What is the role of Proptech when it comes to the bricks and mortar issues of housing supply and affordability?
Dr Ben Coorey is the founder of Archistar.ai, winner of 2022 and 2023 Proptech of the Year awards and is ranked at #29 in the top 100 Australian entrepreneurs. He discusses the role of big data and AI in solving the country's most difficult property problems.
Kylie Davis
So I am really intrigued about I mean, I've loved Archistar since you guys first started and came out, but what I want you to tell us to kick off, because you are a big company that solves lots and lots of stuff, but what's your elevator pitch? How do you summarize what you do?
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah, it's interesting that I think I don't really have an elevator pitch or it changes all the time. I think it depends who I'm talking to and there was a lot of discussion about future customer, who you're speaking to and how do you relate to that person. I think that is super important. And you can have like, in the tech world, it's like, what's your elevated fish? You got 10 seconds to convince me. I could say something that's like, I think we help people understand the potential of property. Maybe that's an elevated pitch, but I would probably never use that in talking to anyone. It's a weird thing, but yeah, we're just trying to streamline processes and make things easier.
Kylie Davis
And what are the key problems that you're solving?
Dr. Ben Coorey
I think that people property is technically like development, understanding what you can do, understanding owning bylaws design, like an architect by background, I know how complicated it is to get all the stuff done. I think if we can help people work through that, understand what's possible, and we're almost reducing the risk of those decisions you make, we're giving more information up front. I think that's one of the things that we're solving. But if you look big picture, if we can fast track all these processes, the end result is there will be more housing on the market, there'll be more stock out there. And I think we are making things easier and we are accelerating the pipeline of things getting out to the market.
Kylie Davis
Yeah. And I guess if you can put more information up front that people understand, they become more curious and they ask more questions earlier on, which leads to better outcomes the whole way through.
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah, exactly. And I think the more informed you are, the better decisions you're going to make. And if we can stop some of the issues that come later on, some of those mistakes, it can actually be very costly later on.
Kylie Davis
So how did you start? Tell us your origin story.
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah, I'm an architect by background. I was very interested in tech from the start. I lectured in technology. I started by working for some big architecture companies. I was a tech guru and then I basically said, look, I'm not going to be an academic. I did four degrees, ten years at university. But I was never like I didn't want to be an academic. I just loved learning. And I think from that point on, I was like, well, what do I do? I saw the industry, the adoption of tech in architecture firms. It was a very slow process. So I thought, first, let's just teach people how to use tech. So we started with an online learning academy that said, here's how you use BIM, here's how you use graph software and Revit and all this stuff. And then we moved on to say, well, we can just teach people software, or we can actually build stuff that automate processes.
Dr. Ben Coorey
So that's kind of where we started, just by looking at what the industry was doing. We consulted a lot, spoke to a lot of people, and just said, we can solve some of these problems and just kind of start on the journey and just keep evolving.
Kylie Davis
Yeah. So your tech is kind of quite broad in the things that it's bringing together. And housing affordability is one of the country's most pressing problems right now. How are you helping solve that issue? How do platforms like yours?
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah, I think that we're playing like, a small part in it. I don't think we're solving everything, but we just released a report two days ago on the potential of granny flats. I don't know if anyone saw that in the media, but we found there's like 655,000 houses on the East Coast that you can put a granny flat on. And that's like, it's not going to solve everything, but it just highlights that, hey, there's zoning there. You can put something there. And I'm traveling around the world and people are saying, my kids are never going to leave the house anymore. They can't afford a property. Maybe this is a solution that you can put a granny part of the back and put the kids there, and that would be helping some part of the market, but just showing people the opportunity. And we're doing a lot more to streamline the process.
Dr. Ben Coorey
I think that it's playing a bit.
Kylie Davis
Of a part in well, if only 10% of those 655,000 properties added a granny flat, there would be 65,000 people off waiting list for rentals or whatever. You guys are sort of synonymous with using big data and pulling together data sets. We're always traditionally very manual in terms of that planning, regulation and things like that. How do you see that big data could play a role in solving some of these wicked problems that we're facing?
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah, we kind of built that up over time. And I think it was never when I started this, I just wanted to build a generative design tool to design buildings. And then everyone said, oh, you need to know what the planning rules are, because that would make it so much better because you know what you're designing to do. So went on a journey to start putting up zoning, and we thought it was probably very naive that would be an easy task.
Kylie Davis
Yeah, how can it be?
Dr. Ben Coorey
And New South Wales got pretty good data, so we started here. The whole country would be easy, but it wasn't.
Kylie Davis
Who was the worst. Name them.
Dr. Ben Coorey
Well, I think maybe Queensland. Everything is kind of decentralized, but I think you kind of just build up and you learn what you need to get together. And there's so many different sources of data. But for me, it's not about, like, we could add more data, but it's not just about getting every bit of data you can get. It's what's relevant and what's going to help make decisions. Because you can get just too much data and it becomes too overwhelming and complex and you can't make decisions. So it's not only just getting the data, but it's what do you do with that and how do you present that in a way that it's going to help people as opposed to just flood them with a whole lot of information?
Kylie Davis
Yeah, it's the insights and what the action that they need to take as a result. So you've done that now, not just for Australia, but you expanded into Canada and the US. Tell us a little bit about that.
