184: ‘Chaos Evolves’, with Stephan Sieber and Bill Allen

184 - ‘Chaos Evolves’, with Stephan Sieber and Bill Allen

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Evan Troxel: Welcome back to the TRXL Podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, and in this episode I welcome Stephan Sieber and Bill Allen. Stephan is the CEO of Chaos, and Bill is the newly minted director of products at Chaos. Previously he served as the CEO and President of EvolveLab, which was acquired by Chaos in early 2025. I could have recorded this episode sooner and gotten Stephan or Bill, but I really wanted them both on the show at the same time to discuss the recent merger between Chaos and EvolveLab today we go inside the merger. Stephan and Bill join me to talk about the synergies, innovations, and strategic rationale behind the union. We'll find out how and why these two companies are combining forces. We'll talk about tools from AI rendering with Veras to innovative tools like Glyph and Envision, change in the [00:01:00] industry, and among the many fascinating topics that we covered, I want to focus a little bit more on complacency. It affects us all a little bit differently, some more than others. And my key takeaway from this episode is clear. You have to stay current with rapidly evolving technology and master its use.

The AEC industry will look vastly different in five years. That's just my hot take, so you need to either get ahead of that change or at least keep up the pace at a bare minimum. What's exciting is that today's small teams can achieve extraordinary results as EvolveLab has quite spectacularly shown us with what they've done in creating valuable tools.

But it also applies to practitioners of course. So stay tuned until the end where I'll provide a summary of my thoughts. This was a great conversation with Stephan and Bill, and there's an extensive amount of additional information in the show notes as usual, so be sure to check those out there in your podcast app.

If you're a paid member or if you're a free member, [00:02:00] you can find them on the website at trxl.Co. And now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Stephan Sieber and Bill Allen.

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Evan Troxel: Bill, welcome back to the podcast on your part Bill and welcome for the first time, Stephan,

Stephan Sieber: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Bill Allen: Thanks Evan.

Evan Troxel: it's,

it's always fun negotiating who's gonna talk when there's multiple guests and we're all in remote location, so I will do my best to like actually point it at one of you to, to make this happen. Um, but Stephan, let's start with you because you're the, you're the new guest on the show, but also I think, you know, the news that we're kind of sharing today and also the conversation that we're gonna have.

I'm sure has a lot to do with, with you as the CEO at Chaos. And so maybe you can give us.

a bit of a background. Uh, we met at Autodesk University at the end of last year in San Diego, and I had gone [00:03:00] into a small meeting booth with, with you and Christian, the former CEO of

Chaos, and Phil Miller, who has been on one of my other shows, uh, who is a 3D studio, max Guru, works at Chaos now, um, has been in the industry for a long time.

And I was going in there thinking I was gonna ask you guys some questions, but it was actually quite the opposite. I, I was told later by Roderick Bates, who has also been on the show, that you were given a dossier on me ahead of time and you were asking me a bunch of questions because of the work that I do here on the podcast and the guests that I interview and just kind of my sense of what was going on in the industry.

And so I'll just use that little story as a kickoff here, but it's great to have you and, and if you want to jump in and tell us kind of your trajectory to becoming the CEO of Chaos, I would love to hear it.

Stephan Sieber-1: Very happy to do that. Um, uh, look, I came on board, um, uh, at Chaos on the very beginning of 2020. Um, uh, four originally as the [00:04:00] exec chairman. Uh, and then in summer, uh, last year, on the 1st of August, I took over as the CEO. Um, I came on board after a long career in traditional B2B Tech, so mainly enterprise applications.

I've done a fair amount of ERP, enterprise resource planning. I've been the CEO of a digital freight platform. And when I got in touch with, um, our board about this opportunity here at Chaos, I originally said like, this is probably not the right opportunity for me because it's a new application space for me.

Um, and that's why we sort of chosen this way for me to get into the business as an exec chair, have an opportunity to work alongside Christian, my, my predecessor. Really get to know the space, get to know the business. And I've realized, and I think we've realized that there's a quite a few things in common, right?

We serve professionals. We, we serve architects, we serve architecture firms, uh, many smaller ones, but also quite a number of large architecture firms. And a lot of our [00:05:00] go forward and, and, and go forward priority and strategy is about verticalizing our software for the AEC industry. And what I mean with verticalizing is really providing technology that helps our customers to create value for their customers.

Um, so as I say, help them to do faster design, smarter sales, better builds, um, to cover more parts of the design workflow beyond classic visualization. And, and hopefully this, you know, gives us a good segue into many interesting topics to touch on amongst others. Um, the combination of EvolveLab and Chaos.

Evan Troxel: All right, bill, it's your turn. Welcome back to the show. I'll put a link to. your previous episode, which was a very early episode on the podcast in the show notes, And then your. I don't know how, how do you describe what Ben does? Ben? Ben is like the Swiss Army knife of EvolveLab and now Chaos.

Right. And, and so he's been on the show, uh, he's been on the Confluence show as well, talking about Veras and [00:06:00] Glyph and all these different tools that you guys have been building. But give us kind of the, the quick update on your story since, I mean, it's probably been three or four years since you've been on the show at this point.

So tell, tell us what's happened in the, in the meantime.

Bill Allen: Yeah, I'd be happy to. And it, it would be a good segue to, to Ben's intro too. So I'll try to do him some justice here, uh, as well. So my background actually is not in software, not in consulting, uh, backgrounds actually in architecture. So I worked, uh, for a lot of years, uh, doing traditional architecture practice, working on projects, et cetera.

Uh, naturally gravitated to the design technology side. Uh, saw a lot of gaps in the industry and opportunities to try to help architects and engineers and contractors. So, started at EvolveLab in 2015 as a data-driven design and BIM consulting company. And then, uh, naturally saw an opportunity to start developing, you know, solutions, apps for architects, engineers and contractors.

But I didn't know how to do that myself. I was, was not a programmer. I did some dynamo scripting, some grasshopper [00:07:00] scripting, but never, you know, I. Legit CA, you know, add-ins or anything like that. And so I needed, uh, someone, you know, to kind of be a right wing person to help me with that and, you know, compliment, uh, skills that I did not have.

And so, uh, that was when I brought on Ben Gula, who, uh, was our, our CTO and, and, EvolveLab to be a, a partner in uh, we started building out, you know, apps that we would've wanted when we were doing traditional architecture, um, which I'm sure we'll get into, you know, automating construction documents and data-driven design and, and such.

So, um, anyways, we brought on Benji in, uh, 2019. Uh, realized he was a spec, pretty special individual, I think as all of us know, um, and crazy smart guy. And so anyways, uh. Since then, we started building out different products, um, and some of which I think were in the space, Evan, when I was on the show last time, but maybe some other ones that, that weren't in probably some more advancements.

