The Pomp Podcast - #970 Brett Hagler On Solving Homelessness Worldwide

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Brett Hagler is the CEO of New Story, a non-profit company focused on bringing affordable housing to nearly 3 billion people who are experiencing inadequate housing around the world. In this conversation, we discuss how New Story is bringing affordable housing to so many people through construction innovation and financing innovation to help their residents. We also discuss New Story's efforts in El Salvador to build housing, accept payments on the Bitcoin standard, and how Bitcoin is helping so many people in third world countries. ======================= Since 2018 Copper has been at the forefront of institutional digital asset development.   From award winning custody solutions, to creating the first truly off-exchange settlement function, Copper pioneers technology, products, and services, in lock-step with a rapidly changing world.    No other infrastructure provider covers as many assets, across as many exchanges, with the speed and security that Copper can offer. To learn how Copper helps the world’s largest institutional investors secure their digital assets, head over to copper.co   Copper - the unfair advantage. ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin.  Visit http://compassmining.io to start mining bitcoin today!  ======================= Bullish is a powerful new digital asset exchange built for institutions that delivers the innovations of DeFi in a regulated environment. The Bullish Hybrid Order Book pairs the high-performance of a traditional Central Limit Order Book with automated market making. Powered by deep Bullish Liquidity Pools, backed by the multi-billion dollar Bullish Treasury. So, you can trade with certainty and at scale across variable market conditions.   Learn more at Bullish.com or follow @Bullish on Twitter. Because the future belongs to the bullish.   *Not investment advice. Digital assets and cryptocurrencies are high risk products. Consult your professional advisor before dealing in them. Bullish’s services are available in select locations only and not to U.S persons.    Visit https://bullish.com/legal for important information and risk warnings =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Brett Hagler is the CEO of Newstort. It's a charity that's focused on bringing affordable housing to almost 3 billion people experiencing some sort of inadequate housing around the world. In this conversation, we talk about the construction innovation that they're helping to drive forward, the financing innovation that they're ushering in, and exactly how Newstore is helping so many people find that affordable housing. I really enjoyed this conversation with Brett.

Hope you guys enjoyed as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Copper. Since 2018, Copper has been at the forefront of institutional digital asset development. From award-winning custody solutions to creating the first truly off-exchange settlement function, Copper pioneers technology, products, and services in lockstep with a rapidly changing world. No other infrastructure provider covers as many assets across as many exchanges with the speed and security that Copper can offer. To learn how Copper helps the world's largest institutional

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The bullish hybrid order book pairs the high performance of a traditional central limit order book with the automated market making. Powered by deep bullish liquidity pools backed by the multi-billion dollar bullish treasury. So you can trade with certainty and at scale across variable market conditions. You can learn more at bullish.com or follow bullish on Twitter because the future belongs to the bullish. Now this is not investment advice. Digital assets and cryptocurrencies are high-risk products. Consult your professional advisor before dealing in them. Bullish's services are available in select locations only and not to U.S. persons. Visit bullish.com slash legal for important information and risk warnings. Go check them

out at bullish.com or follow at Bullish on Twitter. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of pomp investments you should not treat any opinion expressed by pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy but only as an expression of his personal opinion this podcast is for informational purposes only all right guys bang bang i'm very excited about this conversation i've got brett hagler here ceo of news story um what you're doing is just pretty incredible uh but i think maybe the best place to start out is you're a young, smart guy, like, why go work and build a charity versus build a technology

startup or kind of go do you know, the business thing? What's kind of the thought process behind, you know, the work you've been doing for the last couple years? Yeah, thanks for having me on pump. First I'll say is I love startups. I love capitalism. So we'll get deeper into how we're trying to take a market driven approach. I mean, how I got into it, I actually started a for-profit company right out of college, a tech company. And that company, we decided to give away a little bit of the money we were making. And we wanted to go see an organization that we would be giving to. And that organization was based in Haiti.

So I went on a trip to Haiti when I was 23. I recently started this company in a college. I was not exposed to extreme poverty growing up. I just wasn't. And on that trip, I saw families and kids that were living on dirt floors, tarp tents, lacking life's most basic human needs like food, water, safety, shelter, both physical safety, psychological safety. And it just rocked me. And I saw it. But I still didn't think that I would try to start a nonprofit.

