Devon Zuegel: Building a People-First Town From Scratch with Esmeralda & Rethinking How We Live

Devon

It's like Google, but with a Z. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You nailed it. Yes. It's all a hard one.

Austin

Google, Google, but Zugal. Okay. Okay. And then Chautauqua. Yes. I know I'm going to confuse my head again though. It's funny how hard it is to stick with me for a second anyway.

Devon

No, no, that one's really tough. People can't spell it. They can't pronounce it. Yeah. And then first name is Devon, which I think you got, but just to cover all the bases.

Austin

Yeah, I got that one. Yeah. Cool. Well, Devin, welcome on. I'm excited to have you on the podcast.

Devon

Thanks for having me. I've been really looking forward to this.

Austin

You know, we got to catch up last week a little bit, but could you tell everyone else just a little bit about your background and some, you know, include the cool and interesting stuff, you know, like the being head of Stanford review and your background in tech and, you know, founding a company and selling a company. I mean, you've done a lot of really cool stuff. Uh, so I'd love for people to hear a little bit about that.

Devon

Oh, thanks. So my background, I studied computer science and economics in college. So when I left school from Stanford, I was a software engineer for a while and at a number of technology companies in San Francisco. But also while I was in school, which Austin alluded to, I was the editor of the Stanford review, which is kind of the rag tag rascal bunch of newspaper people in school. There's like the main. newspaper and then there's the ones who kind of create trouble. And that was us. And that was really fun to, we sort of, we would go and talk about topics that other people on campus maybe didn't want to talk about. So that was really interesting. Sort of more of a pursuit of truth and trying to really like dig into things in a scientific way, as opposed to just kind of going with what we saw as sort of the, the way that everybody else just sort of was like, yeah, let's just all believe that because it's more convenient. Um, but that definitely, uh, you know, there's some stories there as well. And then, so yeah, I was a software engineer after college and throughout that whole time I was living in San Francisco and it's really hard to live in San Francisco without getting obsessed with housing policy because, uh, the city's housing policy is terrible. Um, you know, that, that could be a whole podcast in its own, but long story short, San Francisco doesn't build housing. It has also a serious, uh, homelessness problem. Um, where there's people suffering on the streets just every day you walk around one of the cities that has the most billionaires per capita in the whole world. And there's also people like literally dying on the street as you walk to work. And it's just hard, it's hard not to ask yourself like, why is that happening? And so I got really involved in housing policy and trying to help get a state Senator Scott Wiener elected and a number of other things. Like that, and going down that rabbit hole got me really interested in cities and urban economics more generally and architecture and why do some spaces create wonderful human interactions and other spaces don't. And that, you know, led to the question of like, where are all the wonderful new neighborhoods? Like, why don't we build nice new places? It seems like all the places that we like were built a hundred years ago.

Devon

And, you we're so much richer now. We have so much capacity. We have more free time. Like we should be building more beautiful places, not less. And that led me to new urbanism and traditional, traditional development and all that. And people like meeting, getting to meet people like Austin. And over the years, while I was working in software, it just, it just kept coming back to this question of like, why aren't we building more of these places? And there's a few answers that we could get into on this conversation. But for the most part, the answer to me was, we're not really trying. And if we could just try, then we would have more of these places. And I decided at some point to stop complaining about it and I wanted to get involved in building it. So basically I started a company last year and working to build a new town or neighborhood or village from scratch that is very much in sort of the new urbanist tradition. Um, but it's also very influenced by my childhood growing up, uh, going to a place called Chautauqua, which is a small town in Western New York, where my grandmother, uh, goes every summer and my family would join her. And it's a place where children run around totally free and independent, um, very different from how kids these days usually grow up. There's, um, you know, everybody walks and bikes almost everywhere. You'll, you'll drive there, but then you park once you arrive. And then one of the things that's most unique about it is that it has nine weeks of summer programming where every day there's a lecture, a performance, a ballet. The Beach Boys came and played once. Jane Goodall came and talked about chimpanzees once. And this brings the community together and people learn together and they get to meet and build a shared context. Long story short, I was really affected by that. I've been every year of my life except for one year during COVID and... As I've gotten older, I've realized why is this this one random place that I go, you know, once a year, why isn't this what normal life is like? So long as saying my company is to create a new Chautauqua and in the early stages of making that happen.

Austin

Gosh, it's awesome. Okay. There's a lot of things I already want to talk about there because, uh, well, starting even with the, the, the policy and stuff of like, why aren't we building more places like this? And you're like, it's just, we're not even trying. You're a hundred percent right. Like people literally are trying, which is crazy because people actually want like individuals and families want this other type of living and lifestyle. We can talk about what that means a little bit, but I just read this article. I think it was this week or maybe last week. about how rents in Austin are actually going down. And it's because they've added so much housing. And I think I could get this wrong. I forget who wrote the article. You could Google it, but something about Austin permitted like nine times more housing than San Francisco over the past couple of years over COVID or something. And lo and behold, rents are coming down. Now, I wouldn't say Austin as the example of what we should all be copying because a lot of that housing, I would still critique it as, hey, lots of multifamily buildings. It's serving a purpose. But it's not like, let's build a great place for people. It's providing sleeping units for people, which is important. But okay, I would love to hear more about to just, didn't you say it was like seven generations of Shataka like that you've been going or something like that? I mean, that's insane to me.

Devon

Yeah, and my grandma never lets me forget it. It's hammered into my head.

Austin

That is wild. That is so cool.

Devon

Yeah, so a little background on Chautauqua. It's not just a town. It started 150, 175 years ago by a Methodist group that they just, they basically camped out for a week by Lake Chautauqua, long, long time ago. And they were mostly Sunday school teachers and they were teaching each other aspects of the Bible and practicing the religion and just. They had such a good time and they enjoyed it so much that they kept coming back every summer. And it started as this tent camp, but after a few summers, they were like, hey, you know, maybe we should buy this land and pitch up, you know, slightly more permanent tents or like little shacks because we're coming here all the time. And over the course of a decade or two, it expanded, it became more permanent, people invested more in the community. And yeah, it's... Very organic. And I mean, there's still a few of the nowadays it's all permanent homes. People like my grandmother has air conditioning in her house, for example, which they did not have back then. But there's still a few places where people have the old tent platforms that are still there, kind of as like a an old, you know, relic of the past to show like where this community came from. And these days, it's much more secular. It still has a religious component like my grandma still goes to church. But there's now, it's also multi, very multicultural and there's multi -faith things like there's also a synagogue, there's a mosque, there are all sorts of different destinations that people can go to practice their own religion. So it's no longer like just a Methodist thing. But it's, I think having started from those Methodist roots, it really... brought forward this like strong community and like sort of sense of purpose that was more than just we're going to go vacation together. It was really we're going to go to this place to improve ourselves and to get closer to our community and back then get closer to God. And I think that that you can just feel it. It feels like a sacred place. Even though I myself am not a Methodist, I really feel that, you know, echoing through the generations and like.

Devon

You know, people do brag about how long they've gone to Chautauqua. It's one of those things where they can't help themselves. They'd be like, well, you know, I've been here for five generations. Well, we've been here for seven, so. Yeah.

Austin

That's funny one up each other. Like how big is it like population wise and how many of that population is seasonal? Like what full time versus kind of visitors and stuff do you know?

Devon

It's extremely seasonal. I don't know the exact numbers, but you can, you could probably count on like one or two hands, the number of families who stay there in the winter. Cause it's, it's, um, it's sort of close to Lake Erie, just to give it, it's like, uh, yeah, it's in that part of New York and the weather is brutal. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere. Um, and it's, uh, it's not, it's not a super fun place to be in the winter. There's not much to do. So I think that like in the, in the,

Austin

Okay.

Austin

Right.

Devon

community that I'm building, that's one of the things I'd like to do differently from Chautauqua, is build a place where people can live full time as well, as opposed to it just being this place that you go to in the summer.

Austin

Right.

Austin

Right. Yeah. And that's, you know, you mentioned, um, kind of the, well, even the religious roots and how that manifested and just like people being there intentionally and wanting to grow and learn. And that's what I noticed. There's so many like educational events and things out there like, and you know, we talked about this when we chatted a couple of weeks ago, but just how an American culture, um, We don't really make it about like everyday life and the everyday life experience. It's all about like, let me have these, all these individual pieces of life kind of spread out over very vast distances. And it's like the concert that I'm at is the big deal. And I just saw, I was on their website just earlier today at Chautauqua and they've got the beach boys coming or, you know, some things. And what I imagine that's so different about a place like that, cause I haven't experienced Chautauqua, but, um, just other TNDs like Carlton landing where. It's not just the concert that's special because you could do that concert anywhere. It's, it's the entire experience of it. It's before the concert, it's getting to the concerts. It's hanging out at the concert in a particular venue. It's hanging out after on the way home. Like, and, and it's, it's much longer event than like, okay, okay. I'm going to go through all this misery to consume two hours of music. And then I'm going to like get my car and drive home, you know? Um, and I know she talk, well, is a vacation community, but like you're saying it can, why? Could this not be everyday life?

