Kylie Davis:

Welcome back to the PropTech Podcast, season two. It's Kylie Davis here, and I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology, real estate, and property collide. I passionately believe we need to create and grow a sense of community between the innovators, agents, and property owners, and sharing our stories is a great way to do that.

Kylie Davis:

Now the aim of each episode is to introduce you to a proptech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible across how we design, build, buy, sell, rent, and invest in property and all the associated behaviours around that. And none of this would be possible without our sponsors. So a big shout out to the Direct Connect team, Dynamic Methods and Forms Live, and the Proptech Association of Australia. Thank you for all your support that makes this podcast possible.

Kylie Davis:

Now my guest in this episode is one of the winners of the Proptech of the Year Awards, Marco Salinas, CEO and Founder of Hubble, which won the most innovative startup for the design and development category. Now Hubble is a wonderful piece of technology that shows how individual materials affect home living experiences. In every build or renovation project there's a raft of decisions to be made about the materials you choose, but how we tend to do that currently is based on aesthetics and price.

Kylie Davis:

But what if it was easy to state your intended outcome, say making your home sustainable or low energy and that there was a bot to help you choose all the materials and could demonstrate to you just how effective they would be against your chosen goals? Well that's what Hubble, the technology designed by Marco, is now starting to do. Marco has studied energy innovation and emerging technologies at Stanford and has a Master's of Science from Carnegie Mellon. And more than 10 years experience as a software developer in the energy efficiency space. Macro Salinas, welcome to the PropTech Podcast.

Marco Salinas:

Thank you Kylie. It's a pleasure to be here.

Kylie Davis:

Oh, fantastic. Now Marco, we always start off with your elevator pitch. So tell me the Hubble elevator pitch. It's the trickiest part of the interview, don't worry. It gets easier from here.

Marco Salinas:

Actually it's quite simple for me, I would say. At Hubble we help discover property experiences. And we translate building fabrics into things that people can understand really well, such as comfort and energy efficiency and algae-free experiences and basically we do this with the use of artificial intelligence.

Kylie Davis:

Fantastic. So Marco Hubble won one of the Proptech Awards this year. Congratulations on that for this fabulously simple idea that has an awful lot of complexity underneath. That really does help people understand what the materials out there when they're building, what kind of experience that can create. How big of a problem is that? I mean we're renovating our bathroom at the moment. I know there's so many things you have to choose from. How do you do it?

Marco Salinas:

It's a huge problem. And you're absolutely right, we won one of the awards at the Proptech Awards earlier this year. It was a fantastic experience to be part of the community. And I would say it's a huge problem. And the reason I'm saying that is because if we look at the trends, particularly with the COVID you will find that almost 40% of Aussies are renovating. Just a few seconds ago you told me that your neighbour is renovating right now. And mostly most of the people is renovating now.

Marco Salinas:

I don't know perhaps in New South Wales, but in South Australia the property market is like all over the place. It's a huge boom, perhaps one of the highest peaks. And when people is looking at the properties or looking into renovations, technically they don't perhaps they are looking into other components that perhaps should be quite important. Like for example, how much investment would the property require within the next few weeks or months to perhaps keep it at a really good level of performance.

Marco Salinas:

Or how much energy is consuming or if it's going to be a really hot property where you're actually going to be uncomfortable. And most of these decisions are not being considered unless you go with an expert in energy efficiency or energy performance or house performance. And usually that won't happen unless you are prepared to invest a significant amount of money, perhaps over 3K, 5k to go with perhaps a specialist or an architect.

Marco Salinas:

And usually this is just happening at the very end of the market, like with premium type of houses and whereas should be available to everyone. It's amazing what you can actually do when you are looking at the performance of the house. And even perhaps selecting the materials based on what experience is going to provide you. And then perhaps even calculate what it's going to be the return of investment, even if it's just comfort or build savings and energy savings.

Kylie Davis:

Because it's not the way we tend to do it, is it? And I mean, we do so many things the way we've always done them in property. Not just buying and selling but renovating. And I often say that the building construction and renovation space is even more right for disruption than even just buying and selling. Because we tend to look at a magazine or look at some of the properties for sale and get an idea of the kind of look or feel that we think we're going for, and then work out what we can afford from that.

Kylie Davis:

And then how that impacts on your property's performance is something that happens. It's a happy coincidence or it's something else that you have to consider as part of the... It's a whole other part of problems that you have to try and work out when you're determining materials. So how does Hubble do it? How does the AI work it all out?