I actually was – I had bad experiences with charities and nonprofits. I thought they were way too old school. I thought it was too traditional. I thought, um, people weren't applying business principles and it just like felt very different to me. So I tried to go find some organizations that I could support and I could get excited about because I solved the problem and it was so clear of how bad it was. And, uh, and long story short, I couldn't find any that I could get excited about as like a younger entrepreneur, um, that love technology, that love startups, that love trying to come at things with more risk and innovation and it's hard to say that other orgs were doing anything wrong just

from my perspective wasn't what i wanted and so that's how the aha moment came of trying to start a new story um that first startup i had like basically was fizzling out and ended up failing and tons of learnings and amazing experience and uh called a new story to create a new story in the families that we get to help but honestly most importantly like a new story and how we think about building a more modern, innovative, social impact organization. And we were one of the first nonprofits to get into Y Combinator back in 2015. And that's when everything kind of got started. Tell me about that, like going through Y Combinator, most tech entrepreneurs, that's, you know, the pinnacle of the start of a business taking a nonprofit through like,

why did you want to go through YC? And why did they want you in YC? I guess is a good way to think of it yeah so why we wanted to go through it um i tell a lot of other you know other non-profit founders ask me this sometimes and it was so organic because we were already learning from white commoner right like when i was starting the organization and my co-founders like we were already watching the videos we were already like learning from the principles like that's where i was learning from i wasn't learning from a lot of the other places that non-profit folks learn from so that was really like just in our DNA like who we are and so that was why and then when we got in I think why they liked us was we had you know a really big vision we wanted to use technology we

wanted to hire really great people and I think the best part about going through Y Combinator as a non-profit was they didn't treat us one percent different than anybody else there and that was always my perspective and my co-founder's perspective on what it should be like you know it's like why why do you have to lower the standards so low and when you hear the word non-profit or charity just like my mind goes and probably almost everybody listening it's you just you sense a different caliber yeah and a lower standard and not a high bar for excellence um different competency on the team and that we wanted to be the anti of that so that was um that was kind of what we the dna of how we got started yeah so talk to me about uh kind of the

problem itself. I saw a statistic on your website that says there's going to be 3 billion people by 2030 that are homeless, according to the UN. And to me, 3 billion people is 40% or so of the global population. And so I think most people in the Western world understand that homelessness is a problem. It's a problem here in the United States. It's a problem even worse globally. But 3 billion people struck me as a really big number. What's going on with that number? Yeah, I mean, today, as we sit here, you know, despite all the incredible advances we have in the world, there's, you know, give or take around 1.5 billion people today in 2020-22 that live in inadequate housing. And so for folks that are listening in America or global listeners all over the world, I think sometimes when we hear the word homelessness, we think folks that are struggling and maybe living on the street or that's been a lot of what we're conditioned to see. But globally, it's more of we call it inadequate housing.

And so it means families that are living in some type of structure, but as it's defined, they're living on dirt floor, tarp tents. It's on land that they don't own. It's extremely small, so there's overcrowding. It's inadequate housing. It's nothing that you would ever want anybody that you know or love to live in. And with that comes all types of issues. When you don't have basic human needs and shelter, health issues, it's very hard to earn income in there. When you don't have that foundation, everything adds up. And so just today, 1.5 billion people live in those conditions. And what we say is, aside from climate change, we think that this is one of the largest, most expensive problems in the world, if you just did the math. right on 1.5 billion people that need better housing um it's massive it's it's so massive but

it's not something that is uh in people's faces every day so it's hard to see it and it's um the awareness of it is uh i don't think it's as strong as it should be and you know we're trying to bring awareness to it yeah so if we're at 1.5 billion today they estimate it'd be 3 billion by 2030 so obviously getting worse exactly how many of these people who live in the inadequate housing so not on the street but they live in one of these structures do they think that they're homeless like would they identify as being homeless or is it just hey i'm a human super adaptable situation sucks but my family's here and so this is just the way life is um i think they understand that they are they're in you know extremely low income and that they don't have adequate home housing and

