What you’ll hear in this episode:

• About ICON developing the technology to 3-D print homes
• How this will help ICON address the world’s housing crisis
• Why “never give up” is Jason Ballard’s mantra

“Never give up,” is more than just a saying for Jason Ballard, co-founder and CEO of ICON, it is a life motto and driving force behind everything he does. “I tell myself, I tell my teams all the time ‘never, ever, ever give up,” Ballard tells Masters & Founders hosts Dan Dillard and Ryan Francis during SXSW 2018.

Ballard co-founded ICON, a construction technologies company that is revolutionizing homebuilding. ICON aims to address the world’s housing crisis by creating sustainable solutions with 3D printers, robotics, and advanced materials. They even built the first-ever 3D printed home in America. Before ICON, Ballard co-founded the eco-friendly Home Upgrade Company, TreeHouse.

Listen to the fifth installment of Masters & Founders to learn more about how ICON is fundamentally changing the construction industry toward a better, more affordable, and sustainable future. If you like what you hear, feel free to join the Masters and Founders Facebook group. Also, be sure to leave us a review and share it with a friend!

Host: Dan Dillard, Ryan Francis

Guest: Jason Ballard, ICON

Producer: Myrriah Gossett

Music by: Scott Holm

Masters & Founders is a founding_media podcast created in collaboration with foundingAUSTIN.

 

Transcript:

