Innovation Professor Evaluates ZenniHome

Transcript:

Bob Worsley

Robert, it's just such a pleasure to have you here today with us. You have been truly one of the most in-depth researchers following us. We've had a fun conversation a few times, and I'm really looking forward to your input today. Would you be willing to maybe just kick us off and tell us from the many inches of paper you've described to me of homework you've done on us. Just give us a little bit of an overview of how you're feeling about what we're trying to do, what we're attempting to accomplish. We're getting really good traction. This week we'll take in about a million and a half of investor dollars, which is our biggest week since we started the round the first week of June. So we're really excited about the traction. Seems like everybody's back from summer vacations and the kids are getting back in school. And it just seems like everybody's getting back, their heads back into the business world. So that's good to feel. But Robert, why don't you just kind of take it from here and I'd love to hear your thoughts about the homework you've been doing on what we're doing.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, so thanks for having me by the way. So it's real pleasure to be with you. And I have been doing homework for years on ZenniHomes. So just to orientate people, the guests are out of my camera so you won't be able to see me. I'm the founding director of GCU's Kenya Ventures Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. So what we do here is we evaluate companies. We bring them into our facility here at Grand Canyon University. We wrap them in services to help them grow. Some of that is capital. Some of it is just intellectual sort of services, how to find product market fit and the like. And to the end of pushing companies out into our greater Phoenix marketplace, into the Arizona marketplace to drive economic development. So some of the things that we do is we look for great founders in great companies. One of which came on my radar really early, Bob was yours, ZenniHomes, and the reason we come up with an entirely new category of business, and I think this is accurate, and I think that...

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, I may have to turn off my camera if that's okay. But let me move to a better location. I think I can get some better internet, but I'll try to keep going along the way here.

 

David

Robert, really quickly, we do seem to be losing you. I don't know if there's anything you do with your internet connection on your end. We're kind of cutting in and out.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah.

 

Robert Vera

Okay, so the idea is that it's a story of a home builder. It is a, to my mind, it's just a different category. It's an advanced robotics manufacturer of durable, portable, energy efficient living structures. And you know, Bob, I see you as the Henry Ford of the modern manufactured living structures. And ZenniHomes is now, what I see is the Tesla.

 

David

That's okay.

 

David

We will miss the cool neon display behind you, but I'm sure everybody's more interested in your words. So yeah, we're happy to make some adjustments.

 

Robert Vera

of the modern, elegant, efficient living structures. And I think that's accurate. I think that when I look at it and evaluate categories in companies, I see the companies who are able to create something really different, really new as them owning categories. And I think Zenni has done that. So that's how I'd like to start with. And then I think I'd like to just, for those of you I have toured the ZenniHome, several of them in your Mesa facility, I'd like to just...really ask you Bob, you know, before we get into really the capital raise and all the other pieces, can I ask you what your three favorite features of the ZenniHomes are?

 

Bob Worsley

Sure. I think what makes us so unique is the steel, commitment to steel that allows you to have the tensile strength to stack. And the fire protection, what you just saw in La Jolla in Maui, I think that's gonna happen more and more in our world. And so making a commitment to fire resistant. structures and steel that allows you to stack is very important. The second thing I would say that I'm most proud about and interested in is multi-purpose space made possible by robotic furniture. I think the future is robotics and what that allows you to do is in a smaller space without having all the waste in construction. of single purpose space, all these bedrooms and closets and hallways in these great big McMansions that we don't use all that space. We're heating it, we're cooling it. If we can shrink ourselves down to more multipurpose, multi-use space, get away from single purpose space, we get several huge benefits that robotics, robotic furniture will give us. It gives us...the ability to buy less house, which means a cheaper price, an entry price. Right now we have an entry price of $400,000, $500,000 for any home in stick-built world. And we think we can make that half that number. And that changes the world in terms of people that are still renting, trying to save up money to get into their first home, etc. So those two things are two of my favorite things. And then my other favorite thing, Robert, that we're working on is since 1996, my wife and I have been living off-grid in a ranch that we own up in the mountains. It's a very large, it's the largest log home in Arizona, at Legacy Ranch. We're at 7,000 feet. And we have become extremely comfortable living off-grid. We have no electricity, no power, no sewer.

 

Bob Worsley

no internet, anything that is wired to our 35 acre island in the middle of the forest on the top of the Mogollon Rim. And so I've become very comfortable with the technology and I've wrestled with the technology of living off grid. And we've just come up with a new concept called PlanetWise, W-I-S-E. And that stands for building in the factory, a home, a factory built home.

 

Robert Vera

Thank you.

 

Bob Worsley

that is fully volumetric and finished and furnished and everything. But it also comes with its own water system without the need for a well or a municipal water supply, a potable water supply. The I stands for internet. And we believe in what Elon Musk is doing with Starlink and what Ukraine is fighting the war with Russia using. And so, and I've used many different poor substitutes for that. until Starlink and they are just that, poor substitutes. It has changed the world. You could do voiceover IP, you could do broadband. It's amazing what you can do. Forget telephones, telephony, wires, forget broadband coming or even Google Fiber, fiber optically coming to you, forget it. It's there now with Elon Musk. So the internet is now possible, installed in the factory, ready to go when you get on the site. S is for sewer. We're working for a very exciting company called Busa West out of Germany for 20 years. They've been doing public parks, lavatories and schools and hotels with a bioreactor combined with hyperfilters. And Robert, I personally took Ford Lab in Salt Lake City. I personally gathered a whole arm full of vessels of water with all kinds of little chemicals inside.

 

Robert Vera

Thanks for watching!

 

Bob Worsley

I took them to a Park City, Utah facility that is using BUSA West technology and coming right out of a septic system. I took water out of that unit and put it in each of the bottles. I personally carried it back to Ford Laboratory, spent $2,000 and I got drinking water, quality water out of their system. And that has been used for 20 years in Africa, all over Europe, and it's just coming to America. We just approved in Arizona last month. So we're going to ship potentially for $10,000 or so, a system where you need no sewer connection. And 98% of the water that comes into your system will be reusable. 98%. So think about the water crisis issues, Robert, that we're dealing with in Arizona. city land parcels that don't have a 100-year certified water supply, we think we can bring ZenniHome into those developments and blow away any possibility of trying to get a 100-year certified water supply by just reusing 98% of the water you take in. So water is a critically important sewer. That solves the sewer problem. And then E is electricity. And we've been living on PV, battery. inverter systems clear back since 1996. There is no reason on God's green earth that we cannot do a grid free system with solar and batteries. That is perfected and proven technology. So today, think about all the things you're paying for impact fees, connect fees to a city to do those four things and to be able to produce our homes in a factory.

 

Robert Vera

So this is why I was really interested. I didn't know about WISE before, but I assumed that was coming. I'm a, so I don't have a wrench, but I do have an Airstream. And those of you who know what an Airstream is, it's basically a home on wheels. And I have all this sort of accoutrements that you would have. I have Starlink, I have, we don't have the source system, but I do have lithium batteries. I do have all those things and I can live completely off grid. But this is why it's a different category because it's an advanced robotics manufacturing

 

Bob Worsley

prepackaged to be planet wise and not need that those connections is going to be revolutionary.