And so, uh, we [00:08:00] were trying to, you know, touch different verticals throughout the architectural design process, whether it was, you know, schematic design, uh, all the way through, uh, construction documentation. So, um, yeah, I'd be happy to go down any one of those trails you want, but I'll let you

Evan Troxel: So there was no word of this, uh, coming together at au last year. I'm sure you guys were talking about it, though. I'm sure this has been kind of in the making for a while. Uh, and so, so nobody led on that this was going on. Um, and so I was surprised, but also happy about it because, and, and I guess Stephan, let's, let's jump back to you here. A lot has happened with Chaos in the AEC space in the last couple of years. Let's call it, uh, from my awareness and my perception, um, you know, in the press, but also just the show floor kind of. Experience that you guys create. You've released Envision, now you've acquired EvolveLab and their Veras platform among the other offerings that they [00:09:00] have.

you've done the, a big Enscape acquisition as Chaos and before your time. Right. But this was a, a, another kind of big play into the AEC space more specifically. And so maybe you can just give us kind of an idea of why that's important to Chaos.

Stephan Sieber-1: Well, it is, it is important. So I, the way we look at the, uh, the acquisition of Enscape was pro, probably more of a merger. Um, putting, putting two companies together that had a lot of, you know, complementary aspects to each other. Um, and, and already original Chaos, meaning before the merger with Enscape had a big, big chunk of its business being done in vis architecture, visualization.

And, and for me, that's architecture as well. Right. I understand that some of the techniques and some of the technology and some of the, the methods used are also used in other parts of visualization such as VFX or even consumer products. But you know, when you think about the value chain, and again, it's, it's a lot about for whom are [00:10:00] we creating value?

Whose problem are we solving? Well then, you know, solving the problem of putting a physical structure into reality is a different problem that you're solving. That entertaining people or then designing a car. Or launching a car. Um, so, so there was already in, in, in, in, in Chaos before, uh, those acquisitions and that merger, a, a, a fair amount of AEC, and obviously with Enscape, which is 100% AEC, and now most recently also with, you know, EvolveLab in some of the other, um, um, organic innovations such as envisions, et cetera.

We're making, we're making more and more steps into the AEC space. W why is this important? Well, look, it's a large market. It's a market that we feel is still underserved with state-of-the-art technology compared to some other industries. It is a very fragmented market. There's a lot of, you know, different technologies around, [00:11:00] it's a lot of different players around, and it's a market that goes through profound change, uh, from multiple different angles, right?

Um, um, what we just look at what it means to build buildings today and, and, and what the requirements are and the cost that in that is involved, but also sustainability aspects, the role that architects play, uh, the number of specialized jobs and roles that need to come together to realize such a project.

So we feel there is a tremendous amount for better technology support, uh, more modern technology support to help, uh, creative people, designers, architects in this industry to do their job better. And, and we feel that we can play a role in this.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. it's, it's interesting because I think, about from the firm side of things, because I'm an architect, I come from the practice side, like Bill as well, and thinking about building tools versus buying tools is something that even architects deal with. And, and you're [00:12:00] talking about it at a kind of a different scale, right?

And, um, filling gaps that you have as, as Chaos over time with these other technologies that other people have brought well beyond, you know, just kind of a MVP level, right? Like these are proven. Pieces of software there, lots of architects are already using them. Um, is, I mean, you're, you're obviously doing a lot of internal development as well.

You're doing some building and some buying. Can you kind of just talk about the difference of why you would pick one versus the other to fill these different holes? Or what may, maybe it has to do with the expertise that already exists at Chaos and you really wanna acquire the talent so that, so that you can continue to build these things because I, I, I have to say it right, there's a lot of people out there who are also concerned every time they see something like this happen, because many times products get bought and then killed.

Right. So maybe you could just talk about like the, the choice to build versus buy at, at your organization's [00:13:00] I think, I think you touched on one of the most important points, it's skills and talent, right? Be because if you think about a technology company and that, that, that doesn't really matter what type of technology you, you, you talk about, it's, you know, as I say, sometimes software is nothing but canned talent, right?

Stephan Sieber-1: It's basically creativity and experience. And, And, and, and, and, and, knowledge of individuals that we somehow, you know, in, in the good old times, we burned it on a cd and in the meantime it's somewhere up in the cloud. Right. But, but it's basically like corned beef, it's canned talent. Right. And, um, and there

is only, there's only so much you and your, your, your team, your staff knows.

Right. And let's also be clear, I mean, Chaos is a small company, right? I, I, I, I know that, you know, we've grown and we're proud about our growth, but we're still a company with, in total roughly 750 employees compared to some of the other, you know, larger players in the technology [00:14:00] industry. We're, we're a small company.

We're also a very focused company, right? It's about, it's about eight. It's more than 80% of our business that is in. Of our core business that is in AEC that is around architecture, right? Um, so, so we're, we are quite focused. Even though we play on a global scale, we serve customers of many different, you know, segments like from very small, even freelance or up to fairly large enterprises.

But what, we're quite a focus focused business. So, so I think that gives us an opportunity to be very specific on, you know, where we have a chance to excel and accelerate with the, the knowledge, the talent, the resources, the experience we have, the technology that we own and that we understand and, and where it is easier and faster for us to partner.

And, and as I say, an acquisition is nothing but a very, very deep. And sort of never ending form of a partnership, right? That's the [00:15:00] way I look at this. Um, so, so this this acquisition of EvolveLab, and that's why I personally rather talk about bringing the companies together or merging them because, you know, bill and Ben and, and their team and EvolveLab, the technology and the customers and the experience and the talent that is in there.

This is not about us swallowing them. This is about us coming together because we're ultimately convinced that we can do something together that each of us couldn't do or couldn't do as easy and as fast as we can do, uh, together.

Evan Troxel: so Bill, you're, you're nodding vigorously. I might add for those who can't see this on who are listening so Bill, I mean, when, when it comes to. Merging, coming together with Chaos. Tell the audience what that means for, I mean, let's, if, if, if Stephan says Chaos is A small company, let's talk about EvolveLab.

So you could talk about that. Like just, just when this, when, when they approach you or you approach them. I don't know how it happened, [00:16:00] but, but like obviously there's, there was. a lot of kind of feeling that out that you went through to kind of really feel like if it was the right thing or not. But to Stephan's point, right?

It's like adding fuel to, in resources wise, to what EvolveLab could do. I mean, that had to also be really enticing to, to see that you could make maybe a larger impact in the industry.

Bill Allen: A hundred percent. Yeah, that's what it was. So for a lot of people that are thinking about starting their own company, I'd like to say it's, it's a very romanticized idea that you have in your, your head. And then, you know, when the, the boots at the ground or the tire hits the road, you know, there's, uh, a lot of just grunt work that you have to start coordinating.

You know, there's payroll and proposals and HR and handbooks and all of this kind of stuff. And what I started to realize is, you know, you kind of as a, as a business owner or or founder, you get sucked into a lot of those kinds of things and supporting your team and making sure that they're, you know, taken care of.

And then your team kind of gets to [00:17:00] work on the fun stuff, um, which is great. And, but for us specifically, you know, we didn't raise money, uh. We're a hundred percent bootstrapped company. Um, and so basically all of our r and d uh, came from our services revenue. You know, we reinvested that services revenue into the products that we developed.