Devon

Totally, totally. And I think you hit the nail on the head. We spend a lot of American culture, including the way I mostly grew up when I was not at Chautauqua, was sort of like, everything's kind of, day -to -day life kind of sucks, but we're gonna grit and bear it until we can get to the really fun trip to Disneyland that we're gonna have planned. Or the birthday party, or dinner. And it's like these big moments where...

Austin

Yes.

Devon

It feels like we're kind of sacrificing all the other quality of life or we're going to drive really long, like a really long distance. And then once we get there, we'll have fun, but it's kind of not going to be that great leading up to that. And, you know, if people want to live that way, that's fine. I don't want to like push my way of thinking on anybody, but it feels like the infrastructure in the U .S. in almost every community kind of forces that way of living on you. And if we could build more options for people, then they could choose not. not to have like, for example, where I live, I currently live in South Beach in Miami Beach, which is an old community from the 1920s and very walkable. I rarely get into a car and every day, you know, every part of my day is great. I can walk, I go for a walk in the morning and I look forward to it every day. I, you know, I have some neighbors near next door and I was planting some flowers yesterday and like waved at them as. They walked by and it's, we've chosen a lifestyle where like every moment can be a special moment. And yeah, none of them is, you know, as exciting as going on a roller coaster in Disneyland or something. But there are all these like small, beautiful moments. And I think that that's harder to do, especially once you want to be able to interact with other people in your community. It's hard to do in the way that we've built most places these days.

Austin

It is because we really do have these, the isolated suburban subdivision, which everyone can picture and imagine. And then on the other extreme, because we're like, holy crap, we need to make it for housing. We're like multifamily and condo buildings. And it's not that multifamily, in my opinion, or condo buildings are inherently bad. Although I think we could do them better a lot of the times, but more what happens is, is it's just like, okay, we're in a midtown. So let's plop multifamily after multifamily or big condo building, but it's not in the context of a neighborhood. You know, so like if you're a really like urbanite, you know, and you're like, I'm, I want to live in midtown and like in a condo building and take an elevator up. You can do that, but there isn't the option of this kind of even that should talk what you're talking about where there's kids running around free range kids plus grandma and everyone in between a place for everyone to, to share. Um, and really, I don't know, just live, live life. And that's a very different, we actually even building streams. It's like super high density, super low density. None of that. human, really the human scale, neighborly, neighborhood and neighborliness in between that leads to neighborliness.

Devon

Totally. And having gotten into this through the housing policy angle and Yimby and people who like, you know, the yes, in my backyard folks who want to build a lot, I'm extremely sympathetic to all that. I think it's like the right direction to go on. But one thing that I think is a disservice to that movement of trying to build more housing is when we build stuff that's so ugly and so soul sucking most of the time, I think it creates enemies. And of course people don't want to see development when we build. Most new development is ugly. I'm not saying it's justified. I still think that it's much more important to house people and give people beds than it is to, you know, make sure that the character of a neighborhood is preserved. I still think that like having homeless people die on the street is like, that's just a way higher priority than anything else. But like, why can't we have both? You know, like we don't have to build these like giant tower blocks that like no one really wants to live in. They're just kind of, you know, the... the not even the most efficient way to do it, honestly, it's just kind of like the way that we know how to do it. And the way that the system is all set up and all the different trades, they kind of know how to do it that way. But like, you go to somewhere like New York, you know, New York City, they have all these beautiful, fairly high density brownstones. And if we built a lot of America as dense as that, or even a little less dense, we would be fine. You know, like Brooklyn is like way denser than most of San Francisco, for instance, and If we build that, like we could house everybody. And I just feel like the conversation is so often like, we should build nothing or we should build like a zillion homes in one spot, cause that's all we can get approved. And we were like lucky if we can get it. And I think that ideally it would be more like, let's build places that are also beloved so that we can turn some of those enemies and make them supporters and like, yeah, you know, this development is actually going to make my community better. It's going to lift people up and...

Austin

Yeah.

Devon

And I think that that's, that's a challenging nuance to get into the conversation.

Austin

It is. What are some of those things that you've seen, you know, as you were getting into looking at housing and policy and some of that might be directly related to San Francisco and some could be national policy. Some could be, you know, just kind of incentives and not necessarily hard policy, but what are some of the like the really big things that if you could wave a magic wand, you'd be like, we need to stop doing this, this, this, and this, and we would start doing this, this, and this. Do you have kind of a running list?

Devon

Yeah, well, yeah, there's probably some specific examples I could give, but I think that the high level thing that they have in common is as building things has gotten more and more regulated, it requires a lot more upfront work to get anything approved. And what that means is that you can only really justify big projects because if you're going to just build something small, it's just not really worth the headache. you have to like take that cost and spread it out across a lot of units. And I'm not saying that big development is always bad, but I think if you only have big development, you end up having a much more stale feeling city. And then, I mean, I think also there's aspects of like the way lending works, with let's say you're building multi -use building where you're gonna have retail on the bottom. and housing on the top, which like in general, I think is a great idea. Not necessarily for everywhere, but like we should have more of it in many places in the US. When you do that and you go to your lenders, you could say, I'm going to, I have like, you know, this much square footage, I'm gonna split it up into five spaces and lease it to like Bank of America, Starbucks, things like that. Or I'm gonna break it up into like 20 very small spaces. and lease it to the mom and pops in town, a bank is just much more comfortable with the first one. And actually, in some ways, I think it's not even totally rational of them because just the law, if you know any basic statistics, if you can break up and have more little data points that sum up, if you have 20 tenants and one of them ends up not being able to pay their lease, not the end of the world, it's not great, but you still have 19 that are paying. versus if you have five and then suddenly one of them stops paying like there goes 20 % of your revenue. And then also these big chains that you could bring in, yeah, sure they have a high credit rating, but they also have a lot of negotiating power over you and it's like less, it's less good as a business person. But the lenders, they don't know the mom and pop shops. Maybe they don't have like a great credit rating and the lenders are uncomfortable with that.

Devon

And so they push you towards having more national scale tenants who in turn tend to require really big spaces, which means that you have fewer spaces. And so all in all, I think that's another thing. I don't know the solution. So I don't even know as magic wand, but I really wish that lenders like in their conservatism are actually like adding risk to the business and also. I think not even doing themselves a benefit. And actually to modify that, I don't know if the word conservatism is the right word. I think it's like legibility. They want to recognize, they want to be able to understand what they're seeing quickly because they're, you know, looking at a lot of different loans. And I think if there were some way to make those smaller businesses a little bit more legible, I think it could go a long way. But I could give you a very long laundry list, but those are two things that come to mind.

Austin

Hmm.

Austin

I love that. I think about that one a ton, the small business one, because it's just everything's kind of a stacked against small business. And everyone today is talking about inequality. Everyone's talking about the housing crisis and affordability. And it's like, man, a lot of this wealth building and things like that used to happen through entrepreneurship. And I'm not saying it doesn't happen anymore. There's still so much upward mobility in the United States, but in new construction, a new building, which is a lot, like it's just. that the cards are so stacked against local businesses. And man, it reminded me, I was driving to Austin last week and so I'm in Oklahoma city. It's a seven hour drive down there, six hour drive down there. You kind of drive through Fort Worth, Denton, all that to Austin. And. You would think in a six hour drive, I'd be driving through a lot of countryside, you know, but because it's like Denton and Fort Worth and they're just so sprawled and stuff like that. And Austin, it's actually just driving by a lot of strip malls over and over and over again. It's actually like at least half of that. And I hadn't made that drive in a while. And what kind of shocked me a little bit was just that I swear, you know how you've got like the signs for the exit. What's like for three hours of the trip, it was just like signs every five, 10 miles with the exact

Devon

Yeah.

Austin

same offerings, the exact same Starbucks, the exact same talk about maybe Chick -fil skips a couple of them, you know, and then you've got the, the marshals and the big box stores. And it's like, you could be anywhere. It doesn't even feel like a, you're like, this isn't America. This isn't Texas. This isn't Oklahoma. This is just like corporate. Wow. Like a corporate spreadsheet threw up and just like have, you know, all this stuff became a reality. And. Once again, like you're saying, I understand why it happens. And it's not like I don't think individuals are being bad or something and making it happen, but it really is tragic. And I haven't, what I love about what I'm about to ask you too, and what you're doing with the town is we're both kind of going, we look at these things and say like, wow, that is messed up. And then we can sit and critique the system all day long of why, and there are policy things we can work on. And I think we both kind of like work on those in the periphery, but at the same time, it's like, all right, you know what we're going to do? We're going to go do something. We're going to go build something different. Just completely. Here's the box that everyone tries to put you in. We're just going to step outside of that and just try to do something over here completely differently. So I think now would be a good time to talk about like, what is your vision for this town in Esmeralda? And yeah, just to talk about that, start talking about that.

