137: ‘Accelerating Tech in AEC’, with German Aparicio, Jr.

137: ‘Accelerating Tech in AEC’, with German Aparicio

Evan Troxel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the trucks of podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, a little bit of housekeeping here before I introduce my guest for the episode. I'll be at Autodesk university next week. And if you're going to be there too. Please reach out to me on LinkedIn and send me a message. I'd love to meet you. You can find the link to my profile in the show notes for this episode at TRXL.Co.

Okay. In this episode, I welcome German Aparicio Jr. German is the program manager of early innovation and partner development at Trimble Ventures, where he is focused on advancing early stage innovation, and collaboration, leading outreach efforts, and expanding their innovation portfolio through the identification of promising early stage companies.

He has a decade of consulting experience working with Trimble Consulting, providing strategic advisory and advanced project delivery services to leading owners. Architects engineers, builders, fabricators, and other industry [00:01:00] professionals worldwide.

German previously co-founded Trimble's 0-60 accelerator program focused on design and technology for Trimble's core industries. To help startups build and scale innovative products and services.

Prior to joining Trimble, German worked at some of the world's leading design engineering and technology companies, including Gehry Technologies, which is also known as GT.

In this episode, we discuss Trimble Ventures' new venture fund program to stimulate innovation in AEC, the importance of connecting the job site with design, mentorship and the value of real-world experience, the use of AI and machine learning in the AEC industry, and the potential of multimodal models and the natural language interfaces in the latest AI tools. So without further ado, I bring you my conversation with German Aparicio.

​

Evan Troxel: [00:02:00] German, welcome to the podcast. Great to see you again.

German Aparicio: Thank you. Likewise, Evan. Thank you for having me.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. We're, we're gonna take two here because we, we just had a, a recording hiccup. So we've, we've already, we've already chatted through this, but I, I wanted you to maybe tell a little bit of the story of where we met and what we were doing back, back in the day as we called this segment of the show.

German Aparicio: Yeah, so I was mentioning, I was thinking about this, uh, I'm thinking about coming outta the podcast and I re, I think the first time we met was back in my Cal Poly days when I was a student there. So early two, early two thousands. And I was mentioning that, uh, I took one of your courses and it was focused on Form Z, which was the three D modeling software at the time.

It was kind of the cutting edge technology. And, uh, I was very excited to take this course because I was kind of frustrated with the existing tool sets that, that we had. Um, and, and yeah, I was looking forward to learning more.

Evan Troxel: [00:03:00] form Z circa. 2003. It was three D Modeling was a different animal back then, right? Like we were, we were working in wireframe all the time,

and it was big desktop bound computers. We had the Mac lab, we had the PC lab at Cal Poly, and I remember that very well. Uh, also, and, and that was really before we started teaching BIM at Cal Poly.

Right? Uh, it wasn't too long after that that I recall teaching ArchiCAD. And then we transitioned to Revit. And I know for me, always teaching kind of technology on the technology side of the architecture program, I was just constantly having to adjust my curriculum. I was just telling somebody this story just a few days ago, like every quarter, technology's moving, moving, moving, moving.

Whereas the professors in Design Studio, which of course get all of the attention from all the students, it's what everything rely, you know, it's all built on Design studio, those. Those courses never [00:04:00] change. Right? They're, they're probably still doing the getaway house in third year. They're probably still doing the infill project in second year.

They're probably, you know, and it, it's, it's really interesting to me because I always felt like I had to meet the demands of what the studio professors wanted technology-wise, for a whole decade. And their courses never changed. I just thought, I just kind of reflecting on that and it was, it, it's interesting to see how technology is affecting the profession, but it's amazing how much of the profession is also got its heels dug in and it's not gonna change technology or not otherwise, you know, it's, it's, it's really kind of an interesting paradigm and this, this whole foundation of our, of what we do as professionals.

You know, I, it's just kind of interesting to think about.

German Aparicio: Yeah, I think our industry has always been slow to adopt new technologies, right? So it's kind of interesting to think about, yeah, what technologies existed when I was a student there at Cal Poly [00:05:00] and, uh, like I mentioned, form Z was kind of cutting edge, and I think back then it was, you know, every, I don't know, two and a half to five years that a new technology was.

Um, I came to market and kind of a new skillset that we had to learn yet today that that time has, uh, gone down right to, you mentioned the quarter, uh, universities on the quarter system, but I think even, even a shorter timeframe now, risk seeing new developments like. I don't know. Six months is kind of a long timeframe now.

It's like every, every three months or every, every other month, a year or something new.

Evan Troxel: It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. And with, uh, all of the, you know, the AI hype cycle that we're living through at the moment right? Is every week there's, you know, now it's multimodal ai and, and it's, that's gonna be, Forgotten in a minute, and we're gonna move on to something else. But it is, it just feels like it's [00:06:00] moving so quickly. Um, uh, it's absolutely astounding the pace, and I'm sure that you're hyper aware of what's going on in the space. So maybe you can, before we get into the, the tech of today and, and what, what is really interesting to you, let's go back and, and give the story of what you've been up to for, let's just say the last decade, maybe more, but since, since we, you know, we're, we're 20 years out of Cal Poly at this point.

You, you were in my paths crossing. Right. a lot has happened. Too much to talk about. But, but talk about your role at Trimble and where you're coming from on the incubator accelerator side. I, I want you to kind of, uh, paint the picture of, of what you've been working on for, since you've been at Trimble.

German Aparicio: Yeah, so I joined Trimble by way of acquisition back in 2014, uh, when I was working at Gary Technologies. And I joined Gary Technologies, uh, by [00:07:00] way of an invitation. By then, my, uh, you know, formal thesis advisor from M I t Dennis Sheldon invited me to join the team after we had taught a course together at, uh, U C L A.

And so I was kind of excited to leave the corporate world and join kind of boutique firm focus on, you know, advanced project delivery using, uh, cutting edge technologies. And, uh, the idea of, you know, working on some of these amazing projects that, um, great technologies had the fortune of, of by way of working with Franker and other architects.

Um, little did I know that the company was gonna be acquired by, by Trimble. Um, but to Trimble's credit, you know, since 2014, they've kind of, uh, left the consulting group as, as is for, for many years and had the fortune to work on a number of very exciting projects. [00:08:00] As part of that team worked on, on projects like the, uh, new airport in Mexico City, I got had a chance to work on a number of, uh, W D I projects over at Disney, uh, across the world in Tokyo and Florida.