And so we kind of saw this opportunity with Chaos. Uh, you know, twofold is one, it selfishly was an opportunity for me to get back to the craft and the things that I love. And then we can, you know, there's people at Chaos that are. Uh, ex it's their job to coordinate HR and payroll and it's great they can do that.

But then, you know, for the end users and for our customers and for everyone else, the opportunity is that we get to now really amplify, you know, the technology. Uh, we're working on some really fun and what we think, you know, is very innovative, uh, processes, but there's, uh, a cap to, you know, gasoline in the, in the tank and the amount of resources that we had prior to the [00:18:00] acquisition.

Um, again, with us being a hundred percent bootstrapped. So what we saw as an opportunity with Chaos is really to start amplifying that innovation and then also getting the technology into end user's hands, more people, you know, would be able to be aware of the technology, be able to benefit from the technology.

Um, and so it's really, you know, that's how I kind of saw the opportunity, both from a selfish standpoint, but also for the industry as well. And so that's where we see some really great synergy. We. Stephan and I talked a lot, you know, prior to this and this idea of, of one plus one equals three. You know, it's not just, uh, you know, you take the two things, they're, they're, they're more to, they're better together.

And so that's where we really see, uh, an opportunity to really take things to the next level. Now with, uh, both the kind of what we're, uh, been building, but also with the resources of Chaos.

Evan Troxel: Can you talk about kind of the. What the right word is here, but the, the, the idea that,

I mean, you picked a partner

and I'm [00:19:00] curious why you, you, maybe there were other options, maybe there weren't on the table, but, but there, there's definitely like the players in our industry. I'm curious why you felt like this was the right fit for you guys and, and maybe even why now?

Bill Allen: Yeah, I'd be happy. So we were never, you know, really looking to sell. Like we never went to some brokerage company and put ourselves on, we always had, um, it was crazy. We've always had people that have approached us, but never really seemed like the right fit. And so, um, the, the main thing that was really important to us, uh, was two things.

Was one, the synergy, which I was just describing a, a, a second ago, but then also the culture. And so from the moment we met Stephan, um, and his team, uh, Yor and Roderick, and the whole group, uh, Vlado, everyone has just been amazing, uh, to work. There's this very natural chemistry, you know, almost like when you're dating your spouse and you're, you're trying to find a partner.

It's very much [00:20:00] like that because, you know, as Shahan Mess mentioned, like it's a, it's a. Long-term relationship, you know, you're, you're getting married to somebody and so you wanna make sure it's, it's a good fit. And from the moment we, we talked to them, it was just this natural chemistry that occurred.

And so the relationship was very important to us in addition to, you know, the synergy because you wanna make sure, uh, post, you know, acquisition and all of that, that you're going to, you know, get along and everyone's gonna play. And yes, you have friction with any relationship you have, we have with our partners or friends or anything.

Um, but you know, the, the chemistry there helps you get over that. And so we, we saw a very natural fit there and talking to them, and we really like them a lot. They're very likable, uh, people, the whole team. And I can't tell you, like when we joined, like I got so many LinkedIn messages and email, you know, welcome to the team.

We're so excited you're here. So it just kind of ver further validated that, um, after we came on board, uh, as well. So that, that was just important to us, you know, uh, in [00:21:00] addition to the synergy piece.

Evan Troxel: Well, Stephan, let's go back to you and just talk about what was really enticing about what EvolveLab was doing, is doing, continues to do, and, and what maybe where, where you see that going in the future.

Stephan Sieber-1: I, I can echo many things that, that Bill has just mentioned, right? Equally for us as, as the acquirer, uh, or as the other partner in this, in this, in

this marriage, um, the culture and the personal fit matters, right? Because as I said before, you know, there is, there is a fair amount, a fair percentage of this, of this, um, um, investment is really bringing talent and bringing creativity and experience into our team.

The second strong pillar is really that, what I call the strategic rationale. When you look at what EvolveLab does, uh, across the, I'd say the four larger products, right? Ve certainly being the most popular one, but then also Gly, Morpheus, helix, um, and, and, and then you sort [00:22:00] of put them into a logical value chain, simplified value chain of how.

You know, architects and the AEC industry work, then, then, then I think everybody can see that we're, we're very adjacent to each other. But there's actually in that, that's a positive thing. There is, there is little overlap, right? We're, we're really expanding, extending each other's capabilities. And that's why this strategic rationale was like from, from the initial, you know, view already quite, quite attractive and sort of, you know, very, very logically explained why one and one in this case can really be three. Um, then we talked to a lot of customers, um, um, we talked to a lot of uh, uh, EvolveLab customers. We talk to a lot of our customers. We talk to industry experts and you know that that visit in San Diego and I think fair, it's fair to say Bill. Yes, we were talking indeed. Actually, I think even. The hour before or right after our [00:23:00] conversation in the very same romantic booth.

I had a meeting with Bill and

Ben

Evan Troxel: I

Stephan Sieber-1: where we,

Evan Troxel: wouldn't, call it

Bill Allen: did you have

candles in your booth? Evan?

Evan Troxel: that we didn't have

Bill Allen: Oh, okay.

Evan Troxel: I had a

bottle of water.

Stephan Sieber-1: So we had, we had a meeting and I think that was the first time we met in person. Right? We did talk, we did talk on the phone, on the phone and video conference before, but we spent a lot of time really figuring out like, how, how would we do this together? Um, how would we do this in a way that, you know, this is not becoming one of those stories where big swallows, small and small, disappears and evaporates.

But this is

really something where customers, customers, um, and, and our existing users, right? Let's be down to the individual, the people who use our technology every day. Uh, day in, day out, in, in, in, in, in fulfilling their mission where they see a value and where they can get excited about this. Right? And, and through these discussions, we, we just [00:24:00] realized that there is a lot of common beliefs and there lot of common convictions and a lot of common frustrations with how things should work and could work if, if, if we would have more talent and more resources and more capacity.

And, and then, and then we felt, look, this is still a challenge. It's still a big opportunity and you don't get it for free. There is a lot of work going into this and that will continue. But we, we, we ultimately came to the point where I think we all felt, um, it, it's easier for us to do this together, uh, and it will still be fun.

Um, and that's why I think we then we then we then came to the point where we started to talk about commercials and terms and conditions and everything, which is. Obviously this is an important project for all of us and, and, and, and it has, its, its, its its place. But I am, I'm a firm believer that if you have culture and a strong strategic rationale, you have a fair chance to overcome the legal groundwork and the commercials.

If you only have legal groundwork in commercials, but the [00:25:00] culture and the strategic rationale are not strong enough, then it will, or it can easily be one of those cases that, you know, people probably point out in MBA case studies about m and a projects that didn't work out right.

Evan Troxel: Can you define commercials? I've never heard that term

in this context before.

Stephan Sieber-1: price, right.

When you acquire a company, you need to pay money for it. You don't get it for free,

unfortunately. Right.

