing area and engage citizens in conversation around what is good or bad, and what could be changed.

Next they followed up with a more formal consultation on their designs, and referencing how the design accommodates the original feedback. Our technology helps designers keep stakeholders informed and involved across all stages of the projects.

Some architects use Stickyworld for internal design reviews. If you are meeting a client face to face or on Skype but you want to share the drawings and have a discussion about those drawings after the meeting, then you can create what is called ‘rooms’ in Stickyworld. In these private rooms you invite your client – and they invite their family, their friends, whomever is involved – to review the drawings and then provide feedback for the design team.

Large contractors use Stickyworld for bid management. It’s a great solution for, say, bringing in 30 different experts into a room to offer feedback on strategies for sustainability and transport on large infrastructure projects. It also enables people to become more involved and share ideas across the platform to all stakeholders. So it’s a pretty wide-ranging tool for a deeper form of collaboration in design and construction.

So, you have quite breadth customers from different industries?

We do. At the moment, we’re trying to stick to the built environment as much as possible in terms of our marketing investment. Stickyworld is a collaboration platform for working with people who are not on your core team so we need to get the message out more.

There needs to be a shift in mindset away from the old ways of project management where everything was kept close to your chest and on a need-to-know basis. The understanding of risk is changing. If you don’t carry out your projects in a more inclusive and transparent way, all you’re doing is carrying that risk. Our customers are not defined by their sector but rather by their recognition of this risk, and the need to solve the problem of collaborating with their wider stakeholders.

The building industry is known for being slow to adapt to new technologies. What is your experience with this?

In the UK, the building industry operates on very low profit margins. It’s broadly measured by ‘start and stop’ capital projects and unlike those industries, like say manufacturing, which invest in continuous process improvement. Not surprising it has relatively low levels of investment in process research and development.

So bringing in new technology and software is hard. But when all the money is spent on delivering a capital project and little is invested in knowledge sharing across the business to drive growth and profit, you get this condition.

But the industry is changing. I went into a big contractor the other day and it was a room of 20 people, where 14 of them were architects. Architects are getting involved in organization wide innovation and sustainability, and they are employed directly by the contractor. I think that’s an interesting career move option for architects working in private practice, working for an international construction firm to get a different view of the industry.

A lot of architects don’t think like that, though. It goes against the ‘romance’ of architecture. But that is the reality. That pattern has been established. So, I think that many architectural practices have been slow to recognize and adopt the business and cultural change that is happening around them, and I know from experience that the education and the professional institutions sets things up too narrowly to maximize these choices for young architects.

They will probably continue to be slow to change for another five years, maybe even a decade, because of their established business model of delivering architectural services.

Speaking of the romance of architecture, what do you find the most fulfilling about archipreneurship, and what do you find the most challenging?

As an architect, I wanted to invent, to change things, and I had an instinct for R&D and investment in new ideas. But I found that, as a practicing architect there wasn’t the scope to do that in a small practice. Maybe in bigger practices there is a bit more scope, but it’s still very difficult to do.

What is fulfilling as an entrepreneur is that, once you’re doing your own thing, at the beginning you are your own boss and you are in charge. But soon after comes a realization that this is not quite true – you’re not actually in charge – your customers are in charge. And that’s the right way. You have to work for your customers every single day to help them get value else they won’t come back. So it’s incredibly hard work, but when customers say they like your product and recommend you to others – that is incredibly fulfilling.

Of course as an architect, if you work for a client, you like the client, have a good rapport with them, and they like your project that can be very fulfilling, too. The switch to entrepreneurship, or more specifically from being a consultant who offered design services, to being an entrepreneur running a product business, is that you have to change your mindset from one of working for one client or a handful of clients and maybe doing really novel and interesting projects, and to working for a larger number of customers, possibly hundreds and thousands and delivering a stable product or service so it works perfectly for them all.

That is a big change in thinking. It’s personally taken me a long time to get my head around and adjust my decision-making.

How has your architectural training helped you in the actual running of your businesses? What specific/transferable skills have proved the most useful?

There were some things I’ve had to unlearn. As I mentioned, I had to unlearn my perception of my role as a consultant to being a product person, and from working with clients to working with customers.

Architects do have great insight across many different aspects of projects, so that has been useful. As an architect, you can work on planning, policy, all the way to handing over a building and getting a sense of how that building functions. It has been useful to have insight of the full life cycle, but I think some of the things that I would naturally do as an architect, and sometimes still do, are maybe wrong.