Sometimes you have a great idea and sometimes that idea leads to another great idea Jason Ballard had agreed ideas the founder of tree house he was able to disrupt the home improvement space by making a place for consumers to one stop shop not only could they make projects happened but they could do it sustainably from there he was inspired to start thinking outside the box about housing and how you can make changes to development for literally from the ground up he is an amazing story and such passion for the environment and for Texas let’s get right to the conversation now with Jason Ballard hello everybody and welcome to masters and founders apart podcast brought to you by founding Austin first things first we want to thank all of our sponsors still Austin whiskey tiny house coffee kind bar Waterloo sparkling water and the Russell collection fine art gallery which we are so fortunate to host this podcast in today we are talking to Jason Ballard of tree house an icon I typically like to jump right in everything so Jason once you tell us a little bit about yourself and and we’ll go from there yeah so I am the co founder and president of tree house which we call the home of great company it’s a home improvement company dedicated to advancing health and sustainability in homes especially homes already exist and just this week here at south by southwest we unveiled the second company that I helped co found which is called icon which is a company using robotic software and advanced materials to three D. print homes and it’s it’s it’s been a great south by southwest and I’m I’m one of those fortunate people to get to wake up every day and do work that delights in excites me can I also say I love your tattoo thank you thank you very much I get that so much I’m a very servers storage you know here’s yeah yeah so if you guys can’t see tattoos on podcast unless podcast have changed a lot since the last time I was in the one it’s a tattoo is is never give up and it has the pac man that the pacman the pellets in the ghosts and never give up is one of my like life mottos that I dis tell myself I tell my teams all the time my fate I there’s a video of me somewhere during the middle of the three different winners tore into arranged just when we’re putting the house a couple weeks ago here in Austin and what I said on the video was never never never give up in in pac man my grandfather passed away two weeks ago and he was an engineer probably one of the most brilliant engineers and sub self taught in any of our techs never went to college he’s a brilliant man who no one will ever hear of that he worked on the Astrodome he worked on the skin that the space program of the Kennedy Space Center he built some of the largest and most fantastic span bridges in the world just a a bridge a master without a masterpiece of speaking just a brilliant man and I think he would be super proud of what we’ve done with three D. printing but he used to go to the bowling alley arcade and he was an old man they were going to the pacman machine and everybody like what is this old man doing in before everybody knew it there was like a crowd gathered around him watching him absolutely destroy pac man it made us investment worries about him crushing pacman made him seem like a mythological character in my life and so walking in singing with a never give up happened to you especially with his recent passing to see really a whole the whole reason why I got it was to a vow to myself to never work for anybody again is the only tattoo that anybody can see on my body and I never would have done that and less a vow to myself that I’m never going to work for anybody ever again and it had to be driven by my entrepreneurial spirit so that’s beautiful yeah it’s gorgeous let’s talk let’s talk about your three D. printing homes I I saw something maybe two months ago they were making I wanna say is four hundred I don’t know where this was you probably know they’re making four hundred square foot homes and they were able to print them in a day yep if we’re not the only organization to work on this for sure there’s a there’s a outfit in China called when sun is a Russian company called APIS core what are kind of claim to fame is it we are the first company to cite print otherwise we printed on site we didn’t print in a warehouse we didn’t print pieces somewhere in a truck come out and put it together we printed on site in weird it will be a permitted building in the city of Austin because the first permitted three D. printed home in America and possibly the world but we don’t I I can’t quite make sure that’s true but it’s quite possibly the world so it it is truly the first of its kind in in the the the overwhelming feedback about the house has been I would have we live in that house right along the other three D. print houses you might see online maybe look like Yoda huts it’s something that’s what the when I look yes I feel like a Star Wars fan that’s pretty cool but good luck raising a family in there yes Sir even want to touch on we were just talking with four the pocket started which is your background yeah we we talked about the whole purpose of why found in Austin and national started which is my background of eighteen years will lead to a scene where people are doing or society’s going down this path lots of pressure on kids let’s push the college and then ninety degrees on Houston you just I immediately identified what to say that’s racist that’s right so my background is in biology is when I study university mostly because I think life is a miracle and amazing and I didn’t know what else to study because I was the first person from my family to graduate from college in so I study biology in but knew I wanted my life to be about the intersection of ecological flourishing human flourishing and I converged on shelter even though I don’t have a background in architecture engineering so the first company that I I helped found was tree house which is a retail home improvement coming very tenuous connection to biology at best you know when I realize there were major thing the major problems with conventional building approaches and started looking for an innovative and disruptive waited to build homes land on three D. printing I don’t have a background in structural engineering material science but I ordered every book on three D. printing off of Amazon that I can get my hands on I went took a class at tech shop one class into started meeting with every brilliant person I could find who had anything to do with concrete structural engineering in it it’s two thousand eighteen a wee wee and myself in my founders were able to teach ourselves to three D. print a home well I strongly believe you can teach yourself to do anything yes I bet if we lock