Devon

Yeah, I think the shortest way to describe it is basically a cross between a TND, like a place like a seaside or Seabrook or Las Catalinas, the list goes on, places like that crossed with Chautauqua. Something where it brings in the lessons that we've learned the hard way over the last hundred years about what it looks like to build a good neighborhood, crossing over with something that's very community oriented. like Chautauqua where there's programming that brings people together. So it's not just a place that you live. It's also a place where it's a group that you feel like you're a part of. And I think another analogy I sometimes use going back and forth about whether it's the right one, but it's kind of like a college campus, but for families and multi -generational families. And the reason I hesitate is because college campus, of course, has all the educational and certificate aspects. And that's not what I'm going for. But the part that draws me to that analogy is that so many people say that going to college and living on campus is one of the best times of their life. And there's a lot of reasons for that. One is you're young, you don't have a lot of responsibilities, blah, blah, blah. But I think a really big one is you live in walking distance from all your friends and you have a shared context where you go to classes, you're working on things together, you know a lot of the same people. you bump into each other, you have these like moments of serendipity where you're just walking down the street and you see someone you know and you know you're heading to get a coffee and you say, hey, come with me. Like, let's go get coffee together. And those moments are really hard to recreate once you become an adult and go move off to a typical suburb in the US. And so trying to recreate those moments. And I think the reason I'm working on this now and why I think it's an opportunity now. is that with COVID and with remote work, really completely shifting the way that tons of people across the country work, not everybody, but most people are affected in some way, shape or form. There's suddenly this ability to rethink the way that we live. So maybe it's, you know, the most pure case is someone who used to work in an office and now they work completely remotely, that you can move anywhere.

Devon

You can be anywhere you want to be. So instead of orienting your life around where your job opportunities are, you can now choose based on what community you want to be part of. But I think that this is also even true for people who are doing hybrid work. Instead of working in the office five days a week, let's say you work in it four or three, and then the other days you work from home. Well, now suddenly it doesn't sound so crazy to live an hour, two hours away from the office, because if you're only going in a few days a week, it's not super fun to... to drive that far, take the train that far, but you can do it. And, you know, your family can live in a much nicer place. You know, I also have some qualms with that. I wish I can get into it in a second. Like I feel like there's some fear of, you know, recreating the suburban commute and bedroom communities and that sort of thing. But that's a longer conversation. Long way of saying, I think that like the aperture has opened for what's possible. And we have this opportunity to build. communities that we couldn't have built even just five, 10 years ago, not as easily. And people have been unmoored from where they live. And like one, you know, a data point here is the reason Chautauqua exists, a lot of the people who ended up going to Chautauqua were public school teachers. My grandmother was a librarian. And so she would have summers open where she would have way more flexibility than... most families do because she would be able to, you know, she didn't have any work. So she would go to Chautauqua in the summers and she would have all this free time. And a lot of people in her, in previous generations in my family were also public school teachers. And I think that's instructive because public school teachers have a different rhythm of life than most people who work. They have the summers where they have more flexibility to do something else. And I think now that more people can work remotely. more people have flexibility like that in the way that public school teachers have for forever. So that's what I'm working on. And I mean, really the reason I'm building it is because I want to live in a place like this.

Austin

That's a great way to go is build the things that you want to live in. That's kind of how we think at building culture. It's a, yeah, we build places that we would want to be and raise our kids in or visit our grandparents in or whatever. No, it's interesting. I mean, you're right. Like you're talking about a, you know, a remote community and a town's hard to build. Like it takes time, but you know, we, in this country, we take such a short view on housing, you know? So. you know, from an investor standpoint, if it's like, if it's not finished in 10 years, like, you know, and completely operational. And when you're building a town like this, I mean, it could be really be a multi -decade thing. Um, the rest of your life type of thing. And ultimately, you know, you mentioned this about Chautauqua, which I think is really cool because it's something I think about, but, um, that it started off as like tents and very kind of disposable housing. And, you know, as you know, and everyone listening knows at building closer, I talk a lot about durable housing and permanent housing. But one thing I talk about too and think about is that all societies everywhere need fast, cheap, disposable housing because that's how things grow and evolve organically and change rather than just like, let me come and impose this thing in total permanence out of nowhere, you know, nothing. And then boom, we're trying to build this thing to last a thousand years to actually be able to start with buildings that might not be the highest and best use in 20, 30, 50 years. It's actually really cool. And I think about that with industry too, like even if, I don't know, maybe 20 years, people are commuting more, but in 20 years and 2040, it's not hard to imagine or 2050 or 2060. Who knows? It's like, it's not hard to imagine that industry actually starts built, you know, these, when you build a great place, that's kind of what I'm thinking about. When you build a great place over time, if I start thinking about hundreds of years, what can actually happen and evolve around that? And then it could be its own economic hub and center. Like, easily in the long run. And I really think I think anytime we talk about urban planning and building, we should really be thinking and, you know, 100 year timelines minimum because it is like once you put something there, even if all the buildings don't last, like you're really the imprint of the urbanism is going to persist for a very, very long time. But I love that idea of like letting something evolve to.

Devon

Yeah, one of my favorite examples from Seaside, Florida is when they first got started, they didn't have a huge budget and they wanted to experiment with retail. So they put in, I'm blanking on what they're called right now, the silver food truck, not a Winnebago, man, I should know this all the time. Airstreams, airstreams. They put in a bunch of airstreams.

Austin

Oh, the I know we're talking about Oh, gosh. I know exactly what you're talking about and I can't think of the word either. Airstreams, yep.

Devon

and had retail and food sort of coming out of those. And they were thinking, this is just a test. We're not sure if this is gonna last forever. And also they put little shacks that like ignore hurricanes, like a single gust of wind will blow them over. And they're like, yeah, this is not very nice, but we're gonna have it there. We're gonna see what retail works. And then we're gonna build permanent buildings. But they were such a hit and it actually worked really well. And so they've ended up keeping a lot of those. They ended up building permanent retail as well. But you know, these airstreams, they add a lot of charm to the community and they're really easy to rotate, you know, food trucks out if things aren't working. And it ended up lasting a long time, even though that wasn't the original intention. And I think that a lot of urbanism, like the way that we've sort of approached cities over time has gotten much, much and much more towards the like, we have to plan really far in advance, everything has to be like set in stone. decide and I mean I'm experiencing this as I talk as I search for land for the community that I'm building and I talked to various towns and Planning committees and planning departments and stuff like that It's just so implicit in the way things work people. It's the water that people swim in they don't even notice it that You have to have everything decided up front like you have to have your full site plan already locked in You have to know like exactly what the uses are gonna be You got to know like what the densities are and yeah, sure. You can like get a change later, but the implicit thing is like, you're, you're going to know, you know, on month six of your project, you're going to submit your application and then you're just going to build it over the next five to 10 years. And like, that's not, I mean, coming from a software background, that is insanity to me. I mean, like with software, there's very much a focus on iteration. You get like an MVP out of like, and minimal viable product and like.

Austin

Minimum viable product, yeah.

Devon

then once it's out there, then you see like what's working with not, and maybe you completely change it and throw it away or you add to it. And it's just a very different way of working. And I think that the essence of it, there's two key things. One is it's just more expensive to tear down a building once you built it, you know, like it sticks and stones cost money. Whereas, you know, you could delete code with, you know, one press of a button. So that's one difference that's not gonna go away anytime soon. But I think another really critical difference is needing to ask for permission for every little step of the way that you ask for. And some of it makes sense. You're changing the fabric of a community that affects all the other people who live nearby. But some of it really doesn't make sense. It goes too far. And it makes it hard to learn from mistakes. It makes it hard to learn from what's going well. And as a result, it's hard for our buildings to learn.

Austin

It's yeah, gosh, you're hitting on so many good things. Like we, I actually use the same MVP, but I've made it minimum viable place, which is the same exact concept, but we had pitched, in development we were doing, we were pitching the exact same thing. Airstreams, these little eight by eight boxes, like almost like little sheds that you could pick up at Home Depot that I've seen in, in Carl's Landing, which is a TND here in Oklahoma. And it would just be, you know, they weren't used during the week, but on, you know, they're not very expensive. And then on a weekend, they would get little local merchants to book them and farmers markets to book them. for free, right? And I think eventually I might've charged a hundred bucks a booth or something like that. And it's the same thing. It's get people there. It's activating the space. It's seeing is interested in seeing what's working and then getting feedback. And I think that's so like critical. And you're right. It is very hard. It's harder in urbanism because like, like you're saying, building is, is harder to dismantle than code, but I still think there's ways to do it. Um, so that we can't, and that's going to create the best and highest like possible place because then we're actually responding to the feedback and to people, you know what I mean? And then giving more of this, less of this, shaping, and then allowing people's hands to shape because you never know when that's the other thing about kind of a ladder with these Airstream trailers and stuff too, is like someone could start something in an Airstream trailer and then what's the next and that's a success. You're right. Some of those might not work and some might go out of business or some might just always be an Airstream trailer because they never make enough money. move up, but they're really successful ones could move into a food hall. You know, you know how food halls have become more popular. They're like, cool. It's like an upgraded old mall food court, but they're actually pretty cool now. And you know, that's kind of the next iteration of that. And then the next iteration beyond that is an actual brick and mortar shop. And that's actually creating a pathway for businesses. And what I love about creating a pathway for local businesses is that's creating a pathway for local culture, you know, so that way your town looks completely different than.