I’ll give you an example. In the early days, I employed a lot of other architects who, like me, liked using technology. But what you actually need in the startup world is not lots of people who are the same, but lots of committed people with complementary skills.

I had to unlearn certain ways of working, bit by bit. To do that, I had to ask myself some hard questions: Who is my customer? What skills do I need to serve that customer? Who should be in my team? The reality is that you have to keep learning.

But on the plus side for architects, I think the creative/technical balance and the natural desire for knowledge, inherent to a lot of architects, has helped me and surely helped other archipreneurs to learn a different way of working.

Just because you started out as an architect doesn’t mean that you have to finish as an architect.

Do you have any advice for archipreneurs who want to start and build their own business?

If you are currently in a job, before you jump ship, go and read all the books you can and go to the tech community’s startup events. Not all companies are going to be tech companies, but they’ll all have tech as an element of their work. Whoever calls themselves archipreneurs will have tech in their lives. Go and mix with ideas and people outside of architecture. You’ll learn about yourself in the process. You’ll also learn whether you are ready to jump onto the startup rollercoaster.

Once you have some ideas bouncing around, find some cheap ways to test them out. Identify with and understand your customer as early as you can. Build a team whose skills you need to serve that customer. You are probably going to have to do all of it yourself until you find co-founders. There is no shortcut to this.

In which areas (outside of traditional practice) can you see major business opportunities for up and coming architects?

There are lots of opportunities in the industry. If you’re listening to and watching new developments and you’re savvy about the opportunities available, then you will be able to find out about the new things happening in the industry, often with big contractors. I see some architects changing how they’re delivering their service, and how much of a service they need to give in order to add value. I see a lot of architects becoming product designers.

All the star architects have a product and a brand. Those things may not be immediately possible or desirable for the majority of the smaller architects but I would recommend thinking of it like a pattern: if you understand what your skill is and where there is a gap in the market, then you can define what it is that you do.

I was talking to a friend of mine who works for a very big practice. He says, “We are becoming a little bit like a big design consultancy, more like an ad agency than a traditional architect. And we’ve got an international growth model,” and it’s happening because they’re listening closely to what their clients want and who their clients are. And that is key: if you want to be entrepreneurial then you have to look at the market. But you also need a sense for serving a customer or client base.

The traditional model of architecture, as I learned when I was at university, is that the architect is right, the architects sets the vision, and the architect tells everyone what the vision is. I think this is a dead idea, we have to move on. Some people will lament it but I think it’s a really good, healthy thing.

Why be constrained by the traditional norms of practice and what people told you architects should be? You have to redefine it in order to stay current and get the clients and customers you want.

About Michael Kohn

Michael Kohn is founder and CEO of Stickyworld Ltd, a visual customer collaboration platform that makes it easy for organizations to involve wide groups of people in making better products, services, buildings, places and cities together. Founded in 2010, Stickyworld has attracted a growing number of customers from local government, energy and utilities, construction, architecture and design sectors. A former architect, Michael’s career spans 20 years including award-winning concept design work, administration of multi-million pound construction projects, university research and lecturing, and collaborative technology.

Whilst Michael is no longer a practicing architect he likes to think that his work is contributing positively to a more user-centered design of the real world and his company has big growth plans for 2017.

The post Architect Turns Tech-Entrepreneur: How Michael Kohn Launched His Virtual Collaboration Tool Stickyworld appeared first on Archipreneur.

This week’s interview is with Tian Deng and Qi Su, co-founders of the startup Modelo based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Tian and Qi developed a browser-based 3D design collaboration tool, which makes it easy to share and comment on digital 3D models. From his work in various architectural offices, Qi’s experience was that sharing a 3D model with a client for giving feedback could be difficult. The process was hardly optimized, involving converting the 3D model into a flat image, printing it out for the client, marking on the print, and then scanning it and updating the 3D model.

That pain point is what eventually led to Modelo, which Qi founded together with industrial designer Tian Deng in 2014. Their product is now in its beta development stage and the full commercial release is coming soon. The startup has raised more than $1 million in funding and has 12 employees. Way to go!

Keep reading to learn how the two founders managed to finance their startup, about their Software as a Service (SaaS) business model, and about the similarities of being an architect or software entrepreneur.

I hope you enjoy the interview!

What are your respective backgrounds and when did you partner up?