Evan Troxel: it's based on the word commerce. I get it, I get it

Stephan Sieber-1: Yeah. Sorry

Evan Troxel: commercial in in the US is, I'm, I'm watching. It's, it's, it's getting in the way of my television show that I'm watching or

Stephan Sieber-1: And forgive, like, uh, that's probably my non-native, my non-native, um, um, uh, abuse of your language.

Evan Troxel: No worries, no worries.

Okay. So I wanna share a quick story here because I think this kind of speaks to the culture, um, that I've experienced with both of your companies and, and it has to do with even just at the last and I'm in a, in a privileged position to be able to, to [00:26:00] tell this story that when I go to the Chaos booth.

Roderick and Dan Monaghan are there to kind of say, Hey, come, come back here. I want to show you some stuff. Right? And, and the, the way that, that your two companies do it is different, right? I think with, with Chaos it's, it's more of a here's, here's a, we've already thought of this slide show. Here's what we're going to show you.

And, and Dan usually is the one leading that. And, and Roderick is sitting there and they're both asking questions. What do you think about that? What do you think about, is this useful? What? Whatever. But I, but I like the whole like, come, come, I wanna show you something. And then I go to the EvolveLab booth, right?

And, and you talked about Ben Guler earlier, and Ben's like, Hey, come over here. I, I wanna show you this, I want to get your, your thoughts on this, or I wanna show you what's coming, or whatever, whatever it is. And so, like I said, it's a, it's a bit of a privilege position to be in, but at the same time, you're both doing it and you're both doing it because you want to get a genuine [00:27:00] reaction of somebody who's in the industry because you're excited about the tools you're building, you're wondering if you're going the right direction, right?

It's like, are is this right? Is this what, what do you think? What's your sense about this? And that's valuable because there's a lot of companies out there who never ask, right? And they just throw something out there. And we all know who the kinds of companies we're that I'm talking about right now, but it's like.

The big reveal, and it's like, well, I would've, as a, as a practitioner, I would've maybe done that differently. And, and so there's less involvement, I will say, with the industry of the decision making process when tools are being developed before releasing them. So I wanted to share that because like, it really does speak to kind of this fit in culture.

You guys are both doing it and you're gonna continue to do it like that, I assume, because that's how you operate. And to me, as a partner in the industry, with the industry [00:28:00] itself, I think that there's some reassurance there for the audience, but also, you know, your customers, that that really is a fit.

Um, I'm curious now, bill and Stephan moving forward, EvolveLab developed tools that I don't think we would've ever seen come from Chaos. Right? Like I am thinking of, of glyph and you know, like really deep kind of automation type stuff that happens inside larger platforms that aren't your, you know, right.

These, these are, these are tools built to plug into, like, not, not unlike the visualization stuff, but not like it either. So I'm just curious from a product standpoint. Right. Bill, what's your new title at Chaos?

Bill Allen: Director of products, I think is my

Evan Troxel: yeah.

So, so I mean, you're, you're now in the position of making decisions about the kinds of products that Chaos puts out into the world, and you've already made those decisions earlier with EvolveLab, with the types of tools that you're putting out [00:29:00] into the world.

I'm wondering if that changes, but I'm also wondering, like you, you, you talked earlier, Stephan, about verticalization, but there's also kind of a horizontalization going on within. The AEC industry itself of offering a wider range of tools now through acquisition, but also through development. And so I I'm gonna throw this to both of you.

Somebody, you guys can arm wrestle virtually about who's gonna go first, but like, what's the thinking behind this and, and this side of, of the story.

Bill Allen: basically, you know, a lot of the tools that we build at EvolveLab are tools that we would've wanted, um,

as mentioned. So we have an assumption, uh, because we've been in practice and we see a lot of the, you know, ditches and the very fragmented process that Stephan, you know, had mentioned earlier in the industry.

And so, uh, I think both of us kind of see the world the same way. Some people look at a problem and they go, well, that sucks, and they move on with their life. Um, we kind of look at a problem and we go, man, it'd be cool if you know someone created an [00:30:00] interoperability tool for this issue, or if there was some way to, you know, automate construction documents.

And so we try.

to build out those tools, but, you know, it's also a very small industry and you also want, you know, feedback as you mentioned in trying to get that validation. Um, and so that's kind of how we look through the. Through the lens, you know, through our worldview and in, in the industry at large.

Uh, and then regarding, uh, you know, the integration that one plus one equaling three with Chaos, uh, I, I would let Stephan, you know, comment on this and, and validate this, but as we've gotten more acclimated with the Chaos team, we understand that that's part of the bigger vision. Uh, Chaos has been known, you know, for a very long time to be the experts, the leaders in visualization, um, but also realizes there's great opportunity for all these different, um, you know, lanes within the, the, the project process and, and life cycle.

Not just visualization, but there's other problems that also we should be trying to solve. And so I think that's where that, that synergy, both of us kind of saw [00:31:00] that. But Stephan, I'll let you, you comment on that.

Stephan Sieber-1: Yeah. No. So happy to b before I, before I answer that, I, I'd like to say thank you, Evan, for, for that feedback. Um, this is for me as the CEO of this company, and I think as I'm speaking for many of us, or for all of us, that this is, I'd very much like to hear this, right? This is, this is great that, that's how a technology company should work with its customers, right?

Be curious, be passionate, and, and be never, never, you know, never stopping to ask questions and try to understand how we can create more value for the

people

we serve, right?

And that's why, and, and the second part of my answer I want to give is that vertical versus horizontal, right? When I talk about vertical software, I'm talking about industry specific software that

supports the core people, the core functions in an architecture firm, AEC

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Stephan Sieber-1: in our, case, right?

Um, as compared to horizontal software, that which is important technology, [00:32:00] like a payroll, an hr, human resources system, which is, which is just not the

core process of an a

EC company right?

now. If you play in that vertical space, um, then, then it comes with a few opportunities, but it also comes with a few obligations, right?

The opportunity is you work with people like you that actually deliver products to customers, services and products to customers,

and that depending their success to the support you provide to them, you as a technology vendor provide to them, that's a great opportunity because you can actually be contributing and be part of their success.

Obviously, it comes with an obligation. If you don't do a good job, if you deliver something that they. They can't use Well, you make them unsuccessful and ultimately you lose them as a customer or you don't win

them as a customer. Right? so

so I think it, it, it setss up imperative for for [00:33:00] marketability, for usability, for value creation that comes with vertical software that I personally enjoy.

Right. And when I say we want to move more to vertical, is it then we want to, we want to be more helpful in helping architects specifically to, to, to deliver their results, to achieve their goals because, and yes, we started Chaos originally started with visualization or even more narrow with rendering, right?

But most, most of our customers don't render for the sake of rendering they render because it helps them to sell their ideas, to express their ideas. And it helps them to win more projects to explain better why they are unique to, to, to understand better what, what their customers are expecting to help.

