Proven Not Perfect
Proven Not Perfect
3D Printed Living Seawalls: Engineering Environmental Solutions with Anya Freeman, Founder & CEO, Kind Designs
Reimagining coastal protection through revolutionary technology that preserves both our cities and oceans. Meet Anya Freeman, the visionary founder behind Kind Designs, who's transforming traditional seawalls into living marine habitats through cutting-edge 3D printing.
The urgency is clear: traditional concrete seawalls are destroying marine ecosystems at an alarming rate—50,000 miles of habitats will be lost by 2040. Meanwhile, coastal communities face increasingly severe flooding and prohibitive costs for protection. Anya's solution? The world's fastest concrete 3D printer creating biomimetic seawalls that serve dual purposes: safeguarding shorelines while fostering thriving underwater ecosystems.
What makes this story particularly compelling is Anya's unlikely journey. A Ukrainian immigrant and former lawyer with no background in science, construction, or oceanography, she built a diverse team largely through Craigslist—proving that innovation often comes from unexpected places. Her leadership philosophy prioritizes grit and hands-on skills over traditional credentials, resulting in a tight-knit team unified by their mission to transform coastal infrastructure.
The impact extends beyond environmental benefits. With 30% of the global population living directly on water, Kind Designs is making coastal protection more affordable and accessible. Their second-generation seawalls eliminate rebar entirely, further increasing cost efficiency, while extending lifespan from 30-40 years to over 100 years.
Discover how this groundbreaking approach to climate resilience is attracting major investment and changing how we think about infrastructure's relationship with nature. Also, I believe this thinking has the ability to inspire more breakthrough solutions and to be a catalyst for game-changing ideas in manufacturing, in total.
Follow Anya's mission to protect our coastlines while nurturing the ocean ecosystems we depend on.
www.kinddesigns.com
Instagram: @KindDesignsOfficial
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I'd love to hear what you think!
Anya Freeman, it's so good to have you here at Proven Not Perfect. I'm excited about this conversation. I have to tell you I have a friend who probably was my first friend when I moved to Florida and he is a brilliant mind, wonderful business person and he was like you know what? You got to meet Anya. You got to meet Anya, you got to hear her story, you got to hear about her business. And then I went online and I looked up Kind Designs and I have to be honest, when he first said Anya and Kind Designs, I had a whole different thing in my mind. But Kind Designs is such a beautiful name as it relates to what's important in life, right, like just preserving life as we know it. And the thoughtfulness in your name, I think, speaks to the thoughtfulness of the business. So we're going to dive right in. Tell us, anya, what is Kine Designs. Tell us what your business is.
Speaker 2:Sure. So we are both a climate tech and a construction tech startup and we are revolutionizing coastal infrastructure and coming up with better ways for cities to protect themselves from flooding, from rising sea levels, by 3D printing living seawalls, so structurally they're identical to concrete seawalls that you've seen around everywhere forever, but because of the technology, we're able to incorporate a biomimicry design into these seawalls which transforms them from an infrastructure product now to something that also functions essentially like an artificial reef oh my god.
Speaker 1:So wait, a minute, wait I somebody might have missed that, because I almost did so. Essentially, you have found a way to replicate what a reef looks like in its natural state what?
Speaker 2:yes, but the key is the replication has been around like artificial reefs. So the artificial reef science is very well established. What's new about what we're doing is merging that science into infrastructure products, which before was impossible because infrastructure was built using precast methods. But because we have the world's fastest 3D printer, the highest resolution 3D printer, that freedom of design is unlocked. So for the first time ever, we're able to merge artificial reef science with a seawall. So it protects cities from flooding, protects them from hurricanes, but also functions like a marine habitat, dissipates waves and improves the quality of water.
Speaker 1:Okay, there's so much in there that we got to unpack because, literally, the brilliance of the whole thing. So first we talked, you hit on 3D printing, so I definitely want to talk about that. Secondly, you talked about optimizing manufacturing by being able to have it available and do it actually in environment. Those are two incredible things, right. And thirdly, you talked about what the materials are and the material science that goes into something that is not only useful but beneficial to the environment. Those are three key things that I'd really like to double click on.