Qi Su: I was an architectural designer and had worked for several firms before I went to The Harvard Graduate School of Design. While there my major focus was on technology, so it’s fair to say that at that point I became half architect, half programmer.

Tian and I met through a mutual friend. At the time, I was mainly doing everything by myself, showing my prototype to friends. I still remember the first time Tian and I talked about potential collaboration; we actually did it on a model page of Modelo where we could both chat and rotate the 3D model together.

I think we shared the same vision for and interests regarding the solution we are offering to the industry, and so that’s why we decided to partner up.

Tian: I had worked as an industrial designer before, so the design disciplines were different for both of us. But our experiences gave us a great combination of perspectives to build our product.

What made you decide to found Modelo? Was there a particular moment that sealed the decision for you?

Qi Su: The first moment must have been when I first saw a 3D model get rendered in the browser using WegGL; that was back in 2012. My director at Harvard, Panagiotis Michalatos, showed it to me. I was so excited because finally our major digital production outcome, CAD models, could reside in a web browser and be shown to the others interactively, in 3D. As a result, I decided to do something with it.

How do you finance your startup? Any tips for our community on how you managed it?

Qi Su: We were supported by our friends (mainly architects) at the beginning and also got some funding from an accelerator program called BetaSpring. After that, we went on the same track like every other technology startup in the world: getting money from institutional VCs.

Regarding tips, I think you really have to think your business through, keep your mind open and learn as much and as fast as you can.

You developed a browser-based 3D design collaboration tool. Could you give us some examples of how the tool is used and how it helps architectural practices?

Tian: Modelo provides web-based communication and presentation tools for architects and people who use CAD as their production tool. The goal of Modelo is to help our users get things done faster: making presentations, rendering, giving design feedback, sharing files, getting clients’ approval or validating building issues with engineers and consultants. We’ve seen our customers extensively using Modelo for internal design feedback, file transfer and client-facing presentations.

We’ve heard from one of our customers that their design partner wouldn’t allow anyone to show him models that are NOT on Modelo; besides that, they use Modelo for most of their client presentations and the clients love it.

In what stage of development is your tool?

Tian: We are still in beta, but the product has been pretty stable and we already have many paying customers using it in their work. We will probably launch our full commercial release in the next couple of months; by that time, we will have released several very exciting functions.

What is your business model for your startup?

Tian: It is Software as a Service (SaaS) and subscription based. Users go to www.modelo.io, sign up, choose a plan, try it out, and then they get to decide whether they want to pay after a 14 day trial. We also have a free plan where people can sign up and try Modelo out by uploading models that are under a certain file size.

Qi Su, first you worked in an architectural office, now you are an entrepreneur. What do you find the most fulfilling about it?

Qi Su: I found both very interesting, and in some ways similar to each other. They are both about creating things for people to use and getting big projects done – but the pace is very different. As an entrepreneur you can probably (and have to) learn new things faster than as an architect.

Do you miss working as an architect?

Qi Su: Sometimes. I still love architecture very much. My family’s background is in architecture and civil engineering. So becoming an architect was my childhood dream – except during my teenage years when I tried to become a professional soccer player!

The building industry is known for being slow to adapt to new technologies. What is your experience with this?

Qi Su: We are dealing with buildings, not toothpaste. I think it is reasonable for the industry to be slow. It’s such a complex industry, and it involves many stakeholders.

The bigger problem I see is in architectural design education. I think it’s very broken; it’s rare that people coming out of it will know anything about how to run an architectural practice. I think we need to change that.

Do you have any advice for archipreneurs who want to start and build their own business?

Qi Su: Follow your heart and do what you love to do. However, if it’s business you want then you need to learn to take care not only of yourself but also your customers.

In which areas (outside of traditional practice) can you see major business opportunities for up and coming architects?

Qi Su: Wherever our skills can be sold and the Internet can help us in selling.

About Qi Su and Tian Deng

Qi Su is an architect who has worked for the architectural offices amphibianArc, MADAs.p.a.m. and Michael Sorkin Studio. He graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Design and is the only master’s student in school history who has won both the Peter Rice Prize for structural design invention and the Digital Design Prize for the innovative creation of digital tools.

Tian Deng worked as an industrial designer after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. He worked on several hardware design and interactive design projects before he joined Qi Su and start working on Modelo in 2014.

The post How Modelo Started a SaaS Business appeared first on Archipreneur.