Marco Salinas:

We started Hubble last year working perhaps up our parent company. Our parent company, it's a energy efficiency consultancy company with a lot of data around house performance. This includes perhaps 15 to 20 years of experience and assessments that we have conducted. And we realised the value that we have in that data. And that was, we decided July last year to spin out Hubble as a digital solution. So this technically comes from the data that we got already with us, and at the same time we generate millions of records of different assessments for internal purposes as well.

Marco Salinas:

And we recently we were successful in a grant application to work with a governmental entity here in South Australia to deploy 3,000 sensors at the beginning. So we are going to be monitoring what is happening inside the properties with different specifications. So then we know technically how a 10-star house which is one of the most energy efficient houses, there's one here in South Australia, performs because we are continuously monitoring. So we have really good benchmarks. And now that we're just about to release our sensors with this, I'm technically not supposed to be talking about the project but that's the reason I cannot say the entity given that I need to go with the government communications team. But the announcement will happen very shortly.

Marco Salinas:

And we will help monitor houses and this information will help us train our AI, our models, and then provide insights very quick. And you're absolutely right, currently what is happening is even if you are planning on doing a renovation people tend to decide based purely on the aesthetics of the product. They don't know what is going to be the benefit or the impact. So people when they go out either to windows vendor or out to Bunnings and they are perhaps thinking on, I don't know, double glazing, I could tell you that there are thousands of options for double glazing. Then requesting will be which double-glazed window? And then the other question could be something like which window? Do you need to do all the windows or just one?

Marco Salinas:

Or should we perhaps different type of specs for each one of your windows? Or if it's even double-glazed do you need shading? And the complexity of these things is incredibly high. And basically what we're trying to do is to reduce that complexity and try to bring it down in such way that you don't need to actually think about this. And Hubble really quick will tell you what could be the benefit or the potential value in a way that you can actually understand it, so you can actually make a decision. And perhaps don't stop guiding those purchases not purely on the aesthetics, or just purely basing the recommendation of the vendor. Which in most of the cases it's inaccurate and wrong.

Kylie Davis:

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Kylie Davis:

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Kylie Davis:

So what does a 10-star building or a 10-star house, how does that perform differently to a typical house? What are the benefits of a 10-star house that you're going to enjoy?

Marco Salinas:

At 10-star house is technically the limit. And our parent company was the one that actually built the house here in South Australia. We can argue that perhaps is one of the most energy efficiency and the best performance, if not in Australia perhaps even in the world. The house it's was built perhaps to show that that level of standard can be achieved. So it's like a proof of concept because then 10-star is very, very, very high. Just to give you an idea, the house doesn't have any air con or heating and will keep the house perhaps steadily at 20 to 25 degrees over the entire year without having artificial or air conditioning or heating.

Kylie Davis:

Wow. That's impressive for Adelaide, because Adelaide get very cold in winter and very hot in summer.

Marco Salinas:

I know. Yes. And this is purely because of the design and the materials and how well the house actually was planned. So that is one side of the things. But then in the other side we were looking, in this case for example Hubble was the platform that helped them decide and figure out the materials that they needed to actually use to achieve that level, the 10-star. Because again the number of combinations that you can have just by changing different type of walls, it's in the order of millions. So then Hubble basically what it helps is to reduce those combinations and bring them down into a few options and explain why you should be using that.

Marco Salinas:

And it is not just about the temperature, but also it has an amazing level of humidity, also they include air purifiers, where the CO2 it's also considered. It monitors air pressure because the house is very well sealed. So the air tightness of the house is also very good, very high standard. And solar home batteries it's fully automated, so there is ventilation in the ceiling that will open the vents automatically depending on the temperature of the house. The house they recently moved to a new energy company, that they are called IO Energy. They're also based here in Stone & Chalk. And IO Energy will be publishing the energy consumption of the house, perhaps as a benchmark so people actually can see the benefits. And again the bill will be close to zero.

Kylie Davis:

Wow.

Marco Salinas:

So the house won't be paying energy.

Kylie Davis:

So a home that is obviously beautifully comfortable to live in because the temperature's just right. Goldilocks temperature. And obviously a lot more affordable to run, but very cheap to run because it's not running all this extraneous energy to keep it hot or cold. And I'm assuming it's quite a nice design or floor plan. Maybe we'll include a link. Till we got some information that we can include in the show notes, that would be great to see. Compared to a 10-star house, what's a typical Australian house? What energy rating or how many stars would that be at the moment?

