Like many contractors, Haskell faced the need to innovate head on, and created an increasingly sophisticated approach to assessing, piloting, partnering and investing in construction technologies. Through their Dysruptek subsidiary, Haskell is able to play a number of roles in the innovation ecosystem. Hamzah Shanbari serves as the construction technologist for Dysruptek, bringing his experience in VDC together with investment and broader technology acumen.
Hamzah Shanbari
[00:00:00]Hugh Seaton: Welcome to constructed futures. I'm Hugh Seaton. Today I'm here with Hamzah Shanbari Construction Technologist at Dysruptek. Hamzah, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:12]Hamzah Shanbari: Thank you for having me Hugh.
[00:00:14]Hugh Seaton: So let's start with what Dysruptek is.
[00:00:19]Hamzah Shanbari: Dysruptek, in a nutshell is the corporate venture arm of Haskell.
We were started as more of the technology group that looks at all these new solutions. Things that help us become safer, more efficient, better at what we do. But at the same time also capitalize on it if there's any investment opportunities.
[00:00:44]Hugh Seaton: Excellent. And so it sounds like just, even from your description that there's been a little bit of a process. Talk to me about how this started.
[00:00:54]Hamzah Shanbari: Yeah, that's... it's always an interesting story because we started back in 2018. You know, it starts with new leadership that was promoted from within that looked at where we're at today as a company or back then as a company and where we want to head now.
And one of the pillars that the new leadership started talking about is innovation and being on the cutting edge, being the leader of the pack, so to say. And technologies and new processes, new methods, that help us be better. and of course, They had the vision, they had the resources, and just like any other company, right, you start looking at who's going to lead this effort. So as everybody else you look at VDC group, you look at IT group. Either of those can function in that regard, but they also have a full-time job on the side. So it becomes a little bit less efficient, so that's why they stood up Dysruptek.
They hired me from within the company I come from the VDC group, pulled out to, to be part of this, movement, so to say, and brought in Cutler Knupp, who's the director that oversees this with a couple of other guys here. But the funny thing that you like alluded to is like how we started is we hit the ground running, right.
We looked out there, we saw that there is already hundreds of solutions that nobody has even looked at before. Right. So we use like two or three here ad hoc, some job sites have some other solutions different from, from ones that you see in the office. Uh, so we started just just looking just, immediately entertained any demo, any opportunity to look at new solutions, new software, and we kept going and, we looked at literally everything under the sun in terms of how it can help us, how it can make us better, more efficient, safer. Um, but then the funny part is, all right, so now you've looked at all these companies they first start to mush together because there's so many. Funky names out there. You're aware of that.
And at the same time, there is a lot of overlap between some of the solution on what they're trying to solve for what is the problem statement, right. So it became a little bit, there is a lot of, a lot of fogginess and, and trying to figure out what solutions is solving for what that's, when we like hit the brakes a little bit and said, "oh, We need to, we need to be looking at this a little bit more methodically rather than just sitting down on demo calls and trying to remember what happened and just taking notes on the side."
So that's when we said, "yeah, let's figure out how do we get store this in a, in a more structured manner that we can easily more efficiently put apples to apples together for, for solutions that are competing in the same space.
But at the same time, what other tech stack do they integrate with? Because that became a very important point. That's one of the first questions that we asked is like, do you integrate with a, B and C? If not, then thank you very much for your time. I'm not interested in really looking at what you're trying to solve or because we cannot have start a new endeavor and go through looking at something that's going to become its own silo, at some point..
So that's like part of the methodical look into, into all these different solutions. And again, it's like, we're, we're heading up, almost 400 solutions that we've not only like looked at, but these are solution that we sat on demos that we talked about, that we understand exactly what they do and what tech they integrate with.
But then the flip side of that is how do you implement it? Right? How do you pilot it? How do you test it? How do you make sure that what they say they provide is actually what they do provide. And that's, that's the other part of the struggle early on, which is like, we find a solution that's like the next best thing and we go to a project team when we say, Hey, we need you to start looking at this. We need you to start implementing this. And I'm sure you can imagine how that went. So that, that was like our us trying to push technologies on our, on our team and our job sites and our, even in office, because, because Haskell is like a design build.