Have a chance to work on, uh, you know, a a number of projects, uh, around the world that are, are well documented, uh, online. . But, uh, during that, during that period, you know, having worked in consulting and developing bespoke technologies for every, every project, and then at the end of a project, kind of throwing it away, uh, quickly realized that it was a very sustainable model.

And how do you drive, uh, real change in the industry if you're not able to kind of develop these products? Uh, in, in further, further detail, right, ready for market, uh, we decided to kind of launch a accelerator program. [00:09:00] And so in 2018, uh, I co-founded an accelerator program called zero 60, and worked with a number of startup companies, many, uh, whose founders you've had on your pod podcast, right?

Including, um, teams like, or companies like High Par and Test Fit, tonic dmm. All really, really great. . Uh, products and, and teams that are contributing to driving that change in the industry. And, uh, was kind of very excited to launch the accelerator program and, and play a role in, in helping drive that change.

And so from, from that success, based on those early partnerships with these companies, uh, more recently have, uh, had the opportunity to join our ventures team. And so the idea behind the Ventures team is to create, create a role, uh, under the ventures umbrella to help grow and scale this accelerator program and [00:10:00] also focus on our, uh, portfolio companies.

So for those that don't know, Trimble Ventures is a, a corporate venture arm of Trimble. And, uh, they manage a $200 million fund, which is, you can think of fund number one that invest in, uh, And companies, startup companies more closer to Series A through D. And uh, the idea behind my role is maybe to focus more on the early stage companies, right?

So pre-series A think, uh, pre-seed and c stage companies, it's help develop their ideas and, and develop partnerships over time. So, uh, yeah, I'm excited to announce that, um, currently, uh, left the Trimble consulting team and joined the Trimble Ventures team to, to focus on this new role. I.

Evan Troxel: There's a lot of little pieces I want to go back and pick out. Yes. [00:11:00] We have had several, we, we've had your past colleagues on the show. You guys lectured in my class at Cal Poly, so this is other kind of touchpoint along. Our paths that we've had and it, the talking about emerging technology, you've always had this drive toward technology and making the profession better. And I think it's interesting now, you know, you were with the zero 60 Accelerator, you mentioned high par test fit, um, reg at Tonic DMM was on the show. I'll put links to all of these back in the show notes for this episode so people can kind of connect the dots. Um, Robert Ewen from Monograph as well.

Right.

Um, and, and there's this really interesting take by Trimble, which is like, you don't just go out and acquire these companies. Maybe you try, I have no idea. Right. But this, this idea of investing, I think is so interesting because it's different than what we see other large companies in a e c trying [00:12:00] to do.

Right. And so can you just talk about it from that point of view? Here. Just why? Why that approach? Why the investment approach? Why the mentoring approach? Because I think we wanna talk about mentoring as well. Why? Why are you not just investing dollars, but you're also like, like the idea of an accelerator program is not just money, right? It's it's expertise, it's lessons learned, it's all of these things. So from, from your perspective, can you kind of bounce off of those kind of ideas and tell us where you guys are coming from?

German Aparicio: Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I think there's, there's many, um, investment vehicles, right, that you mentioned. So there, or efforts, right? There's the, the m and a, the mergers and acquisitions. I think, uh, Trimble as a, as a company has, has, uh, done a great job by. Yeah, acquiring various companies like Dairy Technologies.

That's how I was introduced to [00:13:00] Trimble. And, uh, really leaves, leaves them, you know, for a long time to, to do what they're best at and, uh, brings 'em under the Trimble umbrella as, uh, what we call one Trimble. The other area where Trimble invests in is in, um, as part of the, the ventures arm, right? Is in these, uh, startup companies, series A through D.

So there's a whole fund to kind of focus on, uh, to that, uh, as well as historically in some of our, um, partner funds like, uh, iron Springs investing kind of, uh, in some of those companies. Uh, the, the one that I, I can speak closer to because I'm part of this is probably from a acceleration standpoint, right?

The focus on the earlier stage companies. And the idea behind that was to partner with, um, some of these. Existing companies that maybe were, uh, pre-revenue or had a, uh, you know, under a million [00:14:00] dollars in revenue and, and, uh, some of these companies had different needs. And it, it kind of goes back to the motive for starting to accelerate in the first place, right?

It's to partner with these companies, help drive change in the industry. Uh, but as well realizing that, um, you know, if you look to adjacent industries like the tech industry, there is very mature accelerator programs that offer, uh, to your point, mentoring and finance and access to resources, to these companies to grow and scale.

Uh, I felt like in 2018 when we launched this accelerator program, we didn't have that for architecture, engineering, construction specifically. If we did, you know, it was maybe, uh, yeah, one of the existing tech programs or a very small program, and I thought, uh, Trimble was uniquely . Positioned to set up accelerator program and have a lot of value to offer to these companies.

So as part of the accelerator program, yeah, we, we kind of structured it similar to [00:15:00] other accelerator programs in the, in the tech industry where we have, uh, you know, series of, of demo days, uh, mentor days, and then we end with the graduation event. So it's a three currently set up as a three month equity free program, but the meat of that program is really focused on workshops, training, and mentorship.

And so the workshops really help companies who need help in specific areas, right? Such as marketing or, uh, finding that product market fit or just getting, um, introduced to strategic clients. So Trimble is uniquely positioned that it works with a number of, uh, innovative, you know, customers, right? Uh, clients that, that we have as customers that are doing really amazing work and, um, , you know, we had the opportunity as part of this accelerator program to have, you know, dedicated, we call them open closed demo days, where we invite a number of our participants to come [00:16:00] present these strategic clients and get that kind of early feedback, which is a, I think a was a big value add.

But in addition to that, you know, uh, industry specific training. So we would, we would offer as part of this program, access to hardware and software, and then kind of any, any needed training associated to that. Um, back then we had a few APIs, but maybe not a central location where developers could find that information.

And so part of the Accelerate program, uh, experience was to facilitate those connections and a, you know, access to documentation for, uh, potential integration to the products. But that wasn't necessarily the focus. The real focus was on, on mentoring, right? These companies and providing a help where they needed access to resources, whether it be introduction to potential clients, marketing opportunities by inviting them to specific events, um, or, [00:17:00] or networking with, um, industry professionals and internally with folks that, uh, have, have built and created their own companies in the past and found themselves to be acquired by Trimble or, or, you know, this was, yeah.

Kind of the next evolution of, of their careers that provide, come back and provide that, um, feedback to these, these, uh, participants.

Evan Troxel: I, I think I caught you saying equity free. It's not like I caught you red-handed or something, but is that what you said? Is that you said that this was like an equity free investment?