 

Robert Vera

durable, portable, energy efficient structures. That's not a manufactured home. And when we look, when we think about manufacturers homes, we think about sort of this sticks, it's really what they've taken in manufactured homes, not to be disparaging to those home manufacturers. They've basically, you know, put sticks together in a factory somewhere and then shipped it, you know, on a truck. That's what it is. It's really not any different than a traditional home. It doesn't have all the in a durable, portable, energy-efficient home. Let me tell you my three favorites. So you mentioned the robotics furniture, the auto bed. I posted that on my LinkedIn, and I got people asking me, how does that work? For those of you who don't know what the auto bed is, your living room becomes your bedroom with the press of a button. The button, literally, the bed. you press the button, the bed comes down over, you don't have to do anything, just comes down over your couch. That is really elegant and it's the safe, the space savings is just incredible. So you've got the two in one, so you don't need to have an extra bedroom because it's right there. The other one that I loved was the flex walk-in closet. I, in fact, I didn't even know it was a closet, you know, when I walked in, it just looks like shelving, but I didn't see the floor. And when I saw the flexible, stackable shelving that moves on the floor. I was, that was brilliant. I really loved that. And from a safe space savings design, it was just so efficient. And the last one you touched on is that for a long time, us in the sort of RV or travel trailer sort of community, we always, we never really had access to solar air conditioning because of the Amperage. It was a little too much to pull. So we always had a tow generator with us. We always had to have that. And and you need a 3000 Watts, but solar AC is a game changer. And with Zenni's now with its wise construction, I just think to be able to move something off grid or to even more so the ADUs or the new homes you're eligible for now, but many cities, one of the challenges I have in my backyard is I don't have access to SOAR. The SOAR is in the front. So I have to trench all the way to the front to tie into a SOAR. I really don't wanna do that, right?

 

Robert Vera

So even though you can put an additional structure on your facility, you may be able to get power and water there, but you may not be able to get SOAR. Cause most of the SOAR lines run on the street in front of your house, not in the rear of your house. But those are my, those are my sort of three favorites. But I love the fact that this is opens up an entirely new market for customers in, you can now put a ZenniHome anywhere, basically on the planet. You don't need to be tethered, which I do think we're going to be decentralized sooner than later. You don't need to be tethered to utility or to a municipal source system. One of the things I fell in love with the design of ZenniHomes, because I'm sort of a modern enthusiast, that's why I love Airstreams. I've had the old versions, I've had new ones, I love them. But really, one of the things that I really loved, Bob, was how you raised money. Can you share your story of your Crowd Fund raise? And the perks that you give with that, um, and by the way, your website is, isn't it, those of you have not gone to any homes you need to go and see, you know, the capital raise they did. What I love about it is use not only democratized home ownership, but you democratized investing in a startup company with crowd rise.

 

Bob Worsley

Thank you, Robert. I don't think anyone's ever done this before, but we're doing four concurrent offerings to raise $25 million. And let me give you the four pieces, because it is groundbreaking. And the lawyers were going, we don't know how to do this. So we had to have an expert on crowdfunding who knew how to do file a form C with the SEC and do all of that, and get us ready to allow us to raise money. Only $250. is the minimum investment. And so, and we were proud of saying, if you are a millionaire, or you're just someone who has 250 bucks you want to put into this community of ZenniHome, you pay the same price. It's exactly the same price $7.11 a share. And who does that? I mean, there's always these perks, you know, that go to bigger investors and millionaires that can that can invest in your company. So we are proud that we have almost 700 investors that have invested since the 1st of June in ZenniHome. So that crowdfunding is exciting to me and feels like it's democratized. The second piece is we have a Reg D offering, which is for people who are accredited investors, who are millionaires, and they have to invest at least $25,000. And that's just a regular reg D investor. And then we have this thing called opportunity zone. And from the very beginning, Robert, we, our seed round was raised by, uh, one of our large investors there was caliber up in Scottsdale and they, uh, had a crowd. They had a, an opportunity zone fund. And because our business is located on the Navajo nation. and in a downtown blighted area that they're trying to redevelop, we are an opportunity zone business. Zenni Home had to become an opportunity zone business, which means your projects, your headquarters, everything is in an opportunity zone that President Trump put in place for some very big tax benefits in 2017. So you can put off any gains, short-term or long-term gains. And

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, it's one of the... Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Bob. Okay.

 

Bob Worsley

Any money you invest, if you leave it invested for 10 years, you never pay income tax. And any income tax on the gain on your investment ends any home. So we now have, we've set up this opportunity zone. We've set up an opportunity zone fund now because we are an opportunity zone business, we can actually take investment from opportunity zone investors. And so that's the third piece. The fourth piece. We just kicked off two weeks ago. A lot of people wanted to do a convertible note. They wanted to lend the money to the company and then convert it at $7.11 in 18 months. And so those investors we've now given up to 10 million of our $25 million investment, we will take as a convertible note during that time period. So no one's doing four of these.

 

Robert Vera

Look, so just why that was so fascinating to me, first of all, not many people know about the QSBS, which is the qualified small business stock sort of exemption. You get as your investors have $10 million of tax free gains. Even the $250 people get $10 million of tax free gains.

 

Bob Worsley

to try to allow anyone's needs to be met that want to invest and make them part of the ZenniHome family. So thanks, Robert, for asking that question.

 

Robert Vera

The reason why I think that's important, at least for me, is that when I ask myself this question, and by the way, it's not a rhetorical one, when I ask, do I believe that we, all of us, will be paying more taxes or less taxes in the future? The answer is more taxes. So then how do we do this? How do we actually pay less taxes in the future on the gains or the winnings that we've taken risks for? And I think that that's part of it. The other piece to it is that, and this is why I'm really, I was really fascinated by this is because I am a partner in a venture capital firm. I do understand the process and what you've created. This bringing these groups together, it's the way that an early stage company should raise capital. It's the way you should do it. You should. And many, many founders say, well, I don't want to work with, you know, the 710 investors that put in $250. I think, I think that's wrong minded. I think you absolutely do want to have those. Those are your fans. Those are the ones you want involved first. So I was just, when I saw it, and if you go to the website, you'll see it right there and gives you these options to invest, but I just really love the way you democratized. investing in ZenniHomes and getting people and able to invest at a very low amount seven you know 250 dollars The the um, can you guys still I hope my internet is still going here

 

Robert Vera

That's okay. I hope it's better now. But let me ask, because Bob, that was really the idea of democratizing both home ownership and investing is really fascinating. I think it sets a model. It's a new model. When I did go to your website, I was really interested in the team you put together. Can you speak to the team that you brought together?

 

David

It was good before, it's now degraded a little bit. So I don't know if there's still another better spot. And we're making you walk laps, I apologize.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, let me make sure my camera's off.

 

Robert Vera

How's that? Is that any better?