Speaker 1:So let's start with 3D printing. So, for those that are listening, what is 3D printing? Because I think it's kind of one of those things that people hear a lot about, right, and some people know, some people don't. I'll break it down for, like you know, the folks that are really just getting into all of this stuff. You essentially say are you seriously on a printer printing out something that is an inanimate object in multiple dimensions, just like you would a piece of paper historically? And the answer to that question is A hundred percent what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, 3d printing has been around for a while and traditionally people think of it as like desktop 3D printers. People have it in their house. We have like one guy on our team who stream, who streamline what's it called Stream Streamline Streams on YouTube. Sorry, I'm so bad with these. Yes, yes, english is not my first language. Anyways, he streams live himself 3D printing like little parts, and people watch this. He like stays up all night for 24 hours watching these prints. But that's what's been around forever. Usually it was for, like, airplane parts or car parts, small items, small component parts right.
Speaker 1:Exactly Every time. I mean being a manufacturing girl here myself. Every time I hear about it, think about it, see it, it's in the context of something that's really almost sort of a cog component alternative, if you will right.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and something that needs a lot of customization, because that's the beauty of 3D printing you can customize things instantly and a minute later they come to life. So that's been around for a long time. What's new is large scale 3d printing. So I mean, people are literally now printing rockets, which is pretty awesome. What we're doing is we're printing using concrete, so we have the world's fastest concrete 3d printer a foot and a half per second. A foot and a half per second A foot and a half per second.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's crazy, you have to come see this in person. And the second thing that makes the technology special is also the highest resolution concrete 3D printer. That means the layers are really small and thin, and that's what unlocks the design freedom that we talked about, so we can incorporate a biomimicry design into the seawall instead of printing just flat concrete rectangular slabs.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's so awesome. And so when you think about that, now taking on the rest of that question, kind of flow through to the environmental component and the manufacturing component.
Speaker 2:Sure. Well, the problem with traditional seawalls I think it's a good place to start is that one they're very expensive and they're actually cost prohibitive for a lot of people. I think there's a common misconception that only if you live on like Star Island in Miami or whatever, you are on the water and you can afford your seawall. And that's true. But globally, 30% of the population lives directly on the water, is living below the poverty line, and even in the US, even in Florida, a lot of people live in canals. Their property values have gone up, but they don't have $300,000, $200,000 cash to put in a seawall. That's being mandated by the local municipality, or maybe they inherited their house, right? It's a really big problem and people are losing their homes. Actually, it's a good example recently in Louisiana, an entire community, and you know about this I do.
Speaker 1:You're speaking to my New Orleans crew right now, girl.
Speaker 2:Yes Island is Jean Charles, and they moved them there initially to give them a space so they can thrive like working off of the water. Right, they're doing a lot of crabbing and fishing and eventually that I forget the change in the square footage of their area. But, like 90% of their community, basically flooded and it got so bad that they could not no longer afford to put in infrastructure. And recently they moved the entire community inland to these horrible, dystopian block houses, like a far cry from these lush coastal homelands that they grew up with. So they're preserving culture.
Speaker 1:I mean really.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course. Of course, there is no culture in those horrible suburbs. So, anyways, that's the first problem.
Speaker 1:Talking like a true Miami girl.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I love character personality. So, anyways, that's the first problem with seawalls they're very expensive. The second problem with regular seawalls is they also destroy marine habitats, for two reasons. One is they're leaching chemicals into the water.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:The seawall is concrete, which is most seawalls in the US, but some are steel, some are vinyl, plastic. All of them are leaching chemicals and they're flat. So before there was a seawall, there was a lot of fish there, different organisms. Once you put in a flat wall, now those organisms have nothing to anchor to during storm events, so they migrate and no one is left to eat the toxins in the water. So just between today and 2040, by installing seawalls in the us, we're going to kill 50 000 miles of marine habitats. Wow, let's say driving from miami to la and back and forth 17 times. By which year did you say?
Speaker 1:By 24? Yeah, 15 years, that's not that far away. No, it's massively distant. I even think about how the weather seems to be getting more and more I'm going to use the word impressive more and more. I'm going to use the word impressive, right? If you want to think about it in a positive sense. These storms are something else, right? And so you know, who knows if it's even shorter time than that?