German Aparicio: Correct. The, the program was initially set up to be a equity free program. Right. And, and the idea behind that was, like I said, in in our industry, we didn't really have a program accelerator program set up to help these companies build, you know, a lot of these companies are, are bootstrapped, you know, they might have one or two, uh, customers or they might have, uh, you know, their own [00:18:00] investment that they're using maybe fam, family friends, money to get them up and running.

And so it felt like, uh, being part of a large organization didn't make sense to take equity in these companies. And that really wasn't the goal, right? The goal was to help them grow and scale and that in the various ways that they were looking to do that, uh, again, to hopefully help drive change in the industry.

Evan Troxel: It's, uh, I just think that is super interesting. German, like the, that just sounds completely amazing. And I, as the VC kind of landscape has changed, I think everybody's way more aware of it than we were 10 years ago or five, six years ago when you guys started this to be. Looking for the unicorns, right?

Looking for the 10 x a hundred x returns. Uh, it's a difficult landscape for startups to [00:19:00] navigate, especially if they're coming from architecture, right? Like, this is not how people were trained. They're not trained in finance, they're not trained in this, all these, you know, series A, series B, series C, they're not trained in.

And, and that is like a, a foreign language. It's a, it's a foreign concept to a lot of 'em, to a lot of every us I should say. 'cause we're, I'm coming from architecture as well, right? This is, we, we, we barely even had a business class. We probably didn't have a business class in architecture. Right? And so for you guys as Trimble, a big company who's been there, done that, you've acquired firms, you've invested. Everybody wants a return on their investment. And I think what's interesting from what I'm hearing from you is that the return on investment for you is a stronger profession, is a stronger industry. And I think that is that you're actually doing that. I mean, really that that's what you're doing.

That sounds incredible to me.

German Aparicio: Yeah, I think it [00:20:00] comes from our own experiences, right? Like, like yourself. I am also trained as an architect when went to Cal Poly Architecture School, didn't have the opportunity to take, uh, business courses. And it wasn't really until grad school that I was kind of exposed to this idea of, of startups, right?

And kind of spinning out companies out of labs and kind of what, what resources it would take to, to do that, to achieve that. And, uh, I had the fortune to, yeah, spend some time at MIT where I learned a little bit of that. But also it wasn't until, uh, I had the opportunity to teach in the Bay Area. And spend time in, in San Francisco teaching at, uh, C C A and at uc, Berkeley, where I was kind of exposed to the idea of a accelerator program and served as a mentor, uh, to some of the companies there and just learn kind of some of the, the behind the scenes right.

Of, of that world. And [00:21:00] so that, that also kind of inspired right, um, me to, to help start this accelerator program. And then also taking the, the experience from being acquired right as geared technologies, uh, into Trimble and the idea that, you know, a company which in its own was a, was a startup out of, uh, Frank Gary's practice, right?

As this kind of a sister company to, to realize his buildings that could develop a technology back then, such as, uh, G Team that came out of, you know, working on projects. Now Trimble Connect. and be acquired by a large organization like Trimble. I thought, I thought was really interesting. And so kind of going back to why, why make it equity free?

You know, a program like that didn't exist for, for our industry. And so one, it didn't make sense to take [00:22:00] equity in, in these smaller companies who were just, you know, uh, trying to build a product or a service and have the background. But, but I thought again, Trimble was uniquely positioned to offer that knowledge, that skillset, uh, access to resources, mentorship, to be able to, to take those products and services to the next level.

Evan Troxel: I, I just think about the mindset difference between Startups that are building something for the short term to get acquired by somebody bigger versus the ones who are building something to last. That is much more of an architectural practice point of view. Building a prac. Well, a lot of people start their own practices, right?

And they want to build that practice for decades. They want to build it. They're not starting a practice to get acquired typically. Right? It does happen. There's a lot of m and a in a e, c, right? But I think most people start a practice because they want [00:23:00] the freedom, whether that's the freedom of expression or the types of projects, or they see a niche that they can go after and, and what you're talking about is investing in companies to help them build something that lasts.

And of course, I, I, I can't imagine that you're putting some kind of clause in there that says you can't get acquired. Right? Of course, some people are still gonna. You know, do that. But I think that that's just kind of an interesting, an interesting perspective to take, to do something for the industry. I mean, funny, un enough that that's why I do what I'm doing at the podcast, right?

I, I wanna see this industry get better. I want to share the things that typically happen in private conversations with everybody so that we can all get better together. And it sounds a lot to me, like that's what you're doing with Trimble and I, I like how you take it back to what you were doing at gt. When you were acquired, and, and I remember when you and Lucas and Allie, uh, who were all working at [00:24:00] gt, I thought of you guys as like a, a skunkworks team who was, or like a SWAT team who would go into different projects for different architects all over the world and like, do a job, right? You were the A team and then you would, you would go back out and then you would go do another job.

And I think it's interesting that you said that you would kind of start from scratch every time, and you saw that as being really wasteful. And we, we kind of do that on architectural projects as architects throughout the entire industry. And it, it's amazing to me to even think about your first cohort that you had at zero 60 with Ian from high par and. One thing we've talked about on this podcast is how his goal was to make it so that architects never had to start from a blank page, which is exactly what you're talking about when you're talking about what you were doing at GT even, right? So all of these things are kind of swirling around and informing each other and creating [00:25:00] this kind of clear path forward.

And I think, again, I think it's just incredible that Trimble kind of sees this as a a zero equity. Of course, I'm sure there's an option at some point where it, like you couldn't not try to acquire a firm if they were, if they were interested in that, to be part of the bigger trimbo, eco Trimble ecosystem. But .But for the most part you're just saying no, like we're doing this to strengthen all of it. And, uh, because you working at gt you saw the incredible power of what technology could do. You mentioned the Mexico City Airport. I mean, I, I, you guys came into my class and talked about that project. Allie did.

She talked about that project and she talked about what you did there and that these projects could not happen without what you were doing. I mean, it's absolutely, um, just table stakes that they could not have happened without what you're doing. And I think you're applying that view back to the industry and saying, well, that's what technology has the power to do. [00:26:00] We've seen it firsthand. We're gonna empower others to do that more and more and more for our industry.

German Aparicio: Yeah. Yeah. AB absolutely. Yeah, definitely informed from our, our previous experiences. Like I said, my time at Cal Poly and my time at M I t and my time at gt, it's kind of informed the motivation behind Launch Accelerator program, but also from those experiences realizing, yeah, not, not having been trained in these areas and, um, just learning from having spent time in the industry and, and working with others.