So we have an entire fleet of architects and engineers. And that, that didn't go as well. So that's when we also went back and said, how do we approach this a little bit, more efficiently, which is advertising. Believe it or not, we were like becoming more. And I, I tell that to every other solution providers that we talked to is like, I become, if I believe in your solution and I understand it fully, and I know what, what you provide, I'd become an internal salesperson for you or for your solution within Haskell, right.
So I go in and I try to spread the word we have, like our own internal newsletter that we put out there that we highlight different solutions. And we start getting inbound from people that are intrigued about a specific solution, right? So they're saying, Hey, I actually like that idea and I want to try it.
So that becomes your pull methodology. So they're pulling the technologies out of us rather than us pushing it on them.
[00:06:24]Hugh Seaton: So there's a lot I want to pull out of this cause it you guys have learned an awful lot and it sounds to me like there's value in the first just diving in and just seeing what's there.
I mean, you don't want to be wasting time of, of potential partners, but at the same time you learn something just from getting out there. Right. You understand a little bit of what its like to even hear from a technology company and start to get used to how they're going to view the world differently from you.
And sometimes you have to unpack some of the enthusiasm and say, well maybe it's not going to be quite as easy as you think. But then you talked about, I want to dig into this one a little bit, and that is you, you, it sounds like you've evolved the way you keep track of the companies. And I would, I would ask if that's a, a knowledge management approach, is it, so how are you, how are you guys keeping track of these 400 and growing number and also your responses to them?
And, and so on, it's CRM, it's knowledge management. How have you guys gone about that?
[00:07:25]Hamzah Shanbari: So that's exactly what it is Hugh. It's a CRM and it's funny to say that on the other side, because a lot of these solutions are not really customers of ours, right. We begin to become customers of them, but we've flipped the script a little bit.
And we're using a CRM that ties directly into our office 365 and then like updates all the records. Uh, we log any interaction internally without with our team or with that specific technology provider. And what emails were sent, if there's any proposals, if there is anything that was approved NDAs, all of that is being logged in a methodical way.
But the coolest part of it, which is like assigning custom fields in a sense, which is... So two things, one, what is the technology type? Right? So is it that augmented reality, virtual reality? Is it IOT? Is it sensors? Whatever it is. And then the bigger thing, which is like, What is it providing, what is it solving for?
Right. So we call that the theme. So we're looking at anything that is with reality capture is, is a theme that's different from tracking and monitoring. And some, some of those kinds of overlap.
But a lot of times it's like when somebody just walks into my office and says, Hey, this, I have this pain point, I have this project, as you know, of course, nobody, nobody wants to talk to me unless they have a deadline, unfortunately, because I have this project that I need to do A, B and C before Friday, do you have anything? So that, that kinda like helps me very quickly filter out. A lot of times I can remember a couple of solutions off the top of my head, people that I've talked to, I've connected with that I you know, about the relationships, right?
When you connect with someone, you start remembering that, but there is other solutions that we might've just sat on a demo. So we didn't really connect in person or there's a lot of them. So some of them dropped. So it's, it's really cool to have a CRM that, easily filter, by technology type, by the theme, by whatever it is that that we're trying to get at and comes down to a list of four or five that I can immediately on the spot, give to this person and say, here are four different solutions that solve for what you were just telling me about.
Let's take a look at them. Let's sit down and on demo calls with them, or you can pick one right now and we can hit the ground running.
[00:09:52]Hugh Seaton: I love that. And it's, again, the same reason why you would have a CRM for sales, you can keep track of responses, reactions, notes, and so on that you're never going 400 is a lot to keep track of in any, in any sense, but certainly remembering how it went and your impressions and so on is just impossible if you're not organizing it. I love that you guys are using a CRM. It sounds like it's one from the Microsoft stack or one that works well with the Microsoft stack, which is also interesting.
