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  James Kotecki (00:00): 

  The boundary pushers, the futurists, the dreamers, the doers. What do they all have in common besides over-caffeination? They seek new possibilities, new innovations that can enhance the human experience and you'll find them all at CES. So dive into the most powerful tech event in the world, CES 2025. It's January 7th through 10th. It is in Las Vegas, and you should be there. So join us, register today at CES.Tech. 

  (00:42): 

  This is CES Tech Talk. I'm James Kotecki, exploring the trends shaping the world's most powerful tech event, CES 2025 in Las Vegas, January 7th through 10th. Today we talk about the future of housing, a conversation often filled with lamentations about how it's getting harder and harder to put a roof over your head. But what if the house of your future was actually futuristic, autonomous, sustainable, intelligent? What if someone said, "Wow, it looks like Apple and Tesla designed a house"? Well, that quote is on the website of Haus.me, so let's find out what it might mean to literally live in the prefabricated future with the founder and CEO of Haus.me Max Gerbut. Max, welcome to CES Tech Talk. 

  Max Gerbut (01:33): 

  Hi James. Hi everyone. Thank you for having me here. 

  James Kotecki (01:37): 

  We are super excited to have you. I understand you're a first time exhibitor at CES and that implies that people are going to be able to actually look at the structure that we're going to be describing on this podcast today. But since this is an audio medium primarily, can you just give our audience a sense of what we're even talking about here? What does a Haus.me house look like? 

  Max Gerbut (02:00): 

  The best description I can give you is something we will live in for a future. So the construction and housing industry, the conservative industry currently in the world and what we do in-house, we just take existing future technologies like polymer composites, extreme energy efficiency, cell sustainability, and put this on the market product. So something you can find in every Haus.me product can be described in just one word, 'future'. 

  James Kotecki (02:32): 

  Do you have a science fiction or a fictional reference point that people... The idea of Apple and Tesla designing a house I think is a good one if you're just trying to describe it in words, but are there other futuristic images people might have in their mind that you can compare it to so they can help them understand? 

  Max Gerbut (02:49): 

  Yeah, this is my favorite question. Remember Bruce Willis' Fifth Element movie? Back in 1995. He was living in a small capsule and with everything like integrated, transforming inside, and it looks super futuristic back in 1995. And you know what? With 30 years after that, and it's still futuristic, we still doesn't have such a well-designed absolutely professionally and durable materials, living structures. So yeah, something what we built now it looks like a future was all integrated technologies and everything ready to live. 

  James Kotecki (03:31): 

  I would also potentially describe these as trailer homes, which may be absolutely the wrong term that you don't want people to associate with this, but I'm only saying that in the sense that they can be transported like a trailer home on the back of a truck, right? Half or the entirety of this capsule, again, just to help people picture what this is, can be transported down the road and it's a modular system, so one or more of these can be pieced together. Am I in the ballpark there? 

  Max Gerbut (04:01): 

  Not exactly. The trailer home means something you can move constantly from one place to another. So the better term is prefabricated or fully fabricated housing solutions and this meaning you have something completely built and assembled on a factory and yes can be transported from factory to your place. However, this is the only opportunity for you to use this flexibility. So to avoid all the mess with construction, with permits, insurance, labor on your backyard. However, we'll learn that our customers, even though they have this opportunity to relocate the unit in the future, they not interested in this. So it's mostly used for saving time for construction on site. 

  James Kotecki (04:53): 

  Got it. Thanks for that clarification. But even that term, 'prefabricated' or 'prefab' homes I imagine gives people the wrong idea sometimes. Can you give us a sense maybe for folks who aren't as familiar with the construction industry of the current state of what most prefab homes are like and then how you're trying to be an alternative to that? 

  Max Gerbut (05:13): 

  Yeah, so the most prefabs on the market, it's actually some sort of pre-assembled components and structures, which can significantly reduce the structure assembly time. However, most of prefabs doesn't have any decorations, furniture. It's still just a structure, in best case scenario it could be with some pre-wired, plumbing pipes or whatever. What we do, we do homes like cars. So imagine prefabricated car getting delivered with no wheels, no interior, no seats. That doesn't make any sense for everyone. So what we do, we say, "Hey, stop wasting your time thinking what kind of sofa from IKEA will fit your new bedroom. We can take care of it. We can design the sofa or a bed or storage place, perfectly fit every inch, every millimeter of the house, be connected with all sensors, lights. 