Um, so the, yeah, the early parts of the, of the accelerator program were really exciting 'cause we were also learning from right, the startup companies about how to, how to run an accelerator program. You know, what are, what is the, the best way to structure it? What, uh, value we could provide to these, these companies?

And it, you know, it was in the form of [00:27:00] access to resources, whether it be, uh, again, technology, hardware, software or marketing opportunities, introductions to, to customers, those sorts of things. But I think that the biggest value that, uh, we had to offer, or that came out of the, uh, maybe a lesson learned that came out of that experience was this idea of mentorship.

And that's also been kind of a, a theme throughout my, uh, career in education. Right. Um, kind of going back to the beginning of, of the podcast, we were talking about time at Cal Poly, you know, people like yourself, like the, yeah. Thank you for, that time and, and learning about various software technologies that you brought to the university.

Uh, you know, . Other, other professors at Cal Poly that serves as mentors for me. People like, uh, Axel, er, Smithberg, uh, Michael Fox, you know, Gentile, uh, number of other faculty there that help inspire and kind of, uh, drive, [00:28:00] right. My, my career, I think very, very similar, um, idea is what we're trying to push as part of the accelerator program.

The idea of mentorship and how, because a number of, uh, people who decide to start their own companies, right, don't have that background. How do you, uh, bring 'em up and running or up to speed in a short amount of time? And that's kind of that, the idea behind having this three month window, excuse me, three month window, to be able to bring your product and service and, and scale it up through, uh, through this program and connect you with various mentors.

Whether it be in marketing, whether it be in, uh, software development or, or other areas that you have a need. And so as kind of a, a result, um, this, this year we decided to run a, a pilot program with our Trimble Tech Labs. And [00:29:00] our Trimble Tech Labs is, is a program with our university partners. And so, uh, we launched that, uh, this last August, and we currently have a, a number of students that participate.

So the idea was to target undergrad, graduate, and, uh, maybe even faculty who, who have idea, maybe researching ideas as part of the labs, and how do we leverage the resources they have available to them as part of the labs to develop their own business model and value propositions. So in, in parallel, I've also been teaching a course at Cal Poly Pomona, uh, as, as a part-time faculty.

There. Shout out to, uh, to George and, and other faculty for allowing me to teach this course. But it, it teaches students about Yeah, the business model. We use the business model Canvas as a tool, right? Or lean methods the same, um, yeah. Business principles [00:30:00] that are taught in like a N Ss f I corp type program to help, uh, develop your own business models and value propositions.

And we do do that through a series of exercises and, and doing customer surveys. Uh, currently running that, that, uh, curriculum as part of this, uh, pilot program that we have with our Trimble Tech lab partners. And so we have a cohort of, uh, students from various universities, including Washington State University, Purdue, Texas a and m, uh, Florida International University.

They've been a great partner in developing this pilot program to see if we can't help . Right. The various, uh, participants develop their own business models and, uh, potentially spinoffs, uh, out of, out of these labs. I think that's a, another ex exciting space to kind of grow builds on top of the ideas that, that were mentioned before, I.

Evan Troxel: The idea of teaching, [00:31:00] basically entrepreneurship in architecture, I think has been lacking. For a long time. It's awesome to hear that that's what's going on. I had a conversation with a previous guest, Jeff Eckles, who teaches a pro practice class at Ball State University in Indiana, and a big piece of that is entrepreneurship as well, and kind of designing business models that typically it's gonna be around technology.

The students are immersed in technology, it's how they deliver all their projects, and so oftentimes I think they can see opportunities there or holes, right, that they might wanna try to fill with, with an idea. It's really cool to hear that there's an avenue to develop those skills because I think, you know, going to school, when I went to school, it was like you're getting trained to go work in an office and it wasn't really that you're getting trained. To go run a business or start a business. Right. You would learn how to do that by working at some other office. Right? Schools did [00:32:00] school stuff. Businesses did business stuff, and they were kind of separate. They still kind of are. Right. So it's really interesting to me to hear that this is actively being pursued with these university partnerships all over the United States. you give some ideas of just the kinds of ideas that students come up with because we, we look at design, design courses, the ideas are wild, right? They're all over the place. And that's encouraged, like that's what you do when you're in school. Is it the same for this kind of a course or is there like limits that you put on students or?

I would, I'm really interested to kind of hear the kinds of things that you're experiencing through this process.

German Aparicio: Yeah, I think, I think it goes back to my consulting days, right? Having spent a number of years on projects and identifying specific pain points, areas where technologies didn't speak to each other and developed bespoke technologies to solve [00:33:00] a specific problem or, um, yeah, I think, I think that kind of fed into the, this concept that students, uh, face similar aha moments, right?

When doing their own research, that there are, uh, pain points in the industry in which that now they realize technologies don't talk to each other and, uh, they're working on idea that could help solve those, those challenges. So the idea behind this pilot program was to work with those students that were researching those type of things in the labs and develop their own, uh, Business models and value propositions.

And so we have, we have essentially four teams at the moment that are participating in part of this pilot program from those various universities I previously mentioned. And some of 'em are focused on, uh, taking maybe construction safety training as a, as an idea creating kind of certificate program.

But what, what [00:34:00] would a, a certificate safety training certificate program look like using emergent technology, like virtual reality or augmented reality headset. Right. How do you take, and I think this, this idea is interesting because I think it came about as a result from, uh, the Covid era, right? So like a lot of, a lot of students and, and just people in general found themselves that they couldn't do their jobs because they couldn't access labs or, uh, yeah.

Their, the facilities to achieve their specific goals. . And so this idea that, uh, you could kind of extend the lab into a headset and train a labor force at scale, uh, using these emerging technologies is really interesting. So this team is looking at developing a construction safety course, uh, using virtual reality.

And, uh, as part of this program, they're looking to develop that on a, on top of a product that, [00:35:00] that we have at trimbo called trimbo Virtual World. And it's kind of this, uh, really neat, uh, virtual environment that allows you to build what's called the Quest, right? And the idea behind, uh, Trimbo virtual world is to create these kind of, uh, training experiences to help, uh, trained various labor forces, because that's, that's currently, uh, a challenge specifically in the construction industry, right?

Is to find enough people to, to build projects, right, and train them up. I think there's also . A big disconnect between those that have the knowledge in the industry, right, that are maybe more senior, um, individuals versus the, the incoming kind of, uh, workforce right at a school. And so the idea behind this platforms that help kind of, uh, build a connection between those two groups and have kind a, a virtual environment to do that type of training.