People in engineering and construction to understand better can this be built and how can it be built? And if you, and if you zoom out and say visualization for the sake of visualization or visualization for the sake of, as I [00:34:00] said, faster design, smarter sales, better builds, well then, then, then you can automatically see how the EvolveLab tools, even though they are not core and classic visualization, in my opinion, fit very well into what our mission and mandate for the AEC industry is.

Because it's all about giving architects better tools, better technology to achieve their goals faster and be more successful and take away as much of the lower added value, mundane, repetitive tasks that I think all of them spend still far too much time with. Taking this away from them using modern technology to eliminate or to reduce that, that the effort and time spent there and giving them even more chances to spend time and their energy and creativity where they really can make a difference.

Right.

Evan Troxel: I think one of the, the themes that I've seen. Become really apparent [00:35:00] in what Chaos is doing specifically, and there's others as well. But is this idea, and, and I've talked about it with Roderick on the show, um, so this isn't a new thing maybe for the audience to hear, but this idea of what used to be, I mean, you said it well, right?

We don't do rendering for the sake of doing renderings. Like they're, they're a, usually there's a sales component. There's a, there's a decision making component associated with those to help move the project forward, back in the day. Right. So dating myself, it was always like, can we get updated renderings?

Clients were always asking for updated renderings, and it was like, no, you can't, like they, they're so time consuming. You only get them per the contract. And now with tools like Enscape and Veras, it's very much like. You can have renderings whenever you want. Like renderings are free basically.

Um, and, and that's a good thing for clients because it keeps them in the loop. It keeps them happy and satisfied that things are progressing and that they [00:36:00] can see it in a language they can understand. That speaks back to this kind of sales idea of, of rendering, but that you're actually pulling these tools into the process earlier and more often so that they can be used for decision making.

So that's the concept I mentioned a minute ago about is maybe not new to the audience of this show, but that's a super, super, super important aspect of how tools can change over time. And I think there's still a lot of architects and probably small firms out there, which is the majority of firms that we can't forget about that don't, don't understand that yet, right.

They, they're like, no, I still do renderings at the end of a process or the view and SketchUp is all my clients ever gonna get. Right? Just the shaded geometry view. So I, I think that, you know, and, and then you're able to expand on that, Right.

With your sustainability tools that you've been

showing off, right?

So it's like, okay, now we can use this really smart [00:37:00] information in the model to help drive the decision making process in a way that we can see it, right? Like literally see it because there's a visualization component that's helping us make these decisions as we go along. But that helps us make better decisions earlier in a project, which really drive project success, Instead of waiting until the end of dd. To get an energy model back from our MEP engineers. Like, oh, we we're just, we're frontloading that process and having a better understanding of our decisions earlier and the impacts that those have on the project, which is the ultimate thing that we're delivering to our client.

it also allows us to include them in that process because we get that feedback so much earlier that we can have these conversations and include them, and that actually is much better for that relationship that the architect is building with their client over time too. Right. That inclusiveness in the process.

It's not so black box. It's like, we're gonna go over here in the studio, we're gonna work. [00:38:00] No, you can't come in And look. it's, too messy and you'll, you'll just ask too many questions. No. Now it's,

way more back and forth, way more often. The touch points in the iterative process are way, there's so many more of, you know, the potential at least is there to do that. so

Stephan Sieber-1: And it's,

Evan Troxel: I'm just curious from your standpoint, how you see that in, you know, manifesting in the tools that you're putting out there.

Stephan Sieber-1: you know, I, I'll go first, bill this time, and then you, you, you chime in. But I think it's also important for us to remember it's not only architect and client, right? It's like

dozens, if not hundreds of people and specialized. Tasks and profiles that collaborate. I was, I was about two years, three years ago, I a bit, a bit longer, four or five years ago, I was sitting on the opposite side of the table.

I was a customer. I, in my previous company, we built a large new office building. We were the biggest, the biggest, tenant in, in the building. And we were part of the construction process. And I, as a non-architect, I, I was confronted in many meetings looking at [00:39:00] 2D plans, very abstract

plans on sort

of a, a flight level of one meter 50, cut through the building, trying to understand how, how should our people work

in this, in this building, how do we, that was just in the middle of the Corona pandemic, right?

Where we also needed to rethink the way we put the workspaces, the way we organized ourselves, where we moved from very traditional, you know, everybody has its own. Desk to a more open space. And, and it was so hard for us to, for me to, to understand like, is this, is this gonna be a workspace that our people will enjoy?

It will help us to drive productivity and will help us to bring teams together, et cetera. You know, if I would have had something like what we can provide to our customers, um, even together with EvolveLab, where you put on an and, and a virtual reality glasses, or even you look on your cell phone or on the, on the, [00:40:00] on the computer screen, and then you, you iterate, you document, you annotate, you collaborate on, in one platform, on, on something like photorealistic visuals, right?

They, they don't need to be absolutely photorealistic for some of the use cases. For some they

need to be, but for some others they don't. But you have something that you as a, as a, as a non-expert understand what it means and how it looks like and how it will work in reality. That's a, that's a huge benefit.

And, and that's sort of next to covering more steps in the workflow from, from concept to construction, where I think we have an opportunity to also, so somehow become a collaboration platform for multiple different jobs and profiles and players along that chain, you know, to communicate and to exchange data and, and feedback and iterate because it's all, it's on the one way street, right.

Bill Allen: one of the things that's pretty interesting with some of the tools and the technologies, uh, Evan, you mentioned like how long it [00:41:00] used to take, uh, to create a rendering.

I remember, uh, you probably remember this too, back in the day, we would network all these computers together, together, and then you'd hit render, go home for the evening and hope and pray that when you come in in the morning, your rendering, you know, would work. Uh, and then, you know, with the advent of tools like Enscape, you know, have this real time rendering engine, it's like, are you serious?

This is incredible. Um, and then with ai, you know, it just further accelerates, you know, some of this, uh, instantaneous, uh, feedback that you start to get and you're able to actually produce this, um, you know, very, very fast to be able to get it in front of a client. So it's really, you know, short cutting the, the process quite a bit.

And, um, just helping things, you know, be more and more efficient for sure.

Evan Troxel: Bill, I'm curious from your point of view, developing a tool like Veras. I mean, something that I've observed in the industry is, you know, obviously AI has taken over a lot of the.

The airwaves, let's just say. Right? It's thrown in our face every single day as like, [00:42:00] these, this, this really incredible intelligence.

And I, there's, there's, I think there's still not a lot of intelligence there. But back to the idea that I mentioned earlier about decision making. architects have always done this kind of a thing, but they didn't have control over, they, they were on a search rather than, than, than prompting image making, right?

And so this idea of ideating early through the rendering process, I mean, it's kind of not even rendering, right? It's like. You type something in and you get something back. And so it's still kind of a search. And I think maybe it's still, we could, we could link it to searching for inspiration, searching for ideas to help drive the design process, Instead of thinking of rendering as the outcome or even the process with real time rendering, which it became, now it's like. Ideating and coming up with ideas or looking for direction, and that's a behavior shift. [00:43:00] Um, and that I've noticed happen, you know, with other AI generating tools as well as like, like mid journey and, and, and stable diffusion, things

like that, that are maybe more black box and not as directly related to architecture as, as Veras is. But could you maybe just talk about the shifts that you've seen? And it doesn't just have to be with image

making and, and, and looking for design ideas. Right. But that is, that, that to me is a, a big, like, we're not looking through Dwell Magazine anymore, right?

