Cove, Redefining Architecture for a Smarter Future

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast where we find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. I'm your host, Evelyn Lee, an architect who spans tech as an angel investor, startup advisor and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're a seasoned architect or just starting in the field, this podcast is your gateway to think differently about the role architects play within our global community. Hello disruptors. Welcome to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. I'm thrilled today to welcome Patrick Chopson, co founder and Chief Product Officer of COVID Architecture, formerly Cove Tool. What started as a mission driven SaaS or software as a service platform, empowering architects with performance analysis tools, has become the first full service AI powered architecture firm. A dramatic reimagining of what architectural practice can be.

A Over nearly a decade, Cove and its investors have poured more than 25 million into building AI frameworks, culminating in Cove Architecture, a practice where design excellence, AI simulation and real time decision making operate in seamless harmony. Their debut project, a multifamily row house complex in Atlanta's West End, was designed in just 15 days, achieving design timeline cuts by 60%, cost estimate accuracy hitting 95% and iteration costs dropping by 40%. Patrick brings over 20 years of experience in high performance architecture, building science and sustainability. His vision let AI handle the code checking, cost modeling, zoning analysis so architects can focus on what matters most, beauty, meaning and creative impact. Today we go deep with Patrick on the evolution of COVID architecture from SaaS to consultancy to a full service AI first studio. How that shift happened, what it means for the profession and how it's already reshaping timelines, risk and value.

B Welcome to the show, Patrick. It's so great to have you back.

C Yes, so good to get to talk to you again as always.

B I know last time we had Sandeep on and we were just talking about the release of your new book. We were also talking about your transition. Cove, kind of made from a SaaS software products to consulting. And you guys have done yet another transition within the first quarter of 2025. So I'm excited to get into it. For our listeners who don't know who Cove is and your origin story, why don't you start way back when, which actually isn't, I feel like not too far long ago.

C Yeah. So originally we started off as a consulting and architecture firm previously to raising $36.5 million of venture funding and our goal was always to create green buildings. That was the idea. So when we started making the software, people thought it was cool. Raised a Lot of money off of that, built what became one of the number one software for sustainability consulting in the architecture space. So we did see that happen. AI 2030 by the numbers were by a wide margin last year, last reporting cycle. But the thing that we kind of learned was that people, it's really hard for people to learn software in the AAC space and specifically scientific software where someone has to interpret.

C What does that mean? And so then we realized that we needed some consulting to actually help people interpret it. And then we started applying AI to that consulting. And then we realized that there was some pretty big advancements in the AI around intent interpretation and then also traceability information that had occurred in the last six months. I guess that we knew we were going to be able to actually offer architectural services and do that in a way where we could maintain responsible control and also make something from using AI. So that's how we got started into the AI for architecture space. And now I feel like as a full services firm, we're kind of able to deliver on some of the sustainability goals that maybe were elusive as a consultant. So that's kind of cool.

B I remember when we first talked to you about the development of COVID as a software, a lot of that conversation had to do with scale too, right? Like there's only so much that you or that any single architecture firm can do. So the hope was that that software could be used at scale by multiple architecture firms. Where does that lie now with the kind of the current iteration of where you guys are?

C Yeah, I think the long and short of it is not possible, I don't think, for the architecture profession to probably use something like that in a large way. Now there's great people at every firm, but that number, we can never get it above 1 to 5% of the people in our firm who could use a really nice piece of software like that. And so we needed to find a way to create bigger impact and also of course, revenue. So we needed to find ways to kind of combine our technological expertise with money as well and make sure that we could have something that would be helpful for more people.

B Before we go into what it means to be a full service AI first architecture firm in this world. I want to go back a little bit to Cove as a software service. What was it like to sell a software to architects? Who. The story I always tell coming from Slack, of course, is architects adopted teams during the Pandemic because it was included in Microsoft 360. We are really tight when it comes to pinching our pennies. And where we're spending our technology spend. So what was living in that world like?

C It's difficult because we think about Autodesk, they have like, of the 5% of the budget available for a firm, you think about 90% goes to staff, 5% probably goes to, you know, just random people walking around the office. And then of that 5% that's left over 4% is taken by Autodesk for, you know, revit and things like that. Like I just got my Revit bill for our firm and I was like, oh my God. So I mean like that, that means that there's only 1% left for all the cool tech that we might want to spend on, whether that's like Blue Beam, which is now undervalued, I guess, and then like everything else. So like Cove was a part of that 1% of that budget. And so that becomes very challenging because unless everyone in the firm is using a piece of software, it could be deemed non essential when times get rough. And so when economy goes down, it's very difficult to justify spending money on a bunch of different things. You have to streamline that, which I get.