So this team is looking to take their construction safety [00:36:00] course and, uh, implement it on our Trimbo virtual world platform, which is, uh, very exciting, uh, you know, project that, that they're currently working on. We're currently about halfway through the accelerator program. Just had a very successful mentor day and, uh, getting ready for a demo day here at the end of October, and then a, a graduation event in, uh, end of November.

But that's just, that's just one team. Another team. It's out of, uh, the Sweden area. It's developing a, uh, a wood, I say, I say this correctly. Yeah. A wood, uh, structural system, a building system that allows you to assemble and disassemble buildings, uh, on demand. And so, uh, this particular student has developed, uh, a product and is, is looking to patent that product and, um, [00:37:00] with part of the accelerator program, looking to take that building system and, uh, essentially take the logic and encode it into one of our products that's called Trimble Creator, which is essentially, you know, very similar to, I would say like a grasshopper dynamo, uh, for, for SketchUp or, uh, Tela, for example, to be able to build a building configurator.

Right. So you think about taking her library of, of parts. Whether it be a floor system, wall system, roof system encoded into this, uh, software that, that allows a designer to build a design and then kind of automate the instructions for assembly of this assembly of, of that project. That's the second, the second project that currently works on the third one is focused on, uh, cost estimating tool.

So we have a, a student out of, uh, Florida International University that is kind of looking at this old age problem of cost estimating and using models [00:38:00] to, for quantification. And so we're taking his research work and IT into a product of ours called Trimble Connect. So they're able to automatically upload a model and kind of extract those values in the backend and, uh, you know, potentially use something like AI to, uh, give you, uh, cost estimating, uh, values.

Uh, so that's a, that's our third project and maybe the, the fourth project. Is focus on indoor mapping. Um, they've partnered, this is out of Texas a and m. They've partnered with, uh, another startup company that's developed, uh, indoor positioning system, uh, that is a technology that's come out of nasa and they're looking to collaborate to build, um, yeah, a, a new product to help visualize that information, to help first responders.

And so they're taking the data that's collected from that system and maybe, uh, create models on Trimble Connect, sketch up, [00:39:00] then kind of, uh, visualize and in real time some of that sensor data, uh, using these technologies. So a lot of really, you know, a lot of, a lot of our labs are based out of the civil engineering departments, and so kind of a lot of projects, uh, you know, in these, in these various spaces from everything from training to building configuration, To, uh, indoor mapping and cost estimating, uh, just to be the flavor of the projects that come through the

Evan Troxel: and the, and some of these things, maybe if, maybe all of them are not things that are traditional focus of architecture school, right? These are not design problems. And, and so you said civil engineering departments, a lot of that, that's where this action is happening, but that the, the kind of, well, there's two things I want to talk about here.

One is like approaching this as a design problem, right? We as architects are trained to focus on design [00:40:00] problems as design problems, but we don't necessarily think about our businesses as design problems, and we don't think about our practices as design problems. And I think that there's a lot of room for that. Um, the other, the other thing though that I, I, I think is interesting that you're in a position to deliver here, and I'm interested to see if you are, is students don't have all the experience needed to do cost estimating. They don't have all the experience needed to do the kinds of pro, you know, when you're talking about a building system for deployable, uh, buildings that, that can get assembled and disassembled. And so are you, because Trimble is such a big entity, are you able to connect those students? I mean, we talked about mentoring, so I, I kind of assume the answer is yes, but are you connecting them with people in the industry, whether that's Trimble or outside of Trimble to. Make informed decisions as they develop these ideas so that they can go farther faster.

Right. Because I [00:41:00] think something we all, I don't wanna say suffered from, but, but the thing that we saw when we were in school was that a lot of our professors didn't practice architecture. They were career academics. Right. And, and that was a bit of a disservice knowing what it was going to be like to work in the industry. And a lot of times you go through school, then you get outta school and it's like, you didn't learn that, how, how we do that because we just didn't have that connection. So are you making those connections for these projects, these people who are leading these projects in universities so that they get that exposure and that experience as they do it?

German Aparicio: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think that's right. That's kind of the goal behind this pilot program as part of this accelerator is to take, like I said, the, the research that's coming out of the labs and help develop them, business ideas and, uh, various participants are at different stages in that, right? In being able [00:42:00] to achieve a, uh, product or service or actually a business model value proposition as a product or service that they can go in and, uh, sell or turn into a business.

Right? And, And kind of put in front of a customer. So as part of the accelerator program, you know, we try to pair them with, uh, mentors either internally with, uh, leaders in our organization who have started their own companies and can provide that type of mentorship or, uh, technical expertise. Right.

Matching them with, um, a lot of our development team or business units that focus on similar products that they can build on top of. Right. Uh, introducing them to other programs that we have in existence. Uh, for example, we have a trimbo developer program that is, is, is being created that allows, um, yeah, these participants to [00:43:00] access, uh, APIs or STKs, for example.

We have a trimbo partnership program that we introduced them to. In addition to that, uh, other learning resources, we have a platform called learn.trimble.com, where they're able to access, uh, various, um, learning products. Think, think of, uh, LinkedIn learning or, or these other platforms where you could kind of subscribe to a course and, and Right.

But this, this gives you access to specific, uh, Trimble software, uh, learning curriculums. We also have, um, yeah, o other resources that we make available to them so that hopefully they can, they can leverage that and not just internally, but also try to make the connections externally. Right. A number of our folks, you know, uh, partner with, with external organizations and I mentioned strategic customers, so, uh, when the, when the time is right, right.

We try to introduce them to some of these customers [00:44:00] to, to get that kind of feedback. Or in the case of, um, The student that's working on the project for, let's say the, uh, the, the building system introduced them to specific trades trade organizations and leaders in trade organizations to see what, what kind of, uh, yeah, opportunities might exist there or feedback they could provide, uh, for their project.

So I think that's, that's my, my biggest challenge. And, uh, if I had a call, call to action, right, for this podcast would be to, if you're interested in mentoring, like please feel free to reach out and, uh, join, right? The Accelerate as part of Metro, because there's a number of, of people who could use your expertise, whether it be industry expertise, subject matter expertise, or if you started your company, right?

Uh, entrepreneurship expertise. These are all kind of, [00:45:00] uh, things that we could use more of. And I think, uh, Yeah, I listened to a recent podcast you, you did with Clifton, and he, his call to action was to have more startup companies, more, uh, investment opportunities, more spins outside of tech companies. But to get there, I, I think we need, we need to have, uh, greater mentorship.

And that's my goal as part of this Accelerate program is to provide that for, for industry and for, uh, you know, graduates coming outta the university that we are interested in, uh, starting their own companies.