  (06:19): 

  Will be also calculated about airflow because air quality is the biggest part of the design we do in the house. And it's not only as structured with furniture, it's a complete body with all systems integrated. We think about energy efficiency, we think about acoustic control because it's a big part of comfort level of every person in living space. We think about air quality, oxygen, carbon dioxide, smells, control, everything. So we think of housing like a complete unit, complete solution, complete space, entirement where our customers can enjoy even in limited and compact spaces. Completely opposite from prefabs on the market where you got a structure and then you just along with your problem and issues trying to furniture, decorate or fix the air flows, thermal conditions, whatever else. 

  James Kotecki (07:23): 

  Is it fair to say the problem you're solving is people want to live somewhere and they go to one place, you, and you give them the entire living solution? Is that fair? 

  Max Gerbut (07:34): 

  I think the problem we are solving is sometimes people doesn't understand why they feel uncomfortable in some living spaces. I can give you an example. Imagine you go in somewhere in the forest resort or island resort and it doesn't matter how that looks. You feel yourself much better. You breathe, you sleep well, and you cannot explain why. However, it's just a science. The air quality gives you the ability to sleep well. As simple as this, if you can control oxygen, carbon dioxide, smells, other parameters, we can create the perfect condition for your rest, for your sleep, for your health in any box in the world. And what we do, we deliver people that ability to feel comfortable in any space, including different models we manufacture. And it's like your favorite shirt, you just wearing it and you cannot explain why you like it because you feel better. 

  James Kotecki (08:36): 

  So you're saying that you are creating these standalone housing units, but you're also selling the technology or the solution for people to up-level existing dwellings that you don't necessarily manufacture, but you can up-level the interior experience? 

  Max Gerbut (08:53): 

  Exactly. So we make any living space comfortable. It's like a well-designed car. It could be very small, but you feel much better than in a huge pickup, which twice bigger and you cannot explain why because it's all about feelings. And I can give you another example. We probably the only company in the United States in prefab market who have a separate team who take care of surface feelings, touch feelings. So every material we use in manufacturing, in assembly, we control over and over for touch feelings. And when our customers come inside and start touching things, they feel comfortable, but they cannot explain why. 

  James Kotecki (09:40): 

  But you can. 

  Max Gerbut (09:41): 

  But we can. It's a science. 

  James Kotecki (09:43): 

  There's a science to it. 

  Max Gerbut (09:44): 

  Yeah, it's A to Z science. It's nothing, no miracle here. 

  James Kotecki (09:49): 

  I want to describe for folks the image on the website to give people a further visual understanding of what this is. So I go to the website and I'm looking at this beautiful outdoor scene. I believe you mentioned a forest earlier. I'm in the forest, there's this brook and there's some mountains in the background. And then front and center is this gleaming box, small home, large glass windows, almost an entire wall looks like, made of glass, solar panels it looks like on the roof and some nice modern aesthetic on the inside. And on the site, it looks like the house is in a relatively remote location. So I want to keep going on what the experience is for the dweller that the user, the person living in this home, but first I want to understand the use case. Is this something in terms of the individual housing units that you're selling that's primarily for remote locations, vacation destinations, things like that? Tell me the use cases. 

  Max Gerbut (10:51): 

  That's a great question and actually when we start designing our products, we start from technology, from science, and we try to understand what actual problems on the market are and how we can help every construction and manufacturing company create better products. It's not only about homes, it's about all housing in the world. We have the same problem. Sometimes it's expensive, uncomfortable and other things. So at this time we have two super important directions and two different products manufactured in-house. The first one is a micro house. The micro house is probably the fastest housing solution on the world. And the problem we solving is everything about wasting your time. Imagine you just need a one extra bedroom and bathroom in your house, your family grown, you have friends, relatives, grandmas, you have growing students who wants to separate and have a separate space. You maybe need a home office, whatever else, you just need extra living space. You can buy a new house, you can move somewhere or you can just write a check and have a bedroom and bathroom on your backyard in hours. 