C But that makes it very hard to convince people to buy software in the first place. And then once they do, than to use it in a way that's more driving profitability. Kind of end up with smaller groups of people who end up using some of those specialized tools. And then those people are awesome. But then who else can learn? That becomes very challenging because you can't just train someone to use, for example, Covetool. In the past, you couldn't just train someone to use it because they might only need it once per quarter. By the time they got to using it again, they might have forgotten what they learned. And so then from a project Manager's perspective, a $2,000 piece of software could be a $60,000 cost to the company in terms of training.

C And so that's kind of like the dialogue between training and the cost of software is something that even for open source, it's very difficult to justify sometimes. So you end up kind of like people switching jobs. The base, I think knowledge base for architecture remains consistent. And then so we kind of like fall back to that mean sometimes when it comes to software. So software tends to be sometimes not the best fit for the solution that we're trying to find an answer to. That's what we learned anyway.

B I'm also interested in the notion that you mentioned, even with the software, you need a certain level of expertise to kind of interpret the outcome I mean, I feel like all the good, wonderful architects out there really want to build sustainable climate res buildings. But if it's true that it takes so much to understand the output of a software and I felt like COVE was technical, but it was also, you guys were trying to make it more accessible. What is the future of us meeting our 2030 challenge or bringing that to fruition if we're always going to be reliant on the next level of expertise to truly get to the numbers that we need?

C Yeah, I would have to say I don't think that we get there with software, to be honest. Just having hacked away at it for seven years, I just couldn't. I think anybody will tell you who's older than me, that's like, I don't think that's a thing. People told us that wouldn't be a thing, but we tried to make it easy. I think at the end of the day, the expertise and the responsible control problem is the thing that both holds us back as a profession but also makes us really good stewards of the client's money, is we have to kind of know like, how do we get a thing? And as long as we can't solve that problem, then we're always going to have the challenge of like, if I don't understand exactly how this thing was made, how can I present that to my client? I'm not being a responsible architect, you know, so that's like, I think there's like some something there. I just don't think that the 2030 goals are going to be achievable unless we have technology helping us along the way in ways where we don't have to think about it. I think that's how probably in my view, AI allows us to be able to achieve our 2030 targets. There has to be more of a broad based adoption of tools that think a little bit more for us and can validate and explain how we got the answer.

B But you just said software couldn't get it there. But you think AI can get us there?

C Yeah, because you know, then it's less. Less of the problem is like, what does this mean? Like that's always the question everyone asks.

B Yes, but I think, I mean you're drawing a very different distinction between is AI a software? And I think most people view AI as a software and AI as a tool. So they might be conflicting views. I get where you're going, but how can you bring the rest of the listeners maybe up to speed on your view of AI is not necessarily just software?

C Yeah, I think most people are probably experiencing AI at a level that seems like I'm not sure if this is a thing or I asked it to do X and it didn't do X or you're kind of having to explore, you don't know, but you've read something and it's like, well. And so it's like you really have to just try to. You don't really know what AI can do until you actually try doing stuff with it. And it's less like a software and more like the Internet is kind of like how I help people. Think about like you wouldn't take an Internet class, you would probably just use the Internet and learn how to find the thing that you're looking for back in the 2000s when it was fresh. So I think like a lot of times right now people are kind of waking up to its possibilities. But in my view it's more like an underlying technology like electricity and less like an actual piece of software that you learn and you just eventually it's going to be a part of every conceivable tool that we'll use. Slack, Good example.

C All the way to Outlook. Now you got copilot in there. So I think whatever people think now it can do is just a tiny sliver of what it will be doing in a year or two years or five years from now.

B Let's start with what does it truly mean to be an AI first architecture firm? Because I think there's a lot of architecture firms out there saying, especially even the big firms saying like we're prototyping it, we're playing with it, we're integrating it into our workflow. What does it mean to really be AI first?