We're, we're actually iterating in a tool with maybe some really rudimentary geometry and it's coming back with things that are like, whoa, I, I never would've thought of that, that that's a shift in the industry that's actually changing things.

Bill Allen: Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, I'm thinking through, you know, our, our, our process. What we used to do when we started to go through that, Evan, as you're talking about, is, you know, we go to Pinterest and create mood boards and Google

images and we kind of put all these

on, you know, a board to, to kind of look at [00:44:00] and get inspiration, and then we'd bring it back to our design model authoring program.

It really is a shift, like a very disruptive, in a good way, found, uh, shift in the way that we execute and do our day-to-day work. Uh, I'll be very honest, I didn't understand. The application or the opportunities that were around ai, the technology was so foreign and weird to me. Uh, when I first saw it, I remember actually the first time Ben showed me Veras and he's, he put a calendar invite on my, on my calendar and, and it was called The Future.

And I was like, okay, it is very kind of, you know, abstract subject. And he goes, I wanna show you something. I said, Okay.

And he started showing me Veras, uh, inside of Revit. And it was the Revit, you know, sample model. And then you had, uh, this screen on top and it changed the model slightly. And I was like, what are you showing me?

What is this? And he goes, bill, it's ai, it's the future. It, it's gonna change the way we work. And I was like, I don't get it. Like, how, like what is this doing? And it, it took me a little while [00:45:00] to connect the dots, but then as an end user, I started realizing the opportunity. When you're talking about this ideation process, Evan, I.

You know, I remember I was a computational guy. I would use tools like Grasshopper, uh, you know, to create, that was the fastest way I knew I would build something dynamically, something parametric, so I didn't have to just model it once and scrap that and model it again. I would model it dynamically so I could iterate, you know, for, for that process and try to do it as, as fast as possible.

With the advent of ai, I had this aha moment where I was like. Wait a second, I don't have to model this entire storefront and all of these mulian and this perforated panel. I could prompt it and I could prompt it. And you talked about Mid Journey and stable diffusion and some of these tools. One of the cool things, um, just uh, to, to brag on Veras a bit is that it's pretty cool that it uses your, your project as a substrate.

So that's, the other differentiator.

And so it wasn't just,

you know, a mood board or [00:46:00] some Google image to your point. You could now actually use your actual project with the context and the backgrounds and the floor to floor heights, and then you could prompt and get, you know, a different result. And so that was kind of the big aha moment for me, you know, as a fundamental way in, in how we work and, and how advantageous it was.

So. It was really, really special in a new process. And, um, you mentioned kind of people being scared of ai. I mean, I could understand that, I respect that. Um, but you know, one of the things that I, as I've started, 'cause I'm an end user, I told you I'm not a, a programmer, I'm an end user first and foremost.

And it's a really fun tool. Like I actually, I, I was surprised at how much I, I like it and enjoy it. And there's this quote I use quite a bit when people talk about AI and how scary it is. And it, it says that, you know, AI is isn't gonna take your job, but someone using AI might. And so with that, you know, when we went to as a parallel, uh, an anecdotal, uh, example, when we go to to Revit [00:47:00] and Revit came out and you drop in an elevation marker and it elevates your building, architects aren't going, wait a sec, Revit's taken my job.

Like I wanted to draw, you know, that

whole elevation? Yeah,

Right.

exactly. Um, and so AI is kind of the, you know, it's, it's a copilot, it's a way to kind of, with you, and you're still in the driver's seat a hundred percent. Um, and it is very fun and there's gradations of how you use it. You know, we have, we have a little geometry override slider, so you can, is if you want the AI to have more creative freedom or you want more, you know, freedom in that you have that, that option.

And so that's kind of how I look, you know, through the lens, but also a, a very fundamental way in the, in the, in the way we work It is changing very fast. Um, but hopefully it gives us that quality of, of, of life back, you know, and, and be able to have, uh, fun in, in the day-to-day work.

Evan Troxel: I like that and being able to have fun. I, I'm not looking forward to the day though, bill, where I move that slider over to say like, no, re respect my geometry, and it moves it back to

giving itself [00:48:00] creative Right?

Bill Allen: Exactly right.

Stephan Sieber-1: that's, by the way, something that we're, we, we are actually discussing quite a bit is like, to what extent do we want to do, we want to give and, and we think it is important, do we, do we want to give human beings, our users, our customers, an opportunity to control and to, to, to, to understand what the AI algorithm has done.

Uh, because we think that controllability and that specificity is absolutely critical, right? And, and, and if you look at this, you know, as a, as a non non-architect, but I'm comparing this with, with many other parts of our lives, right? Uh, even, even the lives of my kids as students. Are cha is changing, right?

Um, and I remember when the lms, the first LA large language models came up, I was, my initial reaction was like, don't use them. Right. Don't, okay, you need to learn by heart. You need to read those books and [00:49:00] remember for the rest of your lives. And at some point in time, luckily quite fast, I have to say, I realized like it's completely wrong.

It's just their role is changing. Right? Um, and, and, and I think architects are more like probably curators and editors of AI assisted iterations, whereas originally they were the, the sole and the only creator. Um, and, and, and, and that gives them an opportunity to strike that balance between genuine creativity and uniqueness and control and specificity while getting the support from modern technology to deliver better, smarter results in a, in a, in hopefully a more fun way.

Right.

Evan Troxel: Well, I'm curious, Stephan, how is this going to manifest further in Chaos as products? It can. Is there anything you can talk about with kind of the use of AI and, and what, what you're pursuing?

Stephan Sieber-1: Yeah, so, so at the moment the focus is a lot on Veras, um, and bringing Enscape and Veras, uh, closer together and, and I, I'd say [00:50:00] on both ends, right? Use, use Veras very early in the ideation conceptual schematic phase, and then, and then use it sort of at the back end of, or along the design process to, to iterate and to get faster results and ideas and inspiration.

Um, but, but as I said before, right, equally Glyph, Morphis, Helix are, are, um, are, are, are great additions to elements we do, right? For example, in Enscape, I think it was four point. I think it was 4.1. Don't quote me on it. Well, I did quote myself already, but I think it was 4.1 where we brought something like the, the, um, um, the, the, the Revit filter overlays, right?

Where we, where we basically can visualize all the important information that sits in a Revit model, and that is of utmost importance in understanding how a building works and, and for example, how flexible, how flexible it will be for, for, for, for multiple [00:51:00] different use cases in, in, in the future, right?

And those are elements that connect very closely to elements that come with, with Glyph around documentation, with, with, with Helix, um, um, and, and, and some of the other capabilities that the EvolveLab team brings to us, right? So we're step by step bringing this together into a suite for AEC products that hopefully, as I said before, go from, from, from concept to construction.