 

Robert Vera

Okay.

 

Robert Vera

So it was really fascinating on the way that you put together the offering. I think that's great. When I went to your website, can you speak to the, like when we look at early stage companies, I always look at the team. Can you speak to the members of your team that come, that I believe had a lot of value, but can you talk to some of the key members you brought into it to launch Zenni?

 

David

we have lost you again.

 

Bob Worsley

And Robert, I think it might help if.

 

Robert, I think if you take your camera off, we might be okay with the internet you have.

 

Bob Worsley

Yeah, I think that, I think, yeah, the sound, the sound's coming through much better.

 

David

Yeah, let's try that.

 

Bob Worsley

Yes, and Robert, I would just tell you that we are actively looking for two more people that I'll describe when I finish what we have. First of all, our board is outstanding. We have the two experts, one in Utah, one in Arizona, for master planning communities and housing in general. So my partner in Utah is Stephen James.

 

20 years ago, he founded Daybreak, the largest master plan community in Utah and has won national awards for that. You can thank him, Robert, for our Scandinavian modern design for our home. We were starting with a box, a shipping container frame, shipping container shape, and he has made it look elegant as a Scandinavian architecture lover, which is minimalist and...

 

kind of boxy and it just works. It's lovely for stacking and everything. So Stephen James is a rock star and is a major shareholder in the company. Trevor Barger is the equivalent in Arizona, has done DC Ranch for DMV, Verado, Eastmark, a number of developments. He's master planning for the Fain family in Prescott, very, very knowledgeable and expert and 50 years old.

 

got years ahead of him. What's funny is Trevor just turned 50 and so did Stephen. So I've got some, what I consider young guys, but experienced young guys. Another person on our board is Mindy Rex. Mindy Rex was the co-founder of AutoVol, the last large factory, 500,000 square foot factory built in America. It was finished about three years ago. She was the co-founder there. They are still building wooden.

 

Robert Vera

Hmm.

 

Bob Worsley

wooden boxes that stack there. It was a hundred and ten million dollar factory built state-of-the-art in Nampa, Idaho. I've toured that factory now several times. The problem is the input apartment buildings that are coming in from Oakland, California area, Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, they build them in

 

Bob Worsley

And every project, Robert, you won't believe this, every project, every box is different. And so the factory, the whole idea of automating a factory is lost when you can't control your architects and they wanna do something different and everyone a different floor plan, a different cladding option, a different everything they're doing is making the factory go crazy.

 

And so she's on our board because she thinks we have solved that problem that can really allow you to build a factory with robotics that can build the same thing over and over again. And all you're doing is changing colors of cabinets, colors of floors, colors of cladding, just like a car would get different colors. But she sees us as potentially that Tesla factory that needs to be built and needs to be.

 

You have to constrain yourself and not allow the architects to go crazy. So she's on our board and awesome, Mindy Rex. We have a couple of people, myself and Connie, Karis, who is our Pricewaterhouse, she was a partner, Pricewaterhouse, she does our audit committee stuff, very, very sharp. She's also really into ESG and is certified in that and so adds to our board some serious

 

level of environmental concerns in what we're building when we build homes and put them out in the wild in America. On the executive team, Trevor is helping us. He's not only serving us on our board, but he's also working for us as our chief revenue officer to fill our pipeline with plenty of orders, which we have plenty of orders, plenty of market demand for this product.

 

both from developers but also from governments. Navajo Nation wants a thousand of our units. And then we have the ADU market that wants one of these in the backyard or wants to figure out a single family home kind of approach that's more rambler style and less stacked like the apartments would want, apartment owners, developers are looking for.

 

Bob Worsley

We also have found some people on our team that have fantastic experience. David, for example, here has been working in San Francisco with Instawork and some high tech education organizations and understands how social media should work in today's day and age. And he redid our website two months ago and he joined us to be much more.

 

elegant and useful for mobile. We're starting to build a social media presence, including doing these webinars, working with the Wefunder people on the crowdfunding campaign. That's all cutting edge kind of millennial thinking that we're excited to have on the team. In Page, the thing we're very excited about there is we had a thousand people that were skilled craftsmen, blue collar workers.

 

that were iron workers and we're still building. So I mean, how good can that be? Pipe fitters, electricians, carpenters, that were let go from shutting down the largest coal plant west of the Mississippi. And those workers have been unemployed for the last two years. And we are bringing them back to work. We have 125 people there now and have 300 more that want to come to work.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah.

 

Bob Worsley

application waiting for us to call them up to come to work. So I think the team in Page is extremely gifted as it relates to working around steel, welding, and plumbing, electrical, et cetera, from a blue collar perspective. And when I was looking for our first factory, I didn't want to compete with everybody else in town.

 

Robert Vera

I just, it's a, that is a game changer, I think, for Arizona to have it in Page Arizona. Can you speak to sort of the number of new employment opportunities you created in just Page alone, just at this point? Can you talk to, speak to that? Because this is, when we look to partner with companies here at Grand Canyon University, our center, we look to see, okay, how can this organization help to drive economic development in a specific region? Especially places that are lack.

 

Bob Worsley

So we went to Page, a little bit more of an isolated location, what people might think is isolated. But I knew there was 1,000 really high-skilled people there waiting for work. And it's worked out perfectly in that regard. Our steel manufacturing people that make our chassis is three miles away, a great company that we've used in our power business for 25 years, Page Steel. They're the largest manufacturer of billboards in the West.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, I'm sorry. Let me switch to another internet. Hold on one second.

 

Bob Worsley

and they built the coal plant, they built the dam. So having that manufacturing facility there for steel has been invaluable as well. I may have missed something, Robert, did you have a question?

 

Bob Worsley

We're not getting all of your, we're getting about every 10th word, Robert.

 

David

We lost you again.

 

Bob Worsley

I think I understood what he was asking. I'll just go ahead and answer that question. We've hired 125 people in Page. It's been a game changer, one of the largest employers in town now, and again, 300 people waiting to come to work for us. To take an indigenous population that's been really not thrived, 50% unemployment, 90% of the Navajos on the Navajo Nation live in.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, I mean, it's just that is a game changer, I think, for the community. I've been thinking about a lot about this. I call it the ZenniHomes perfect storm. And I've identified these 12 factors that I think are really important to speak about. Can we can we talk about what these what these 12 factors are that are driving this?

 

Bob Worsley

condemned homes that would not meet today's code to live in. 90% of the 45,000 homes are not livable. And if you drive through the reservation, you can see that. And so helping those people out, they need a job, they need good income to be able to replace those jobs that are just impossible and terrible. They were HUD home quality that

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, let me, let me, let me, I apologize.

 

Okay, I apologize guys. Let me switch to another internet provider here. We've got a lot going on in our facility here. So it's just, let me switch to another one. And, but can you hear me now?

 

Bob Worsley

didn't even last 20 years in that environment. And so they're excited about having a home that might last 50 to 100 years. This built from steel and not wood. So I think we're doing a lot of great good there, Robert, in Page and on the Navajo Nation in both employment and potentially providing them with some much better housing stock than what they've been provided before.