Marco Salinas:

The minimum star in South Australia, perhaps to use it as a starting point, is 6-stars.

Kylie Davis:

Right.

Marco Salinas:

It's very far from that because it is not a linear, but it's more like a corporate type of behaviour in terms of performance.

Kylie Davis:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marco Salinas:

And in New South Wales, ACT, and Victoria there is a minimum standard. I can't remember if from last year or the coming year will be 7-stars.

Kylie Davis:

Right. This is the new properties being built though, not for existing stock.

Marco Salinas:

Correct. This is for new properties being built. And I can tell you that perhaps 10 years ago it was less than that, perhaps 1-star less, 6-stars. And then in South Australia there was 5-stars. And I know that, for example, Queensland they have a different standard as well where the performance-

Kylie Davis:

[inaudible 00:16:07]

Marco Salinas:

... Is not that good. So perhaps they're lagging behind. And something interesting about this is that usually, and that is just in theory, right? Because one thing is what you present to the council which is for new house, for new properties and the other thing is what the builders actually achieve.

Kylie Davis:

Oh, okay.

Marco Salinas:

[inaudible 00:16:29] the opposite. No, believe me. Because many times they will be saying that they were able to achieve 6-stars or 7-stars. But then in reality because of the poor knowledge or yes, like if they were doing a lot of holes in the walls and they didn't know, or penetration in the walls, they didn't know basically what they were doing, then the performance goes drastically down.

Marco Salinas:

And people actually they don't know this. And they move in without knowing how the house actually... Like there is a problem in the house, right? So I would say that perhaps the average of all the houses, and I'm going to just throw a number over here which is very risky, but I would say that it's very low. Perhaps Australia is 10 or 15 years behind in performance from Europe.

Kylie Davis:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marco Salinas:

Double-glazed windows or more sophisticated systems it's very rare to find in a house, unless perhaps you are in ACT on a very cold weather. Otherwise will be very difficult to find. Whereas in Europe they have been working with this for the last 10 years and they have even been mandatory. So I don't know if you had the opportunity to talk with someone from Europe. And they will tell you that they have been quite surprised of the windows or because of the temperatures that they feel here. I was last week having a chat with someone that came from Russia. And she told me that this is the first time she has been feeling so cold in her life [crosstalk 00:18:09]-

Kylie Davis:

In the house.

Marco Salinas:

... Coming from Russia. She never expect that this will happen in Australia [inaudible 00:18:15].

Kylie Davis:

No. I had 12 months as an exchange student in Denmark when I was a teenager. And I'm pretty sure I've been colder in Sydney in winter than I ever was when it was minus 10 or 15 in Denmark. And that was because our houses aren't designed for cold. On the opposite side though, I have never been so hot as I have been in the UK on a hot summer's day when you actually can't get the windows open [inaudible 00:18:41]. There's no airflow whatsoever, so.

Marco Salinas:

It's a matter of having a really good balance. And not everything, you're absolutely right, not everything is just about the materials but it's also about the different systems and the systems that you've got in place. To give you an example, if you got the wrong sizing for an air con, again that will impact significantly in the house performance. In the other way around, if you are oversizing the heating then you will be consuming more energy than the one that is required to keep it warm.

Marco Salinas:

If there is air infiltration through the windows and through the walls then all the cooling or the heating will be just leaking through the walls and the windows. People wouldn't be noticing this. But, yes. And just going really back to your question, a different experience that perhaps you can actually see in the 10-star house is allergy-free. I don't know if you perhaps noticed that when you are tiding up your house and you feel you have the dust in the, I don't know, in the desk or-

Kylie Davis:

Everywhere.

Marco Salinas:

... [crosstalk 00:20:03].

Kylie Davis:

Absolutely everywhere.

Marco Salinas:

That's one of the things that actually won't happen in the 10-star house because it's so-

Kylie Davis:

Dust-free.

Marco Salinas:

Yeah.

Kylie Davis:

What?

Marco Salinas:

It's really good for allergies. Because then air will be moving from the inside. And there is HVR system that purifies the air that actually comes through the house. So the ventilation is mechanical and it's through a filter. So it's similar to the cabin of an aeroplane, so it's been filtered. So that's actually really healthy, allergy-free experience. And this is the type of thing that is very difficult to measure. And either if you're planning to rent or purchase, it's very difficult to consider why it's going to be the experience of living in the next property?