Well, let me ask, the next piece of the process that you outlined there is this idea of piloting, but you guys have really learned that that going out and searching for pilots is harder than letting people know that there's some potential things that could be piloted and have them come to you and say, I have a use case for this, which it's so sort of thing that after the fact, you're like, well, of course we're going to do that.
But nobody knows that in the beginning, when you're trying to figure out 10 different things at once. How have you guys, you mentioned that you do sort of internal advertising. What, tell me more about how that works and what you're finding, is the most effective way to pull in a brief and get a pilot off the ground.
[00:11:03]Hamzah Shanbari: Yeah, so marketing is again the first part of it, right? So getting awareness out there and people interested in the solution. But once we set that out and we get somebody who's interested, we sit on a demo, we understand any limitations. That's something that I always try to put out there is like, okay, so this is what it does, but this is what it doesn't do.
You have to always like, remember that as well.
[00:11:30]Hugh Seaton: How do you guys figure that out? Do you, do you do your own little when they're demoing it to you? Try to put it through extra paces so that you can really, really think through what the limits might be.
[00:11:40]Hamzah Shanbari: Absolutely. If there's, yeah. If there is a free trial or if there is like a a sandbox environment that we can play around, man, I, I tell that to everybody else that I talk to also is like, just, just give me a demo and I'll try to break it.
That's that's my job. My job is to break your software to get to the limitation. But the funny part is, is also on the demo calls. We ask the tough questions, right? We don't just let the salesperson tell us about the solution is like, no, tell me, does it do a, B and C? Exactly. Not. You know, I I've talked to a lot of salespeople.
I love them, but some of them love dancing around specific questions. So it's just about going back and asking the question again a little bit more clearly, like, does it do this right? Yeah. So that's like the part of that, that we try to log in and understand what are the limitations of each solution is before we get into the demo.
But it's an important, an important piece of, of ensuring like the pilot is set up for success is, is what we have as an implementation plan. And that's something that we have to have in writing, shared with every stakeholder in that pilot project. So making sure that we set out what the solution is what the timeline for the pilot is, what the roles and responsibilities for each person that is involved in that pilot. And then more importantly, what are the success criteria? What is, what does this look like? If we come like 3, 6, 9 months from now and say, this is the best thing ever or not. Right.
What are the qualitative aspects of it? But also what is the quantitative, how is it going to, what are the numbers that we're trying to see? Is it going to save us like 50% time? Is it going to reduce our costs by certain percentages? I like to use percentages because if I don't have the benchmark, then I can't say save me three hours, right?
But if, if I say, save 50 percent, Then I can go back retroactively and see how long it takes to do that later on and how long it takes to do it.
[00:13:47]Hugh Seaton: And you can scale it more easily. You can understand it at scale more easily as a percentage than as a number. Right?
[00:13:53]Hamzah Shanbari: Absolutely.
[00:13:54]Hugh Seaton: So what are some examples of pilots that you think have gone really well?
It's fine if you want to mention names or don't, but what are some examples of, of something that's gone through the process you just described, that, you're pretty happy with?
[00:14:09]Hamzah Shanbari: There are a couple of them. One of them is a smaller pilot, but like a near map. As we looked at it and we sat at this, this might be interesting.
We talked to a couple of our business development guys and gals that love showing to the clients what the product's going to look like. Relying heavily on Google maps are dated, or lower rez. So that's something that caught fire, like almost instantly, and immediately became a hit that we try to scale internally as much as we possibly could.
But that's, that's where our role stops at that point. Once we pilot something, we document it, we report on it, right. With all the analytics, with all the data that we collected, the feedback. And hand it over for operations. Right. And say, here's, here's what we did. Here's how it went.
Here's our recommendations, here's what Dysruptek thinks Haskell should do with this. But then after that, our hands are off. And it becomes like an operations thing, whether they want to scale it or not, how much do they want to scale it? And all of that stuff falls back on, on operations.
But that was, that was like one example. Others is like Holobuilder, Pype, close out. Those are really, really, successful pilots that went through through the paces.
