How I Started Bay Modular

A few years ago, after deciding to close Propeller, I took some time off to decide my next career move. At first, it seemed quite obvious to put my consulting experience to use and build my own product — take a software approach to an industry I was passionate about.

I thought about the work I had done for customers, the articles I enjoyed reading, and browsed the Breakout List, but nothing stood out to me. Each company was tackling a concept or project that was ambitious and impactful in its own right, but, save a few companies that I did interview with, there weren’t many that I felt like spending half my waking hours on.

Instead, I decided to spend some time with my mom, the person who taught me the term entrepreneur through example. I'm sure I still don't know the full extent of her hustle, but I can certainly attribute some of my ingenuity and perseverance to her will. So, while I continued to dabble in new areas like cryptocurrencies, hardware sensors, and artificial intelligence, I set out to learn more about what she did and see if I could add some value.

As a semi-retired real estate broker, she spent most of her time speculating on new properties to purchase and flip or rent. In the 10 years prior, she had moved from 100% residential to 100% commercial and began to focus her attention on converting restaurants or even old mechanic shops into commissary kitchens — a novel idea at the time. I invested money in her new properties and lent design and construction expertise whenever it was needed.

Pattern Matching Construction and Software

When I began working with her, I focused on the design and planning, putting my early construction background to use while managing and assisting in the renovation. At each phase of the process from speculation to completion, I documented how things were done present day, what parallels it shared with software, and how they might be improved either through applying technology or identifying and resolving inefficiencies. I divided the process into 7 stages and made parallels:

Stage 1: Property Search and Comps

This is similar to competitive and market research. Software companies have a hypothesis and a solution they’re trying to present.

Stage 2: Conceptual drafting

This is specific to the developer but highly encouraged. What you can do in your head, you can do better on paper. Conceptualizing ideas is easier when you can draft them, which makes this the early UX phase - information architecture and wireframing. Really low fidelity sketches to see if a project is viable with minimal resource.

Stage 3: Architectural plan drafting

The process of plan drafting is a conversation that brings you closer to a functional prototype. The architect will guide you through the process that makes floor plans function, but will take feedback and requirements that are specific to your process. Like software design, it’s important to be clear, concise, and welcome feedback.

Stage 4: Permitting

Like QA or Review, this stage is variable - depending on the people you work with and their understanding of your project, you may receive a list of comments and a rejection (common) or an approval (rare).

Stage 5: Break ground and construction

Like building a production-ready app, construction is not a straight path. Delineating clear stages of the build and empowering the right people is just like creating sprints, epics, and conducting iteration planning meetings.

Stage 6: Inspection

Inspections happen throughout the process. They are good — they ensure you’re building to code, based on regulations, for the safety of others.

Stage 7: Completion

Finding Intent, Driving the Mission

A good friend of mine recently told me about a saying he’d heard and taken to heart— action creates information. Although Bay Modular may not be in the business of commercial renovation, it was informed by its process. While working with my mom, understanding and learning from her process, I documented each stage, loosely drawing parallels between her world and mine, with an open mind to change. Each stage taught me something new about the relationship between construction and technology, and how not all relationships will improve efficiency. But what stuck was the idea that the right combination of construction, technology, and policy can create impact. Although renovations may not be the right vehicle for pushing change in construction, it helped me to arrive at the intersection of manufacturing, construction, and housing.