Marco Salinas:

Or how can you upgrade your home to something that will be perhaps more comfortable or you will be able to really use the energy bill or, I don't know, even perhaps just reduce the energy. I know that a lot of people suffers from allergy and they have severe problems and they look perhaps into taking, I don't know, medication or pills or I suppose of just looking at improving their house. [crosstalk 00:21:32]-

Kylie Davis:

So-

Marco Salinas:

.... Potential solution.

Kylie Davis:

So let's just break this down a little bit. we've got new houses that need to be built that are being obligated to be built to higher standards. And that's quite tricky if you don't understand the materials or the way that they're being applied to hit those star goals. We've got a whole bunch of existing brownfields, or whatever they call it, stock out there that desperately needs an upgrade and can and should be upgraded. But again knowing what to do, knowing what products to choose is really tricky. And we've got a whole lot of imperatives to do all this stuff on the basis that once we get through it our homes will be more environmentally friendly, more comfortable to live in, more affordable to live in, and safer to live in, and healthier to live in.

Marco Salinas:

Correct.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. Okay.

Marco Salinas:

So that is one conversation around the minimum standard for compliance. And I would say that government is starting to catch up. We can see in the horizon that the minimum standard would be increasing. And even disclosure of that star rating or the house performance will be mandatory if you're planning to sell or even rent. This is something that is already happening in ACT, so there is a mandatory disclosure for residential properties.

Kylie Davis:

Right.

Marco Salinas:

And that will start happening perhaps in a few years time, the minimum standard will increase. But even if this still happens, translating these standards into tangibles like for the end user how these translate what is 7-stars? What is 6-stars? What is the 8-star? Translating this into the actual experience it's something that perhaps we're trying to do. And that is one. And the other one that perhaps has been increasing significantly perhaps more from COVID given that our circumstances recently changed, more people is living or spending more time at home working from home.

Marco Salinas:

So now they are thinking and they're looking at the energy bills and they're being perhaps a little bit more conscious. Perhaps because of they spend more time, they are trying to find different ways to improve the living, and start thinking about healthy living. So then the amount of options that you got to improve your house there like millions. And what we are trying to just do is to not only help the homeowners but also the vendors. And that's perhaps something that we actually started helping the vendors. Like for example windows retailers, windows manufacturers, air con manufacturers. And what we found is that not even them can actually explain how their product is going to perform or how their product is going to help their clients. So-

Kylie Davis:

Oh. So when we talking about vendors, let's just double back here, we're not talking about vendors who are people selling their properties we're talking about suppliers to the building industry like those vendors. Yep. Okay.

Marco Salinas:

... Correct. Suppliers or even manufacturers they don't know how to explain the benefits.

Kylie Davis:

No.

Marco Salinas:

So when you go to these retailers then they will tell you, "Okay. If you buy this product, this double-glaze for example, it is likely that everything will improve around 10 to 50%, but I'm not really sure."

Kylie Davis:

Because 10 to 15 or 10 to 50?

Marco Salinas:

10 to 50. And then this other one will perhaps say it's even better because-

Kylie Davis:

Numbers may change.

Marco Salinas:

... This is noise reduction. But they can't actually give you something very tangible, something that you can actually understand.

Kylie Davis:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marco Salinas:

And we started helping them explain to their clients these experiences. But at the same time that we're helping them, we are learning on how they are selling and what are the experiences that they are providing. And we're doing this because we are helping them on installing sensors, proprietary sensors that we have been developing at Hubble that we have been testing on the performance actually improves. Or what's the benefit of using different products.

Marco Salinas:

So then we can replicate the same efforts with other home homeowners. And a little bit of our vision is that eventually with Hubble, we will act like anyone with one of our sensors just like use a sensor for a few days and we will be perhaps scanning your entire home. And that sensor will give you a very good insight on how the property is performing and we will start giving you a pathway to healthy living.

Kylie Davis:

Oh, I love this. I love this. Everybody I think wants to do the right thing, but if it's hard to do the right thing then you only get a very dedicated group of evangelists who will go out there and do all the research, make all the decisions, set everything up. Because there are just so many choices out there. I think around choosing solar panels or understanding the electricity, the amount of homework that you need to sit down and do often just feels so hard. So anything you can do to make that simple sounds really awesome. And in making it easy to be compliant is the easiest way for us to achieve some of these goals.