  (12:15): 

  That's impossible in real world because you need to do a lot of site preparation, foundation, hookups, pipes, wiring, construction, labor, timeframe, customizations, architecture permits, approvals. Micro house eliminates all. So we take care of everything and it's literally how it sounds. Few clicks and you have your micro house delivered to your backyard. We're taking care of permits. Everything else we deliver to any place, no foundation, quite a minimum hookups because of extreme energy efficiency. So imagine building a house in your backyard is usually required with the wiring and pipes and everything else, but imagine your house just need an extension cord like powering your laptop. This is how efficient it is, so this is why it's the fastest housing solution on the market. We can drop comfortable bedroom and bathroom anywhere in this country in hours. The second direction we work on is the biggest problem is we have a lot of available land on this planet undeveloped for different reasons and most of the reasons is infrastructure. 

  (13:32): 

  So it's impossible to design a comfortable living space without electricity, without water, sewer, some safety features, foundations, especially if we're talking about mountains, seismic issues or hurricane issues, which is extremely actual right now. So what we do in-house, we create a fully absolutely real self-sustainable structures. That means there is a structure you can drop anywhere in this planet from extremely hot places, wet, humid places to extremely cold places covered with snow on top of the mountain and live there enjoying your espresso every morning, made of water generated from air humidity and sunshine. So imagine no site preparation, any flat surface in the world works. We can drop a comfortable living structure with espresso machine, with comfortable queen size bed with towels and wine glasses and we can transform in a click any cheap land, undeveloped unbuildable, no infrastructure land in a living space. And it's usually became from a cheap land concept to extremely expensive land concept just because it's usually location, location and location. 

  James Kotecki (15:06): 

  I can guess how the power electricity side of the self sustainability works. I'm looking at the picture on the site. I see the solar panels on the roof. How does sewage work in a self-sustaining model like this? 

  Max Gerbut (15:22): 

  You won't believe me, the biggest problem in self-sufficiency and energy efficiency in the world is an energy balance. How to get energy from solar and have enough energy to live in the house. However, absolutely most of the customers, everyone who's thinking about self-sufficiency start from the same question, how sewage works. It's not a miracle, nothing magic happens with the sewage. It's just a collection thing. It's a holding tank or external sewer underground, above ground, depending on the regulations and the zoning. There are a lot of sewage solutions for any place in the world. It's not something miracle. However, way more interesting is energy balance because if you try to Google, everyone think it's a straightforward thing. You can just put solar panels, a few batteries and you're ready to go. But this is not absolutely correct because if you imagine the worst case scenario, somewhere in January in cold place, you have a freezing temperature or maybe snow. 

  (16:36): 

  The efficiency of the solar radiation drops to 10, 15% of July level. And of course you don't have 24 hours of sunshine, you have only eight hours, seven hours. If it's raining, even less, if it's snowing it could be zero. However, you need energy 24/7, you need energy to heat the house, you need energy to ventilate the air, cook, wash, dry, enjoy Netflix, whatever else. So if you put the solar panels and battery to ordinal, to standard house was built on traditional technologies, the budget, so what do you need? You need a very big amount of solar panels. Imagine if you need 20 panels in July, you need 40 panels to cover nighttime on July. But in January, if your efficiency just 10%, you need to increase your panel amount 10 times to be efficient in January. The problem is most likely your roof is too small to hold 200 panels. And of course if it's freezing outside and you need approximately 10 kilowatts per hour just for heating the space, imagine how much batteries you need for just 24 hours. 

  (18:01): 

  We're talking about thousands kilowatts, hundreds kilowatts. It may cost you half a million just to make 3000 square feet house being self-sufficient somewhere in mountains or in remote location, not in California in July, but in January in Seattle for example. And what we did and what Haus.me makes different from anything else on the market in the world right now, we create structures which are extremely energy efficient and reduce energy consumption more than 20 times, not 20%, 20 times. That means when your efficiency of solar panels drops 10 times, we're still good. So we don't care how much solar panels and batteries we use because for example, we have self-sustainable cases in Idaho and Washington Mountains. We have fully self-sustainable homes right now on top of St. Helens Mountain with approximately 30 kilowatts per hour batteries and just six kilowatt solar panels. It's absolutely impossible for any other structure in the world built on traditional technology. This is the case. This is the most unique thing about Haus.me. 