Devon

Yeah.

Austin

town that I live in because it's a product of the people who live there and their own vision for the family recipe that's been passed down for generations or whatever it is, some creative take because they traveled to Pakistan and brought back something really cool. And gosh, like just how much cooler that is than, oh, yay, another Chili's.

Devon

Right. Yeah. Cause when you, when you build, you know, a whole building that is like permanent and solid from day one, you know, the, the somebody who has an idea for a business, they're not going to be able to justify that cost. They don't know if their idea works yet, but like Starbucks or Chili's sure they'll come in and you know, I've been to Starbucks and Chili's plenty of times in my life. I'm not saying that they're like the end of the world. Um, in fact, you know, I've enjoyed my time there many times, but do we want everything to be Starbucks and Chili's?

Austin

The skillet cookie at Chili's is pretty good.

Devon

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty delicious. The fajitas too, not too bad. But do we want everything to be a Chili's? Like, I certainly don't. And I think by not giving people that pathway, it doesn't, it's not great. And I think like, I understand, you know, there's, it comes back to what we were saying, where it takes so much time to plan something and get stuff approved. That you just kind of want to like get the final thing done. You just want to like get there. But if you have a little tent that's selling something, maybe it shouldn't be so much work. Maybe it could just be a small permit from the city or something like that. And I think that a lot of developers I'm seeing aren't really thinking in those terms. They're not thinking, how could I activate this space in the meantime? They're just waiting for those big approvals to happen. And yeah.

Austin

Right. It's because it's hard. You know, it takes effort and intention. Like it doesn't just happen. You know, I think that's part of the reason why it's a different. Yeah.

Devon

And it's a different skill set, I think, too. Like, I think a lot of people who are really good at, you know, like there's this giant lot in downtown Miami that it's like in a great location and it's just been empty as long as I've lived here. And just big patch of green grass that's like gated off too, so people can't even use it. And I'm pretty sure that the owner is just waiting until they can build a giant tower there. that's fine. It's good to build more housing and stuff. But then in the meantime, I'm like, couldn't you put something on this grassy piece of land? And maybe they've thought about it, maybe they haven't. If they're listening to this podcast, I'd love to talk to them about ideas. But I feel like it's even the thing is it is a different skill set to be like, okay, how do we organize a bunch of food trucks to hang out here for the next few years until we have the approvals to build the tower? That's just a different type of job than like... raising a few hundred million dollars to build the building. And people who are drawn to the latter maybe aren't really thinking super hard about the former and they're busy, they're busy people.

Austin

Right. Right. No, and it's a lot of money involved too. And you're focused on that and investors and all sorts of other things, but you're right. It is actually a lot of times it is kind of a different skillset slash type of a person. That's an interesting, cause you're right. So much of it's very relational based and you really need to know the place and the people and things like that. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. On our Townsend project, we've broken it into three phases. And to your point about like having to have everything upfront. It's we're like being forced to, and this isn't unusual. Um, it's just the way it is, but like forced to have elevations for everything, even though we won't be building some of it till like three years from now. And not only would I not rather spend the time on it right now, because we don't need to, I actually don't want to, because I don't want to lock it in because we could build the first phase and then respond to what we're seeing in the field of it and the way the bricks working or what people, whatever. There's so many. like benefits to letting something unfold. And, and we, uh, we actually pulled our third phase kind of from our plat that we're getting approved. Um, because we said like, this is part of the future development and it's part of this development where we're taking it off of approvals right now. We have it. It's like a three store commercial building and some live work units, but we're kind of scratching our heads going, is this the best possible use for this parcel? It could be, you know, and. We might do exactly what we kind of have already drawn up and that's ready if it's the case, but we've also pulled, peeled it off because we might completely redo it with like micro apartments or micro condo units. Like I saw a super cool building from Opticos design of this compound courtyard micro condos where they're like 400 square feet and you can actually buy them. And it's a beautiful building. It's not some high rise. It's like three or four stories. I'm going. Man, wouldn't that be cool in downtown Edmond to have some 500 square foot apartments that people could buy? Even a teacher could buy. Yes, it's small. But anyway, there's a lot of, I think about it kind of like a story where you hear authors talk about, they come up with a character, but as they're writing the book, the character takes on a life of its own, starts to kind of like write the story. And you're like, what would this character do as you're writing it? And I think that's really cool.

Devon

Yeah, and I think having to lock in things like that from the beginning, it really reduces people's ability to take risk because they think, well, you know, I just have to do the thing that is most likely to not kill me in three years versus like leaving room for that ability to experiment. I mean, like also, you know, the market might change too. That's like another component, right? Maybe right now you're like, yeah, we got to build a bunch of housing, admin to needs, whatever it is. This is what we need now. But in three years, like think about where we were three years ago. Things were totally different. Like we were in the middle of a pandemic, completely different situation. Who knows where we're going to be in three years. Like who are we to think that we know exactly what the future is going to hold three years from now. It's great to have a plan. Sure. Like have an idea. But all good plans change. And I feel like so much of the way that we build, we've had so much emphasis on making sure that things are safe and not affecting other people. And really just like reducing the possible for it to be have negatives that it makes it impossible to actually be creative and respond to the local conditions, which ironically ends up making those problems in the first place. Like the reason why I think a lot of our development feels so bad and people don't like it and it does negatively affect their day -to -day life is because it can't change to the local conditions, to that moment in time. And so I really feel like when we try to, Whenever you add, I've seen this also working in big companies, when you add process to try to reduce the downside risks, it also actually reduces the upside potential as well. And now you can't build anything good.

Austin

Right. You cap the ceiling. You might, you might create a floor, but you're also capping the ceiling. You're keeping everything mediocre. It's never going to be great. Might not be terrible, but.

Devon

Yeah. Like concrete examples, like one of the bigger companies that I've worked for, there was somebody accidentally sent an email to all the users in our software just by accident. And it wasn't even like that big, but you know, it was a spam email, basically. It was an error. And so the company put in place a process where you have to get like three reviews from different people before you can send a single email. which sounds like a reasonable thing to do, because it's like, you know, we don't want to bother like millions of people with an email. Yeah. But then what it also means is like any time that it might be useful to add an email to your product so that like, you know, you signed up, here's your, you know, link to log in or something. You now have to get a review from people like every single step of the way. And so people, it added a cost to adding an email to anything. and what that meant was people would not put emails into the product when it might be actually a relevant thing to do. Imagine like if every time you wanted to go grocery shopping you needed to like ask somebody like three people for approval. Well you might like not go grocery shopping as often. You might buy more preserved food so that you don't have to like ask as much approval and and it would just it would completely shift your behavior. And that's not to say that some level of oversight is not appropriate. Like there's definitely some things where we should have other people checking our work. We should make sure that people are not going crazy and like ruining the environment, things like that. I'm not a purist of like, oh, let's go all the way to anarchy. But I think we've gone too far in the like restriction of action. And it's constrained creativity of people to actually solve problems.

Austin

It's, it's real. I completely agree here. I think it's like a form of safetyism, you know, where, and even when it's not human lives, right? Sometimes you're right. Like it's, you really want strong regulation. I'm very pro certain regulations myself, like protecting the environmental source of things. But when you're so scared of like something bad happening, you know, quote unquote bad or like something not going according to plan or an email going out, which you're right. Do you want that email to go out to millions of people? No. But how often does that happen? And like you're saying, is the medicine worse than the disease? Which I think happens a lot. Like we're really, I feel like we're almost kind of like stuck society -wise, like in this form of like, I don't know, rigid safetyism. And you know, in your about section on your blog, you have the Mark Andreessen's line, like, strong opinions, weakly held. And like, I repeat that a lot because it's something I really, I just believe in. And the older I get, the more I realize it's true. It's like, we've got to be able to have conversations. And so it's so much easier to just be like, here's what I think. And like, just be honest about it and you can be confident about it. But also like, literally you're updating your thinking all the time. And that's what I like, I picked up with you very quickly is just like, you're infinitely curious, you know. And really, and you said at the beginning too, at the Stanford career, like, Hey, we're after the truth, not being right. And that's actually part of what we say, like our core values that we actually mean at building culture. We don't like put it on websites and stuff. It's for us internally, but like truth over being right, you know, where at any time we might back off a position as a company, you'd be like, you know what, we were wrong here because this new information has been in here is what we think now. And that does take a certain level of commitment and humility, but at the same time, it's also a lot more fun and less stressful and also leads to like, better outcomes and by the way, like there really is nothing better than getting to the truth of something, you know, there just isn't.