Kylie Davis:

Let's just take a short break and hear a quick word from our sponsors. Do you run a proptech business or are you the founder of the proptech? Make sure you join the Proptech Association of Australia. It's Australia's new not-for-profit association made up of tech people who are passionate about the property industry and committed to improving experiences in how we buy, sell, rent, manage, build, and finance property. Joining will give you access to events and networks across Australia and globally to help you promote and grow your business. Go to proptechassociation.com.au and follow the prompts to join.

Kylie Davis:

Marco, who are your customers? Are they me, like Mr and Mrs. House Owner? Or are they architects and designers? Who are your primary clients at the moment?

Marco Salinas:

We started Hubble with data that is already available. And architects and builders they are really using it. There are a few architects that they are really embedded into energy efficiency and sustainability and usually they provide assistance to homeowners looking at upgrades. And they use Hubble to explain the benefits and to show them the things that they need to do.

Marco Salinas:

A few of them they traditionally know other software which perhaps can be a little bit more difficult to use, but still they are very resourceful in the sense that they have the skills to actually jump into more the other type of software. And perhaps model the house, the performance in a different way but definitely are using Hubble. We're helping builders to find the optimal solution for a homeowner, mostly in new builds.

Marco Salinas:

And we are helping, perhaps more recently, we started to help retailers like in this case material vendors like suppliers, manufacturers to explain the benefits of the products. And the idea is that everything that we're doing right now is that we're using it to prepare our platform to help homeowners. And what we have in mind or perhaps our vision is that we would like to open our platform publicly at no cost for everyone that wants to jump and wants to explore how they can improve their home.

Marco Salinas:

And by then, and perhaps I'm talking a few months away, because of all the data that we have been gathering from vendors, architects, builders every time that we are working with them or onboarding a new retailer we are technically improving our machine learning models and our AI is getting smarter and smarter and we're getting more accurate. And at the same time we're gathering information from sensors.

Marco Salinas:

So then technically speaking what we are doing is that we are preparing our entire platform to solve the people of homeowners like regular mom and dad planning on buying a new house or mom and dad planning on doing renovation or a retrofit because they are just spending a little bit more time in the house because of COVID.

Kylie Davis:

Yep. Okay, fantastic. So what's your business model then? So you're not charging mom and dad to upload their plans, how are you making money? Because you are a new startup only what? In the market about a year you said. This is a lot of stuff that you've been doing in just the 12 months. No wonder you won the Proptech Award. What's your business model?

Marco Salinas:

Our business model. We have a premium fee for those architects and those builders that actually are making money because of using Hubble. To give you an example, there are a few builders that if you go to the display room you will find a tablet. And the tablet will start talking about the energy efficiency package and the different upgrades that you can actually perform in the house. This is for new builds.

Kylie Davis:

Good.

Marco Salinas:

And you can interact more in a kiosk type of way.

Kylie Davis:

Yep.

Marco Salinas:

For different retailers something similar will happen. For example, if you go shopping or you go to a showroom looking for windows, it might be the case that you find a tablet and then, an interactive tablet, and you start playing with that. And you start getting a better profile and a better product because of the advice that we're taking you, we are monetizing that solution for them. But technically what we are doing is we are gathering more data so we can actually improve our AI, and finally we can release in an open platform.

Marco Salinas:

And what we are planning at the end is that if people start using, as we are hoping, to use our platform then we will know how different houses might perform. And this could be something very, very interesting for other the companies. Like for example, the ones that they are in the market for selling or renting. So then if you're planning on sell a house and you would like to explain what's the performance of your house, then you might have to go to Hubble to perhaps get that information. And we are planning to monetize that information as well.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. I love this. So I love the fact that, I mean, one of the impacts your technology is potentially going to have down the track is buildings with higher star ratings are going to be worth more and valued at higher levels. Whether that's in terms of weekly rent or the sale price at the end of the day than buildings with lower value. So there's an incentive there for everyone to start to upgrade and improve their homes. How big are you guys now? I mean after your first 12 months?

Marco Salinas:

We're quite a small team.

Kylie Davis:

Yep.

Marco Salinas:

It's conformed by my Co-founder, Jim.

Kylie Davis:

Shout out to Jim.

Marco Salinas:

He usually works...

Kylie Davis:

Hey, Jim.

Marco Salinas:

Yeah. Jim has helped us bootstrap Hubble.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah.