  James Kotecki (19:22): 

  So you mentioned that you're also selling these solutions or this technology elsewhere, not just in your own homes, but to help level up other structures. Are the self-sustaining homes a foot in the door? Do you feel like the real business here... Because if what you're seeing is true and you've created a home that's 20 times more efficient than similar dwellings, then if that's true, then this is a massive business opportunity for you, right? Is that the real future of this business, the energy efficiency business? 

  Max Gerbut (19:51): 

  Yes. Everything in the world right now is about efficiency because the global conditions of the planet and all economy, global economy moves to reducing energy consumption, this is not just a concept. We're not saving polar bears or whatever else. We are creating this product for industry. And unlike other small homes or prefab homes manufacturers, our target audience is enterprise market. We sell homes to private customers right now just to validate the product, to indicate different use cases, to prove that in different jurisdictions, in different climate conditions, we can deliver the same design. It's another very important thing about Haus.me. We don't have different designs for different states. We have the same design and we deliver it both to Caribbean Islands and Idaho and Canada. The same design efficiently work everywhere because if you work on a very hot climate or very cold climate, the physics is absolutely the same, just reversed. 

  (21:02): 

  It's energy transition, works the same way, just in different direction. So the reason why we are targeting enterprise market and just very simple, we can make every home manufacturer in this country, every ADU or prefab home manufacturer from the scratch, more efficient, faster and higher quality. With our technology, we can reduce cost to any home manufacturer in the country. This is the first direction. And the second direction is imagine undeveloped places where you want to build the resort or hotel network, glamping, wherever else. The biggest problem you usually have is not to find the land. There are a lot of places, beautiful places undeveloped. You can enjoy the view. There are a lot of home manufacturers, home construction companies who can build anything anywhere. But the problem could be unexpected. Imagine you want to build 20 homes on the Caribbean island. You need 20 homes, 10 kilowatts per hour per each home. 

  (22:19): 

  We're talking about 200 kilowatts power line. And if you're somewhere in the middle of nowhere in mountains, in island, there are no power there. You can have something from the nearest city, but it could be very limited. And the biggest problem for developers is not the land or construction technologies. It's usually power, water, sewer problems. And with product which may need 20 times less power, you can build 20 times more homes on the same lot with the same power limit. This is what we provide our enterprise customers. And this is already proven in orders we have. I have a perfect use case where the customer purchased a great location in mountains in North California and he was dreaming to build a house. And however, when he start getting quotes to provide the power line, the power line cost was 3.5 million. The most expensive fully self sustainable home we can manufacture is half a million. So for the cost of just power line, he can build seven homes with me with our company. 

  James Kotecki (23:40): 

  So it sounds like you're talking about really significant breakthroughs in energy efficiency. What do you attribute that to? How much of that is breakthroughs in material science or advancements in, let's say, AI to help better allocate how electricity is used? Maybe it's some combination of all of those things. Where are these gains coming from? 

  Max Gerbut (24:02): 

  You're absolutely right. It's not just a one thing, it's not a magic plywood or something. It's a combination of three very important direction. The first one is materials. We use polymer composites and it's a composite material which have extremely high insulation level comparing to traditional materials used for the construction. So for example, the best R value for northern states required by code could be around 28, 30. The base level of R value for our mid-size model is R-80, 80, a couple of times more than maximum requirements by code. And also these materials have very nice side effects. We are the only company in the United States who manufacture category five hurricane compliant structures. Every structure we manufacture can withstand hurricane category five. And we already have a successful example just yeah, it wasn't five, it was category three in Florida just a couple of days ago. But we have a few installations in Florida, was perfect during this hurricane. 