 

Robert Vera

Is this any better?

 

Robert Vera

the idea of sign names and the un-intentioned. That one big ones.

 

Bob Worsley

Yes.

 

Bob Worsley

Robert, we want to hear the 12.

 

Bob Worsley

Robert, we want to hear the 12 and we're only getting about every other word.

 

Bob Worsley

Ha ha ha.

 

Bob Worsley

Yes, yes we can. Yes.

 

Bob Worsley

I think. If you're talking now, we're not hearing you.

 

Robert Vera

The 2% mortgages has creating a housing shortage. And now people have to figure out what am I going to do? Where am I going to live? That's one of the ones that I think is, one of the primary ones is driving this perfect storm. Can you speak to that?

 

Bob Worsley

Yes, I think getting mortgage rates down to 2% was a fantastic environment. And it was hiding some underlying serious problems in the construction industry, including rapidly rising labor rates and materials costs. But when you can buy a home at 2% interest rate, you're able to kind of ignore

 

what was happening in the real cost of building homes, stick building homes. And now people in that 2% mortgage world are stuck in those homes and maybe need to upgrade, maybe their family's growing, and they don't wanna go to a 7.5% mortgage. I mean, it's a massive increase in mortgage payment to go from 2% to 7.5%. As most people on the call know, most of the...

 

mortgage payment in the early years of your 30-year mortgage is interest. And to have it double and triple is not insignificant.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, the other sort of others, I'll just go through them as I see them. The other ones that I think are fairly significant to talk about is that I call it generation priced out. The purchase price plus high interest rates plus student debt, you know, people can't afford a home yet, a home anymore. Then this third one is an aging population. We have a need for senior homes or seniors need homes. I think that's a, it's going to be a bigger one.

 

Coupled with the fact we have adult children now living at home because they can't afford they're the generation that got priced out They can't afford a new home then this workplace mobility and these digital nomads They they need flexible housing which again, it's driving this I get the problem that Zenni solves By the way, is I think it's I think it's meeting it's solving the US in global housing crisis, right? and then I think you touched on this before the off-grid movement, I think there's a

 

a movement to go off grid and come combined with that, the tiny home trend, less is more. And then we have, you know, this, this other factor with city codes changing allowed in for AUDs. And then a big one is that, look, we need 600 last count, I think was 650,000 new trades construction workers. We just don't have the people to build homes anymore the way we used to. And then there's this, there's this other one that I think is, is really

 

well communicated. The tempo and frequency of natural disasters destroying entire communities that need to be rapidly rebuilt like Maui and other places, that's happening more and more frequently. So I think that's really important that speaks to the total addressable market of this. Then I think there's a generation of people that they want experiences, this generation experience versus, you know, my generation was generation mortgage. These are people who

 

the generation experience, they don't want to be home poor. And then this is really, I think the last one is this Airbnb property owners have purchased available housing and inventories in places around the globe. From Lisbon, Portugal, to places like Glendale, Arizona, and Airbnb real estate is now an asset class. Many apartments and homes have essentially become hotels. And that's really driving, I see this trend of driving this demand for these affordable, portable.

 

Robert Vera

energy efficient, low maintenance, low cost homes. And I actually don't see this going away. And in fact, I think that when we look at the market, it's a $2 trillion market. I actually believe that's undervalued. And here's why. If you add in the cost of rebuilding from natural disasters, if you add in all those other costs, you're gonna see that the total address of market is probably double that $2 trillion number.

 

Here's my question, given all of that, this perfect storm, what segment of the market do you think Zenni serves best at this point?

 

Bob Worsley

Robert, people on the call probably don't know that for over a decade I have been a pro-immigration person because I was working in a congregation of all Spanish speakers and was here for the SB 1070 fiasco in Arizona where we chased out really literally all of our workforce, our construction workforce, because many of them came without documents.

 

and employers were happy to employ someone to do the job because the kids of our citizen population were not willing to go swing a hammer in 120 degrees. And so the whole construction industry in Arizona was based on this immigrant community that we basically chased out in 2010. The economy collapsed, the housing market collapsed, and then we chased everybody out. Well, they're not here now. And those that...

 

did have papers have aged a bit, at least a decade, 15 years. And as we know in the workplace, if you stick around for 15 or 20 years, you're a supervisor. You're not an entry-level laborer. And so I think seriously, we have not recognized the impact of cutting on immigration and its impact on the cost of construction and the labor pool necessary to build

 

on site is just it's impossible to satisfy today. So I agree with you. These 10, these 12 perfect storm issues are creating an opportunity I think for single family homes big time. And I think the other big opportunity is for apartment buildings. And during COVID, everything went up in cost, including rent everywhere.

 

And you just have for these other generation priced out, aging population, adult children living at home, the unintentional consequences of mortgage rates. Basically, everybody had to start paying way more for rent, not to mention if they could afford to leave home and buy a home because interest rates are higher, et cetera. So what's actually happening,

 

Bob Worsley

and I don't see it on your list here, but it's happening, is the homelessness that's occurring. 23% more in Phoenix, Arizona than last year. Salt Lake City, 24% more. San Francisco, 25% more. And we go, well, what's happening? We have more drug addiction, more mentally ill people, blah, blah. No, we do not. The issue is the bottom rung in the economic ladder just collapsed, and it collapsed for all these reasons you just talked about.

 

student debt, mortgage rates going up, no workers, immigration stops, so now we have no one here coming to America who's willing to work at these entry-level jobs. And so what's happened is the bottom rung of the ladder broke off and we just threw 25% onto every city in America of homeless, unhoused, unsheltered population. And that's a serious problem we're not addressing as well.

 

and I'm just starting to work on. I've been called about getting 2,200 homes to Maui for the fire, that's climate change, rising sea levels. People don't wanna recognize in La Jolla and Hawaii. You know what the real problem is? They're gonna do what they did in Hilo when they had the big tsunami in the 1960s. They're gonna take a thousand feet of oceanfront property in La Jolla that had the front street there, all the...

 

big Catholic Church and all the cool commercial stuff, that's gonna never be built on because they're counting on a three and a half foot rise in ocean water in the next 30 years. They're also going to put all the utilities underground, they want to re-grid the city, so all the homes that got burned down are gonna have to go through takings and right-of-way expansions, etc. That city, that area will not have homes on it again.

 

for five years because they got a remaster plan and those people are gonna have to go find a place to live. So you're right. All these factors are combining and this is gonna get worse before it gets better. I don't know what the hurricane aftermath is in Northern Florida panhandle from yesterday, but there's an impact. I heard they were expecting storm searches of 12 to 15 feet. That wipes out.

 

Bob Worsley

so much housing when that happens on the coast with just a hurricane. So yes, I think there'll be apartments and single-family homes and ADUs that will all surge in these conditions.

 

Bob Worsley

Are you there, Robert?

 

Bob Worsley

David, can you hear us? Are we still here?

 

David

I can hear you. I think we lost Robert and he's still on the screen. Now we can.