Speaker 2:It's true, and that was really a big inspiration for why I started Kind Designs, witnessing it firsthand, living in Miami. Every year there's way more storms, or storm surges are much more intense. The flooding is much more frequent. My street in South Beach, just straight up, gets flooded like to my knees. You can't even leave your cars parked on my street or in my driveway because they float away. It's like a regular Wednesday during hurricane season here and I just thought this is not normal. My friends in other cities are not, you know, dealing. They're not like knee deep in water trying to get their car and and exactly, and it shouldn't be and it shouldn't be normal.
Speaker 1:I think that's that's a big point too, all right. So look, we gotta, we gotta press the tape on pause and we have to roll back, and I really do want to double click into the magnitude of what you've endeavored to do. But before that, who was Anya Freeman? What did you go to school for? What? Were you a big environmentalist? Were you a big scientist? Did you major in science, like, where did this come from? So take us back to I'm 11 or 12.
Speaker 2:Literally none of the above. I knew nothing about science construction. I'm actually a terrible swimmer. I'm like too buoyant. I used to always go like diving with my girlfriends and they'd be underwater. They're like mermaids getting these cool videos and I'm just like I'm top floating. So I've actually, I know, surprisingly, but I was not an ocean girl at all. And, um, originally I'm not from Florida, I'm from Ukraine, so that's like my excuse, because I didn't. I didn't live by the water that's an excellent excuse.
Speaker 1:You know, I know a lot of people here from Florida.
Speaker 2:Not everybody swims thank you, thank you. So then, uh, then I grew up in Israel and eventually I got the opportunity to come to this beautiful country because my dad got a job with a space program. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:My whole family moved to actually Maine, a small town in Maine called Kennebunkport Very different immigrant experience than probably in Brooklyn or Miami. I'm so, so lucky, and you know my whole family felt extremely, extremely excited to become US citizens and really wanted to make the most of that opportunity. And so my first stop, for my parents' guidance, was to go to law school. I was supposed to be a lawyer. My brother was going to or marry a lawyer. That was my choice.
Speaker 1:Isn't that funny how that optionality remains there for us girl children, right, isn't?
Speaker 2:that nice. We have two chances. The poor guys, they just have one, you know, they just have one. So, anyway, so that was my parents' plan. So I go to law school and that's how I ended up in Florida, because I got a scholarship to study law at UM and I graduated. I started working as a lawyer doing litigation, and had a great career obviously super fun life as we all have in our 20s in Miami.
Speaker 2:But then started to notice that my home, this beautiful city of Miami, had a huge problem with flooding. And what annoyed me is there was a lot of attention on this problem, but it was always people like standing on a soapbox talking about how terrible it is and that's like not new information and people telling more books about it and writing more articles is not helping. And it's also like doom and gloom, Like they always say. You have to be crazy to invest in real estate in cities like Miami because we're all going to be underwater by 2060.
Speaker 2:And there was no conversation around solutions and, specifically, there was no conversation around how do we bring in or even merge existing technologies to come up with that solution. And so two years ago, to my parents' great disappointment, I left behind my legal career and I started Kind Designs with the idea of number one. We find that solution from my hometown, Fort Miami. Number two we make sure that solution is extremely affordable so we can scale it, duplicate it to every single coastal city at risk, because globally there's 507 cities at risk from flooding, rising sea levels, in the next 15 years, and this is global, global, that's a global Yep.
Speaker 1:And the U? S? What's that number?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but I do know it's 50,000 miles of seawalls will have to go into water in the next 15 years. Okay, and by far, by far, the number one state is Florida. Yes, Florida will spend $76 billion in seawalls in the next 15 years. Us is $400 billion. For context, louisiana is a huge problem area, of course, new York and California a huge problem area of course, new York and California.
Speaker 2:And so the number three thing we want to accomplish is not to just build these seawalls, but also make sure that we're doing something awesome for the ocean, because we're so lucky to get to build something that will be in the water for generations to come, and so put together a team. You know, raised my first round last year, started looking into the space and right away started learning about seawalls, which are kind of the first line of defense to flooding and the problems that I explained associated with those seawalls, and so we thought how do we come up with a seawall that's actually more affordable for communities? And what if, instead of destroying marine habitats, what if the seawall in itself was a marine habitat? And that's how we came up with this idea of 3D printing living seawalls.