[00:15:33]Hugh Seaton: Really, really interesting. So the other element of what Dyruptek does is as, as an investor, how did that come about?
[00:15:44]Hamzah Shanbari: Yeah, that was actually part of the vision that. I would love to take ownership of, but that was like before, before I even was brought into this group. Our executive leadership saw this as an opportunity not only to position Haskell in terms of finding the best solutions out there to make us better, deliver better projects, faster, safer, but at the same time, how do we capitalize on that in terms of investments in terms of return on value that you put in at the beginning?
So they set, they set very specific criteria is like, here's, here's how much you can put out there for companies that you're vetting that you're looking at. And what we started off with is we don't have the full resources to do full due diligence and whatnot. So we relied heavily on VCs at the beginning, right?
So we were doing investments in funds here and there, and just making sure that we're keeping track of that. But once we got a little bit more comfortable with that, then we started making our own direct investments in this space. And then we're thinking that's, that's going to hopefully yield very, very good results in the long term.
That's the hard, that's the hard part, Hugh, is like trying to explain that to, to the board that this is a longer term play, right. And this is not a one or two year investment that that's going to return immediately. Right.
[00:17:05]Hugh Seaton: Well, that's really interesting though, that your first steps were as a limited partner.
That's what it sounds like, right? You guys were LPs and a couple of funds and then, and then over time, as you understood, and probably made some hiring decisions as well, in terms of folks that, that know that some of the ropes of being a VC, but that you grew into the confidence to say we're going to make standalone investments.
[00:17:26]Hamzah Shanbari: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:17:27]Hugh Seaton: That's really interesting. That's really smart. I mean, it's so funny how the, the, the risk mitigation approach of construction, how it translates into other things like, like investment, right. As you, you de-risk the process, which is funny. That's also what investors do right.
Is, is how do I de-risked this investment? So it's... I can at least stomach it right now.
[00:17:49]Hamzah Shanbari: Absolutely. And then, and that's that's, I mean, part of it is as the whole learning curve, right? It's like, we're learning as we're doing, but we had passed on, on direct investments in the past that we are regretting passing on.
So that's why we're taking a more closer look now at companies that we come across.
[00:18:07]Hugh Seaton: How do you guys think about investment versus partnering versus just piloting. Is there a, is there a a rule of thumb or is it really based on what the business needs or how do you guys approach that?
[00:18:22]Hamzah Shanbari: I think it depends heavily on where the company or the startup that we're talking to is in their growth cycle. Companies that we come in there they're early on, they're just raised their seed or they're even looking for a seed round. Those become partners very quickly, especially if we believe in their solution. If we test it out very quickly, not, not in a like full blown pilot in a sense. But those become partners. We can become more. Involved into their their roadmap, their, their product development, stuff like that, that we can guide them.
And they love that they feed on that, right? It's like, yes, here's, here's a potential client. That's actually giving me valuable feedback that I can use today. And in my, in my product, but on the other side of it. So you get to, to companies that are a little bit more established, they raised their series A, they're going even for series B sometimes.
They're raising 50 to 80 million. They're not they're not as interested as, as getting your feedback, and growing with you, they're more like, we figured it out. Here's how it is buy it or leave it in a sense. But we also still look into that as, as solutions that that would help us be more efficient as well.
[00:19:39]Hugh Seaton: Interesting. So one of the things that I've talked to folks about that are in a corporate VC or a VC that's that's associated with a company is the strategic imperative that you're given can really be difficult to get right. You know what I mean? You are asking the board to think at a different timescale than they're frequently thinking.
And as a result, sometimes that it blends that, that I need you to be a strategic investor, not a purely financial investor, or I need, I need you to make up your mind how you're making individually. You know what I mean? It can be all over the place because it's up to you. How you guys think about that.
Is it purely when you're making an investment? Is it purely financial? Is that like the main criteria?
[00:20:20]Hamzah Shanbari: Far from it, we are. It's part of our, investment strategy is, is we're only gonna invest in a startup that we can use internally. So phase one of our due diligence is pilot, right.