the door to the art gallery right now with the people sitting here there’s an audience here for those of you who don’t know and somebody gave us an outrageous like no one can leave an ever see your family again and use and let you make a flying car but we had access to the internet any materials we need I bet we could the people in this room could create a flying car yeah it didn’t happen in Apollo thirteen they had to go home right right that’s exactly right Houston we have a problem yeah so you did you think of the books and that we also use a you tube you tube for yes are you interested in you to be in adversity basically row YouTube every large scale three D. printing watch the videos multiple times took notes saw what I like what I didn’t like I didn’t like it hurts right sure didn’t find a compelling to three different parts in a warehouse and just sort of taught ourselves how to do something because I’m also listening to an amazing audio book right now is the biography of Leonardo da Vinci and he was an artist and he was a scientist and he drew designs for a helicopter and he made advances in anatomy and there wasn’t this he did have this idea that my life has to fit into a clean track and it just he kept this curious mind his entire life and was open to the universe and the world around him yeah I think one of the more unfortunate things about the modern world and like one of the strangest questions you can ask a person I think fit into this but it doesn’t seem strangers what do you do what are you going to do sort of that line of questioning because it gives you a sense you have to have this like really tight compact answer I was a biologist who almost became a priest and then founded two companies they’re also barely related to each other and so I I I I think I wish more people didn’t have the sense that my life has to follow a clean track look at it yeah which is perfect we talk so starting your first company let’s talk about the companion the let’s talk about your problems in Java man so I was so I still tree house is one of the most important companies that not enough people have heard about in the world I mean it is existentially urgent that we find a way to shelter ourselves without ruining the world around us it just it’s absolutely important we’re doing amazing work at trails to make that happen and so when we open this business it was like at the time it was the joke was it was like the whole foods version of home depot I wish I thought we would have to hire security guards like keep the people out right I mean just this isn’t such a profoundly good idea that had to happen in the world needed to happen to good people would understand it to show up and that is not at all what happened for the first few years we were like bleeding cash and had to have like every was just it was it was terrible lets it down all want to does it wasn’t working and why isn’t the world supporting this but you sort of just like never give up and you just get out of bed and you start innovating in in you find your way forward but it was it was a real go rodeo there for a while trying to figure out how to both can tell the world and convince the what how important what we are doing and to put their homes where their mouth is so to speak and then also just to to to be it’s not enough to do a good thing you have to do it better than the other people doing what you’re doing and so that was tree house and we sort of one thing after another we added services we develop really robust partnerships with people like Google and nest and Tesla and just kept innovating and partnering until all the sudden we emerged as a company doing something that no one else in the world is doing which is like a full stack home improvement company and it’s beginning to work we just opened our third location in Plano Texas with another in Dallas obviously here in Austin can you explain what a full stack curry is such a great dot the home yep the note said the home improvement industry is I don’t have a five roads like this but it’s super fragmented right you got a designer in one spot you’ve got an architect in another spot you’ve got a builder but then he is a sub contractors and they get some of the products at home depot some up and down the tile show room and somebody else is financing the deal and in and the result is it is a miserable industry it would be like a wedding planner who routinely ruined wedding days and just like in that anybody anybody who’s listings ever try to do a major remodel or build a house is is either laughing or crying what I’m saying because it’s absolutely true and so what we decided to do is to vertically integrate not upward toward manufacturing but downward towards our customer so we hire interior designers in building performance analysts and so when you talk to someone it trails are not talking to a high school graduate has never owned a home you were talking to a professional and then we have curated the very best products for you and then we own it all the way to service delivery I’m from East Texas I have funny sayings but the result is an about to say one so fair warning to a strange thing about here the result is if something goes wrong with your project dress you have one throat to choke right I mean we are going to own your satisfaction from the design the consultation product selection will stand behind the products we sell and then all the way to the end of service delivery and by the way you will have a healthier more sustainable easier to operate more comfortable home at the end and you know I do want to talk about sustainability with what you’re doing because it’s pretty rare that we see that how important is sustainability to you and where did that thread come from when you were deciding to build such a business because sustainability it isn’t always profitable and and it’s super hard to source everything and especially in your world all the way to design it’s it’s it’s unconventional and that’s what home depot killed yeah right there’s a lot of important things what you just said so I’ll take it from where did I get the inspiration then I’ll go to why system really is all always problem like why it’s so important so I grew up back to East Texas again hash tag Texas forever the southeast Texas most people don’t know this is an area called the big thicket it’s where the Piney woods me to Gulf coastal prairie and it is the most biodiverse region in all of Texas in excuse me it is I want to reset that I wear but listen close it is the most biodiverse region in America so I grew up around alligator gar these monster fish that can you can barely fit inside about flying squirrels for speeches of carnivorous plants I mean just this sort of he Dennis Wonderland of biodiversity what is also