their dream is to one day own a home and own the land. It goes together because what they see that as is a multi-generational opportunity for their family. They see it as a place where their kids can have a better education. There can be better health outcomes. Their income significantly increases. We've now been doing this for almost seven years. We've been fortunate to work with thousands of families taking them from inadequate housing to long-term adequate housing dude the income like it almost doubles after two years of being in the home really yeah and so why is that uh it's everything from you know these these families they're they're they are people that love working they love working they are they are trying to find income a lot of them they all have

income. And so once they get into a house, we just think about it anecdotally, like, let's say that you live on a dirt floor, and that you're living on a kind of like a more steep hill that's prone to rainwater coming into your home, and there's a storm at night, right? And you have a pieced together roof, and it rains, you're not really getting you're not really getting sleep at night. Um, your kids are probably going to get sick because of the, the environment that it's caused. And then you're supposed to show up at 7 30 AM in the morning because you're a maid or that you have a job. It's really hard to do that consistently when, where you're living is kind of like, we call it survival mode conditions. And so there's small things like that. Um, there's

things like, it's really hard to get a micro loan when you're living in that environment. Um, and actually like have a business that you could start out of your home and so once somebody gets into a house they're in a much better position to actualize their potential because it's a safe environment that they can count on and that they could actually like invest in and think a little bit more long term as opposed to just thinking about literally surviving and like how do I make sure that my kids are not getting sick simply because of where they're living and mosquitoes coming in, you know, all types of safety issues. Yeah. How much of it is a confidence game? Like as you're talking in the Western world, again, the thing that I think of is almost like the

Deion Sanders quote of, you know, look good, feel good, feel good, play good, play good, get paid well. Right. And to some degree, like if you're like, hey, life is headed in the right direction, I'm building momentum, I'm kind of doing the right things. Does that play into it as well? A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and the dignity of, of having a home that just has, you know, a good floor and it just has a couple bedrooms and that has a toilet and a shower and electricity, because then you can bring in a computer. Like you, it just, it's a whole different mind shift. And, uh, and, and what we're trying to do is, is just, you know, have families see that vision more and, and work and work towards it, that it's not a handout to them, but that

They're actually really working for it. Yeah. So as you start to tackle this problem, obviously it's a huge problem, right? Global homelessness is almost so large that it's hard to pick where to start. Walk me through, when you think of the organization today, where are you focused geographically? And what does this look like when you go into a geography? How do you get started? Yeah.

I mean, I think about, as a lot of investors listen to this podcast, I see all the time, This is one of the largest, fastest-growing, most underserved markets in the world, if you think about it. And because it's so big, that TAM's so big, like what New Story is trying to do is first focus and prove a model at scale in one area that can then, you know, grow to other places in a financially sustainable way, which I'll come back to. And so our focus right now is partnering with a million people in Latin America before 2030. That's our goal. And we're, you know, super focused on trying to hit that, hiring teams, building products for that demographic. And then from there, you know, be able to expand out to other places. Got it.

And so when you go into one of these locations, I basically think about your kind of effort being twofold. One is you could go raise a bunch of money from like a donation standpoint, and it comes in, it goes out, you got to go back to the well and go fundraise more. And there's plenty of charities who have been super, super successful in doing that. What's unique about what I think you're doing is you're trying to say, hey, look, we are going to do the fundraising, but we want to create a system where the economics are actually positive. and uh we can make this sustainable in a way that once money comes in it's not a one-time use of the money we basically can recycle it over and over and over again have more impact with it so that doesn't sound like most uh non-profits right the the name non-profit literally means we don't make a profit totally uh explain this in terms of like positive unit economics for a non-profit uh may

violate the way some people think about this yeah i mean i'm i'm i've always been very unashamed in like saying how we, how we think about things. And, you know, what I believe is that the way that we're actually going to create real change at scale is it has to be done. And what we call a market driven approach, right? Where there is, there is profit involved with people that get that, that work with us. Um, so we believe in investment, we believe in profit. And, uh, and so what we've realized after doing this for seven years is that, um, philanthropy and government aid is literally not even a drop in the bucket of what is actually needed to think bigger, you know, 100x to think about for this problem. And so the way that we think about using philanthropy

in a high leverage way is to fund our team, is to fund innovation R&D, and then to go start projects that we're using philanthropy to prove, but then could be scaled by the market. And so we're coming in and proving something to show the market in that area that this is a viable path to to to make profit and we're going to go and prove it first um and so we the phrase we use is uh creating a financially sustainable path to home ownership for for the lowest income families yeah and um and you know so we're doing that really in two main ways um one the thing about like to to we focus on two areas um construction innovation so we got to be able to decrease the cost um of of inventory of homes and uh but still have it be high quality and have it be beautiful