Evan Troxel: I would assume that also while you're creating those connections, that the students, through the kind of interview process with those experts, not only are they getting the insight that's domain expertise, but they're also identifying what I would hope is a whole, that the person who's been doing it for a long time also [00:46:00] recognizes and, and they're able to kind of tailor what they're doing an actual potential customer.

In that, in that way, I, how, how many startups, how many ideas have you seen where I. There's this idea, but there's no validation of the idea,

and they may even go through the entire process of building that thing, spending all the capital and the time to do it, and then not finding a customer with it.

Right. It happens all the time. And so is that validation also happening through this process so that we create the connection from here to there before it's too late, before they spend all that time for nothing?

German Aparicio: Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's kind of the, the idea behind having demo days, mentor days, right? And these graduation events to get those feedback. But, um, specifically the demo days to get the feedback from potential customers, right, on developing their products and getting that product market fit. And so customer surveys is a big component of that.

[00:47:00] And I love accelerator programs that will take, for example, um, participants. Their, their applications like day one and have participants burn those applications. And, you know, to realize that what they thought they were gonna bring to market might completely change by the end of the accelerator program.

Based on that, based on that feedback and lessons learned. And, uh, I think that's a, that's a really good kind of first lesson is that, uh, it's, it's important to be open and iterate and take that feedback, right? To be able to achieve that product market fit. Uh, that hopefully will become a, a product and service that people will find value in.

Right? And that's, that's not something you're gonna get for me. You're not gonna get from the accelerator program. It's up to the market to determine, you know, what that looks like, what it is. And, and hopefully, uh, through the, the process that we try to, uh, create as part of the accelerator program, [00:48:00] uh, is, is how participants get there.

Evan Troxel: It, it, it just makes me think of a few other things that, uh, other guests that I've had on the show, uh, and on, on other podcasts that I've been on as well. One, one that I think of is a, was a researcher and she does qualitative research with, with building product manufacturers for the most part. And she e listens to what they're saying and then does, does market research to see if it actually is, is playing out.

Because there, I think the idea of assumptions, untested assumptions is something that, uh, in what, it doesn't make sense to me because we're, we're trained to test and iterate and do all of these. That's why we have critiques in architecture school, right, is to get, is to, for the feedback loop, to be in full effect. But there's so many times in technology, in product development where there's a, a core set of assumptions made early [00:49:00] that are never really tested against the market. And it's only through that testing that you get the feedback whether there's product market fit or not. Right. It's, there's kind of this initial idea where we assume that, of course there is, like, I see the value in this.

Why doesn't everybody, why everybody's going to see the value in this? But it is actually only through testing of those assumptions that it happens. And I, I think about my research friend because I. There's so many times where it's like the, the dots aren't connecting. They're

the, the the message isn't landing. Uh, people are seeing things in a very different way than you think they're seeing them. Um, and yet as architects, we are trained on every project to do exactly what you're talking about doing. we we don't think about this as the same kind of a problem as that though, maybe. Um, so I, I think that that's just kind of an interesting, again, position that you're in to help people test those assumptions with these, um, product demo [00:50:00] days, with talking to people in various domains that could connect into what they're proposing. Um, and so I, I think that's all excellent to hear.

German Aparicio: Yeah, I think a lot of that comes from, uh, my time in consulting. Right. I think why, uh, organizations like Gary Technologies was so successful. 'cause there were boots on the ground, you know, uh, the business model was to work at a client office and, uh, live the, the same pain points that . , um, our customers did day in, day out, and unless you were boots in the ground and on a, on an existing project, you wouldn't have an understanding, right, of how, how things are done, kind of the various workflows and how you could plug in various technologies to, uh, make those workflows more efficient.

Right? And so often that would require developing, like I mentioned, bespoke uh, solutions. And so, to your point, people who work in [00:51:00] labs, people who work, you know, by themselves without getting that customer feedback, um, I think sometimes you have develop products and services that, that often fail and hopefully through this, um, structured program, right, we're able to provide, uh, participants with enough opportunities to get that feedback from potential customers or industry experts.

From, uh, people who have understanding of the, the actual challenges on projects to be able to, to build that into their existing products and services.

Evan Troxel: So are there internship opportunities in this kind of a thing as well so that people can get that experience by under like living through the that pain or that circumstance or that process with potential people who would end up buying whatever they're coming up with? I.

German Aparicio: So we don't have any internships as part of our accelerator program. Uh, uh, no. Our, our parent [00:52:00] company, Trimble, has, uh, has internship program, and that's to develop. Yeah. We have, we have a couple programs. So we have a, uh, a rotational development program where, uh, recent graduates come into the program and kind of spend some time with various, uh, business units to, to find kind of their, yeah, their, their passion and, and kind of the best fit.

within the organization. So they get exposure to various parts of the company, get a general knowledge. So when they find kind of their fin a landing spot, they have an overview of the entire organization and then, uh, hopefully find yeah, their, their dream job. We have also, uh, an internship program, which I believe is a summer program.

So a student is able to, you know, fulfill their, uh, university requirement and, uh, spend some time in our organization and learn some new skill sets and that hopefully they'll take it throughout their career. But as part of [00:53:00] accelerator program, there's no specific internship per se, but, you know, the whole experience is about kind of getting, getting that education, uh, being put in front of, uh, potential customers, getting the feedback.

Uh, also I think, uh, our graduation event and, uh, yeah, mentor days are also. great, great times where we invite industry professionals to provide feedback, right? So they get it, they get it in different aspects, not necessarily being on an active project, but they get it. Um, yeah, from, from various, uh, users of these technologies and, and people who work, work on projects on day in, day out.

Evan Troxel: There, there's a big lack of, in our industry, there's a big lack of connection to the job site. Like I, it's interesting to hear that there's projects all around the construction side of things. Um, and maybe that's because it's coming more out of the civil engineering side, I don't know. But, but I think we've all seen how [00:54:00] there's a disconnection between practice and even what actually gets built in the field in the feedback loop that does or doesn't happen because of that disconnection to the drawings and the modeling and all that kind of stuff. Um, it is, seems like, uh, a natural fit for these students to try to spend time. Right. And maybe they're not all students. I don't know what the age range is. Anybody. You could be any age and be in university. Right. So it seems to me like there's an opportunity potentially there too. Walk a mile in their shoes, right?