Devon

Totally. It's also, I actually feel like it can be easier once you get into that. Cause then it's like, oh, when someone tells me I'm wrong, it feels good. You're like, wow, thank you for telling me something that I didn't know. Right. Right. I mean, I think like maybe the negative is feeling is like, oh man, I was acting on the wrong information for years and I didn't know that sucks. But yeah, no, it's, it's, I think once you reframe being told that you're wrong as like, huh, maybe I am wrong. And if I am wrong, wouldn't it be better to be right?

Austin

Yeah, oh. Thanks for correcting me for being an idiot this whole time.

Austin

Yeah, it's a software update. Get the bugs out.

Devon

Like then, yeah, yeah. And I mean, obviously it's easier said than done. I'm not saying that I'm perfect at this. I definitely have an ego too, right? But I think it's something to strive for. It's helpful. And I feel like in building, it just doesn't give you space to do that. Like, you know, as I'm thinking about the site plan for one of the properties that we're looking at, I'm kind of...

Austin

All of us, yeah.

Devon

terrified that like in a few, you know, once we get it all approved in a few years, we're going to realize that we made a big mistake and we should change something, but it's so locked in that I can't change it. And we like have to just move forward and I have to sit there knowing that it's wrong. And I feel like if you build a system where it's so costly to get something approved, you then cannot change things later. And we're going to find stuff that's like, could be better 100, like you're never no matter how good of a designer you are.

Austin

100%.

Devon

You're never going to design it the right way the first time. And even if you design it the right way, where someone's like, wow, this is exactly what I wanted, their needs might change or someone else might buy it later who wants it to change. And we're just like putting things in amber. And I fear that like, I fear that I think as societies get richer, they kind of, there's more about protecting what they already have as opposed to making things even better than they already are.

Austin

Yeah.

Devon

And like, yeah, sure, society is pretty rich, but we're not rich enough. You know, like everyone should have a great life. And that's not not sure even in the US, let alone like the world more broadly. Everybody should live in a home that they're proud of. And like we're so far away from that. So for us to be already stagnant and saying, yeah, let's just leave it how it is just feels like so premature. And I feel like maybe I mean, my disposition may be that we'll never get there. And that's good. Like we should always be trying to make things better.

Austin

I agree. That's kind of part of the meaning of life to me of like, it's just, if everything was perfect, I think people would be bored out of their minds, you know, cause like we need problems to grapple with and work on and responsibility and things like that. But I love that you've got this, um, yeah. Vision of like things can be better than they are. Things can be better than they are. And why are we stopping here? And I agree with you. And I, and I think it's, uh, I think a lot of younger people feel this way, or at least like, some that I talked to where they're kind of looking, you but you're right, like, and I don't mean it's all older people or something like that, but there's something kind of like societally stuck where it's like, we've got all this great stuff. We've got all this wealth, like don't let it, don't let it go. You know, we're so afraid to risk anything that like we really are stagnant in that way. Like this is such a silly one, but like it just baffles me that the last time we went to the moon, you know, was so long ago. And like an iPhone is infinitely more powerful than what powered, you know, the first rocket to the moon. And, and we haven't been back. Like we hadn't even been into space for, we forgot. Like we've, we always think like innovation is just like, everything is onward and upward. Everything is towards progress. Everything's getting better all the time. It's like, no, not even close. And, and in fact, like it really, it's not just automatic. The economy just doesn't. do things or make things better. It's people, it's individuals, it's you being like, you know what, I'm going to go do this because I see a problem and I want to be part of the solution, which I think is a really awesome, like hopeful message for young people too. And I'm calling us both young.

Devon

Yeah, no, I think I agree. And I've been thinking a lot about where this comes from. And I think one of like, you know, Adam Smith has the whole specialization leads to more efficiency sort of thing. And I think that that was correct in so many ways. But I worry a little bit that we've gotten specialized enough where people are actually very isolated from the things that actually make their life like good. Like, I remember the first time I saw how a pineapple is grown, it blew my mind. I had never, I like, I never thought about how pineapples grew. If you haven't, if you don't know, you should look it up. Like it looks weird. Or, you know, have I ever like, I've eaten a lot of meat in my life. I've never slaughtered an animal. Not saying I want to, but like I have a lot of distance from the way that my food is produced. The same is true for the places I've lived. I remember the first time I decided to drive a nail in the wall so that I could hang up. picture on the wall, I was terrified. I was like, what if I do it wrong? And that wasn't, that's not even structural, right? That's just like literally putting a painting on the wall. And I feel like people are getting, as we get more specialized and more trained in particular things, we get farther and farther away from how, how things work, how we're living. And so we ended up both taking them more for granted, but also being scared of changing them and feeling them like it's not something that we ourselves can. can do. It's something that we have to leave to the professionals. And I don't think we should go back to the, you know, world where we're peasants and we're all making our own food and clothes and housing. But I think having pulling back a little bit and saying like, okay, I want to make sure I have a basic understanding of how these things work. Because when these things become abstractions, you just kind of assume that they're going to be there. They'll just keep like showing up at your front door if you like order Amazon enough. And I like convenience as much as anybody. And I'm really glad that there's a civil engineer who built the building I live in so that it doesn't fall on my head. That's really great. But I think having a little bit more appreciation for like, that's right, this is the basics of how a house goes together. Or I also see this in businesses. I again, in some of the bigger companies I worked for in the technology industry, they'll have like thousands of...

Devon

The biggest one I worked for had a few thousand employees. Some of them are even bigger. And I could tell that a lot of my coworkers didn't really understand how the business made money. They kind of just showed up to work and did the things they were told to do. And often it would be productive, as I'm not saying that they weren't contributing, but they didn't really understand the engine for why it made money. And so whenever they would ask for a raise or for more benefits or something like that, it was always this like, I want more of the pie. But then I think the first question is like, well, what is the pie? How do we make the pie? Like how many pieces are there even in the first place? And it's great for you to advocate for yourself and ask for more. But if you don't understand the basic machine, you can't, I think they basically assume that it was just like an infinite money printer and there would always be more money there for them to be able to like have more salary or whatever. And I think versus if you talk to people who work in a small business when it's like three people. Like I can tell you someone who owns a coffee shop, they know where the money's coming from. And like, if they know that if customers don't walk in that door and buy coffee, they are not going to make money that day. Um, and they won't be able to pay their employees. And, and so it was a bit of a rant, but basically I, I feel, I feel like getting so separated from the way things actually work. It brings some benefits like specialization and not having to think about things that are not related to like the task at hand.

Austin

I like.

Devon

but it also means that people have lost touch of like how the world actually works. And I think that that's a really dangerous place to be because when things go wrong, they can go really wrong and like no one really knows how to fix them.

Austin

I love all everything you said there, honestly. Like, uh, it does seem like we've overreached in the hyper specialization. And it's weird too, because culturally I just hear more and more the word experts, like just experts. They're just everywhere, these experts and there's experts in everything. And apparently all the time, you're just always supposed to listen to the experts and whatever field and just do what you're told. And it's like, Well, there's a lot of experts that disagree too, you know, and just all sort of, and like, if, if these experts are so siloed themselves and can't see outside their own box, um, how much of an expert are they? You know? Um, and of course there are brilliant experts out there that I listened to people that know more than me all the time. So I'm not trying to make a gent or, you just a blanket statement, but I am, it's like, I just can't believe how many. like science gets thrown around and it's like, I still don't know if coffee is good for you or bad for you. Cause there was a thousand articles that say both, you know, and then until, until Andrew Huberman came out with an episode about alcohol, I thought alcohol was, you know, you, you can find all sorts of studies like two glasses of wine a night is good for you. And then, and Andrew Huberman goes through the, uh, uh, how it works in your body. It's like, I don't know. Alcohol is just straight up terrible for you. You can drink it sometimes, but like, just know it's terrible for you. You know, like it's not good for you. And. You know, I don't mean I don't drink alcohol at all now, but it's nice to know this is not good for me. I'm not, you know, getting some antioxidants by drinking a glass of wine every night. You know, I just, the point being of like how much even official science and stuff out there that is either not true as an disagreement or is constantly changing. And, and it's really incumbent on us. I think it's bringing it back to like individuals and responsibilities. I think one's like abdicate decision -making to other people and people to tell us what's right. But really I think. People need to engage a bit more with what is true and what, you know, out there.

Devon

Totally, and I think it's about having agency and being able to take action on the world around you and make it, form it into the shape that you think is better for you, your family, your friends, your community. And as opposed to just taking it as a given that like, okay, yeah, this is like living in this giant, you know, five over one building. I don't really like it, but I guess this is just how things are. And, you know, I fixate on the built environment, but this is true, I think of. health as well or anything else. I mean, I had a striking experience a year and a half ago. I had a really bad injury, which I'm fine from now, long story, but I ended up spending a lot of time in the medical system and asking a lot of questions. It was a hand injury. So I learned about the like the basic mechanics of how my hand works so that I could get used to it again, which would be pretty nice. And I remember asking all these questions of the various like doctors and surgeons that I was talking to. And at some point they were like, they were just like, amazed by how many questions I had. They're like, why do you care so much? I'm like, well, it would be nice to use my hand again. You know? Yeah. And they're like, well, but like, don't you, they weren't trying to, they were all wonderful to talk to. But I think they were kind of like, don't you just like leave that to us? And I'm like, well, no, there's like real decisions that need to be made. And like, in the end, I had a choice of sort of three paths that I could go down of the different types of surgeries I could have to get it fixed. And each of them had pros and cons. And I think,

Austin

That's my hand.