and be dignified that somebody wants the family wants to live there for decades right and then the other piece that is incredibly important is um is the financing right because nobody can afford you know this type of home up front even i mean they're they're lower cost homes for folks listening you know in the west or the u.s it's you know they're anywhere between like 8 000 to maybe 15 000 u.s dollars um per home but people can't afford that up front so you have to have the long-term financing or else if you don't have the long-term financing you're only reliant on a government giving you a house or a charity giving you a house which doesn't scale and it's also not dignifying for the families they want they want to work they want to pay over time

they're not looking for things for free they basically say look i'm willing to work for just show me the path on how to uh i mean look some people are but but we're trying to partner with families that that want to work and that they they see this as an opportunity of a lifetime to actually be able to afford land and a home and they want to be able to tell their kids and their grandkids that we got this house like we like we bought this house um and that is that is what we are working on yeah so what do people get when it's eight to fifteen thousand dollars is this you know a six-bedroom house this is a one-bedroom house is there uh two bathrooms a kitchen like walk me through kind of what is like the average home that would get built for for that yeah yeah

i just got back from um uh guadalajara mexico we're working in a new area in jalisco the state there, and was just one of our the architects. And so we're designing homes that I'm going to say it, it might sound kind of odd, but I'll explain it. We're designing homes architecturally that will grow. So instead of starting off a family with a home that may cut that the square footage may be, you know, closer to 800 or 900 square feet, with a cost, it's going to be closer to 25,000 US dollars, it starts off smaller. So it would start off at a smaller price point and with fewer bedrooms, fewer components to the home. But over time, the family, they see a path to adding on rooms to their home. So the architecture is literally set up to where as

the family grows, they increase their income, they will add on a room to their home and they will pay for it themselves. And so the, um, you know, the slabs are set up that way. The roof is designed in a way that a second story will be built and families see that vision from the beginning. So we go and we show the families with, um, we're actually doing this with VR, which is, which is pretty cool. They get to walk in and see what the home is today. And then what it can be like three years, five years, 10 years. And the home is literally growing and they're paying for all of that. Um, they just need the starting point. And so, um, you know, starting out about basic houses, it's going to be probably two bedrooms, a living room. And then, um, the,

the key part is, um, is a bathroom. Um, because most of these families, almost none of them actually have a toilet, um, clean water inside the home electricity. And so those services are also, um, included in the home. Got it. And so when you think about the construction innovation, right um this to me is uh what makes this so fascinating around uh you want to build as many homes as possible as cheaply as possible uh as quickly as possible but they still need to meet some quality bar that that makes this kind of long-term sustainable for these families and so talk to me about the work that you guys have done on the construction innovation uh because again i don't think people think of a charity doing innovative work around construction

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so we kind of do it two ways. Like we are, the example I just gave is trying to just kind of use what's already in some of the regions, like great architects, local materials, local labor, and just think differently about how can we design it from scratch, differently using what's kind of there so that it can be, you know, they can grow into it over time. And then we also are making longer term bets on earlier stage innovations. And so one of the big ones that we've been fortunate to work with from the very beginning is a 3D printing company out of Austin called Icon. And so we were their first partner and got to help launch the first 3D printed home in the U.S. back in 2018. That was at South by Southwest. And so we wanted to put in a lot of risk capital to be the first partner to prove that out with the long-term thinking that if this works, it will be a significant, you know, improvement in time, cost, quality from the traditional construction. And we want to be the ones making riskier bets. And that was one example of how we did that. When you say risk capital, like you're literally investing in the business in order to

get them to- We have R&D budget. Yeah. So we have an R&D budget and we have, you know, donors that a small group of private donors that we call the builders and the builders fund just our operational expenses, our innovation and R and D budget. And they understand that we have to, we have to make some, some risky bets that have, you know, extraordinary potential and, and be get in early so that we can, you know, learn how can this work for the demographic that we want to partner with, right. Which is, which is different than some of the demographics that um, construction companies are, are designing for. So we, you know, back when we were making the decision to, to, to, to make this, um, kind of R and D partnership, we felt that, uh,