C To co. Yeah, because I guess like we think about we should be AI powered but human centered. So it's like to what end are we making AI? Is it to just make it faster? I don't think so, but it should be in our view that we increase design excellence. So how do we achieve greater design excellence? By using people who are experts. One of the great things that we found is that the more experienced you are as an architect, the more likely the AI is helpful to you, the less experienced the least helpful it is. So that kind of puts a premium on training people and getting your junior staff really ramped up into what does it mean to be an architect without AI so you can understand what AI is giving you and if it makes sense or not. So that's been an interesting observation. But yeah, we think about it as being AI Powered, but human centered more than AI first you could say.

C But it does mean that you could. For example, if I'm able to do something 40 to 50% faster, now I have time to think about making a building truly unique. And not just like everything else. Like I can be more of an architect. Like every project can be a Frank Gehry level of detail if you have the tools to be able to explore every concept to the nth degree. And then you have a more coordinated project, which is also better value to the person who's hired you because less errors and omissions, better building, less construction defects, those things are super valuable to owners.

B Are we there yet? Are the digital tools there yet to really begin leveraging AI even as you just said?

C Yeah, I mean like we're building our own tools internally. So we have a Software team of 10 obviously, so we're actually able to validate every assumption. Like just the other day I myself was coding an ADA bathroom configurator, for example, that's going to be a sub agent that runs inside of our overall group of AI engines that are focused on specific parts of the construction process. And so that allows us to then make sure that every bathroom that gets configured is checked against the code. Right. That's a very basic thing, but something that can be missed. And so that freezes up then to think about maybe I want to make passionate form, but I want to make sure I didn't accidentally forget a stall in my bathroom. Things like that.

B That brings up another point. So you've started as a software company, so I feel like you have the in house expertise to do the coding. Even as a solo entrepreneur, I am making constant decisions every day on build versus buy. What are your thoughts on right now on building vs buying? Especially as the AI space is evolving so quickly and new tools are being made available on a monthly basis.

C In my opinion, you gotta build it yourself if you want to. Like I just don't know how a firm could trust something that another firm made or something that a software company made when it's like that core of an aspect of your workflow. And maybe there'll be other firms that band together and like certainly you know, we're, there's other firms we know that we could work with that maybe will allow them to use our software. But like it's really hard from a liability perspective I think to at this point to validate something made by someone else. So I think you really got to, if you're going to incorporate AI into your workflow, you have to kind of do it yourself. At least that's our view.

B How do you make the decision then, whether it's faster to pull up a REVIT model and just do that bathroom one time, or whether or not you want to take this time to code an AI sub agent which is scalable and replicable to. Well, I don't know how you coded the agent, but you would hope that it would be scalable and replicable to all different market sectors.

C Yeah, I mean, like, when we think about, like, you know, obviously there's Revit's been around a while, or there's Rhino or different tools. They all have, like, their benefits. But I think, like, one of the things that you can do is if you're building your own tools and then you're building them, you know, using AI and also to use AI, then you're able to start connecting those things together and then learning over time and recording, like, what did we do on this last project that led to a better outcome? We can track that using an internal thing we're making, has a git type methodology where we can actually see what it is that we did and then merge those things together and track changes. Things that are just probably outside the purview of the traditional architecture process. Allows us to be more. Less liability, I would say, which is something I'm always trying to reduce so that we can spend more time on design excellence.

B So you're building tools in house. What is onboarding an entirely new person then look like to Cove, who is used to the standard REVIT tools now? I mean, honestly, I don't think it's too much different from all of the onboarding experience that you had with just running a software product. But now you're reliable and liable in many instances to get new employees onboard. What does that look like?

C Yeah, no, it's. It's a lot like onboarding for software in the sense that you have to have a really strong training program. I remember a firm that actually has a pretty good onboarding program. When I worked there was Perkins and Will. And one of the things that they did, it was really nice, is they had these workshops, right, where you would, like, learn BIM from the BIM experts who were like, here's the standard. Do it this way. You know, you're a new intern, you gotta make sure you're. You're, you know, using the correct families.

C Like, don't be copying stuff from, like any random place on the Internet. Use these. You know, those types of like things are really helpful, I think, right Now a lot of our onboarding is for principals. Like we just onboarded Luca Maffey, who's like a really well regarded architect who does towers, for instance. And so for me onboarding is just showing him what we can do and what we are going to do. And here's like a project you're pursuing, here's like a fully resolved app just for that project here, you know, you can share this with the owner and show the air far trade offs and things like that. And so like helping him understand what he can do so that he can bring in the work is kind of like where a lot of our onboarding is right now. So it's more so similar to like traditional software onboarding where you have to kind of like give people a lot of information in a structured way and then set benchmarks and goals and have nice videos and different things that kind of like help it stick in multiple different ways.