 

Robert Vera

I'm sorry, David, can you guys hear me? Can you still hear me? So this is so important that I think that we need to make, I think there needs to be change in the way we think about housing and the way we think about development. And that brings me to this question of, what can you speak to, I know that Caliber is doing a, the Opportunity Zone developer is doing a project with Zini Homes in Mesa, Arizona.

 

Bob Worsley

Now we can, yes, yes.

 

Robert Vera

Can you speak to that? Can you do the math for me versus a ZenniHome development versus a traditional cost, both the cost of the product and the opportunity cost with the availability of rapid production? Can you, what I wanna get at here is that why wouldn't a developer put in their consideration set, ZenniHome as their product of choice for development? You can stack them, you can do all these things, but can you do the math for us just about

 

You know, as a developer, you know, I can't find labor. Um, there's an escalating cost of, um, of, of products out there. Um, you know, the delay, we have a housing crisis, so obviously I want to get housing in the marketplace now, but can you do the cost for us from a development from a, in the.

 

Bob Worsley

Yeah, yes, Robert. So today, our objective is to be 30% cheaper than Stick Frame site built. 30% cheaper is our goal and 50% faster, half the time. I think we'll achieve the 50% faster before we'll achieve the 30% cheaper.

 

And so many developers are just telling me right now, if you can just get me at the same cost and do it in half the time, and I know I don't have to go round up trades that don't exist, I'm happy to do it with you now. But we're working on the supply chain, our BOM, our bill of materials. And so today I would say count on parity in cost, but we want to be 30% cheaper, and I think we'll get there.

 

and will always be 50% faster. Today on the 29 West project, they're working on foundations. We just had to demo a building and fill in a basement. It's gotta be engineer field, et cetera. And so what's happening there is that we are building units in page in our factory. Imagine toilets and tile and kitchen cabinets, they're being put into units today.

 

and the foundations haven't even started in Mesa. So 180 boxes will be finished in factory in December. And at that time, they'll be out of the ground with concrete cured podium ready for us to set boxes. So think about that. I mean, we'll set 180 boxes in about three weeks on that podium. And literally it's just buttoned up.

 

corridors, stairways, et cetera, and people can move in because the units have all their furniture installed inside. The bathrooms are done, the kitchens are done. There's no trades you're looking for. The trades were in the factory. So I think the 50% time savings, Robert, is de facto today. But the 30% savings we want to see

 

Bob Worsley

is still to be developed and I think at this point, plan on parity in cost with the understanding that we're driving toward 30% less cost.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, I mean, it's a significant if you're a developer now, I think it's going to be in your consideration set. I think you have to say, okay, how do I do this in control cost and how do I get products, high quality product to the marketplace as quickly as possible. And Xanny Homes has got to be in your consideration set. I've also been thinking about, and I want to get to the off-grid foot point, but I want to, I was also thinking about hospitality. So have you have, has any hospitality or hotels been in touch with you? Because a Xanny unit looks like a perfect hotel suite.

 

and you can have a hotel that has, now they could put suites potentially in a footprint that is off grid. Have you gotten any of those inquiries?

 

Bob Worsley

Yes, and we're working with another partner with a new Marriott product that will definitely be part of our future. But in the meantime, what's happened with Airbnb is it's actually become hospitality, a new category of hospitality. And so we're working very closely with the founder of a very large, funded by Bain Capital. The founder is joining our board.

 

and we're working with him extensively. The last couple of weeks, I've been with him hours and hours, and we feel that Zenni will be a perfect fit for their stock of new Airbnb products, which is becoming a new form of hospitality. There will be the company's today called Build to Stay, but is being rebranded. It's raised 300 million with Bain Capital, and it's based in Arizona.

 

another category buster that's been started by this gentleman in Arizona after Treehouse and Offerpad and Inspiration Homes. So basically, they are very interested because to build today is not economic. It's not in the cards from a time perspective.

 

He told me they just walked on 100 home subdivision, not because of cost, but because of the time it would take to build 100 homes. The GCs don't have the traits, they don't have the subs. And so we aren't building 100 unit subdivision because of cost anymore, we're doing it because of time. And there's not personnel to actually build 100 homes. So that project has gone on hold. It's...

 

It's insanity. So yes, we'll be in hotels, in hospitality.

 

Robert Vera

So this is the point, right? So this housing crisis, I think that the problem, I think great entrepreneurs solve a problem, brilliant entrepreneurs solve a massive problem. And I think this is the problem that Zenni is solving, right? This US and global housing crisis. And that's why I was really so interested in sort of the process that the factory, the product itself and how fast it can be delivered. And also it's not just the product.

 

the box, the home, it's the appliances. One of the things I've noticed is, and you've spoken to this a little bit, but there's this efficiency now that has come, that is now, I think, available. Can you speak to how solar and battery technology has influenced the development of a new breed of energy efficient appliances? And these were not available.

 

in the last like 36 months, but they're now starting to come out. Can you speak to that?

 

Bob Worsley

Yes. It was kind of funny. We built the two models in Mesa and we couldn't get the utility. It's a downtown small utility of 19,000 customers. We just couldn't get an agreement on connecting this modern solar battery inverter home. They had never done it before. And 19,000 customers, no one had ever done this before. We want to be grid tied.

 

We want net metering. They'd never done it before. So really for five months, six months, we didn't have any grid power. And yet every day, hundreds and hundreds of people were coming and touring our two models. And it was perfectly comfortable inside. The air conditioning was running. Very comfortable, the lights were working, et cetera, et cetera. So what's happening, and I think the next big iteration, Robert, is

 

We started here, but three years ago, it didn't seem like we were gonna have appliances. But the big opportunity, Robert, in my opinion, is all DC. A completely DC home, direct current. Your phones are direct current, your computers are direct current, your panels on the roof are direct current, the batteries are direct current. And this whole fight between Tesla and Edison, that happened.

 

over 100 years ago, that battle is going to be waged again. And I think we're gonna win with DC this time. And what's gonna happen is there's a 15% gain to not convert from DC to AC. That's across the board. If we told everybody you could be 15% more energy efficient in your home, if you just use DC appliances and we don't take the sun.

 

that makes DC power in panels and the battery that stores it in DC. We don't have to go through an inverter to put a sine wave into the power and we can send it directly into the home with a DC, uh, current straight DC current. And it goes right into your washing machine, your, uh, your everything you have in your home, your appliances. And oh, by the way, the little, the little box that all of your Apple devices attaches to is putting

 

Bob Worsley

a sine wave is taking the sine wave away and so that your phone can get DC power. And the brick you use to do that, if you fill it, that heat, that's your 15% loss. Every time you go from DC to AC, AC to DC, you're losing 15% in heat loss, inefficiency. So I think big picture, Robert, that's the future. Everything will be DC, air conditioners, everything.

 

and that will make things so much more efficient in the home.

 

Robert Vera

And also less dangerous. But that brings me to this point of I was thinking about sending homes as a power plant, right? So when there is a natural disaster with these stackable batteries now, I think there's a seven kilowatt from Tesla has one. But it becomes a charging station, doesn't it? The home becomes a charging station. If for all the other E.