Devon

my read was that like with a patient that didn't ask as many questions as me they would have just sort of decided for me. They would have thought well as far as we can tell you know these are her priorities in life so we're just gonna like pick this one for her. Maybe they would have gotten it right but maybe not. Like you know I remember at one point I mentioned to them that I've played guitar since I was four years old and they were like oh okay so you would really like use of your hand back you know and like By default, they probably would have thought, well, she's a programmer. So, you know, she wants to type, but she doesn't need that much fine motor skill, right? So anyway, I mean, I don't want to go too deep into that, but like, I think it's an example of just how, you know, like, for your own life, only you know all the things that you need and want in life. And so if you offload too many things to the so -called experts, they really might be experts. They really might know better than you. but they don't know your situation better than you. And so you got to like have some degree of, and I guess like, instead of ranting about it, like I guess what can we do about it? I'm not really sure. I think like the first step is people should just be more aware of the fact that they're abdicating a lot of responsibility. This is something I've been trying to do. I still don't think I'm very good at it, but like I'm trying to build more of a muscle of like, I am going to learn how to do this myself, at least. At least the basics. Maybe I'll still pay somebody else to do it or bring in an expert or whatever. But I want like, you know, if some if if like the electrical in my house isn't working, I want to at least basically understand what it is so that when I bring an electrician, you know, I have some sense of like what's going to happen and so on.

Austin

No, I, I, that's cool. Um, you know, so talking a lot about like philosophical things and I ideas. And when it comes to building, it's something that's also very real and you need lots of capital for it. Um, and so I'm curious, like in the process of this new town, um, as you're casting the vision to people, you know, and you're thinking about land, you know, where are you at? in the process is one question. And then two, what's the response that you're getting from people, the people that you've been talking to, if you've been, if you have been talking to investors or banks or whatever it is, what are people, how are people, how are you telling the story and how are people responding?