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah, it's been super interesting. We've done a lot of work for the industry here, got our product out there. We started to work a lot with government in Australia here and then in Canada. Like, the city of Vancouver reached out to us and said, hey, we like what you're doing, can you come and do that for us? So I guess the city of Vancouver brought us over to Canada since then, the same issues we've got here. It's magnified over there and there's a lot of funding around fast tracking, permitting and streamlining the process, and we got a lot of interest from there. The US reached out to us at the same time. So we're now working in the City of Vancouver, city of Boston, but we're probably in discussion with about 50 cities across North America and just getting started there.
Kylie Davis
Are you working with councils or governments here?
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yes, we are. So we've done a lot of work, particularly with New South Wales and Victoria, but we will be expanding that out. It feels like maybe the US and Canada are relatively faster than Australia, although Australia were kind of like the first people there to jump onto this and they were excited by it, but I don't know, maybe the population, they've got a more pressing need, maybe.
Kylie Davis
Yeah. Interesting. And so what is it? You guys are ex cocoon to a really huge vision. When you look at the Australian prop tech space, do you think we're limiting ourselves? Like Nigel was saying, we're fixing Chat GPT for descriptions and we should be.
Dr. Ben Coorey
Expanding our I'm deleting our roadmap. We weren't doing like, we've been doing this now for a while and a lot of stuff gets thrown at you and there's a lot of little things to fix. And this problem is like, what we're in, there's a lot of things to solve, so you can kind of get narrowed in and focus on that and it almost becomes like you're just developing, thinking this all starts to come out. I think you've got to take a step back at some point and say, well, what's actually moving the dial? And we've done this before, where it's like, we release all of this stuff we work on and it's like, did that actually do anything?
Kylie Davis
Did it move the needle?
Dr. Ben Coorey
And quite often the answer is no. And it's like, what will? And sometimes you got to have those hard questions. You kind of almost got to step back a bit and say, what are the things that we focus on?
Kylie Davis
And a question without notice. But what's the hardest thing that you faced as a prop tech entrepreneur?
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah, I think it's a balance. I'm very much a product tech guy. I love solving problems. But it's not just about your product. A lot of the discussion here was about the relationships. People, you know, the people you talk to. You can just make a product and sit behind the computer, but it doesn't mean you're going to get traction. You're going to get it out there. So there's investors you've got to deal with. You want to build this at scale, you've got to go and speak to people and make sure that we've got a lot of partners, a lot of people sponsor our partners. That's all relationship work, that you can't just put up a website and say, that's done. So it's all the stuff around it that is not just about your products bigger than that. And that takes up a lot more time than you probably think.
Kylie Davis
And so what are the disciplines or techniques that you guys use at architecture to think bigger?
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah, I think we're always thinking big and whatever we release on the platform is always like ten steps behind where we're actually at, because we're always thinking ahead. But I'd say that the best way that I find I keep ahead and talking to people. These problems are so big that every time you talk to someone and you explaining what you do, they'll come back and you say, oh, have you thought about this? And it's like and then that kind of keeps the conversation going. But whenever I go out and talk to people, I don't show them what we've done. I show them what we're working on, because I'm always advancing the conversation. If I show you what's on the website now, the app now, it's like it's old exploring, that's what's there. So it's always like, hey, we're working on this. And then it's like, oh, have you thought about that?
Dr. Ben Coorey
And that just keeps it going.
Kylie Davis
Fantastic feedback loop. And so, look, just one last one to wrap up, because your speaking data army have got you hosting the roundtable, so if you want more time with Ben, please grab him as part of that roundtable. But what's on your roadmap for the what is that stuff. Now that is exciting.
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah. I think every probably six months, we're kind of like moving in further directions out. But if you look at some of the media that we're pushing out now, it's a big focus on the permitting process, development applications, and I think we've done a lot of work in highlighting opportunities, but there's a big bottleneck. Once you've got that opportunity, how do you get that certified? How do you go through the film application process? So we're getting a lot of attention on the tech that goes around that over the last couple of years.
Kylie Davis
If we did that, how much faster could we build new homes?
Dr. Ben Coorey
Yeah, well, I think depending on the size of the building, there's a long delay from when you've designed the building to getting your application approved. Then there's the whole construction cycle that's got its own issues in itself, and that's years long. Yeah, that's right. So if we can solve that first part and at least get you to construction earlier, I think that you can plan better and you can get things in motion and organized. Because I think when there's uncertainty around that first process, like, well, I don't know how long it's going to take. You can't set things in motion, you can't lock things in.
Kylie Davis
It makes it more expensive, too. Exactly. Can we look forward to a future where maybe that time frame is cut by 50% 20%? How much sure could it be?
Dr. Ben Coorey
I'd love a real time check.
Kylie Davis
And what's Archistar working towards?
Dr. Ben Coorey
Like, depending on the complexity of the application. Right. I can see a future where there's a digital certificate and that's your approval. There's obviously more complicated buildings that need a lot more checks, but for small stuff. I could see that there should be a digital future where you've met all the criteria. It's not that risky to give that approval as long as you build within that spec. Doesn't have any zones, it's just building codes. If you build a safe building, it's interesting.
Kylie Davis
Awesome. Well, look. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a round of applause for Dr. Ben Coorey. He will be at the roundtable.
Dr. Ben Coorey
Enjoy your coffee. Thank you very much.