in southeast Texas is the largest concentration of petrochemical refineries in America and so I grew up with this cognitive dissonance of this wonderful planet that we live on in the absolute destruction of that plan is sort of both right in front of you played out in real time it wasn’t sort of a figurative idea something happening somewhere else and I was like I want my life to be about solving these problems interview chase like what is what’s causing all these problems the short answer is buildings it’s not that it’s not the gas I mean we we need to address transportation stuff but building the largest user of energy by sector construction industry’s largest producer of waste number two user of water I could go on the biggest problem is buildings which is back to my point is existentially urgent that we shelter ourselves without ruining the world and so inter tree house right so that’s where we get tree house and we thought that this was just so good that people would be down a path and they didn’t because you’re right it’s it’s not enough just to say I’m sustainable to build a profitable business one of my favorite role models in this regard as you on must contest for a long time the pitch with electric cars were they kinda look like clown cars let’s be honest they go eighty five miles they might blow up and kill everyone if you get in a wreck but Hey save the whales drive an electric car anyone most comes along is baloney if we want electric cars to be normal they have to be fast and sexy and safe they have to be great cars and so we’ve taken the same approach with regard to housing which is like to make efficient sustainable healthy housing normal they have to be more comfortable more safe more beautiful and and very important for us because housing is a basic need on like a car they have to be more affordable that goes all the way to the three D. printing the home right so so that had to have stemmed from tree house and somewhere in there I would think and this is just me openly thinking but can you can you recycle materials to build a home because my my dream home is a shipping container I want a shipping container home but with three D. printing is there a space where they can make a material that you can put into you know what I’m saying yeah I understand is that what you’re saying so I’ll for sure one of the like industrial sort of respect you sort of post industrial materials that we are actively looking into using in three D. printing is flash but this is house one and sort of material version one and since as you progress have gather sustainability part of my life mission so you can bet that will be on the requirements for the kinds of materials we developed but but you’re right you you you were fairly intuitive to connect the dots between hi my work at trails and how that sort of launch pad and into icon three D. which is we’ve just got to build houses but it’s not it’s not going to be enough to build make houses five percent more efficient we or five percent more affordable what will that do and what about the strength of the house so is it stronger and stronger razorback it has to be better get out of it like a little bit but like it has to be absolutely better it is stronger you have more design options the pile of waste left over and rebuild the house is like a little mole hill relate rinsed out the mixer and printer at the end of the day so this could almost zero way yeah this this is the future very much so is twenty years from now we’re going to see this all over that’s right it in it and it better be right we we can’t again we can’t make an incremental but we need a disruptive improvement in the way the construction happens both in the developing world and in east Austin and in Los Angeles and in New York and everywhere and it’s it’s urgent yeah can you talk a bit about the construction the process of the three three bill because in my mind that I’m sure the audience’s mind yeah we used to a small party planners as plastic yep that’s right no you do not want please talk to your your spot on so the principles that govern the large guilty for not very different right you’ve got to control a depositor called an extruder in our case in three dimensional space X. axis Y. axis the X. as those are sort of the principles of three D. printing and it doesn’t matter how big your printer as those things remain true what was different for this is yeah plastic wasn’t gonna do the trick and so we had to do some innovative material science and it’s it’s probably one of our least sexy but most important breakthroughs with the printer is a list of requirements is interesting read the top of the list is like it can’t look like a Yoda like it has to be aesthetically pleasing it has to flow but not like water you’ll have a puddle of concrete has to set up quick but it can’t cure quick because those layers need to fuse together to make back to your question about how strong is it has to fuse and make a monolith it was a real some real scientific gymnastics to get this concrete right but I think the universitas money I hope you got my bill come buyer at least check it out online the universal testimony from when we unveiled on Monday was you know on Twitter things as I’d developing world like I would live in that house and that was the most gratifying thing to me for a number of reasons both it other people wanted it but usually people in the developing world get the worst they’re the last people to get advanced technology the last people to get advanced materials in and and they’re often like there you look a like I wouldn’t live in that in in this is so anyway we printed this house for a here less than ten thousand I knew it I knew this yeah and how many square feet six in her fifties total square foot print and in close spaces about four fifty yeah sneaking up on four hundred but that was just the requirements that our client new story gave us we could just as easily have printed at two thousand square foot house when can I investigate a lot I mean like over one like we sort of liked my X. rays of the tree house where I had to convince the world for seven years that this was important thing to do and so I didn’t have pattern recognition for the world sort of stomping up and down saying that yes this right now and so I got one thousand emails last night while I was asleep into my head is still spinning a little bit because it’s Wednesday and we unveiled it Monday and so we’re sort of trying to say like okay well we’ve got a tiger by the tail here into the proper response would not be like will print one more house and we’re we’re gonna have to figure out a way to get to to step on it so stand by and do do you have a vision of these of course they get bigger and the designs get more broad