 

Bob Worsley

Yes.

 

Bob Worsley

It's not just that, I'm-

 

Go ahead.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, but it's the charging station for everything else that's electronic. And I mean, it's the most efficient way you capture the... By the way, the largest reactor in the world is the sun. We can now capture that energy in panels. And now we have efficiency in battery technology, which I think is going to get much better. And we don't have to put in alternating current in.

 

to actually convert, so you're right. We don't lose, we don't have to invert anything, so we're not losing that power. And you come direct with stored battery power that's rechargeable. If there is ever a flood, whatever it is, I mean, Zenni homes are metal structures, right? So you will, the likelihood of you having to wait for, if you're in a Zenni home, the likelihood of you having to wait for the power company to turn on your electricity.

 

in a natural disaster without a Zenni home is pretty good. But with a ZenniHome, I think if you're a direct current, like you don't lose anything. It's probably, and it's safer than alternative current. But I didn't wanna cut you off with it, but I said that I was thinking that ZenniHomes becomes a power plant. It's decentralized powered in a power plant. And I think that's really important because if we have to charge something, now we just plug into our home. We don't need the utility.

 

Bob Worsley

Yes, and if you look at the lawsuits flying in Hawaii on Maui, the lawsuits are flying between the county of Maui and the utility of Maui because who caused the fire and the utility says well I couldn't de-energize the lines that had fallen because then we would have de-energized all the downstream users including

 

Fire department and water that's needed to fight the fire so you'd look at this whole antiquated system of wires and Centralized utilities and I'm saying all of it sewer water power, etc The sooner we can become decentralized The sooner you basically have cell phone Cell-phoned the landline you just got rid of it

 

And if you go to Africa today, no one's putting in telephone lines. No one's putting phone jacks in their phone, in their homes. How many people today have a landline even at their home that was wired for it? And so the sooner we can get decentralized and have our own power plant in our own home, we don't have the problem that Maui just had. And if there's power lines down somewhere, who gives a crap? You know, I don't need it. I'm just fine.

 

I'm living in air conditioning. I'm able to do everything I need to do. And the other thing I wanted to mention that I think people are overlooking in a big way. I'm sitting here right this minute with five minutes remaining in Tucson, Arizona at a supercharger. My car has just put in, you know, something like 300 kilowatt hours of power into my battery. This battery that I'm driving to my home,

 

If my calendar could tell the world that I'm out of town for the next two weeks, this battery in this car can be a microgrid battery to stabilize the entire neighborhood. When we get into everybody's centralized plant is their own home and they're driving an electric car with a massive battery in it, wait till you see the cyber trucks battery. I mean, these are massive.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah.

 

Robert Vera

Mm-hmm.

 

Bob Worsley

lithium ion batteries setting in our garages. Way bigger than the Tesla Powerwall battery, the setting on the wall of your garage if you've spent that money. Now you've got solar power feeding the batteries. You've got intelligence where battery management systems are tied to all your other smart home appliances. It's tied to your phone. And you can see on your calendar that you're not gonna need your car for the next two days.

 

The car gets brought into the micro grid and helps manage your whole neighborhood, not to mention your own home, so that you're maybe buying power. Let's just say you take some power in from the California grid when there's a duck curb problem and they're giving power away, literally giving power away. Or when a nuclear plant, Poliverty is running in the middle of the night and there's no load, guess what?

 

pennies. And so if you can bring that in, charge up your car, charge up your, your batteries at your home, if you've got those as well. And guess what? During peak period, you are making dough. You're either selling your power to your neighbors or you're taking care of your own needs and not paying the utility, the peak power rates that they want. And so it's just, I think between electric cars, an electric home, and

 

maybe someday getting to all DC in the home. It's, baby, it's a whole new ball game, decentralized. What happened in Hawaii won't happen to you. It's after Hurricane and tornado, rolling power outages. Who cares? I bought my home from Zenni Home. It's working. Everything's cool. I don't care what everybody relying on the rest of the grid is dealing with. I'm covered. I'm safe. I'm totally independent.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, it's going to happen. It's happening already. And by the way, the Paradise Fire in California and other fires, we now know the cause was PG&E. Their power lines hit trees. So we now know that that's those, you know, that those catastrophic events are typically caused by power companies that had lines that, you know, weren't trees weren't cut away.

 

Bob Worsley

Yes.

 

Robert Vera

and they put everybody at risk. So the idea now is that, okay, do we really need this? And the fact is no, which brings up this other idea that I think that the global marketplace is probably more attractive for ZenniHomes than in the United States. They don't have any of the infrastructure or the resistance to the antiquated infrastructure that the United States does. There's a defense of the power grid here. It's a rational defense, but there's still a defense of it, right? There's not this...

 

Like when I say that, there's not a plan that we have here in the United States at any state to decentralize the grid. There's not a plan. The plan for the utility companies is to keep the grid in place. It's not to make it, you know, more efficient with DC or more efficient. The plan is to keep it in place, dangerous as it may be at risk, as it may be for all sorts of things, cyber hacking, all the other things, right. But there's not a plan to decentralize. However, across the globe, they don't have.

 

They're not wedded to a utility system with power lines and the like. Have you explored, I know it's probably difficult to think about global marketplaces now at this stage, but have you explored what developing worlds may, when they may need it and what product would they need in terms of a ZenniHome? And I'm talking about places like Africa, Central America and the like that...

 

they don't have efficient grid systems. Even some places in Mexico that just don't have, there's rolling brownouts, but what is the opportunity, the global marketplace for ZenniHomes? What does that look like? And how would you deliver to those marketplaces?

 

Bob Worsley

Well, let's start with delivery, Robert. We are built to ship. Our homes, I mean, think of the old days moving homes. There used to be companies used to come and move these homes, these massive efforts to raise power lines and move homes. We were designed and built in a factory to be shipped. And once it's installed, it can be moved very easily. So first and foremost, our volumetric modules are built to ship. Ship on ship, ship on trains,

 

on trucks. Imagine going coast to coast which typically runs about $7,500 per container, 40 foot container. Just hopping on the train from San Francisco to New York for $7,500. So because you're a shipping container dimension, your home is not some oddball. If you listen to all the other home manufacturing people,

 

Oh, you should be building 12 feet wide. You could go down the road with a permit, 12 up to 16 feet wide. Well, guess what? A train can't put you on at 12 feet wide. They can't even put you on at nine feet wide. They would run into each other in a tunnel. And so you've just lost the ability to go anything other than truck when you start to try to get bigger and more greedy with the dimensions of your modules coming out of your factory. So we think staying pure to...

 

to eight feet wide is really important to get them to these third world countries. The other thing that's gonna be a challenge is I had the queen of the Congo come up to me in Monaco when I gave this speech over there last year. And she came up, she said, I need 10,000 units for farmers in Congo. I said, okay, great. I mean, let's talk about that. What does that mean? And she said, well, but they can't cost more than $10,000. Am I still framed?

