Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy
Business:Investing
My guest this week is Alexis Rivas. Alexis is the co-founder and CEO of Cover, which is pioneering a new way of building homes. It’s no surprise to anyone that aspects of our housing market is broken. The market is undersupplied and littered with regulatory issues. The homebuilding process has also not changed for the better part of a century. Alexis is attacking the problem and has taken a leaf out of the car industry’s learnings to create a similar production process for home building. In our discussion, we talk about his idea of lego pieces for homes, how they’re refining production with backyard homes first, and how this may change the way people buy and sell homes in future. Please enjoy my conversation with Alexis Rivas.
Listen to Founders Podcast
Founders Episode 136 - Estee Lauder
Founders Episode 288 - Ralph Lauren
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
-----
This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors. Stretch your research budget with flexible expert calls you can trust. At a fraction of the cost of traditional expert networks, Tegus customers pay only what an expert charges – with zero markups and no confusing call credits – netting an average 70% savings. Don’t want to conduct a full hour call? Tegus offers the ability to schedule 30-minutes, an offer you won’t find anywhere else. And they don’t stop there. With white-glove custom sourcing for every project and robust compliance measures, including a dedicated 50+ analyst team that vets every call transcript, Tegus ensures your privacy and protection. For a limited time, you can trial Tegus for free by visiting tegus.co/patrick.
-----
Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.
Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.
Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus
Show Notes
(00:03:39) - (First question) - Supply and demand situation writ large for housing in the United States
(00:06:34) - Lack of workforce growth to meet housing development needs
(00:10:23) - Insight into “lego piece” style construction
(00:11:41) - The comparison to automotive manufacturing
(00:16:15) - Strategic description of a good “lego piece” from Cover
(00:20:08) - Utility continuity comparison between panels versus tradition construction
(00:21:05) - Potential criticism from skeptical contractors
(00:22:53) - The marginal cost for a typical home buyer
(00:25:59) - The role of software in the business
(00:28:47) - Insight into support model and “The Last Mile” theory in construction and possible solutions to combat errors during assembly
(00:30:46) - Support system integration for inevitable repairs
(00:32:17) - The changing reality of initial ideas as projects are completed
(00:34:27) - Building factories and streamlining production logistics
(00:37:28) - Focusing on constraints and an example relatable to real life scenarios
(00:38:37) - The value of moving slow to perfect processes early on versus an all in head first approach
(00:40:09) - The scope of ambition over the next several decades
(00:41:18) - The evolution of homes and how they could change based of consumer wants
(00:43:37) - Vertical capabilities of cover panels
(00:43:21) - Types of panels that could be introduced moving forward
(00:45:14) - Timeline for Cover expansion into new states
(00:46:06) - Advice for upcoming entrepreneurs when building similar business models
(00:47:58) - The kindest thing that anyone has ever done for Alexis
John Harris - Resilience and Imagination - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 230]
Florian Hagenbuch and Mate Pencz - Everything Will Be Bought Online – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 37]
Gabriel Leydon - Designing Digital Economies - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 229]
Assaf Wand - Innovation in Static Industries – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 36]
Dennis Lynch - Delivering Alpha in Adapting Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 228]
Henrique Dubugras - Building the Financial Center of Gravity – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 35]
Justin Fishner-Wolfson - Secondary Investing in Private Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 227]
Peter Reinhardt - Learning How to Sell – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 34]
Brent Beshore - Learnings from a Year of Unexpected Events - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 226]
Jeremy Cai - Manufacturer to Customer – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 33]
Eli Dourado - Frontiers for Productivity - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 225]
James Reinhart – Lessons in Process Power – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 32]
Andrew Sugrue - Investing in Paradigm Shifts - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 224]
Alyssa Ravasio - Supply, Demand, and the Outdoors - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 31]
Josh Buckley - Identifying Legendary Start-ups - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 223]
Thomas Tull - New Physics of Business - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 30]
Paul Enright - The Buy Side Primer - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 222]
Trevor McFedries - Building Web 3.0 - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 29]
Chris Dixon - The Potential of Blockchain Technology - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 221]
Shopify: The E-commerce On-Ramp - [Business Breakdowns, EP. 01]
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free