B You mentioned that earlier too. You said the AI actually supports experts better and I imagine it supports principles very well, especially those that are tasked with going out and winning work, not necessarily doing the work. What happens at a firm like Cove to the doing part, does that mean we need to hire people that can draft this versus we need to hire people that can code this?

C Yeah, so we, we kind of like keep those things separately, but for like junior folks. For example, I have a couple guys from like Cyark who have done some cool things with AI. So their projects are very theoretical. But then that same skill set that some of the folks out there are teaching them, like that translates really well into a workplace where I need to think about why am I doing what I'm doing more so than do it this way. It's like, oh, let me think about how I need to ask for this thing or how do I need to like, or this tool doesn't exist. Can we make this. And asking, being able to ask that question and the question what we're doing is like really important at this stage, I would say.

B Which is interesting to me because I always have said that. An often overlooked position in tech. When people look to transition from architecture to tech, everyone's like ux, I want to go into UX and ui and I have you tried product management? Because it's not necessarily dissimilar from project management. But now I find I feel like you guys are in a weird space where you're hiring both a project manager who is also a product manager, talking to the engineer saying, can you build this for me?

C Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like an interesting thing because a lot of times you show to a principal with 40 years of experience, you show them something you made and they're like, could it do X, could it do Y? And you're like, oh, feature list. You know, it's like it's on the roadmap. It's so easy to make things when you have people that know what they're looking for. And that really drives the. Honestly, the innovation speed forward. Faster is when you can find folks that have practiced for a long time seeing different ways of doing it. They're more open, honestly.

C Like, for example, our head of software engineering, this is his fourth way of coding he's ever done coding. So he's done it four different ways. That's a unique thing to have. When someone has 40 years software engineering or they have like four years in architecture, they have like a totally more. It's a little bit more free space to work with. So, honestly, I'm really enjoying working with some of the more senior folks on the product visioning because I'm doing the product development with my team kind of overseeing delivery. And then I have these architects that are doing the projects. So it's kind of a really nice way to kind of start creating a more well thought out thing than if it was just some kids in a lab dreaming up some stuff.

C It kind of like having that weight of the profession and that time that it's taken to understand what it is that we do, what things are important. I think that's honestly pretty exciting.

B It's so fascinating to me how this is all evolving, because you would think that you are like, I want the newest students coming out of school, but you actually need the technical expertise of well experienced architects. And there's always been this quandary, Right. Of how do we train students coming out of school to be these experts? What happens to that? Because I feel like you're hiring up both ends of the spectrum for good reason. But what does that mean for the future of practice? And how do we train those future experts if they don't have the similar experience that they've been getting just from being in practice?

C Yeah. I'm on the Construction and Architecture Advisory Council for Kennesaw State University. And one of the things that we've been talking a lot about with their cause, they have a really. Dr. Hosam who's like the chair. I mean, the dean of the whole school for that school. His whole thing is like, we should teach people how to think, not what software to use.

B Which I believe is true.

C Yeah, So I think what we need to focus more on is one, how do we think about design like we've always done, but then how do you learn and reason your way out of a paper bag, so to speak, of like, if I'm given this task, why am I going to do it that way? And like that is like really, really important if you're working with AI to understand like, what does this mean? Like, is this the right answer? You have to be able to reason your way to that answer and you can't just rely on the machine. So it's like almost we need to start people off on their in carb hours and they're like studying for the test. Like from day zero you need to be studying that test because the test will help you learn all the things you need to learn to have an understanding of if the AI is telling you something correct or incorrect, you know, so it's like investing in education is our number one priority in a world with AI. Like we've got to teach young people faster or else they're not going to be very useful until they know more things.

B Yeah, but I guess the argument that I imagine most people are making then in this situation is so much of architecture and what we learn is let's get to the construction site. So much of the complaints around even CAD or BIM is that people don't understand what a line on a drawing means relative to what a line means actually in space. Like, does all of this that's happening create a greater disconnect? And I'm just trying to figure out like, then yes, yes, absolutely, we need to teach and accelerate, but this is teaching and accelerating in a new way, which I'm not against new ways. I'm just trying to help. I'm just trying to playing the devil's advocate from, you know, all of the people that I hear and the principals that I hear from when it comes to like that hands on learning and being on site, understanding how things go together that you can't get from studying for an NCARB test. It's arguable why, for instance, we have the axp. Right. And so many hours need to be given to construction administrations.