Put it in front of our people, get their feedback, understand if it's something that works with our tech stack that works today. And then it was like, all right, so now let's evaluate your actual numbers, where you're headed and stuff like that. But we try to play a lot more in the strategic partner rather than, than the financial aspect.
[00:20:54]Hugh Seaton: That's really interesting. And do you find that other VCs that are, are either a little less category specific, like to see that you're there? I mean, that's not like you're a requirement, but I would imagine a more generalist VC would like to see that someone who has tried it and is really putting your money where your mouth is.
[00:21:16]Hamzah Shanbari: Yeah. We get a lot of that inbound from, from VCs that are trying to get our point of view, of a specific solution there they're evaluating that their own on their, on their pipeline. And we're more than happy to do that. We share a lot of experiences and a lot of our interactions with, with different solutions, good, bad or indifferent. We're like, trying to help the entire ecosystem and not just a specific company or a specific vertical, so to say.
but yeah, that's something that we, we run across a lot with, with other VCs. Yeah. Uh, because they're looking at it from a financial aspect.
They understand that. Of course they understand the, the, the product and what it delivers and what the problem statement is. But they haven't seen it in action. Right. So that's where we fill in a lot of that gap. So us and other GCs in our size as well.
[00:22:06]Hugh Seaton: yeah, I can imagine. It's funny how the tone changes when you're not acting like a GC, but you're acting like a VC. I can't believe I just said that, but where it's a lot more, it can be a lot more collaborative. Like there is competition, but it's different. Your main competitor is, is the risk of the startups failure, right? Like that's the big, big pressure.
So I, I just, I I'm sometimes surprised at how much investors will share with each other. Whether it's a deal they can't do because of they already have someone in the space or asking each other what they think. I mean, that's great. It makes the whole thing better that people can explore and understand risk collectively instead of everybody being on their own. So that's great.
Yeah, absolutely.
So now that you've got this, this view of, of really obviously where construction has been being in a GC and where it is right now being in the GC, but also where it's going at different timescales. I mean, it's a really interesting perspective, right? Where you can see, a bit of the past, a lot of the present, some of the near future. And then the investment side is looking at the three to five to 10 years in some cases, future, how are you seeing things change over the course of the last three or so years that you've been at Dysruptek, but even before that, when you were in VDC, you were also keeping an eye on, on where tech is.
How have you seen the ground shift?
[00:23:27]Hamzah Shanbari: Integrations, to be honest with you, that's, that's where a lot of the companies are pivoting a little bit. We've seen a lot of changes and solutions that we've already evaluated. Some, some we even piloted that they're now changing a little bit, just because they found out a different, Angle that helps them become more integrated into the whole ecosystem of what is a construction project, right.
And at the end of the day, it all comes down to data, right? What are we, what are we trying to see? What are the insights that we're trying to understand? And are we open to talking to each other, as solutions and getting to the bottom of it, getting to, to actual or actionable insights that would help the project be more successful?
that's like the trend where we're seeing is like everybody now is trying to play nice with all the other solutions. That was definitely not the case in 2018, 2019. Everybody was like no, this is our data, whatever. And then you can use, you can view it in my dashboard.
Everybody had their own dashboard. Now everybody's like, let's all get on just integrate two to a power BI or something similar to that, and just take a look at it that way.
[00:24:43]Hugh Seaton: That's great. How much do you find that you are, or your IT team can needs to be a referee? Cause people aren't necessarily going to agree on data models and description.
I mean the day job I have at CSI as an example of that is that specifications were, are organized by MasterFormat, and some other standards that allow things to... you know what I mean? Like before, before APIs, there was still the need for someone who doesn't know someone else to be able to read their, their plans and their spec book and so on how much, and that that's still going to be the case, right.
Is one CTO is going to make some choices about, about labels and data models and all that that are necessarily different from someone else because they don't collude. How much do you find that, that you're, you're you're growing internally, or less internally, the ability to bridge some gaps and make things, talk to each other, even if they want to, then the data models may not, not match up and you know, tomato, tomato.