Speaker 1:So what's the longevity of that?
Speaker 2:So first generation seawall by design. Really, the key to early adoption was to make them structurally identical and as traditional as possible, because it's already a nightmare to get a permit for a seawall in miami takes two years. We are working on that. There's pending legislation to cut that to 90 days.
Speaker 1:The vote will be july 1st actually, so literally two weeks away yeah, that's precedent setting really right, because you're sort of trailblazing an opportunity for new startups that come up with solution idea companies to get rid of some of the red tape that goes along with that.
Speaker 2:And we have a voice that the industry did not have before us, because engineers and construction companies, they are not able to stand up against the county and to suggest some of these updates to their code, because then maybe the county won't give them the permits as fast, you know. So they, so they are much more vulnerable, I think, than we are we're. We don't have much to lose. You know, we're like a bull in a china shop. And also we have awesome investors who are have a government background in Florida. So through their support, we're able to already pass some legislation and have more legislation on the way july 1st. That's not only going to help living seawalls our product but literally the entire coastal construction industry. Wow, so, so that's super, super exciting. But to your to finish answer your questions the first generation seawalls. We made them traditional, so so it's still concrete. It's still the same strength 5,000 PSI, that's how strength is measured in concrete. That's hurricane conditions and the same reinforcement. So all concrete is reinforced.
Speaker 2:Seawalls have always been reinforced with rebar. It's actually really, really unfortunate that we're putting rebar in the water, because rebar is made of steel or maybe it's galvanized, but all rebar rusts over time and when it rusts, it expands and it pops the concrete seawall. But that's the way it's been done since 1905, since the first seawall went in the water in Galveston, texas in the US, and so first generation seawallall. We'd also use rebar, so our seawalls last exactly the same amount of time as precast concrete seawalls, which is about 30 to 40 years. Okay, however, we are in very late stages of r&d and our plan we're on target that by q4 of this year we will be installing generation two living seawalls. We we have zero rebar, which makes them even more affordable, exponentially lighter, easier to install and, most importantly, they will last over 100 years.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is fantastic. And then I would imagine that, as you continue to build this solution and think about innovation and sustainability and all the things in manufacturing in general, right, do you start to set your sights to other opportunities to participate in supporting the robustness of our environment and protecting them from natural causes?
Speaker 2:Honestly, I am like singularly focused on seawalls. It's my life. I live and breathe seawalls. I'm obsessed with seawalls. That's a good answer, anya. And it's a massive, massive industry. People don't realize because seawalls are kind of boring. It's not a sexy product. Like 3D printing houses is awesome. Everyone knows that. You know they watch, watch those really cool videos on youtube. No one's looking at seawalls because it's like it's a concrete slab. But it is a huge market, is a huge opportunity for impact, because you can actually build in all this impact into the actual seawall. You know, like now it's a marine habitat, now it's dissipating waves, improving the quality of water. How awesome is that? In a way, I guess we have actually found a path to make Seawall sexy through the impact and also some of the design elements that we're able to bring to the Seawall products.
Speaker 1:Anya, this sounds again massively incredible and impactful. Tell me about your leadership. How are you able to get the team to really see the vision and to participate in the vision I'd love to pivot to, because it's no small notion to dream something and build something and you know heading somewhere where the people haven't gone. So how's that part been for you?
Speaker 2:I definitely think I'm a contrarian, especially like in the last few years, kind of where culture has gone. It's the opposite of where I have stayed, where we run like a full blow. Meritocracy, wow, Everyone has. Well, first of all, literally everyone has ownership in a company. Every single employee has equity in the company, so as we raise more rounds and as valuation grows, they get to watch their shares rise in value, which is extremely exciting. Number one. Number two our hiring methods are very unusual. Like it, actually, I almost never look at education. It's like the last thing I'll look at is where you went to school. That's probably the least important thing to me. What's important?
Speaker 1:What's important, tell us being a badass Badass.
Speaker 2:The majority of the team is operate the operation side, right, so it's like the robot techs. And what's really liberating is that you actually can't go to school to operate large scale concrete 3d printers because it's so new, so that's pretty awesome. So then I don't care where you went to school, because you couldn't learn this stuff anyways. And because of that, all I care about is one that you have some kind of background doing anything with your hands, so like anything in concrete building with wood, maybe working on cars hands. So like anything in concrete building with wood, maybe working on cars.