 

is $10,000, my chassis. And so what's gonna have to happen is we're gonna have to figure out in these developing worlds, can they afford a $100,000 home? And if not, what do we have to engineer to accomplish something there? And I think to be very realistic, even I've been approached by Ukraine, the Ukrainian NATO countries looking to rebuild after Russia's.

 

Bob Worsley

done with their excursion into Ukraine, there's hundreds of thousands of homes that have been blown up and they need houses. Our designers, our draftsmen are in Ukraine. We pay every week, we pay people in Ukraine. So we are absolutely interested and want to help in these other safe areas.

 

but we have to figure out how to get costs to make sense. Our factory, our next factory 2.0 that we will have after the page first factory that's very manual, it can go anywhere and we know what it's gonna cost to go anywhere. So we could build these homes, five, six, 7,000 per factory per year in other places. Labor costs.

 

will be a savings in many of these countries, but it still doesn't get us down to $10,000 homes. And so we're gonna have to rethink materials to be able to really help out the farmers in the Congo. But it sure beats going there and building stick frame, for sure. So we will address the global marketplace. We can put our facility anywhere, our manufacturing facilities anywhere.

 

We're going to figure things out here in an expensive market. And then hopefully in our bill of materials, our BOM, start driving those costs down and driving our labor down and become more cost effective for third world countries.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, I mean, I thought about like, when I was thinking about the manufacturing facility, I have not been up there, but I've seen pictures and I thought about, you know, there, there is back in World War II and even now there's factory ships that actually produce on ships to deliver, to, to offset the cost of actually, you know, moving that across the globe. They actually put a fact, there's a factory ship. Have you ever thought about the potential for a factory ship with another manufacturer? Like could a Tesla.

 

um solar panel manufacturer be co-located on a factory ship with as any home manufacturer and deploy that um production facility to um you know sub-saharan africa or asia or parts across the globe to create a product you know with the same footprint the eight foot footprint but with different materials for that region because what you would potentially do is you still have the box but um there'd be costs for the actual facility the manufacturing

 

It would preclude the need to actually put them on ships anyway. You're just bringing the boat there, right? Have you ever considered a factory ship?

 

Bob Worsley

I love the idea, David, I mean, Robert, and it's really thinking ahead. We haven't spent a lot of time on that, but our new factory will be 300,000 square feet. 300,000 square feet is not that big for a ship. And so I think that could absolutely be done. I don't know what other lines and what other components such as panels, solar panels and other things.

 

how much that you would need to load up as you know Supply chain items as you go there or be resupplied by ships that bring in batteries solar panels etc And how much of that could actually be also co located in your factory on the ship. I think it's a great idea and It's absolutely doable

 

Robert Vera

I know our time is running short here. I wanna sort of close with a couple, just a couple of questions. In the terms of like just ZenniHomes right now, that the market to me seems that it's gotta be developers because they're the ones that we have a crisis. I mean, there's no question about it, but developers are the ones that have the resources, have the dirt, the footprint they purchased.

 

They're the ones that seem like the most likely marketplace right now to purchase large quantity and put developments on the ground. It is that really the, the emphasis, the focus at this point to, to work with developers to have them put ZenniHomes in their consideration set.

 

Bob Worsley

Yes, and it's very wise of you to point that out, Robert. The last three years I've been on the phone, sometimes five, six hours a day, not running the business, but just talking to developers, and also talking to people who want an ADU. And guess what? The amount of time to sell a developer and to sell a person to put a casita back by their pool isn't that different. And the developers have in-house expertise for permitting entitlements and all that. Homeowners don't. And...

 

We think those like Boxable and others who are focusing on the ADU market are going to really struggle because the cost to get one unit approved in California is not insignificant. And it's hard to get the homeowner educated, et cetera. So we'll do that, but our core business and the calls that have come in of the 40,000 units we have in soft order backlog, 75% are developers.

 

and you're selling 100, 200. I have a winery here in Elgin, Arizona. He wants 10 units. Well, it's the same work to sell him on 10 units as it is to sell him on one unit. And he's more sophisticated. He's got cash. He's paying cash for the units. And so I think there will be people in our space will eventually find out that the big opportunity is with the big developers, to your point.

 

it is where the money is going to be.

 

Robert Vera

And that actually starts to make a dent in the crisis. The other piece that I've noticed in terms of, for developers, one of the trends I've seen, and it's come up for the last maybe three to four years now, is that I've seen single family rental units. And so you can actually rent a single family home now. You don't have to purchase it. I think that's a consequence of the perfect storm that we're seeing. When I drive around and look at these things, I'm fascinated with sort of,

 

these new categories of products and what's being done and what's being created. When I look where there's new single family rental facilities or rental homes in Arizona, they are almost directly across the street from apartment buildings. And what it occurred to me is that people living in apartment buildings don't wanna be in apartments anymore. They're renting, but they just wanna rent a home. They can't have access to a home, but they're renting these...

 

these single family homes that become available. And they're right across the street from the, the actual single family home, the developers have intentionally located those properties across the street or very nearby those rental places. So my sense is that there's probably developers who say, wow, this is a really great opportunity. There's a...

 

rental facility right there, I bet, you know, many of those people have grown out of that apartment and would like to have a single family home unit, which to my mind, as Zenni Home is a single family home unit. You get everything in an 800 square foot that you would get in a 1500 and potentially a 2000 square foot unit. So I believe that that's a that's an interesting market. And I do think that at some point, developers to get product to market fast, they're going

 

think and do differently than they've done in the past. So that's it. Now I'd like to ask this one last question then close. When will you really put, you know, ramp up manufacturing production here? When will we see hundreds of units a day going out the door? When do you think that will happen?

 

Bob Worsley

Well, we now know that our current facility that Tesla's engineers that we hired three years ago told us, build your first factory manually. Don't do what we did in Fremont, which is fully automated, but we didn't know what we were doing yet. And then you saw the tents outside and all that. Well, Tesla got it figured out. And now, trust me, their Austin facility is awesome. Berlin's awesome. Shanghai's world-class. And so you start.

 

manually, you work out the constructability issues, the plan modification issues, you really get your crap together and make sure that your Cybertruck is designed properly before you and he's what now building 100, 200 and working the kinks out of those he said last week, Elon did. So I think you start small, you do it manually, you make sure it's working and that's where we are today. We'll get to a thousand units a year out of this facility.

 

the next facility will be 7,000 units per facility. And that's still only building 24, 25 homes a day in a factory. And they're throwing out, Shanghai's throwing out a new unit every 30 seconds. And so the automated EV factories today are showing us how to go fast and how to have high quality and low cost. And so we're gonna...

 

Robert Vera

Mm-hmm.

 

Bob Worsley

partner up with them. I told you there's two positions open in the company I'm saving for very special people. One will be a COO that will have built, I'm talking to some folks that have built Tesla factories and Gigafactories and understand how these new thinking of new lines and more automated, more robotic than ever before. That'll be the COO, dream COO I'm looking for.