Marco Salinas:

So we got Jim, he's an expert in energy efficiency, he sits in different building committees as an expert. And the government usually engage him to conduct some advice for regulations. There's a lot of credibility in his work. We also go Tia Daniels, she's our COO, chief operations officer. She's an expert in energy efficiency and building design. We've got Amber Pascoe, she's an expert in energy efficiency. And so that perhaps will be the team around building design and energy. And then there is another small team of technical, more technological background. So we've got Christian and he's a developer full stack developer. He's amazing what he actually he's able to do. Then we got Matias and he's a data scientist/-

Kylie Davis:

[inaudible 00:35:25].

Marco Salinas:

... AI researcher.

Kylie Davis:

Yep.

Marco Salinas:

And Ivan, and he's also across most of these areas, AI development, project management. And we are supported by an amazing team of advisors. One of them in the startup perhaps domain, actually it's a company called LeapSheep that they're just fantastic here in South Australia and the things that they have been doing. And financial advisors, they're actually helping us model the technical things about monetization and how can we build up perhaps in the future revenue.

Kylie Davis:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marco Salinas:

And how can this perhaps could be attractive for an investor as well.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. Fantastic. So you haven't done any funding rounds yet, but it like there might be some on the cards. Is that true?

Marco Salinas:

Yeah, correct. So we haven't done any funding so far. Again perhaps Jim actually has been helping us bootstrap.

Kylie Davis:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marco Salinas:

And we never know. It might be likely that we will be conducting some funding rounds in the future. We have been getting traction from investors and from VC firms. They're starting to hold-

Kylie Davis:

Circle.

Marco Salinas:

... Circle around. And we starting to be more in their radar. But definitely what we would like to see is someone that is perhaps very aligned with the company. Even if it's an angel or a VC, someone that is very, very aligned we would like to be in a position where... And perhaps we're very lucky because we're in a position that we don't require funding so far like immediate. Perhaps in one year time we would require. But we would like to be in a very strong position where we are able to pick and choose that one really good investor that will help us thrive and reach perhaps our... Help us achieve our vision.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. Why are you hubble.sh not .com.au? Or anything like that?

Marco Salinas:

Sh it comes from sustainable home.

Kylie Davis:

Oh, okay.

Marco Salinas:

For sustainable house. And this is when people actually they don't know about us that is perhaps the first question that they ask. So actually it has been quite careful. And the reason we have been doing this is because it's quite memorable. Once we say it once like it's hubble.sh and sh is because your sustainable house or your sustainable home, people get it and immediately understand what we do. Like we help you-

Kylie Davis:

Absolutely. Yep.

Marco Salinas:

... Achieve a sustainable home.

Kylie Davis:

And where does the name Hubble come from?

Marco Salinas:

Hubble technically comes from, it's a last name from a very famous astronomer, that he built the first one telescope-

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, Hubble.

Marco Salinas:

... That actually is called Hubble. So it's actually that comes from that last name. And the reason we selected that perhaps last name or perhaps just making a little bit of a reference to that we can actually help you look into how to help or generate more energy efficiency stars. At the end of the day energy efficiency is measured with stars. So we're trying [crosstalk 00:39:14]-

Kylie Davis:

Oh, okay.

Marco Salinas:

... Find your next star.

Kylie Davis:

Oh, I love it. That's poetry, Marco. Not what you expect in proptech but I love it. So I'm conscious of the time. Where do you see all of this going? What's the next five years? In five years time when we look back to today, how are our houses going to be different?

Marco Salinas:

I would think that there will be a lot of changes. My guess is that people will be more conscious, will be more aware of the different experiences. Hopefully people will be keeping track of not only about the experience, but how even the materials were manufactured. Like the amount of energy that were used in order to make it, achieve some carbon neutrality.

Marco Salinas:

I would say that we are moving perhaps into that direction and we are moving very, very fast. And the way in which I also see is that we will be using augmented reality hopefully with Hubble, where just with the use of your phone and a small sensor then you will know everything that you need to know about your house.

Kylie Davis:

Oh. Well I'm sure we can hook you up with about 15 different augmented reality and VR people to help you with that. And so what does the future hold for Hubble? What's your next? What's your roadmap looking like?

Marco Salinas:

We are working with retailers. Right now we are already helping builders in South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales. We're generating a lot of data that is helping us in improve. We are also just about to release our first kiosk for windows vendors.