C Yeah. I mean if you're a principal and you're working the traditional process, you might be working on Christmas Eve trying to get some drawings out because you just know things right. And other people don't. And I think probably these principles, if they're using AI1, they're going to get their work done a lot faster for sure, because they're going to be able to figure it out. But then two, I think you really need to take that extra time that you're discovering the process and invest that into that time with the junior staff, because that's the only way that ultimately this whole AI and architecture thing will be successful is if we have more people that are more experts, which is what we should be focused on either way. But I think, like, you got to take the time and put it into training people, taking the job site and doing the things that kind of like back in the 70s, 80s, maybe we had more time to do. And then when we got into value engineering in the 90s and 2000s, and then Revit came on the scene, like you have so many people who are like the principal who's not even came and draw in revit. So they're like, I don't even know what those kids are doing.

C But, you know, so there's like that disconnect. The technology should bring, should be bringing us together, not pushing us apart. And I think that's where AI will hopefully close the circle. At least that's the way we look at it. I know other people may do things differently, but I feel like as the first firm that's kind of really pushing this, we ought to have some responsibility to do it the right way.

B Right? No, I'm just thinking, I'm trying to think what a good analogy of this is. And I feel like in a way, and I don't know if this is a good analogy, you can tell me if it's horrible. I feel like what used to be throw them into the deep end, copy and paste this detail from here to there is now really, like, if I think, because I did K through 12 when I actually did do architecture, if I think about all the maker spaces that we're going into, it's like the firm now becomes the maker space and you're iterating and prototyping so much more, which means that you're actually testing how things go together in new and different ways. Like you said, kind of designing your way out of a paper bag, rather than just being told, like, copy, paste, give me the red lines, I'll give you the red lines and I'll return it to you. But it almost necessitates greater human interaction in the learning and development process than we have now. Is that reasonable to say?

C I think there was this really nice series of lectures from Renzo Piano where he gave a bunch of students some projects that were his actual resolved ones that were built and said Find the problems in this thing and then propose the solution. I think what we'll see is that people, that will be the future of how you teach people. It's like, here's a fully resolved AI building. As an experienced architect, I know a few things that aren't good about this. What do you see? And then like, they'll be like, oh. And it's like, well, one thing you missed was this very important aspect over here. And then that. And then you'll be like, oh, I understand how this all comes together.

C And so understanding that holistic picture is like what differentiates you from a kid who's right out of school drawing details versus someone who's like a PM or a project architect. Like, that is like the ability to spot and understand how it all fits together. And so I think like, seeing a fully resolved thing every day, like you have a fully resolved building all the time, will start to teach you how things fit, why certain decisions don't make sense, and how you'll see those consequences much faster than if you had to spend eight years on a project. And then maybe at the end understand why in conceptual design, that little line that we sketched before create a massive headache at the end.

B You know, this plays around with how the business model of architecture. Right. And how you set up fees. So for instance, if you're training people on fully evolved AI models, that means you're not. I imagine what was previously put towards the production, the money to support a production team is now getting put towards the money to support a product team. I mean, what we can and can't say about fee aside, so much of architecture is wrongfully incentivized by how long it takes us to get our construction documents done. So then how do you guys get around that?

C Yeah, so for us, what we look at is this way. The reason people hire an architect is as a developer on a basic level. They're trying to, if it's a developer project, reduce their risk in some way and have someone else assume the risk of the design. So if we're going to deliver services to reduce that risk, we have to think about what is the arbitrage of what is that worth to a particular developer and then deliver those services for the value that we're creating. When we think about how long does it take to do something. What we've seen, because we switch from. In the software space, we did have software engineers here wrote every single line of their software. And then over the last year we've transitioned to the Everything they do is generated and then they check it.

C What that means is that you actually spend most of your time planning. And then the writing of the Software takes like 10% of the time. So, like, similarly with architecture, we're seeing the same thing where it's like 90% of your time will go into thinking about the design, 10% into drawing it. And so therefore, like, there's a difference. You're just shifting the human to a different aspect of the workflow. So instead of having to think about every single wall, now I'm thinking about how does this floor plan relate to the owner's requirements? So I'm able to kind of think more and draw less, I think maybe is like where it kind of goes to.