Devon

Oh, what a good question. Cause this is such a critical piece. If you don't have capital that's aligned with these sorts of projects, it's really hard to execute. And we touched on that a little bit before. Well, so for when I haven't talked to banks yet or lenders, I've been kind of operating on the expectation that I'm for the initial phases. It's just going to be based on equity, especially for the land purchase and some of the initial infrastructure. Most certainly the land purchase. probably the build out of the initial infrastructure. I think once, I'm just hesitant to take on debt because I think that ties you to a much more narrow range of possibilities, especially early on. And it also means that the clock really starts ticking. I mean, like with IRR, clock is always ticking. But if you have debt, you're saying like, I'm gonna pay this back on this time schedule and... Well, that it forces you to be more conservative and just like, okay, we're going to do it the way everyone else does it. And the way I've been talking to the equity partners about it, and we've already raised a small amount of money for sort of the initial diligence phases and pre -development. And I have investors who are interested, they're planning to purchase the land as well, to be participants in the land purchase. So right now I've only raised a very small amount of money, but I have people lined up who want to fund the land once we've bought it. And the way I've talked to them about it is really as a very long -term legacy kind of play, which doesn't resonate with everybody, but it resonates with enough people. And essentially, the play is something like, in the first five to 10 years, there's not going to be a ton of distributions. In fact, there may be none. But if we build a place that is so special that... everyone else wants to build there. And over time, the value really grows exponentially as more people come in. Like the first house that gets built in a place like a Chautauqua or like Las Catalinas or Seaside, it's not really worth anything more than anything else around it because it's the first one. There's no urbanism. There's no community. There's no brand for lack of a better word. But once you build like the hundredth one or the two hundredth, suddenly there's this little cluster. There's this like snowball effect. Devon (01:01:47.926) where you have a place, you have all these buildings that create an urban fabric and it now feels like a little downtown. You know, have people who are actually sitting out on their front porches, you know, watching kids bike by and making sure none of them are killing themselves, you know, and these things build up over time. And so basically, and I, with these projects, they tend to become much more valuable, like a decade, 15 years in, and even more beyond that. You know, I was actually just in Las Catalinas, which is in Costa Rica. And I made a point of meeting with as many people who were involved in the creation of that place as possible, including Charles Brewer, who was the town founder, some of the investors, the COO who like runs the day to day development and operations sales team, construction team design, it's a long list. I met a lot of people and from talking to them, you know, the first 10 years didn't make much money. They also had really bad timing with the financial. They started right before the great financial crisis, but they didn't make much money. But now that the community and I urge anybody who's listening to this to like look up pictures of Las Catalinas. It's the most beautiful place I've been that was built in the last 20 years. It's just spectacular. Austin (01:03:05.92) It looks like it could have been built like 400 years ago. Just from the pictures, I have not been there myself, but huge fan. Devon (01:03:09.206) It's incredible. I think I love a lot of the TND communities, but this one is in a different echelon. It's really gorgeous. And now that it's been around for, I think that, so they started in 2006, but then delayed. It's been, I think the first buildings were constructed like 12 years ago, maybe 13 or something. So it's not that old. But now it's at the point where people are just dying to start their businesses there, build homes there. And the price per square foot is like much higher because it's so, so, um, attractive long way of saying that like, the returns are coming now and they'll, it's going to keep snowballing as it becomes even more of a town. Currently they have like, I think 150 homes. Um, and, and they, they're about to open up a whole 30 acre new phase where, which is going to, uh, increase currently they only have 20 acres developed. and they're opening another 30 acres. So they have a lot more and they have a lot more space. They're going to end up developing 200 acres in the end. And so long story short, I think the returns there are going to be very back -weighted. And so when I talk to investors, I try to make it very clear, like that's what's going to happen. If Esmeralda, which is the name of my project, as that progresses, it's going to look like that. And so they need to be ready to be in it for the long haul. And in a decade or two, they're going to start getting some really serious distributions. But in year three, like they better not need their money because they're not going to get it. They're going to have a harder time getting it. Austin (01:04:41.536) Do you know if you might not know this yet, but like, are you, are these investors open to not having a preferred return or did they still like want some kind of a preferred return baked in knowing it's a longer term project? Are they kind of willing to go and be like, here's my money and then we'll do a profit split later. Or are they kind of demanding a pref? Devon (01:04:58.102) Um, we ended up having, uh, like a waterfall with a preff, but it was, they were pretty, I think like they, the, um, it was, it was a fairly favorable, favorable terms where they, they are, I think for most of their perspective, they don't see enough people trying to build this way. And they really wanted to make a project like this happen. And so I think to them having somebody who was willing to found it and. Austin (01:05:10.942) Mm -hmm. Austin (01:05:21.984) Right. Devon (01:05:25.398) That was also a scarce resource, not just the money from their perspective. So they were willing to give pretty nice terms. Austin (01:05:32.544) Right. Now I think about that too, like it is a risk, but so is investing in a software company. Now, like we talked about, you're not going to a thousand times your money on a real estate deal no matter how valuable, but you can look at the communities and the TNDs that have been built around the country or Los Catalinas, some of these outside of the country. look at the values of them in the long run, you know, 15, 20 years later, whether that's Seaside or Rosemary Beach or Serenby or Carlton Landing in Oklahoma, that's kind of just now getting to that maturity stage where prices are really, they didn't return anything to their investors for a while, but all these places they take time. But it's kind of that idea of everything good takes time, you know? And so like it does take time, but boy, when you get it right, you know, it just, it is a snowball effect. And I think I'm, or at least I'm betting on the same thing that you are. that when you present an idea, a pretty ambitious idea like you are, I mean, yours is very ambitious, I love, to people, you know, it's inspiring and it's cool. It's like someone willing to go out and try and devote their life to this. And, you know, a lot of investors, a few in a thousand dollars isn't a lot of money either, you know, where of course they want to make money, but also it's like, feels really good to do something good with your money, you know, and to actually be able to. drive by it and be very proud of something that was built later and to really, you're really helping contribute to the world. And we talked about this before, but just that idea of what you said at the beginning here, aligned capital is so important and just kind of culturally, we really don't value capital. Like it's all like evil capitalists with money, bad, they're wealthy. And it's like, they wealthy people and capital contribute to how the world is built and innovation. So. much. I'm not like defending, there's good people, there's bad people, there's everyone in between. But I also think like recognizing that and appreciating that as part of projects, it's just as important as the bricks and the sticks and the designers, like having capital, like they are critical in the success of a project. And that's a super valuable thing that I wish, you know, we could appreciate more culturally. Devon (01:07:44.566) Absolutely. And I actually think it's worse than that. I think not only do we not appreciate it, I think we actively vilify it often because if somebody just spends, let's say someone that has a few hundred million dollars, insanely rich person, they go and they buy themselves a yacht and they just cruise around the Mediterranean privately and they're not telling anyone. No one really knows. And so it's kind of hard to criticize. People don't have visibility on that. They usually aren't going to be like, articles written about how that, but if they go and try to change the world and try to make things better, it's usually very visible and people will criticize that a lot. And one of my favorite historical examples is, you the idea of a library was, I don't know if it was literally invented, but it was strongly pushed forward by Carnegie, who was, you know, one of the very wealthy people of his time. And I think I was just Googling this, he paid for, 1679 libraries over the course of 30 years. And he's a big part of why almost every town in America has a library, which is a really important cultural part of a lot of communities, huge part of support network. It's not just about books, you know, young children, families, homeless people can go to libraries. That's because like Carnegie made that a thing. That was a very weird idea in his time. No one was pushing that forward. Austin (01:08:44.256) Wow. Unbelievable. Devon (01:09:10.12) And I think that wealthy people have the potential to create that kind of change that a large number of middle -class people have a much harder time. And I think we can argue the ethics of that in terms of being in a democracy. Do you want one or two very wealthy people to be able to make such a big change? But the reality is that they do have the resources and we want things to be better. So what are we going to do? Say no to those gifts and not take it? So I think there's... Austin (01:09:37.81) Right. Devon (01:09:40.406) I think there's a lot of room for us to appreciate it more. And, you know, we could also maybe talk about the political economy and try to shift that around. But given how things are, I think it's a really good, you know, better not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I think. Austin (01:09:57.472) Right now it's a I don't know if I'll get in trouble for saying this but it's a It just strikes me like and I'm not making any comment about Jeff Bezos or Mackenzie Bezos because I have no idea who either of they are It's just an observation. I made it's like people like Jeff get vilified because he's a billionaire and then Mackenzie Scott just you see her pop in the news for giving away money to 501 C's and like that's great if that's what you want to do with your money, but it's like that person is labeled a hero for giving away money to nonprofits and a person that's, and maybe they created together. I'm just saying the person, you know, over here, cause of divorce now is that created the value of all that billions of dollars is vilified. And I'm kind of like, and once again, I'm not really critiquing anything here, but beyond saying that it almost seems like there's a misunderstanding too of like, what is the economy and what makes people's lives better? And it's, There's absolutely a place for 501c3s and nonprofits, but it's creating value, you know, that, and so like investing, investing into businesses that then go create new value can change the world more than a 501c3. And they play different roles. I think we need both. But I just find, I've always found that kind of odd that like anyone that gives away money for free is like celebrated, but anyone that. you know, is investing in businesses that then go and produce value and money, you know, not so much, which is just odd. Devon (01:11:30.774) I thought about this a lot and I think that a big part of the challenge is I think a lot of people just default have a zero sum mindset. They assume that if somebody has money, it's because they took it from somebody else and they made someone else poorer. And if you just look at quality of life over the last 1000 years in human history, that simply cannot be the case because it used to be, I don't even remember the stats, but like the amount, the percentage of your weekly wage that would have to go to like lighting a candle for like five minutes, that would be like, you know, hours of your work would just go to like being able to afford the candle. Whereas now you can like flick on lights. And my point being that like, the amount of wealth and value that we have to pull from is so much greater than it was 100 years ago, 500 years ago. And so clearly like things can get, the pie can get bigger. and who's making that pie bigger. Some of it's 501c3s for sure. But a lot of it is, most of the economy is businesses. And like some businesses do operate in a zero sum world. I'm not saying that they don't, like I can name plenty. But most of them are creating value and making all of society richer. It's making the pie bigger so that each of us can get a bigger slice. And personally, I have no issue with, if you're making the pie bigger, you should get a... Austin (01:12:43.104) Right, right. Devon (01:12:55.51) slightly bigger slice. Maybe you shouldn't cut into other people's slice, but if the pie was 10 slices and now it's 100 slices, I am very happy with you getting 40 of the slices. Like that is great. And then also if you wanna give some of those slices away to other people, that's also great. Like maybe you don't need all 40 of them, you're gonna be full off of five anyways. But I think that that zero sum mindset and the implicit belief, Austin (01:12:59.712) Right. Austin (01:13:06.976) Right. Devon (01:13:25.366) that the pie can't grow and it then leads to thinking well that's because they took it, you know, they're reducing other people's wealth. Austin (01:13:34.912) I think that's a great way to think about that. I'm going to borrow that. Because you're right. I think people often confuse money with wealth. And it's like, money is finite. Wealth is infinite, the way I think about it and the way you're saying. Because wealth can be created, and money is just the thing that used to exchange wealth. Although, when we're printing, money should be finite. More finite than it is, I should say. But no, I actually think that's such a really lovely way to say it, because it's a very hard - hopeful and optimistic view of the future that there really is so much abundance possible ahead, which is really counter to the current narrative. For whatever reason, which is really this limited, the pie is fixed, the resources were out of everything and were just screwed. And like, cause I, oh, I just saw this. This was so tragic. I think I read it over the weekend or last week, the 2024 happiness report and from the UN, I think. The US ranks 23rd. So it went down some and places like Lithuania and stuff are ahead of us. And then for people 16 over, we rank 10th, which that's pretty solid. People 30 and under, we rank 62nd. Saudi Arabia and Guatemala are ahead of us. Like, what? And I really think that is such a direct response. Well, there's so many, there's a lot of complicated things within that. But I think a lot of it is hopelessness and like people are putting that. Like why I feel hopeless about the future, whether it's the apocalyptic climate change narrative or the apocalyptic, whatever, it just kind of seems like everyone's like, it's an apocalypse coming. And don't get me wrong. I think we've got serious problems too. And I think we have to work through those problems. I don't mean things aren't going to get worse