 

and then the CFO that understands the capital markets and how all this is gonna work. I'm a CPA, I'm covering that now with another contract CFO, but we need a great internal CFO and that's another position we're looking for. I wanted to mention one more thing on the apartments and the rent to own homes next door. That same thing is happening with hospitality. So here's a Marriott.

 

Robert Vera

Hmm.

 

Bob Worsley

five story box and here's an Airbnb next door. And now there's companies that are doing like the build to rent homes. They're the company built to stay, financed by Bain Capital. They're the investors. They're gonna build whole subdivisions of all Airbnb. And I ask you the question, what's the difference between that and the Marriott? Why are people wanting to stay at the Airbnb subdivision where every home is an Airbnb so that there's no NIMBY?

 

backlash with mixed neighborhoods. Why is that any different than going to Coachella Festival and renting a room in a hotel versus renting a home across the street from the polo fields? What is the difference? People want that intimate and private sense of a home versus living in a box of homes. So yes, it's happening in hospitality with Airbnb.

 

It's happening with apartment dwellers versus built to rent single family homes. And we should watch that very carefully and see how that plays out. The density is not gonna be as high obviously. There'll be more urban sprawl with that, but we're getting 20 units per acre on one single family home, not stacked at all. So we can still get big density with your own place on the ground. So we'll have to see how this all plays out, Robert.

 

but man, you've got great questions and you're looking around the corner like I'm trying to. And between us, let's get a lot smarter together.

 

Robert Vera

Yeah, I know. Look, I'm a fan. I'm a cheerleader for startups here in Arizona. I love the state of Arizona. But Bob, it's been a real pleasure to talk with you about this. These are questions I've been wanting to ask and I just wanted for the audience here to listening. If you ever have an opportunity to go and see us any home, I think you're going to be really impressed. They're in Mesa, Arizona, downtown Mesa. It's a really, really great, you know, product in the facility. And then I encourage you to, to go to the website, 250 bucks. You can be part of the,

 

you know, part of the team here, right? So I think it's just, I'm so proud that, Bob, you've done this in Arizona. I'm really proud to see this. I think it's world-class. I think it's a game changer. It's solving like great entrepreneurs solve big, big problems. You've taken on the housing crisis, not only in the United States and Arizona, but across the globe. And I think ZenniHome is positioned really well to be that product of choice for the solution. And you've done an amazing job to incorporate what I think.

 

is the wise solution for home, like to do that. Now, there's no excuses, right? And I do think this is going to drive, there's been some comments in the chat about city codes. I think this is going to drive city codes and elected officials to make different decisions about how they're going to create affordable housing.

 

in their communities. I think Zenni can, it gives them now a viable option to do that. So thank you, Bob.

 

Bob Worsley

I agree, Robert. And there were lots of questions here we didn't get to, but I think we kind of got to a lot of them roundabout ways. But I see things like, can we do garages? Yes, we've got plans for how it would work as a garage. People are saying, let's see, other quick questions I can spot here really quick. We definitely have ZenniHomes. So I've bought three of them. So.

 

Robert Vera

One of the questions.

 

Bob Worsley

Somebody's asking if I believe in them enough to live in them. Absolutely, we got three of them that we have purchased. And we own, my wife and I own 100,000 acres. We're planning a whole subdivision of Zenni Homes on 1,280 acres. So we'll be massive believers and users and this could be built to rent or could be buy a lot in here and have your own Zenni home as well. So.

 

Robert Vera

Let me add one more thing. I mentioned at the very start that I'm an Airstream enthusiast and owner. And I liked the modern design, but you know, the, um, when I look at ZenniHomes, the cost of an Airstream is almost as the same cost of a ZenniHome. And, um, and I don't get the appliances. I don't get the efficiency. I don't get the space. I don't get, you know, oftentimes I drive my trailer someplace and I put it there. Right. I don't really move it around that much, but it is.

 

Bob Worsley

Yes.

 

Robert Vera

The, and a ZenniHome is way better built than my sort of aluminum, you know, travel trailer. But from a cost perspective, and from utilities perspective, a ZenniHome is an amazing product for the price that you get. And you don't, like, you don't need to lay a pad down. Literally, you need some footers and that's it. I mean, it is, so if you're considering an Airstream, I, you know, if you're in that market,

 

I'd consider a ZenniHome, but I do think that the, for me, I would love it if, if we had developers from across the United States and across the globe come to Arizona to say, look, we heard this podcast that you did, we now need to see this because I do think the cost consideration for them, everyone's facing the same thing. You can't get labor. Prices are going up. Supply chain is, is.

 

is still a mess. It's still a mess. One of the challenges, you know what, I've got a project right now. I can't get a new panel, a utility panel. I can't get a panel for a panel. It's, you know, Bob, it's a, you know, it's a metal box, right? That's a metal box, right? And so

 

Bob Worsley

18 months. 18 months.

 

Bob Worsley

Yep. It might have a bus in it, an aluminum bus and a box.

 

Robert Vera

That's it. I can't get a panel for the, it's a, I have got 150 amp, I need to go to 200 amp and a proper amp, and I can't get a panel. Like I literally, and then I have to find somebody that can do it. So all these things, this sort of perfect storm, all these things are sort of colluding to make ZenniHomes, I think, the sort of, if it's not in your consideration set.

 

If you're looking for a developer or even for your own property, I think it's certainly in mind. Like I don't really need my Airstream anymore, but I would like to have a ZenniHome. So eventually I will have a ZenniHome.

 

Bob Worsley

And Robert, I just want to ask everybody to be patient with us as we're ramping up. There was another question about how many of them are out there. We've got two in Mesa you can come and look at. We've got 14 shipping this month. We're just ramping. So bear with us. Place your reservation. Hopefully become a shareholder and take this ride with us. And I hope you make a lot of money. I hope we become the Tesla of homes.

 

in the future. I think that's very doable. We don't have competitors with our same vision. There are people doing pieces of this, but I think we have the most comprehensive plan and we're executing that the best we possibly can as fast as we can. So be patient with us. Thank you.

 

Robert Vera

Thank you, Bob. And thanks for all the folks that listened, but I'm a huge fan and a huge supporter, but Godspeed, Bob. I know this is really important work and know that here at Grand Canyon University, we're cheering for you and rooting for you. And hopefully one day you'll come here with us and talk to our people about what you've created in Zenni Homes. So appreciate your time.

 

Bob Worsley

We'd love to do it. Thank you. See you, Robert.

 

David

And just to close us up, I've posted three links in the chat. So for those of you that are watching, link to our WeFundr page. We're just about to cross 700 investors there, which is a really amazing milestone. The link to our Invest page on our website, where you can also go check out any of our homes and models and make a reservation there. And then a link to where you can secure a time to either the prototypes or the factory. So any of this stuff should be accessible through our website. So remember zennyhome.com. And with that, we will end the stream. Thank you very much.

 

Robert Vera

Grateful David, thank you. Thank you, Bob.

 

Bob Worsley

Thank you. Thanks for having me, bye bye.