B For like, the business operations person in me literally wants to like, sit down for a week to see how you guys are all working through all of this. I just think it's fascinating how easy has it been to find the big experts that you're interested in bringing in? Because I also feel that so many of those experts have ideas around the quality of the pen and sketching and who we call the gatekeepers of the profession, for better or for worse, and who they are keeping out of those gates sometimes. Sal, how easy or hard has it been to find those people?

C I think a lot of architects are dissatisfied with the amount of time that they're spending finding things and information and the ever increasing number of drawings and details that are being made and the process seeming like they're just working more and more hours and having less and less work. Life balance. That's true for principals too. Yes. The junior staff tends to talk about it a little bit more because there's more of them. But the actual principals themselves are also suffering from more projects, less time, more documentation. And also there's a lot of people retiring, so you have a massive brain drain. And so then people who used to be stalwarts in the profession that would kind of be the backup to someone are no longer there because they're on the golf course now hanging out.

C But so that kind of change has then necessitated that I think a lot of principals are ready for to do things differently and do things better. Generally, most people we talk to in the recruiting process are like, find me a better way of doing it and I'll be there tomorrow. So it's not been as difficult. The problem though, is this. So think about a firm with 32 principles. Typically, they all share the profit. And so to invest in technology would mean that all 32 of them would have to agree that they were going to take a pay cut, and so that's never going to happen. So that's where the gatekeeping is not necessarily around.

C People don't want to do things better. It's more so the financial incentive doesn't exist within the way that firm is structured to be able to do it. So in some ways you could say it's not possible because of how we've structured financially.

B No, I mean, I think that's one of many reverse incentives that negatively affect us in ways that we didn't honestly mean to have it.

C But, yeah, so, I mean, that's what we've seen. So it's like, yeah, recurring principles. It's very, like, fun right now because, you know, they all just want to design more, you know, so if you can give them an environment where they design more, then that's what. That's why you're in the profession. You could spend your life becoming a finance expert and making lots of money. But if you're an architect, you're. You're there also because you really loved buildings and you want to design them and make them as best as they can be. So I think, like, that's been the big learning for me is like, oh, actually they do want to do things differently.

C They just. They just don't have a way to do them better.

B What does success look like for you guys? I feel like you just officially launched this, I don't know, six weeks ago. I feel like it's been bubbling under the surface a lot longer, though. So what is officially one year out for you? And what would you say success looks like in one year? I only say that because we had an email exchange and you're like, yeah, this has been in the making in a long process for a while. So what would you consider the official one year out?

C Yeah, I think our official launch, we wanted to be in stealth mode for a little bit and just not talk about something that's. If it's not real, why talk about it now that it is real and we actually have clients? I think, like, probably, I would say a year from March is like our one year, you could say. But, like, the actual time that's taken to build all this stuff, I mean, everything we've learned over the last seven years has gone into, like, you know, how to do things better, how to think about, go to market, how to effectively market services, you know, what is the workflow, how can you use salespeople in the process, how you can use customer success and marketing and drive all those different things. In a more organized fashion than maybe what a typical firm has at their disposal. Learning all that has kind of brought it together. And I would say success looks like just achieving profitability in the next year is what we're tracking. Because you know like when you're delivering most of the projects that are coming our way are probably like in the 50 to 100 million range, which bit surprising I would have thought have been smaller projects but bigger developers have bigger problems. So you kind of can see where they're in need things at.

C And so I think probably now that we have different principals on staff that are also bringing in their own projects, it's probably by this time next year will be a profitable entity which is pretty exciting.

B That's super exciting.

C Especially when we've been in venture world for so long where you're like.

B Well, I was going to say, I think most VCs can't even say that there. That when you're out and profitability is like a. Is interesting only because I'm sitting in Silicon Valley and I don't know how often that you get it like a. You know, it took Uber. It's, it's just the amount of cash they were burning versus Right. The amount of money that they were making. Like there's a lot of these really big tech companies that actually when you get down to the bottom line, they aren't yet. It took them a while to get a long time to get profitable, if they even are profitable.

B I think some of them are still chomping after just market share. I'm thinking about meal delivery. So what do your investors think of this switch and what does that mean for them to be a VC supporting an architecture firm? Which you don't actually I think is also a first. Really?