Using the power of, you know, I try to, um, um, um, I use that term analytical visualization that is not only about making things look nice, but also helping people to understand how they work and how difficult they are to realize and how, efficient they are in terms of sustainability and, and what options you have to improve energy perfor building performance and energy efficiency and, and things like that.

Right.

Evan Troxel: You know, there's, there's definitely like this kind of image making creative process [00:52:00] that's going on with a tool like Veras, and then for the control enthusiasts in the room, uh, architects in general, right?

It's like we really want to control the exact geometry, the exact materials, the, maybe not the lighting, maybe not the mood, which is something that, that Veras is really good at, because That stuff is is harder than it looks to achieve, right? Is creating kind of this feeling that an image can evoke or that an animation can invoke.

I don't like to use the word control freak. I like to use the word control enthusiast around here because, because when we're building our buildings, our models of our buildings, and showing them to our client, a lot of times they're gonna get stuck on.

because we're, we're at the mercy of like, Okay.

if I don't know how to build a texture, I gotta go find it.

I gotta find it online. And then it gotta make it tile and repeat and make it look good, or else the client's gonna see that and be like, they're gonna talk about the, the way that material looks and it isn't quite right. And it's like, well, that's not what we're even talking about here.

We're talking about the overall form of the building, or we're trying to, and so it [00:53:00] gives us the ability to go in and say, I. With the help of these incredible tools to say, okay, make a material that looks like what I have imagined in my

mind, what is really hard to find and to build myself manually. That process is pretty painstaking, right?

And maybe Bill, you can talk about this a little bit, like how far Veras has come even in the last year with regional rendering and being able to basically swap out materials with a new prompt in certain images.

It is giving us more and more control all the time.

Bill Allen: Totally. Yeah. Uh, quick comment on just the, kind of the concept and, you know, clients responding. You know, we hear that a lot when we create renderings and you show a client something and they're like, wait, I don't, I didn't say I wanted red brick. Well, don't pay attention to that. You know,

Evan Troxel: You, you, they can't they can't not.

Bill Allen: Yeah.

And so one of the cool workflows I saw with Veras, uh, actually, so a lot of people do sketch to rendering, right? You could take, uh, a pencil sketch, you could upload it to a web version of, of various, you could do a render and look, make it photo realistic, which is pretty [00:54:00] cool. But the inverse of that is kind of

interesting. It's pretty that is

Evan Troxel: that's pretty It is

Bill Allen: pretty cool. to put a label on it. Yeah.

But if you wanna do the inverse of this, imagine you have a fully detailed BIM, you know, a model, you have all your Mullins model, you have materials even applied, and you, it looks like it's complete. You could also take that exact same building, a 3D BIM, and you could upload it to Veras and you could prompt white box, pencil, sketch, watercolor, painting, and then it looks conceptual.

And so that's kind of interesting, you know, kind of a, an interesting workflow to do the opposite. And, you know, from, uh, a workflow to show that to a, a client or a customer. Um, regarding some of the other things we're working on, the, the, the other question you had. So one of the things we've added, uh, to Veras and we just released a 2.0 version, is now a 3D viewer.

And so that 3D viewer sets up for a lot of things, um, that we're working on, [00:55:00] including, you know, view persistency and better geometry, retention. Um, you know, some of the feedback we've heard from customers is like, yeah, Veras is great for ideation, but what if I want, you know, I don't want it to change my model.

The, the 3D viewer helps us with that geometry retention piece. Um, you mentioned like the selection. We now have like a, a save selection, think very much like Photoshop where you can select certain things and then. Save that selection. Um, we also, uh, built out a bunch of cool presets. So one of the things we were trying to do is get to this, what we call the aha moment.

Ben calls it the aha moment. You gotta get to that, uh, as soon as possible where someone can just open your tool and hit two clicks and get to it. So we have all these presets, you know, whether, you know, you wanna do photorealistic or, uh, you know, pencil sketch, interior rendering, and you hit render and you get that.

And so there's this term being thrown around in our industry and other industries called prompt engineering. Now you have to be a prompt engineer, you know, to use ai. [00:56:00] And so the presets kind of, uh, we always talk, uh, at EvolveLab about. Reducing the friction, you know, the, the friction that occurs in a process.

And so some of the presets now help you with that. And you can create your own presets, you can save those. So if there's prompts that you use a lot, certain settings you use a lot for your geometry override or your material override, your negative prompts, all that now can be saved as a preset. Um, and then we're working on sharing those presets.

So if you have like an office and you wanna share those with others, you can do that as well. Those are some of the things on the Veras side. I can't remember the last time we talked on, on the Glyph side, uh, we added a AI component of that Glyph Copilot we're calling it. And so before you could, you know, uh, create task and bundles to automate construction documents, view creation, dimensioning, tagging, sheet creation, sheet packing, all that good stuff.

Um, but now you can use, uh, Glyph Copilot and you can prompt, uh, and use an LLM like uh, Stephan was talking about. And you could [00:57:00] say, you know, hey, uh, Glyph dimension, all my, uh, interior walls on levels one through 16. And then the AI goes through and, you know, dimensions, all of those walls for you. Uh, something I didn't expect is there's a very practical use case for that.

We, we all talk about, you know, user experience and uh, just let's just use the Revit stair tool for example. You know, there's all these like tables within tables within tables. That just make for a bad user experience sometimes. And we kind of have that on the Glip side, this challenge of all these settings.

Well, what if you could just like prompt and then mitigate all these, you know, uh, tabs and you know, settings and be able to just tell it what you want and then it would be able to apply that. Um, so that, it's interesting. Some of these AI components can also help with, uh, like ui ux as well, you know what I

mean?

Um, to help again, reduce the friction on that. So that's some of the things we've been, uh, working on, uh, since the last time we [00:58:00] chatted, uh, on some of those features.

Evan Troxel: Stephan as far as Chaos goes, I, I, I mentioned earlier that you guys released Envision, which is kind of what it, it expands the ability for an architect, I think, to tell a story. Right. Which is, is is really cool. Um, do you want to expand on that and kind of talk about a little bit what, what Chaos has done in the last, you know, year to six months?

Stephan Sieber-1: Uh, yeah, so I mean, I think you, you mentioned a few elements already, right? Envision We launched, we launched Envision. , it's still in beta right now. Um, it, it will be fully available in early May. which is sort of the storytelling tool, right? Some people don't like when I say that analogy, but since you, you described it that way, and I think it describes very well what it does.

It gives, it gives architects, um, an opportunity to tell a design story, to animate, to bring in different angles, to assemble large scenes, um, from multiple different systems. I think that is one of the, one of the, [00:59:00] I'm not saying that we're the only company, but definitely something we, we do believe in that, you know, data needs to flow.

We need to have an opportunity to aggregate data from different sources and to play it back necess if, if needed, into different sources. So it, it cannot be a, a, a one-way, sort of dead end street. Um, but you know, especially when you assemble larger scenes that you bring together from different sources.