Kylie Davis:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marco Salinas:

These will be part of around 50 showrooms across New Zealand and Australia. So-

Kylie Davis:

Fantastic.

Marco Salinas:

... It is very likely that if you go to a showroom and there is a tablet helping you select a window that perhaps will be Hubble. And what we are already working on is on looking at different segments, like for example, lighting, air conditioning, hot water systems, ceilings, even paint roof, so everything that you are... Like even flooring, which type of flooring actually we help you improve the performance of your house. And we believe that if you're planning on doing a renovation it shouldn't be just the aesthetics.

Marco Salinas:

But it should be like if you're already doing the renovation perhaps something that will help you get a better return of that investment perhaps with a better experience. And because of the complexity we're planning to perhaps reduce this. So that will be the next step. And we are planning next year to have our first Hubble platform perhaps available now for public. Actually now it's already working. So the AI is already working. And if there is any person interested from your audience, like will be willing to test, just feel free just to go to the website. And-

Kylie Davis:

Oh, I'd love to. Hand up, hand up. I've got my hand up. Let me put my house in.

Marco Salinas:

... Free access. Again it is no charge.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah.

Marco Salinas:

Perhaps we will conduct an interview just with a heads up that it's perhaps just targeting architects, so could be a little bit technical. But in the case about ceiling installations and floor insulation and this kind of things, more than happy to grant you access for free. And we are conducting in a regular basis user research, so perhaps what we will be asking just at the end is perhaps just to fill a questionnaire.

Kylie Davis:

Fantastic. All right. Well look Marco, it's been absolutely fantastic talking to you. I love what Hubble's doing. Congratulations. And I'm very excited because it feels like this is some of the tech that is going to help us live in the world that we want to live in as opposed to be living in the world that we are forced to live in. It's got all that saving the planet, but also saving your hip pocket. So what's not to love?

Marco Salinas:

Was great to be here.

Kylie Davis:

Thanks so much for being on the PropTech Podcast. So what do you think of Hubble? Don't you love it? I do. Anyone who has stood in an aisle at Bunnings and tried to make a decision about the best product to buy, and I think you can see that I've been doing that a bit lately, but if you're trying to decide the best product to buy for a renovation or project you know how hard and limited the options are around good decision making. Especially if you're trying to achieve goals like sustainability, energy efficiency, or health outcomes. It is really difficult or it involves hiring expensive experts.

Kylie Davis:

There's so much homework involved if you want to do it right. So much research. And how do you do that if you're both working and raising a family while owning your home? Or how do you take the time off to do it right if you're paying down a mortgage the size of the Titanic? I love how all these proptechs are now emerging that make it so much easier to make good decisions around home ownership. To help us as homeowners start to make better decisions around how we live in our homes and how we update them.

Kylie Davis:

And I love how Hubble helps experts in this field make their work more efficient and effective, as well as potentially more affordable so more of us can use it. This is really important stuff, guys. When you make better decisions around materials easy and transparent, it becomes harder to make bad decisions. And therefore the consequences of bad decisions become more apparent. In building, we have an awful traditional model that involves everyone in the chain adding their cut to the build price. This by its nature encourages behaviour that seeks to save on materials. So what we tend to go for is cheap rather than what is specified and then our buildings don't perform as intended.

Kylie Davis:

So clearer identification of exactly the materials that we need to have used and their effectiveness in achieving the goals of the building work, that's essential if we're going to hit climate change goals and reduce the carbon footprint of building work. So look, yes, Hubble is very new tech and it has a long way to ago, but it's great to see an Australian proptech defining this space. So well done Marco and I look forward to hearing more about the success of Hubble.

Kylie Davis:

Now if you have enjoyed this episode of the PropTech Podcast, I would love you to tell all your friends. Check out all our episodes on theproptechpodcast.com, don't forget the the at the start. Or drop me a line either via email, LinkedIn, or Facebook. You can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Anchor, and iTunes, and anywhere good podcasts are heard. I'd like to thank my podcast producer flying solo now, Charlie Hollins, and our sponsors Direct Connect, making moving easy, Dynamic Methods, a name behind Forms Live, REI Forms Live, and Realworks, and the Proptech Association of Australia, Australia's industry body supporting the flourishing Australian proptech community.

Kylie Davis:

Now if you're an Australian or New Zealand proptech who would like to be on the show, drop me a line via LinkedIn or kylie@proptechassociation.com.au. Thanks everyone. Until next time, keep on propteching.