from a social impact perspective, from our missional perspective, it was irresponsible not to do it, not to try it. Um, and so a lot of folks, you know, kept telling us like, why would you put X amount? I won't say the amount that we, that we partnered with. Why would you do that when you could just go build another you know 30 homes how they've always been built and you get to help 30 families or 50 families or 100 families and uh you know we're just trying to make some of these longer term bets when you think about the 3d printing how long does it take to build one of these homes and is it something where you just go buy out like a whole block uh in terms of land and then you just build 3d home after 3d home next to each other pretty much yeah so um so we're so

So everything we design is really like we buy land, and we do large communities. So we do like 100, 200, up to over 500 home community developments. And so with 3D printing, everything is on site. So we'll basically, with our partner icon, deploy a fleet of machines, and it comes on site using local material. It's mostly a cement mix with some proprietary stuff in there. and uh and we'll print um 24 hours a day the machine can just work 24 hours and uh and it can print houses and how much does it cost if you go do you know 200 300 home community is that a

couple million dollars a couple hundred thousand 20 million dollars what does that look like yeah it totally depends on the market and you know who are the partners involved but you know on average per unit a home cost is going to be when you add in the services as well and the land right so we do the whole package. It's not just, it's not just showing up and building the structure of a home. It's land services, the whole thing. It's usually going to be between like 10 to 15 K per house. So a whole community is only a couple million dollars. Yeah. And then in those communities, are they just homes or do you actually think about kind of, uh, planning, whether it's a playground or a community center? Like how do you think about the things outside of the home,

but still in that community. That's critical. So it's, it's, we do urban planning, we do urban design. Um, we're very proud that we, uh, we really involve the families in that process as well. It's a more dignified process and it creates a better product, right? We, you know, in the startup world, people say all the time, you know, make something people want, customer discovery, um, work with your end user. But unfortunately, when, um, whether it's governments or nonprofits, when they're trying to work with lower income families, they usually are not bringing them in. They're not asking for their opinion.

They're not really getting feedback. And so we're very thoughtful and intentional about bringing them into the process. And so they're helping design their homes. They're helping us say how the community should be laid out, where they want their kids to play, where they would want to have a market. So they're really involved in that process.

So the construction innovation, obviously, it's just how do we build the best homes as quickly as possible for the lowest cost uh and do it in a replicable way obviously you have a partner that um is able to help you there but keeping it keeping the quality bar high correct so we want we want like we're not just trying to crank out the the lowest costs smallest homes right we want we want a home that a family can move into and say i am so damn proud to live here it is beautiful and i i like i'm obsessed with this and so that's the bar that we have yeah and then on the financing side there's a bunch of innovations that are going there so while you're working to basically get costs down and keep that

quality bar but but increase the iteration speed as well you also have come up with a pretty innovative financing um model where it seems like there's two components one is uh you want the families to have skin in the game and many of them want skin in the game and so we can talk about that. Uh, but also too is the ability to make this sustainable. So it's not just, Hey, we buy you a home and, uh, you know, we're out of money. We had to go raise more capital from a donation standpoint. So how do you approach the innovation around finance? Yeah. I mean, this, the last two years, this has been what I thought about the most, um, and what our team is, is really focused on. So, um, because what we've learned first, I'm gonna start with what we learned. So what we've

learned is that we've worked with thousands of families now that have gotten into into long-term housing is that they they can pay their income increases and that they want to pay the problem is that the the kind of the market um doesn't have mortgages or products that are that are that are designed for them and so we're taking those learnings and that data because we know it works. And we're designing these longer term mortgage products that they can pay for at an affordable interest rate. And it works. They can pay for it. We've thought about them only being able to pay for part of a house, but it turns out they can pay for the whole thing. They just need some more time. So instead of them only paying for five years, they can pay for 10 years. But then

the question is how do you track that over 10 years or longer right um what's the like what's the method of servicing that that loan or that mortgage and um that's where a lot of like technology innovation trying to bring more operational excellence to it um so that people aren't just you know having to to get on a bus and drive to a bank and pay in cash or in pesos and it's not tracked transparently, it's really hard to have a transparent credit history or credit report. And so we're trying to help the families do that

in a way that is better optimized for them. Yeah. And when you think about that financing, walk me through the journey. So I'm one of these families, I somehow get in touch with you and I realize, hey, there's a potential path. What's the first thing I need to do?