  (25:15): 

  Same with fire protection, wildlife protection, and of course those materials last much longer than traditional plywood or decoration material and have close to zero maintenance requirements because it's a polymer structure, the same material used for airplanes. The second direction is engineering systems, ventilation, air quality, heating, solar generation, solar energy storage. All this together combined can provide much more efficiency when you bind this product separately as separate solutions. And the third direction is software, control of their living space by multiple sensors, multiple computers, air quality control, water quality control systems. I can give you an example. Imagine we have a house with negative freezing temperature outside. We need just let's say 800 watts per hour to keep house warm, let's say 72 Fahrenheit inside. When you have -20 out, just 800 watts, this is how efficient it is. However, I'm talking to you, my body produces approximately 150 watts per hour. 

  (26:37): 

  Imagine me and my three friends will step inside the house and start talking. So just breathing, we can cover all thermal losses in this house. So if the house will not recognize me talking there and keep using energy for heating or heated floors or HVC, it doesn't matter, we will have a overheating situation in the house when -20 outside. And to fix this problem, house should start air conditioning this space to drop the temperature. So if you somewhere in the middle of nowhere and the only energy you have is just expensive battery pack, imagine burning this energy for heating and then for cooling the same air just because you didn't realize that four people already generate enough heat energy. So the third direction I just mentioned is smart technologies, sometimes AI prediction, every house we manufacture have a self-diagnostic system and analyzing what happens inside and outside to reduce wasting energy for things like that. 

  James Kotecki (27:54): 

  Do you have a challenge with enterprise customers thinking this is too good to be true? 

  Max Gerbut (28:01): 

  I have this challenge for every customer. Unfortunately the construction industry is so conservative, even as small innovations sometimes generate phrase, 'It's too good to be true'. So yeah, this is the biggest challenge we have. 

  James Kotecki (28:20): 

  But you are going to be at CES 2025. So all the skeptics are people who are just excited on the basis of this interview can come by and see you. What will they be able to see there in person? 

  Max Gerbut (28:32): 

  So we will have a very unique unit there. It's a Microhaus Pro. Part of the history of Haus.me is this company was founded by scientist people and from airspace, I'm physicist myself, our chief technical officer is the guy, one of the engineers who created their largest airplane in the world. So Microhaus Pro is a combination of aerospace technologies in our know how and intellectual property we have in a small compact product. Extremely energy efficient, nice to look, nice to touch. So everyone will be able to come and see how small spaces, small living spaces can be comfortable. So all the modern than materials, all modern technologies we have so far. 

  James Kotecki (29:21): 

  Can you give us a sense of scope of how many of these are out in the world and what your plans are for the individual units? I really like this conversation because it does one of my favorite things in tech business conversations, which is like you think the business is one thing and then you dig a little deeper and you find out there's a whole other reason behind it. I just think it's interesting for people who go to the website, see you as a housing unit company, and then we hear about this much broader energy efficiency play. But in terms of the actual individual units, how many are out there and what do you expect for the next couple of years? 

  Max Gerbut (29:52): 

  So the good answer to this is we're not only manufacturing homes, we're also developing technology. So delivering homes to our customers is just a part of our business. However, we already delivered our homes to five different states. We work in nine jurisdictions, we're providing permits and approval for all jurisdictions we have. Next year we plan to deliver and we already have contracts for more than 400 homes and it's growing. This product is extremely new, so it started delivering only this year and we already have a lot of customer reviews from different people around the world. On Airbnb, you already can go somewhere and live in the full sustainable home and have your experience right now. So it's available on the market. It's available already. 

  James Kotecki (30:44): 

  I was just going to say, this is exactly the kind of thing that my wife and I would like to go check out in an Airbnb situation. So maybe we will, and we'll certainly see you at CES 2025. Max Gerbut is the founder and CEO of Haus.me, that's H-A-U-S.M-E. Thanks for joining us today on CES Tech Talk. 

  Max Gerbut (31:08): 

  Thank you everyone. 

  James Kotecki (31:08): 

  And thank you so much for listening. That is our show for now, but there's always more tech to talk about. So if you're on YouTube, please subscribe and leave a comment. If you're listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartMedia, or wherever you get your podcasts, hit that follow button and we'll give those algorithms what they want. You can get even more CES and prepare for Vegas at ces.tech. That's C-E-S.T-E-C-H. Our show is produced by Nicole Vidovich and Paige Morris, recorded by Andrew Linn and edited by Third Spoon. I'm James Kotecki talking Tech on CES Tech Talk.