Uh, and it obviously has, um, for the Enscape users, it has a higher, a higher quality, right? It, it uses the vena rendering engine, which is a real time path, tracer ray tracer. Um, so really delivers, uh, in real time, like probably the highest quality that you can, you can, you can imagine. Um, and, and that's pretty exciting, right?

I think it, it addresses, it addresses, um, a lot of the customer feedback we get from very advanced and, and very passionate landEnscape users on things they want to do on top of what [01:00:00] NCAP can offer. Uh, but it also addresses the specific own, uh, own need, right? Um, the other thing you, you've mentioned already is Enscape impact, which is sort of the building performance energy efficiency tool.

I think Enscape Impact or Impact is gonna be, it's more of an overarching, uh, term and title that we only, we, we will use for, for multiple modules. So energy efficiency. Um, is only the first module there are, is a few more, uh, uh, coming like, like, uh, natural light and artificial light analysis, et cetera. So where we again, move towards that, making this a collaboration platform for multiple specialized tasks that need to happen and that happen, uh, along the design process.

Um, the third area I probably wanna mention is, is the asset library, um, at the Cosmos Library, uh, where we, where we on the one side continue to build, uh, you know, standard assets and, and, and, and just provide a lot of, a lot more [01:01:00] content to, um, creative people, um, that, you know, they can use and they can put in their scenes.

Uh, but two things that I'm, I'm, I'm quite excited about is the, the crowd simulation and the traffic simulation, um, that we have through also an acquisition. Um, AXYZ, um, Anima, the Anima acquisition of AXYZ. from about two and a half years ago, three years ago, probably, Chaos acquired the company, which gives us not only human beings and animals, but also moving human beings and animals, and in the meantime also vehicles and traffic simulation.

So it, it's all going in that direction of making this a very comprehensive hub for, you know, design people, creative people, helping them to accelerate their design process.

Evan Troxel: It's interesting that you've gotten a reaction in the negative about using the term storytelling. I'm curious, uh, what, what, what that means because that's ex that is [01:02:00] precisely how I,

think about it as a designer and a, which is basically a communicator and a salesman. And again, I think, I think, people also react negatively to the idea of selling design, but that convincing, call it whatever you want, getting people on the same page consensus moving forward, like that is selling And and they're relying on your expertise as an architect to lead the way in doing that, and, I really do, see it as storytelling and sales, um, through communication, right? Like these tools are all made for us to be able to communicate what's going on and what we've synthesized. To another audience, whether that's the owner or the contractor or the jurisdiction that has to approve the plans, whatever it is, like, it's, it's all communication.

Stephan Sieber-1: yeah, while I wholeheartedly agree, I, I think that's probably exactly the point. Why, why there was some, um, um, um, uh, reactions to that be. I, I think there's absolutely, there's absolutely a, uh, straight to the [01:03:00] point, right? We want to help. Architects to sell, explain their ideas better, to help them articulate the continuity of their, of their creativity of, their ideas.

And, and I think that's absolutely the point. Yeah. So.

Evan Troxel: I think that's a great spot to call this. Conversation right there. Um, because I think you just pulled it all together in that last statement about helping architects accomplish, their goals. And, uh, I appreciate you both for coming on the show. I'm gonna put links to. Everything that we talked about in the show, in the show notes for this, including some, um, links for the audience to connect with the guests on LinkedIn, So.

they can see what's going on with your companies and, and the latest news it's great to be able to have those connections with industry folks and, and build that network and make it stronger. And I, I appreciate you guys coming on the show today and sharing this new partnership slash acquisition slash merger, however you wanna, wanna frame it. I think it, it does sound like it overall a really [01:04:00] great thing for the, for our industry in AEC, I know, uh, Chaos is definitely in other industries as well, but I really appreciate the focus that I've seen and the, and the momentum that I see in this industry. And so Thanks for coming on the show today to share.

Stephan Sieber-1: Thanks,

for having us.

It was a

Bill Allen: really appreciate it.

Evan Troxel: All right, before you take off, in the introduction to this episode, I said something that I believe deserves repeating here. The AEC industry will look vastly different in five years. And if you wanna remain relevant, whether you're a sole practitioner, part of a large firm, or running your own startup.

You can't afford to be complacent. Now, let's be honest, we're all complacent in some way. It just shows up differently for each of us. Maybe it's avoiding new tools because they seem overwhelming. Maybe it's sticking with inefficient workflows. Maybe they don't seem inefficient, but maybe they are. But the familiarity is there, right?

Or maybe it's assuming your current skills will always be enough. [01:05:00] This episode is a powerful reminder that staying current and even better, getting ahead isn't just a nice to have anymore. It's essential. And to drive that point home, I wanna walk through seven key insights from my conversation with Stephan and Bill that really illustrate what's at stake and what's possible when we lean into change.

Let's use these seven points as a mirror and a motivation to reflect on where we each might need to take a more proactive approach. Number one, EvolveLab. Bootstrapped innovation as a small team. Bill shared how EvolveLab was a 100% bootstrapped company and still managed to develop impactful tools like Veras, Glyph, Helix, and Morpheus without external funding.

He said, all of our R&D came from our services revenue. We reinvested that and now we get to amplify that innovation. This proves small teams can achieve outsize impact when they embrace emerging tools and stay [01:06:00] nimble. Number two, the danger of falling behind Stephan highlighted that AEC is still underserved with state-of-the-art technology compared to some other industries.

Evan Troxel: Chaos is specifically investing in this vertical because they recognize the need and the opportunity to monetize. Number three, you must build or buy to keep up.

Stephan discussed Chaos' strategy of both developing tools internally and acquiring innovation from companies like EvolveLab to accelerate with the knowledge, the talent, the resources, the experience that we have. He frames software as canned talent, reinforcing that success depends on capturing and applying the best ideas quickly.

Four. AI is shifting how we work rapidly. Bill described, how his initial skepticism of AI turned into excitement once he saw how Veras could ideate from models directly within Revit. He said it's changing very fast, but hopefully it gives us that [01:07:00] quality of life back and allows us to have fun in the day-to-day work.

Number five, new tools enable a whole new design process instead of just rendering, architects can now ideate visually and quickly with AI changing their relationship with design tools. This is a fundamental shift in how we do day-to-day work, and it's happening fast.

Are you shoehorning new tools into an existing design process or are you re-imagining the process? There's a big difference. Number six, industry leadership demands involvement. In this episode, I called out how both Chaos and EvolveLab actively seek feedback from practitioners during tool development unlike many companies that operate in a silo. Finally, number seven, the stakes are higher than ever. Stephan emphasized that architects need better tools to achieve their goals faster, to spend more time and creativity where they can really make a difference.

If practitioners don't adopt new methods, they risk being stuck [01:08:00] doing repetitive mundane tasks that AI and automation can now help eliminate. And we all know where continuing to do mundane tasks leads. So those are my thoughts. Tell me what you think by clicking the feedback link in the show notes or leave a comment on YouTube for this episode.

Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.