Do I need to prove some level of income or how does this work to at the end I actually have a home that I'm living with my family? Yeah. So the first thing is you would need to be living in what we defined as adequate housing, right? And there's a lot of different ways we define that. Um, you then would be, uh, you need to have definitely some income source of income. We're usually working with families that make between from a U S dollar, um, standpoint between like 300 to, on the high end, 600 US dollars a month.

That's our demographic. And then, so they need to be having some type of income. And then the last part is that they need to, they have to want this. So they understand that it's a long-term, it's a long-term homeownership opportunity that they're gonna build credit history over time and that they want to pay for it.

And they have to sign up for that. and so that's those are the kind of the the core components to get started yeah and then as we get started what is like the payment plan look like if i'm making 300 600 a month walk me through how much is going towards buying land or paying for the house and how long i end up paying for so the percentage we usually work with is you're going to pay about 20 to 25 percent of your monthly income is going to go towards home housing and that's very fair affordable a lot of people listening probably spend that or maybe more and so that's the percentage that we try to we try to work with and um and so that's how it starts um we've done a model uh in mexico where families will first pay

for their plot of land so they're they're paying for the land first um which is able to prove credit history and also helps give them a, uh, an asset, a land that can be used, you know, in the future for, for a mortgage, because it's actually some collateral. Um, and then we have other places, um, especially in El Salvador where we're kind of coming in and buying land and just starting to build the homes immediately. And then, um, the families are, are starting on their mortgage as soon as they move in. And then as they're doing this 20, 25% in the United States, most people would say, Hey, that is probably what I pay. If I'm a young person living in New York city, I may even be paying 50% or whatever ends up being post-tax. Um, is it possible for them to

do that? If you're living on $300 a month, like what else are they spending money on? And maybe what was that money going to before they were actually trying to buy a home? That's a great question, Pom. So they're already paying that if not more, cause they're renting somewhere. Got it. So it's like, they're, they're, they're already paying it. Um, it's just not, it's in, it's in kind of the the worst environment that they could be paying so most are already paying rent and not building equity in the home of course and it's it's a it's a horrible environment that you're living in that doesn't have basic human needs so they're already paying it and then if somebody you know if they're getting remittance or if they get access to some type of loan or micro loan

the majority of what they're spending that on is is some type of home improvement and so there is a very clear, um, you know, demonstrated data that families are trying their best to get a home. And what, what typically happens is they will try to self build a structure or a home over a long period of time. So a lot of the families we work with, um, this is very common throughout the world is they'll just, they'll self build, um, not a great structure over like 10, 15 plus years and that's that's pretty much what happens yeah so they're already trying to invest in a house it's just they don't have the economies of scale they don't have the right partners and then the financing really isn't set up for them yeah and so once you get somebody you say hey this is

what it's going to cost this is where the land is etc my understanding is that they actually buy the land first via these payments then they start to build the home and then there's actually a point in time where you guys look to partner with uh local banks or financial institutions uh to really kind of recycle the capital but do it in a way where um it's a win-win for the community so talk me through kind of what that looks like yeah so this is a model we're doing um right now in mexico and i think it's fascinating from just like a straight-up business mindset um the financial sustainability piece of this so um we are we're starting families off where they will pay for their land for about two years. So they have credit history, and they have collateral after

that. Then what we're doing is we're basically bringing in a construction bridge loan to build a couple hundred homes. And then after that, families are starting to make mortgage payments. And then we've partnered with a like local bank or like a local credit union. And we've designed a long term mortgage product. And we're basically bringing them qualified customers that they want to work with long time. And then they're coming in because they have liquidity. And they're basically buying us out of that. And then we can recycle that. And then they can now have customers long term that they're going to make money on. It's not, you know, crazy margins, it's about a 10% interest rate, which is actually very, very low internationally. And then it's affordable for the