C Yeah, yeah. I mean like for, for them, they're pretty excited because they're kind of like maybe on the front end of the Silicon Valley investor. So basically what we're doing is called verticalized AI services is what a lot of people have started calling it. And that is the thing that most of our investors are truly excited about because then with AI you can achieve software like margins on services, which is what we're doing. And so what that means is then literally like Harvey just came out with their. Or last year they came out with their AI services for legal things or there's like different professions, accounting. Every profession is going to have verticalized services in the next year or less. And so we're just one of the companies that's riding that wave because again it was a technological problem, not a business model problem necessarily, which is what's driving that.

B Do you see more opportunities for other architecture firms to. To go after that VC funding then if they were to kind of build, like, set themselves up similarly?

C Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there's like, you know, like most. Like what our view is that, like, our ultimate top line is probably 10% of the. Of the market. You can't penetrate more than that. So then that leaves like 90% of the market is going to be. Obviously, it's like when you go to some countries, if you go to India, you'll see every conceivable form of transport on the road. At the same time, you'll have someone pulling a cart, you'll have somebody in a Lamborghini. I think what you'll see is that there'll be a lane for every conceivable type of firm that exists today.

C And the new ones all kind of coexisting in the same space. And there'll be obviously folks that maybe are a client that doesn't want to work with an architect that uses AI. There could be that and there could be firms where the big firms, some of them will make that technological transition, others won't, and then someone else will come along and make something even more cool than what we're doing. So we just fully assume that, but we just think that if you go first, you got to be like, responsible. And so I think that that's like our, our thing that we're really kind of being cognizant of the conversation that we're creating and making sure that we're trying to help people see the right way of doing it, rather than maybe just racing to the bottom or something, which is not what we want to do.

B Right? No, definitely. How are your clients, by the way, reacting to you being AI first? And what does that say to them, like, from a risk profile standpoint?

C I think what their, their major problems right now are that the drawings aren't as well coordinated as they used to be. That's the number one problem a lot of times. And also the architects are not delivering on time consistently. And this has been mostly due to the principals retiring who did business development, managed projects, and had that institutional expertise.

B That's what you're hearing is just the problem from clients that you're chasing.

C Yeah, yeah, okay. So, yeah, that's what we see as the actual problem is like, you know, the clients themselves, they don't really care how the sausage is made, but they want to know like can you deliver on time and can we make sure that there's not an ADA compliance issue? You know, like that's what they're actually concerned about. That's their business objective.

B I feel like so much of the talk around architects hesitancy to move forward is one what they perceive as lack of reasonable control. So I'd be interested in kind of like your response to that, but also that these tools or some of these visualization tools put too much in the client's hands and then you're directed by the client. So let's backtrack a little bit. What is your response to AI and reasonable control? And I think this goes a little bit back to how you code. Right. AI is generating and the humans are still checking.

C Yeah. That concern that they have is very legitimate. Like if you are generating things and you don't know how those things come to be or the assumptions of the underlying model. Absolutely. A massive risk. That's why a lot of firms have banned the use of AI. That's a reasonable legal response to something that you don't know how to control. So I think that that represents a very rational response to the technology given it's, you know, historically when AI first came out, you couldn't validate anything.

C Now you can validate everything and you can trace back everything. That was a big innovation that allowed us to move forward so we could actually validate. Where did we get that exact answer from? Oh, it's this section of the code and this thing. Okay. Now we feel comfortable and we can create ways of relaying data together to validate that. That's why that we feel comfortable doing it. But I feel like that's probably why other firms don't feel comfortable.

B So another question I have for you, and one that I hope comes out of this transition to AI is kind of the democratization of design tools. Right. Like that the small firms can compete more headily against the medium and the large size. Maybe not head to head with, I mean, here's to wishing. Right. Head to head with the large firms too. But looking at the model that you guys have now, you're VC backed, you are heavily investing in product development and you have the money to do it. Is there a point where there is kind of this democratization of design that allows not the one person architecture firm that becomes the unicorn, but is there something on the horizon that could allow the one person firm to do so much more than ever did before?

C I think that generally speaking you'll see other tools and other software Technologies come out with aspects that give any firm the ability to be better and do better. It's probably just a matter of time to be honest. But our goal is to be a large firm. That's not oftentimes like the goal of most practices. Like sometimes you're just a local firm and you like doing 10 projects a year. It's a lifestyle business and like that is the goal is to like do some bespoke 10 houses, right. Or something like. And that's like a perfectly legitimate business model that you know a lot of people are going to continue to do.