That the, as this old saying goes, so that you actually understand the problems better than you think. You understand those problems, right? Because you'll have lived experience by doing it, and you'll, if you've walked a mile in their shoes, you'll be a mile away and you'll have their shoes, right? So you can, you can always, you always have that going for you. But it does seem like a, a, a way to kind of, again, connect the dots and, and, and make it so that these, these projects [00:55:00] really land. Because there is an understanding of the customer's pain and the, that the value proposition is always around that, right? It's actually solving someone's problem. Like what are the understanding what the problems truly are for the businesses, so that then you figure out how you're gonna go back and build something to solve that problem. It doesn't really necessarily work the other way around.

German Aparicio: Yeah. You, you mentioned a couple in, uh, good points there. You know, the connection between the construction site and design. I think that's something that is a, a unique value that, uh, Trimble as our organization brings to the table. Right. It was company founded in hardware, the Charlie Trimble and the, uh, geospatial g p s Green g p s technology to the civil industry.

and today's, um, software is, is really focused on that connection between field and the office and in facilitating, [00:56:00] uh, communication between these various groups. Uh, so hopefully there's, there's a better connection between Yeah. The site and the design team, uh, through these various, uh, softwares. And so if I were speaking to a, a potential applicant, I would, I would say that uh, that's one of the values that Trimble brings and the software it brings and, uh, the value of building on top of that, uh, ecosystem or Trimble platform would, would bring to, uh, their own products and services and why they should consider, uh, joining the accelerated program and going through the, through the process.

'cause they would, they would be getting access to those resources, the mentorship, and uh, hopefully, uh, opportunity to, um, . , you know, put their products and services in front of potential customers for, for, uh, gaining that product market fit.

Evan Troxel: I [00:57:00] I wanna go back and touch on something that you mentioned in passing, which was your grasshopper like product. And I bet there's a lot of people in the audience who have no idea that Trimble has something like that. Uh, Tom Kreskin, who I think is the product manager on

that has been on this show, and maybe you could just give, I, I love to give Tom a shout out.

He, he was introduced to me by Clifton harness of test

fit, and I, he's an amazing guy and so I want to give him a shout out. But maybe you can just give a quick overview of what that is so that, uh, I'll put a link to it in the show notes so people can check it out. I don't know how much of it's out there yet or anything, so maybe you can, you can just talk about it for a minute.

German Aparicio: Yeah, I wanna say it's a product, you know, if not in betas, just out of beta. Um, to your point, it's, uh, led by Tom and his team outta New Zealand. It was an acquisition, uh, I believe this company's called material. And, uh, yeah, it's very, [00:58:00] very similar to, uh, grasshopper and Dynamo that it was, it was, uh, initially it's, it's a geometric engine, right?

Essentially with a graphical user interface. And so I think when it originally required by Trimble, the idea was to embed it into, uh, a number of products. I think today it's. It's a, a standalone product, but it's had some integrations with tools like SketchUp, the three D Warehouse. There's this idea of, um, of, uh, components that, uh, called adaptive components that you can build intelligence into objects and, uh, yeah, use parameters right to, to, uh, essentially, uh, build parametric relationships between various elements.

And you can download them via three D warehouse and, uh, embed them into your, your three D models, whether it [00:59:00] be in SketchUp or Tela or other, other, um, softwares. But, uh, essentially a, a geometric engine that offers similar capability to like a grasshopper and, and dynamo.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, so it is like a visual programming graph on the screen, and you connect nodes together to build the linkage that you need to create geometry, right? That is parametric.

German Aparicio: Yeah. It, it's, it was kind of the next evolution, right? To kind of go back to, uh, the beginning of our conversation was the next evolution after, uh, form Z, where we just had three D modeling software and then we, we had people like McNeil Release Rhino, and on top of that we had Grasshopper and the idea of computational design and being able to not have to, uh, yeah, code or encode logic using, uh, text-based programming language, right?

[01:00:00] But you could actually just use, uh, nodes and components to string logic together. But since then we've seen kind of the evolution of, of that. Develop into, uh, products like high par, right? Being able to use reusable, uh, yeah, reusable scripts that you would encode logic to, and, and you could just, uh, call now.

Now with the advent of ai, we're, we're seeing now even the next level of that where, uh, yeah, you could, you could just use natural language, right to, uh, to build, build your scripts and the logic and, and, uh, may it become even easier than the existing tools we have today.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I think there's a lot, maybe less trial and error. I think, uh, one, there's a, there's an upcoming guest on the show, Nick Cattier. He has a, a YouTube channel called BIM Pure Live, and I. He recently had an [01:01:00] episode on there where they were doing exactly that. It's basically chat, g p t inside of Revit I think was the case. 'cause a lot of the stuff that he's doing is around the Revit product and, and bim. And one of the things he said was like, like the code's really bad. And the guy who was was on there showing it was like, yeah, but it still works. Right? And,

and I, I think we're gonna see a lot of that, right? Which is like, because people don't have the patience to try to rework their visual scripting, uh, to get it to do what they want on, on many levels, it's way easier to type something in to chat.

G p t say, write me a Python script, copy that Python script, throw it into a node, and it does the thing that for the most part you wanted it to do. We just move on. Right? And, and these, a lot of these visual programming scripts are throw away anyway. They don't

back to your GT stuff, right? It's like, I'm gonna use it on this project.

There are, there are very few scripts that get [01:02:00] reused in major ways, in, in useful ways, right? Most of them get thrown away, just like most of the design process gets thrown away. And that's okay. Um, I think it's gonna be an interesting next few years with AI and scripting and, and coding and image generation and, you know, business use cases, uh, as well.

So I, I, I'm, I am actually really excited about it. Uh, I've kind

of gone through my own hype cycle of, of AI and, and, you know, uh, what it, what it could, or. Could do for us both, both good and bad. But, um, I, I'm interested maybe from your point of view, and maybe we can, we can wrap up here, is just what are you excited about with the future?

What's coming in a e c with technology, what you're seeing right now? Uh, and, and I'd love to to hear your thoughts on that.

German Aparicio: Yeah, I am excited for this, this next evolution of tools, you know, with the additive of AI and machine learning, uh, these are, these are technologies [01:03:00] that we explore as part of a course that I teach at Cal Poly Pomona called Advantage Digital Design. I think that's maybe the same course where you were teaching ArchiCAD and Revit.

It's kind of evolved, uh, you know, to include

Evan Troxel: was ancient, ancient digital design

at this point. Yeah.

German Aparicio: is, I think it's just a continuation, yeah, continuation right. Of, uh, of. These evolving technologies. So I'm kind of excited about, excited about that next level. And to your point, the ability that these models allow at least the, uh, arts language models to be able to, to write, uh, code without even having understanding for code and kind of just using natural language to go back and forth, test things out, whether they work or don't work, and, and feed it the, uh, errors that you're getting and, uh, debug, right?