much I have a three D. printed three D. printer designers right is what it’s going to end up being is going to open up a whole new home I cannot wait for some talented architects yet to get their hands on the sort of the parameters of what’s possible with three D. printing I mean you could just as easily print a house in the shape of a feminazi spiral as you could a square I mean it’s the design I mean I’m freaking out man yeah this is going to be cool yeah it’s going to be cool so I have questions or regulation yeah because that’s obviously a big deal a joke on them so yeah we had an interesting moment of this which is we could print this house on some property near Bastrop and sort of like get out of the city of Austin to make it a little easier on ourselves and there were moments we regret it in the process because we were up against the tight time one like to get this done by south by but we decided to printed in Austin which as you guys know has some of the most difficult regulatory it is one the most difficult construction regulatory environments around probably not as bad as San Francisco New York but certainly quite rigorous in the fact that we are getting this house permitted in the city of Austin that was jumping in the deep into the pool but it’s such a validation that this technology is ready for primetime in that this is not a you know to hide in a warehouse somewhere that this is a gorgeous house in east Austin that we are going to get Oct you know certificate of occupancy very soon and it’s it’s there until the engineers come out the city all my gosh yeah it was is you could say it’s a nightmare it’s always good to stay positive about these things in the sort of to view them as like if I check off all these good nightmare questions it will mean that we passed but yeah it was like what does this mean for foundation what does it mean for fire seismic plumbing electrical mold them into there’s just like a battery of tests that we had took to get through in order to get a certificate of occupancy in the city of Austin and we we have accepted the challenge and we’re there you know I wanna talk efficiency really quick yeah because I I’ve seen this explain how long it takes to print this home yep so this house had a print time and you know because it runs on a laptop and accounted to the second how long you been printing had a print time of just under forty eight hours but that was running at quarter speed so free to run the printer at full speed twenty four hours rented it at half speed within twenty four hours running at full speed we could have done in twelve hours in print six hundred square foot home in twelve hours that that is that is absolutely one one would say possible and we we have to prove that same cool I won and I know them yes or yeah what’s the spring look like is it this is a printer actually bigger than my house yeah so the printer is like fifteen feet tall and thirty feet wide and could easily be sort of made a longer wider and taller and if you just make the track longer like is it it it would have required no additional technical investment to print two thousand square foot house we just we’re working with an organization called new chaired it wanted to build houses to a certain speck in El Salvador and that’s the great thing about a three D. printer says like you literally upload a digital design file and it prints it I can print a thousand houses in this is where there’s an advantage over prefab houses the problem with free but there’s prefabs are also one of my favorite pre have companies in the world is based here in Austin called casita I don’t know if you know those guys love those guys the trick with casita or any pre fab company is to make this the economics work you need a million people to want the same house in houses are so personal that it’s that’s that’s the real trick with three D. printing houses I could print a thousand houses in a line in all thousand could be different you just upload a thousand different digital design files and they can be as different as people and I think that’s an important advantage of the technology where do you see the first execution with the ever so yep where is the persecution of roll this out this is gonna be the organisers yep so we’re we’re running for three parallel processes one is this developing world project that again was also to be able to start with the most needy people in the world to receive this technology we have a right now L. O. wise to print nine homes in various places in central Texas and like I got a thousand emails last night that I still got to figure out what’s what but there are obviously a lot of other people who want to do this so we’re gonna have to tackle that challenge in the third big opportunity is space actually so I’m getting my master’s degree and in space resources right now and NASA recently unveiled a three D. printing habitat challenge because we’re gonna need habitats on planetary bodies and it’s not going to ship lumber and nails to Mars over there needs to be a robot they can make a house that is the real one is built a controlled remotely because there’s no oxygen is going to print airtight structure was locally available materials at center it’s our son NASA and others including myself think three D. printing is one of the most promising technologies for creating habitats on other planetary bodies and so we’re and we were you I would the lan must if you’re listening to this if you’re not listen this podcast you totally should this is an awesome podcast if you are listening I would love to meet you could have so many questions right I don’t know how I would love to just have a beer with a long well I mean I can talk about it all the yeah where can we find out more you can find out more about tree house at W. W. W. dot tree dot house and if you live in Texas help us upgrade your home you find out more about I Conant icon bill dot com very cool it is been a very interesting fight yes I am just focus on the questions what Satan comes in the house yeah well we’ll submit your story okay great thank you so much guys thanks thank you Jason thank you changing the world one house at a time thank you Jason for sharing your mission and hopefully we’ll all see more icon homes out and around Austin and the nation very soon the masters of founders team includes me damn Dillard and producer Mariah gossip thank you Ryan Francis for co hosting this episode with me and a special thanks to the whole team and found in Austin if you enjoy the show don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and please rate and review us on I tunes also if you want to check out full videos more interviews on this podcast and beyond check out the masters and founders Facebook group thanks for listening