Speaker 2:So you, you enjoy and thrive and that's really, really, um, like intense grind of working with your hands. And maybe some crazy outdoor conditions, like in miami, 100 degrees, number one, number two, like when we have an interview, I will like, literally, I want calluses on your hands. You know, there's one thing to say that you love it, but it's another like to see it, and you do have to be physically strong. And some people like they're no question me, they're like they say, like our team looks like Abercrombie and Fitch or something, but but it's not because I'm like.
Speaker 1:I looked at the website.
Speaker 2:It does but it's not because I'm like putting out an ad, you know, for great looking team people. It's because usually people who are super strong and like dedicated and badasses, they just happen to also be good looking, you know. So that's how we put together a team, Like, really, and, by the way, most of them we end up finding on Craigslist. I know it sounds crazy. Initially I did put ads on LinkedIn and Indeed and I was so disappointed that people would reach out to me and be like, oh, I just graduated, I would love to learn more. What's the work-life balance? I'm like there is no balance, like we are here to suffer, like you guys are suffering with us or you're out, you know. And so I was just like really, really turned off by that, just even the questions that applicants were asking of me, and I ended up going on Craigslist. Yeah, and that's because there's a lot of people on Craigslist looking for manual labor and I found an unbelievable team. Most of them are immigrants Wow. We have like every member of a team from a different country. A lot of them didn't speak English well when they started, wow, and they showed up here and we give training. So everyone that comes with a month-long intensive training in concrete and operating robots and design, and now everyone the every single person that's my founding team is all still together. Only one person has left. That's because he had to go to nicaragua to to be his family. He'll be back in December. It's like an incredibly, incredibly strong, lean, close team.
Speaker 2:And my big it was diverse too I mean, you know that but not by design. I think that's what people always say oh wow, your team is so diverse. But it's not like I went out and I was like I need like one woman. I think that's what people always say oh wow, your team is so diverse, but it's not like I want now. It's like I need like one woman. I need one like Asian person at all. Like they're all the best of the best and maybe they started off just being a guy in Craigslist not speaking great English.
Speaker 2:A year later, my designer, my lead designer, for example, has done things in 3D printing that no one in the world has accomplished. How amazing is is that? And that's just because of the dedication and the belief that the team has, and that's why we've been able to move as quickly as we have to. So my biggest motivation on the side of all of this, even more than impacting the ocean, is just like achieving financial freedom for my entire team. I'm always thinking, because a lot of them live with their mom, they send family back, I mean, they're sent money back home to their countries and I'm just always like visualizing like them, like I just got chills thinking about, like, live with their mom, they send family back, I mean, they send money back home to their countries, and I'm just always like visualizing like them, like I just got chills thinking about like buying their mom a house or something you know, just stuff like that really excites me.
Speaker 1:But I tell you you've done a good job of being really clear on the type of talent that is going to show up and really lean into the vision and the mission of the organization. And I grew up with some pretty fantastic brands of companies and I have always said one of them in particular. What made them so amazing and well-written about was, I thought, the savvy of the hiring, clarity to the mission and vision of what needed to happen and the culture that was expected. And I'm hearing all of that come through as you think about and talk about your business. So many people that start up a company I don't think that they quickly understand those characteristics. Did you know this instinctively up front, or how grounded was your vision and your mission statement when you started your company, or is it something that got more crisp and clear as you started to have more conversations, envisioning the art of the possible?
Speaker 2:possible. The mission was very clear. The culture part of it, I didn't. I didn't some, not something I've even thought about in the first in the in, when I first started, and now it's one of the most important things to me. So I think the culture has caught up to the vision and I really see how, how you know it's it's. It's impossible to achieve this vision unless you have a culture that's really really aligned. Wow.
Speaker 1:Wow, you run, you run, you don't walk.
Speaker 2:Actually, I walk extremely fast. So what's your favorite workout? Oh my gosh, I'm a Pilates girl. I've been doing Pilates at least six days, six days a week, for the last 10 years.
Speaker 1:Okay, I love Pilates too. Do you like Reformer or mat or both?
Speaker 2:No, no. It has to be Reformer and it has to be Legree Like. The most painful workout is the only one that I want.