[00:25:41]Hamzah Shanbari: Yeah. That's a big point, Hugh, and for us, we came to a conclusion that says, We're going to use Procore, right. And even anybody, any other company that uses Autodesk construction cloud or Aconnex or whoever, or like, CMiC they're just different project management hubs, right?
So that that's, that's where you have to start is like, what is your central hub looks like? And then how do you structure that data in that hub and then all of these other solutions, all these different point solutions. I have to go back to the hub and the same data structure. So that's, why our first question is always like, do you integrate with Procore?
And if you're inputting data into Procore and if anybody, I'm sure a lot of, a lot of your listeners have worked with Procore or in Procore at some point, they understand that it's very structured. It's very methodically rigid in a sense that no, you can just dump data in there.
It has to be very specific. It has to have these specific names. And that helps us on the other side of it, is creating all these different dashboards that you can change between the different projects and immediately have a better look at what's what's going on in that project at that specific time.
[00:26:56]Hugh Seaton: That's really interesting. I mean, I I've been an early fan of Procore's marketplace. I mean, to me, it's, it really took a page from Salesforce's older marketplace. And I think it does what Salesforce does also, which is take away the need to integrate by doing it for you, which I think is fantastic.
And obviously in Procore's case, they invested really heavily in the team to make it easy to onboard. There really is no excuse. I mean, I've done it myself a few times now. It's very well managed, which is great.
[00:27:28]Hamzah Shanbari: Yeah. But then you got the other side of it where that, that that's where we, we get in trouble sometimes with IT.
Yeah. The data structure is, is one side and it's, I mean, we're solving it with this Procore integration, right. Because we know that the data's going to come in at a certain look and shape and feel. But the flip side of it, which is security, right? So how secure is that solution, where are they saving their data?
Who can have access to it and all that stuff that a lot of times, a lot of these startups, especially seed level, they don't have the full infrastructure or a specific Data security person that's handling that. So it becomes really tricky for us, even, even on a pilot scale, to actually put it through the paces and understand their product more.
And that's why we're going back to the drawing board with IT and saying, Hey, let's, let's find a project that we can scrub all identifiable data from and use that as our as our sandbox for, for anything else that we want to test. But that's still a hurdle to be overcome.
[00:28:37]Hugh Seaton: It is tough. You know the thing that is not always obvious, or maybe it's glaringly obvious is early startups. They're breathlessly getting the product out the door and they, they don't always think about security. A mature CTO or even CEO should know that, but it doesn't mean they do. A lot of times it's people with a vision for how the world could be.
And they may or may not really been through the paces of building something before. This is really great. Let's end with any statement you have about where you think this is all going, like what your investor hat is seeing three to five years down the road.
[00:29:14]Hamzah Shanbari: Oh, that's a, that's a good question.
There's a lot that's happening and a lot of changes in the industry in general, not only in terms of capturing what's happening on the job site, that's been Since day one there, that was like the first startups that we looked at. It's like reality capture analysis of what's happening on the job site.
The other big part of it has always been communication. Right. So who's talking to who, who is having the latest and greatest version who's working on a previous version. We've seen that in and out, but I think where we're headed is a lot of automation of, of all of that stuff. And I know a lot of people get, get skepticals when you start talking about robotics and where the robotics are going to take a lot of the mundane tasks, and, and the dangerous task. I think there is, there is that big opportunity for the industry in general, to, to really bring down recordable incidents or incidents in general, even from, from job sites.
Like that should become part of the past is like, we, we need to be looking back and like 10 years from now and say, I can't believe we used to have incidents in our job site, right.
It's just because you have a lot of talented people that can do skilled work. But at the same time, they don't have to be in dangerous situations to do that. So you can, you can send in a robot or something that assist them even remotely. They can work through the robot to install certain aspects that you can get to it safely.
[00:30:51]Hugh Seaton: I love that. What a great way to end. Hamzah, thank you for being on the podcast.
[00:30:56]Hamzah Shanbari: Thank you so much for having me Hugh. It was a pleasure.