Your scripts using this, this, uh, this interface I think is really exciting. Uh, what I'm really excited about maybe is that next [01:04:00] evolution of, of these, uh, models and how they might play with, um, you know, other, other models, generative design models. Uh, I'm really excited about the approach to multimodal models and that using the idea of using various inputs that I think there's, there's limitations to just using text-based large language models.

Uh, but being able to use right, A three D model as an input, use a large language model to describe what is you're trying to achieve. Uh, some of the new, um, yeah, multimodal models that are coming out such as, uh, G B T four, uh, vision I think is really exciting because you could even, uh, use a sketch right, as, as your, your input.

So I can imagine, uh, yeah, a world where you're just able to, to write the logic or sketch out the logic, uh, you know, by hand and use kind of the vision capability that to build [01:05:00] out that, um, script scripting logic, and then kind of go back and forth with a, with a co-pilot to, to develop that idea into a working, um, script, to automate a task.

Or I think some of the more exciting things, uh, like the high bar team is doing. . Right. Is being able to encode that into a reusable script that you could just use a, a large language model to call upon an a p i and execute. Right? And it kind of happens on the backend, and you just get the thing that you need, uh, to, to, as part of your workflow.

So string stringing these various things together, these different models, you know, um, to kind of answer your question, I'm, I'm more of a glass, a glass half full person. I, I'm maybe 'cause of my, uh, yeah. Biases and technology. Um, I have a positive outlook versus others who kind of see it as a Yeah,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

German Aparicio: yeah.

More optimistic versus the idea that [01:06:00] we're gonna have, um, yeah. Uh, a g i one day that's gonna take over the world, these black bosses. I think the, the future of AI is more about, uh, many ais, right? That are really good at doing small things. AI that use different inputs and that you could string together to achieve your final goal.

And for me, why it's interesting and exciting is this idea that, uh, you could be a student who wants to start your own company and you can leverage these, these technologies, uh, to create a product or a service that, uh, innovates in the industry and also disrupts, right? The current model. And you're able to kind of compete against, uh, big shops.

So you could be, you know, in, in the words of one of our, our previous participants, kind of be small and act big, right? I think that's, that's a, a powerful idea and, um, exciting [01:07:00] to see potentially be a reality, uh, in, in the world where, where AI and and machine learning exists.

Evan Troxel: There's a couple of things that I've seen recently that have just, uh, have been amazing, and, and those to me are showing the potential of these systems doing reverse engineering of things. So, for example, . Poll, uh, an image of a, of a fully plated dinner is uploaded, uh, to your point about the, the vision in G P T four, right?

It's just send up a picture of a plated dinner and say, gimme the recipe for this dish. And it does. I think that's incredible, right? So the I idea of reverse engineering something back down into its building block components and how to actually make that so it's not just what's on the plate. It's like how you would go through, it's what is, what is on the plate, what are the ingredients and how do you put those together to make the thing on the plate? Because I think that applies to what we, we do as [01:08:00] architects. And I think that's the gap that we would be looking to get bridged between something that mid journey produces and saying, okay, now how do I build a three D model of that? Right? Because it's a two

D representation. It's not a three D representation. And the other one real quick was a, a government. Document that it had was heavily redacted

German Aparicio: Redacted.

Evan Troxel: and it was able to basically, I'm sure, pretty closely figure out what had been redacted from it. Why? Because it knows what words go a, are the most likely to come after the words that it, that it can see. Right?

That's exactly what the large language model G p T 3.5 and four are doing right when they write text is it's, it's a token based system. Every word is a token or a series of tokens and it's based on probability of the words that came before it based on all the language it's ever been trained on. And so therefore, you know, it's again, reverse engineering something that we don't have all the answers, but it gives us a pretty good idea of what it actually takes to get there from [01:09:00] where we are, which is from not knowing to knowing. And I think that shows a ton of potential both. Kind of really interesting, but also a little bit scary in the, the government, uh, redacted document kind of a thing. But I, I am, I'm also really optimistic and hopeful that we don't, as a e c, uh, take too long to just sit back and watch what happens. But we kind of take it upon ourselves to figure out business use cases now that we can potentially solve with tools like that and start doing it, because I think that would, uh, that would be amazing. Before we say goodbye, I just wanna reiterate your call to action, which was for people to get involved in mentorship. Uh, and so I want you to tell the audience how they can get ahold of you if they're interested in doing that, and what might be involved in that. So can you tell everybody where's the best place to find you? And we'll put links to all these in the show notes so people don't have to stop driving when they're listening to this and write it down. [01:10:00] They'll know, they can click on a link in the show notes, but go ahead and, and give everybody that information.

German Aparicio: Yeah. So to learn more about our accelerator program, you can find us at uh, zero sixty.io, uh, to reach

Evan Troxel: that all spelled out The letters? Z e r o ss i s uh, x t y. That

German Aparicio: t y, correct?

Evan Troxel: even spell German. Sorry.

German Aparicio: As one word. No worries. Yeah, as one word. You can find more information about our accelerator program there. If you'd like to email us, we're at info@zero.io as well. Uh, you can reach me on all social media platforms. I'm probably more active on LinkedIn these days. Uh, so feel free to, to reach out and yeah, my call to action would be

Uh, if you're interested in mentoring, there's a number of recent graduates, you know, uh, professionals currently working in firms looking to start their own companies and can really use the help of industry professionals of those that have built their own companies in the past. Um, [01:11:00] and yeah, just those that are interested in driving change in the industry, uh, for, for that mentorship and feedback for products and services.

So I would, I would, uh, ask yeah, if you're interested in and excited about this, to, to get involved and, uh, please reach out.

Evan Troxel: I'll put a link to your LinkedIn in the show notes. I'll put zero sixty.io in there and your, that email address. The last thing that I'll say is that, you know, mentorship is not a one-way street. I think that mentors and mentees both get something out of it. And so to your point, German, if, if somebody is interested in helping guide and they're interested in the future and. Change advocacy in a e c, you will also get something out of it as a mentor. So, um, it's not, it's not just a one way thing that's gonna take up your time. I think you're gonna get just out just as much out of it as the mentees are. So, um, [01:12:00] this sounds like a fantastic program. I'm so happy to hear about your new role at Trimble Ventures and, uh, I wish you all the success.

German Aparicio: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.

Evan Troxel: All right. Talk to you soon.

German Aparicio: You too. Cheers.