C And these tools will just make it a little. You'll have tools that'll come along in every software. It'll just make your life a little bit easier. But I think what we're doing is maybe more so like what you would probably see a large firm do, which is you want to create a system and a process and be able to expand and have multiple locations where you're practicing with people. That's like our intent, right? That's maybe more so concerning to a large firm. I don't know that will really affect a small firm's out there. Like the majority of firms won't even perceive really any difference I would say. But for us I think working with those firms as partners is something that we're actively pursuing.

C So it's like if there's a small firm in a location, we'd like to partner with them and have that local human touch to what we're doing. So I don't know. I think the democratization will be and along certain verticals of the workflow more so than a holistic workflow. It's more fragmented somehow and I think there's just more winners but different winners than the people who are currently like the large firms today may be different sized later and then small firms a day who adopt AI may be larger. I think it's going to be a real opportunity zone to be honest, of different people emerging because you know, like think about HOK did their big innovation around multi office work. Patrick McCleanie and all those guys back in the day and then they created this massive value and then everyone kind of copied it. You'll kind of see the similar things will happen, I think so.

B Another thing that I always found interesting about COVID as a tech company is you have an office where everyone shows up to. And we've had these conversations before because Slack benefited from flexible and remote work. Have you changed your mind at all about that or are you opening offices where all your People are. How is that working?

C Yeah, I think you gotta be in person for architecture, but I think you don't have to be always in person. There's just too much, like I gotta look at this page of actual printed paper and like talk about it with people. And I think like junior staff suffer the most when you go fully remote. So I think like, our view is that to achieve the proper amount of like training for junior folks and actually like ramp in a cohesive way, if you're doing something new, you really gotta be in person a little bit more than once every once in a while. So we still maintain that kind of research that is more originating from the software world. Like Microsoft definitely kind of like transfers directly to the architecture world with PM's loving remote work. But junior staff, not if that makes sense.

B So where are you guys hiring and growing right now? Are you actively hiring? I feel like you guys are.

C Yeah. So right now we're looking for project managers who are licensed. We're also looking for other principals as well.

B What is your hope now for? I mean, 10% of the market is. I'm sitting here going, yeah, but actually I feel like that's an aggressive goal. Like if you're considering the global architecture market, which as a large firm or the goals of to be a large firm, is I imagining it's 10% of the global market, then what is your hope now that Cove has on the future of architecture and practice?

C Yeah, I think the goal is to be in the top five firms sometime in the early 2000-30s, I think is where we're currently shooting for.

B Are you doing a full service firm? So are you bringing engineering in house too, with all of your AI tools? Or how are you working on coordination given everything that you're doing?

C Currently, we're just focused on full service architecture. And the reason for that is the engineers are always waiting on the architect to do something. So we don't think that the engineers are at the speed limit to better design, to be honest. And like, my background is also mechanical engineering, so. So I've worked in both firms, so I do know like the speed differences are like astronomically different between, you know, MEP versus an architect.

B Well, I always joked like the difference between drawing a single line on a drawing versus actually conceiving of the entire drawing set, but neither here nor there.

C But yeah, yeah, I think we'll see. That is probably where we'll stay firmly focused is the arc. That's the big problem, you know, that we gotta solve.

B Yeah. What is the big hope Regarding I think going back to your original premise of building a more sustainable future, if Cove Tool found all of the success that you will hope it finds in the future, what does that look like to you?

C I think a more beautiful and sustainable world is like the one that where our firm and others have made that transition to incorporating AI and therefore real sustainability, where we actually know exactly how much carbon our building is using at all times, how much energy we're using. Every time we make a change, we know that we've put that up or down. Those types of things are what we're really excited about. And I think if you could create a world where every building is perfectly designed, uniquely designed, everything is bespoke, where you can see an individual person's style coming through in their work, rather than a firm style or brevit style or, you know, things like that, I think if the world is more designed and more bespoke, I think that is like the world I would want to see. And that's what I'm hoping that we can do with Cova Architecture.

A Hi Disruptors, thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community@practiceofarchitecture.com community. Our our social media handle is practiceofarch. That's practiceofarch. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a DM and say hello. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.