before they can get better or something, but I guess my core belief is that long -term human flourishing is really kind of. infinite and it's just a matter of deciding to, you know, people deciding to actually go do it and pursue it. And I think that starts with believing it's possible. Devon (01:15:34.516) Humans are really good at solving problems if we try. And I think like on the climate doomer as one of the strains of this thought, I think a fact that a lot of people don't know is that actually per capita fossil fuel emissions have dropped dramatically. Like since 1990, they dropped 25 % per capita. Now the population has grown, so the total amount is still grown. But like what that tells me is we're able to learn how to do just as much or more, honestly. We're doing more activities than we ever used to. We're doing more with less. And we can do that in every single domain across the economy, across the world, if we put human ingenuity to the test. And so I think many people would be surprised with that. People just assume that we're just consuming more and more all the time. And it's, I mean, like the amount of electricity in our light bulbs. I remember my parents, when I was a kid, they would say, make sure you turn off the light bulbs. The electricity is gonna get expensive. But now with modern light bulbs that have come out in my lifetime, it's like cents per day of electricity because they're so much more efficient. And we can do that in every domain. Like that's not just light bulbs. Yeah. So I'm not sure. My guess, this has now become very philosophical, but like my guess is that it might be a function of actually being a wealthy society where now we're... Austin (01:16:44.864) Right. Devon (01:17:01.308) rich enough to spend time and get in our heads and worry about things that when people were, you know, struggling more for basic survival and like food and shelter, they were, they did not have time to worry about that stuff. Maybe that's like one guess is, is maybe, you know, we, it's easier to be a doomer when you have a lot of free time to think about it and like write op -eds about, about it. Austin (01:17:27.84) That's true. No, I also think like just, I mean, this happens to every wealthy society, I think in history that I know of like that wealth has its own problems, you know, because it, it just provides its own problems, you know, that then have to be worked through. But, um, so I got a couple, oh, go ahead. Devon (01:17:43.83) Totally. And actually, one other, ask me your question that I wanted to answer about, about, uh, funding, fundraising and response and stuff is that, um, I've, I've also done a lot of what I call user interviews where I basically talk to families who'd be interested in living in a place like this. And I've had a really huge positive response and a lot of, a lot of them have been interested. They always ask me like, can I pre -buy a lot or could I pre -buy a house? And something I've been exploring, and this is still very early days, is like possibly funding some of it through pre -sales as well. Something that's held me back though, is that there's a lot of regulation around that that I don't want to get ensnarled up on. And it also varies from state to state. And I want to make sure that if I do that, it's not promising something I can't deliver and so on. But that's another angle on the fundraising for the town, which is, I've had so many people. reach out. I've barely even mentioned this project actually publicly. This is one of the most I've talked about it in public. I mentioned it in like one or two little sentences on my blog and people have found it even through there and they'll send me like a long email saying like I want to live in a place like that. How do I make this happen? Can I put down money right now? Austin (01:18:57.682) Isn't that crazy? Because nothing's there. That's how badly people want this. Like how many people are like, let me buy this thing that doesn't exist and it's not going to exist for a long time and I'll give you money now. Devon (01:19:00.598) I know. Devon (01:19:05.91) And I'm honored, I'm very honored. And I think like there's so much pent up energy, but I've been sort of thinking through how to funnel that. I don't have a plan yet exactly for how to approach that, but I think that's another option for funding projects like this, because people so desperately want these, not everybody, but you don't need everybody. Like if you get a few really passionate people, they can be sort of the pioneers, the frontiers people. who helped make it happen. So I've been thinking a lot about that as well. Austin (01:19:36.992) We on our project as well, we were also thinking a lot about pre -sales. First we're going to do reservations, like refundable reservations where, I don't know, $10 ,000 to have the right to buy. And one, it gets people kind of like bought in and then they want to like follow the project more, even though it's refundable. Like I've learned this too. Like, I mean, I think you hear that in sales too. It's not like a trick. It's just like, it's helpful and it shows the bank, Hey, there's a lot of people interested. So there's a good reason to do it. Devon (01:20:04.054) Mm -hmm. Austin (01:20:04.352) And they'll increase our guidance line, you know, to build faster because we've got these reservations. Um, I definitely like that method as well. You know, what's your, I never asked this, what, what's the inspiration behind the, uh, the name as Moralda. Devon (01:20:17.622) Oh, there's this book called Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Have you read it by any chance? I'm actually not a big one for poetry, but this one, it's like sort of a poetry dream state type of thing. And it's written from the perspective of Marco Polo and going to all of these imaginary cities in his journeys around the world. And one of the, as I was trying to think of the name for the town, there's this book has, I don't know, maybe 20. Austin (01:20:24.062) No. Devon (01:20:46.654) cities or something like that that Marco Polo goes to. So I thought, oh, I should like look there and see if there's any interesting names that I can pull on. And as soon as I saw Esmeralda, I was just like, I like that one. I think it's like very, it's like warm, but also mysterious. And like, I also, my husband is from Argentina. So sort of it's a word in Spanish and it just like really called to me. So I was like, okay, that's it. Austin (01:21:11.52) I, it's kind of like, it struck me cause it does you, there's a little bit, not in a bad way, but like a little bit of a fairy tale and like, like, uh, in that. And I like that because it's kind of, um, it's like freedom to dream or something a little bit. Like we really could build something, you know, really wonderful. And on the, uh, could you talk a little about the concept of edge Esmeralda that you kind of released recently? Cause I thought that was so cool. I think you sent me the website. Was it a website? Because I remember going through it and I was like, this is awesome. Can you talk about that? Devon (01:21:43.286) Yeah, yeah, actually I meant to mention it when we were talking about prototyping and more like temporary structures and things like that. Okay. So in, um, so, so once again, coming from the software world, uh, I'm very used to being able to build something like in a weekend, throw it out, see if like people respond and then invest more over time. And something frankly, that's like, kind of freaked me out about real estate development is that you have to raise so much money upfront and. you know, have this whole dream and this plan, and then it'll sometimes take years before it's built. And then you can see if it was a good idea, you know? And that's to me, just a crazy way of going about things. That's just not how I've ever built anything. And then also in parallel to that, you know, Esmeralda is not just a real estate project, it's also a community project. It's about bringing people together, creating a culture. And so... I figured while we are buying the land, getting the approvals, getting the infrastructure and so on, in parallel I can run various events that bring people together like a Chautauqua. And actually Chautauqua itself, I was describing the town of Chautauqua and how that history came to be, but there were also what were called traveling Chautauquas where it's kind of like a circus, but instead of a circus, it was like lecturers and people teaching and preaching. And so basically it's like a sort of a traveling ismiralda. In June, I'm hosting what I call a pop -up village. It's in a town called Healdsburg, California, about an hour north of San Francisco. And we expect that about a thousand people will come over the course of the month of June. Some will stay for the whole month. Some will come for just a day or two, some something in between. And on the weekends, we're going to have festivals and lecture, like lecture series and people who come. can give workshops on the things that they're working and building on. Like, know, Austin, if you wanted to come and talk about structural masonry, people would like love to learn about that, for example. And then during the week for the people who are there for longer periods of time, there will be sort of community events, like nightly dinners, where people will work during the day. This is not like a month long vacation, but people work during the day. And then even in the evenings, it can be like a community dinner at one of the local restaurants and we'll have like childcare. Devon (01:24:05.608) And one of our goals also is to make it really family friendly because I think so much, at least the way I've worked in the past, there's been sort of a separation between family life and creative life. And I don't think that that has to be the case. And so this Papa Village is really trying to merge those two. So you can have a creative life and a family life at the same time. So yeah, basically spending a month in a small town in Northern California in one country. And it's in... Also the region where the main region where I'm looking for land right now. Uh, and so another one of my personal goals is to build relationships with people in the region, because I think a lot of people react negatively to real estate developers, cause they'll just kind of show up and say like, okay, I'm going to start building this and, and not understand all the local context. And I think we should have a place for those people. And I actually don't think that that's like so bad, but I think if you can, it's even better to really understand the local context. and understand the problems and make the people feel like they're part of the solution. And this is something that kind of came up. So long way of saying I'm building relationships with the mayors and all the different towns. We're inviting them to come participate in this pop -up and also the chambers of commerce, local businesses, local nonprofits, the schools, and they're going to also participate in creating this event. And ultimately, my hope is that we become really good friends and that when it becomes time to actually build this town that they can be allies and say, hey, you know, we saw the month long version of this. We really want the permanent version too. This is going to be really good for our region. So that's the basic idea. Austin (01:25:51.648) It's such a cool idea. Like I really, if I did not have a two month old baby and, uh, and just very busy summer, I hope, is this something you could see doing annually? Devon (01:26:00.63) For sure. And actually I've done smaller events in the past. Like there's this annual event I've run for the last six years called Frontier Camp. And that's a hundred people and two and a half days. So much smaller scale that brings people who are building interesting things and discovering interesting science together to camp for a weekend. And then I also organized, and that originally started with no plans of making a permanent talent, but I've realized that actually, Austin (01:26:03.712) Sounds really fun. Devon (01:26:30.646) has a lot of the same threads as Chautauqua. And then I also organize these family -friendly trips where like in December, the last three Decembers, I've spent a month in Buenos Aires, which is the capital of Argentina where my husband's from, and I invite friends to come live with us for the month in Buenos Aires. And we kind of take that over. We've done one of these trips to Chautauqua. That was just for one week. We did one to lot the one I didn't last Catalina's a few weeks ago was another one There's one to Seabrook, Washington. So I I host a lot of these events Mostly for myself like I want to see my friends and spend time in wonderful places And learn from I mean from an urbanism perspective. It's also kind of work like I'm learning a lot But then also as a way to start building this community so by the time I'm kind of building the software layer while we build the hardware layer, which takes a lot longer. And then we can plug that in. Not everybody who comes on these trips or goes to the Papa Village is going to be able to move to Ezmeralda full time for whatever reason. It's probably actually a small percentage, but they might be visitors. They might be able to tell other people, oh yeah, I had this amazing experience. You would love it too. And just building a community around it so that, and I think that that's really rare. When I talk to real estate developers, most of them think about it in terms of sticks and bricks. And that's really important. You know, we want the... We want the buildings to work. But I think you can bring a lot of economic power to bear if you sort of collect a group of people ahead of time who are already excited about it. And then they just plug into the building once it exists. And it's a different way of going about things. I hope that banks see the potential in it too. But if not, I think we'll have plenty of other pathways by having collected all this energy. Austin (01:28:09.856) Totally. Austin (01:28:25.376) That's super cool. Now I can imagine being very helpful. It reminds me, I think this was a long time ago, Andres Duane said something about how Burning Man was like the most interesting urbanism in the last like 50 years. I've never been to Burning Man, but just that idea of you really can create like pop -up villages where it's really about the software, like you're saying. And what it... cool thing to experiment with and build relationships. And I really like it's something that I think my wife and I and kids could really enjoy going to in time and kind of having a special month where I'm working, but I'm working on different things, you know, interacting and, you know, combustible collisions with other, with other interesting people. It's always fun. Devon (01:29:10.454) Yeah, and I think we'll probably do another one. I mean, no promises yet. We're going to see how the first one goes. And then maybe it'll change format or location. But I'm having a lot of fun planning it. And it's been, I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be the highlight of my year. So if it's as great as I hope it can be, I think we'll do it again and again. Austin (01:29:16.008) Yeah. Austin (01:29:32.416) Well, cool. I won't be able to make this one, but I'll be following. Well, Devin, thanks so much for coming on. It's really fun to talk to you. You're kind of like, I don't know, you're just really fun to talk to and kind of an inspiration and just doing cool stuff and curious. And I look forward to staying in touch with what you're doing. And of course, wish you the very best of luck and please let me know if I can do anything. Devon (01:29:42.102) Yeah. Devon (01:29:52.982) Well, I really appreciate that. And it means a lot coming from you because for the last six, nine months or so, I keep seeing a lot of your work pop up and people kept telling me that I should connect with you. And I was like, oh man, I got to like put together a list of things to talk about. This is going to be so fun. So when you reached out and I was like, this is perfect. I was really looking forward to these conversations too. And I'm really glad that we've connected over the last few weeks. Austin (01:30:11.68) Nice! Okay, that's good timing. Austin (01:30:17.76) Cool. Okay. We'll talk to you again soon. Devon (01:30:19.574) See ya.