Speaker 1:So why is that your favorite workout?
Speaker 2:Because it hurts. I need to feel the pain. You know no pain, no gain. You know it's like slow and like the pain is just deep in your core.
Speaker 1:I love we are learning all about the psyche of what it takes to be a badass and start a business like this a likable one on top of it, so all right. So now you're having conversations with potential investors and you're selling and telling and sharing and all the things. What are they asking? What is the thing that they want to know the most about, as folks are starting up businesses and they're hearing hey, gosh, she definitely sounds like she's got this right. What are they asking you the most about?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, I knew nothing about fundraising when I started. I mean, literally I Googled like who invests in climate tech, who invests in construction tech? And I just wrote them cold, messaged them on LinkedIn and luckily, some of them took my calls, literally. It's not that I not only have I never worked in a startup, I've never even met a person who worked for get started a company. I've never even met someone who works at a startup.
Speaker 1:And so you know, miami, just what it just speaks to this coming right from your heart, like I just have to. I just have to really point that out, right? Okay? Okay, keep going.
Speaker 2:Well, you know the help actually being oblivious sometimes can be really helpful, Cause I'm like I didn't know. Like you know you're supposed to like get someone to make an introduction. If I knew that then I would have never started, Cause I don't know anyone who can make introductions. So I was like, oh, whatever, Now Google, here's 10 people. That's the first way I met people and the second I got to speak a lot, and that's really really thanks to just this. Miami and the city of Miami really was trying, and still trying, to kind of transform its identity to attract more startups, more investors. So it was providing like there was the Aspen Institute, their climate conference was in Miami for a few years that's the first time I ever spoke about this, yeah. And so through those few opportunities, I started meeting investors. And what I learned quickly? Well, first of all, if someone asks you what is a seawall like, you should just end the call because they don't know what a seawall is, then they'll never feel like the huge opportunity and the huge problems that you're solving.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of a deal breaker and on that topic, like what, but hey, but we can't blow past that, right?
Speaker 1:Because you know I have listeners that are all over the world, various stages, and the reality is we sometimes assume that we're in a warm, friendly, ready, good soil environment, right, just because we have a good idea, and that's not necessarily the case. It's not that people don't acknowledge it's a good idea, it's just that for them to become educated enough to form a credible opinion of what they think is going to take more. And then you have to think about time value spent, right, and am I going to spend all my time educating and getting you up to speed to even, you know, consider this an important aspect, or am I going to find the people that care about this?
Speaker 2:And I just think the chance of success is really low if you have to do a bunch of education, because there are investors who already know it's a problem, they're actively seeking solutions and that's a slam dunk. And so for me, those were actually Florida investors. So talking to investors in even New York City, even in San Francisco, it's very different from talking to investors in Florida, because I don't have to not only educate them on what is a seawall, but I don't have to educate them that they're expensive, that they're destroying marine habitats and the fact that it's a it's a multi-billion dollar opportunity. They know, and so ultimately they understand the urgency Absolutely, cause they're experiencing flooding, of course, themselves, and so ultimately, I would say 75% of my cap table was Florida investors. Oh, wow, and we were lucky to be really oversubscribed.
Speaker 2:We actually increased the round. Originally, the first round was supposed to be 5 million. We ultimately closed 6.5 million. Congratulations, thank you. We had almost 10 million in interest, and so we got to choose the investors, and so all of them are strategic. Half the investors are government people lobbying groups, former congressmen, mayors, commissioners and then the other half is construction people, so people building things on the water who can specify us in their plan. I love that mix. Isn't that lucky. And then Mark Cuban invested just because it's cool and that attracts more and better.
Speaker 1:That's not a bad deal when, just because it's cool and that attracts more, that's not a bad deal when he thinks something's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm okay with that Wait a minute.
Speaker 1:Are you going to do Shark Tank?
Speaker 2:We're too big for Shark Tank now. Plus he left. He did his last episode a couple months ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, I figure he still has a phone number or two he can get you in there. No, no, yeah, honestly later, for that I'm so past that I'm in a different phase and you know what, honestly, that's exactly why I was excited to talk to you too, because I think that you are in a different phase and I think expanding the conversation around new innovative businesses, new innovative manufacturing principles and the thinking around scale and urgency, I think is really, really impressive, and I do believe it's something, even though you're doing the right thing, to think absolutely relentlessly. Focus on the lane that you're in. I think we'll all be smart to watch how you build and develop and grow this, because I think this is transferable and we really got to think about how do we continue to develop manufacturing to be proximate to where the problem to solve is and cost efficient and effective. Those are some of the things that it sounds like you've begun to tackle.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, we're obsessed with getting not just obsessed, we're actually required. For example, if you do any seawall for the Florida Department of Transportation, fdot, you have to fulfill BABA. Baba is an acronym which stands built in America by America, which means the majority of the components of your product have to come from the United States, and that's actually very challenging. A lot of rebar steel comes from Asia. We had originally started working with a concrete mix actually came from Germany, because it was the best mix in the world, and it's hard to get someone in the US actually to meet the same standards in this mix. And so in construction, it's something you already get a lot of credit for. Yeah, and also, are you actually required to do if you want to go for some of these big state or federal kind of jobs?
Speaker 1:So this is a little bit of a swerve too right, because you know now it's just one more complexity to think through. But I think the blessing and the curse in it for you being a bit earlier in the tenure is that you can design. You can design for efficiency now sourcing, you know, so that you're advantaged in the long run where some other manufacturers, you know, have to kind of go back and re-script just because of the positioning.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and we're lucky that we have the scale of the pipeline that we have, because companies are willing to do R&D with us and put in their own investment and time, for example with a concrete mix, to develop a mix, because, you know, they know it's not a one-off project. They can see, they have clear visibility into our pipeline and the cubic yards of material that we're going to need over the next two years and that's how we're able to, for example, switch to a material provider in Orlando instead of Germany, which is hugely impactful from an environmental standpoint, obviously cost standpoint, and allows us to go after more government jobs.
Speaker 1:I love that. So look, all right. So this is fantastic. I look forward to watching you fly, I look forward to learning more. Actually, I'm going to, you know, after we close this out, we're going to get our schedule aligned and I'm looking forward to spending some time with you on site. I want to see it, I want to touch it and I certainly want to help.
Speaker 1:One of my passions is not only to support and develop women in their careers, but also you know, having been in the angel game for a long time, it's really exciting to me when I see something pop and it just so happens right, it's not, it's not a condition for certainly, but it just so happens. When it happens to be not it's not a condition for certainly, but it just so happens when it happens to be a woman who came up with that great idea, I get just a little bit more excited. No shame in my game. So one fun thing before I let you go, all right. So I asked this question of a couple of folks and I'd be curious to hear inbox, because you have such a drive about you Zero.
Speaker 2:Zero, I knew it. I knew it. I knew it A hundred percent. Well, while we talk, probably it's going to be 26, but before I got onto this podcast, it was zero. Yeah, I knew that on you.
Speaker 1:I knew it. Oh my gosh, that's so good. What do you do for fun? What is your, what's your happy place? And I truly know that every fiber in you is focused. But when I say, anya, unplug, what's the thing that you do to get that done?
Speaker 2:I actually love handwriting, I love calligraphy, so I hand write books, books. I hand wrote a cooking book and I just I just hand wrote Serbian food. No, cooking food. It's actually called dear brother, please don't starve. And it's for my brother who's because he's at Harvard and he doesn't know how to boil an egg. And so I mean a very, very sexist book. Very easy recipes for guys, like three to five ingredients, lots of photos. And then I just finished another one last week which is a handwritten and illustrated because I love to draw to um book for chill kids. Oh, it's called the teen, tiny shark society. It's about examples of all these kids around the world who have their own little businesses. So really realistic, I think, creative business ideas that kids could actually read and then do, and then go out and do it themselves.
Speaker 1:Anya girl, you are killing it all all sides right, because I believe, if you want to really talk about being a badass, badass is not only understanding what you're packing and knowing your strengths and how to align those to get a vision complete, but it's also understanding how responsible it is for us to share that wisdom and if we can plant seeds for the future through the young who are reading and watching man. You got the assignment, sush, you got it.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for spending time with Proven Not Perfect. Looking forward to watching you fly, girlfriend.
Speaker 2:Thank you, we'll see you soon in Miami. Yes, you will.
Speaker 1:Yes, you will.