families. And so it's a win for them as well. So that's like an example of trying to use, um, we call it like existing for-profit market players and showing them that this is a demographic that can pay for this, that you can make money from it. And, um, and we want to help prove that. And then we want to scale it because that's what we believe at the end of the day is, is what truly is going to impact millions of people and beyond, because this problem is, it's just so expensive to only try to throw philanthropy or government at it. There's other problems in the world where I would say, the cost of intervention is so low. It just Yeah, it makes sense to go raise billions of dollars. And you can literally help 10s of millions of

people. But with housing, it's just so expensive, you can't do that. And so that's why we're going with more of a market driven approach and using philanthropy to prove out that this is a customer base that the market should work with. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about this entrepreneurial approach to charity, right? Because I think this is what's so fascinating is you've got the innovation on the construction, you've got the innovation on the financing. You keep talking about kind of market-driven forces, which many people would assign to capitalism. And then you also continue to try to prove these models and then almost hand off the playbook to these kind of for-profit entities and so you know is this the model that ends up being the most sustainable for

charities and you expect other people to start to do this we hope so okay tell me more about it yeah i mean like we um so we have this little phrase that we we call a kind of our process is um uh create which usually like create innovation or a better model and then prove it right so we're using we're in the field we're doing we're learning learning by doing we're proving it and then share or scale it and we're we can scale it to some point but to get to real scale like millions of homes we have to have others do it and so um that's where we think a lot of the leverage is um why i think some others aren't doing it and some are some of our profits definitely are but um it takes it i think it really comes back to like the team you know

creating something that is different and unique and innovative and then proving it in environments that are really hard to work in right like it's it's really hard to do this stuff and um in some of the areas that we work you have to have a team that looks a little bit more like a very high quality for profit startup or company than a traditional, um, nonprofit. And unfortunately, most of the, the, the market is, you know, I don't want to put in this percentage on it, but it's, it's very skewed towards a more traditional kind of old school approach, which those, those organizations, they are doing good. Like they're literally some of the best people in the world. And it's amazing. Um, but I think it's a little different than the type of team that we're

building, coming out of Y Combinator, having a lot of advisors and supporters that are in venture capital that are in tech. And we're trying to take the same mindset and approach as a lot of those folks are. And I think that's what's been helpful for us. And yeah, my hope is that, you know, we along with some others that we really respect other nonprofits can be an example of how you can do this and apply it to other problems as well. Not just, you know, the one we care about, which housing yeah um what do the critics say like like what are there people pushing back whether it's in the local communities are there people in the non-profit world like what's so what's the actually anti-argument i guess yeah yeah totally so in the communities um i'm like extremely proud of our

team and our approach so um you know i'm here obviously on your podcast like i love doing this But, um, you know, our team, it's all like where we work, it's all locals, right? So it's all folks that are, um, part of that country or from that country, or they're in the same culture. So the families that are the people that our families interface with, um, are people that they really trust are people that, um, they can, they can resonate with and that they feel has have empathy and understanding for kind of the life, the life that, um, that they've been living. and so and we also really involve the families as i mentioned like it's not just hey we're doing this project and you're in low income and there's a lottery and maybe you'll get a home and you show up and the home's already built the design's already done you had no input in this and like you've been you've been given this um we don't do that we involve the families and so it's a very dignified process that we're super proud of um so the families like it i'd say you know, definitely a lot of critics because we do things that nonprofits aren't supposed to do

and that people aren't conditioned to, they're conditioned to think, ah, nonprofits shouldn't do that. Charities shouldn't do that. You guys shouldn't take that risk. You should let other for-profits prove this out first. But if like this doesn't work, you could have allocated that money to help people with, you know, something that works. And I'll give you a couple examples that we've drawn the most criticism from from people um you know the first one was was 3d printing so we were very very early into it um before it really got started everybody told us we were crazy why would you do this ended up um you know back in 2020 um creating the first 3d printed community of homes in the world with our partner icon so literally the the first kids are living

in these houses and that's an example of like proving something and then the critics there's still probably some critics because it's early but they're like okay like that's one example another example is uh we recently started a new story started a venture capital fund and we spun it out and it's called home team ventures and we invest in early stage seed sometimes pre-seed series a um founders that are just working on kind of these like big big big idea construction innovations and uh and so we we literally raised a fund we spun it out news stories 501c3 is the largest general partner and um it's legally it's totally separate and clean but uh that was incubated inside a new story like we started the venture capital fund

And then the third one that's happening right now is a project in El Salvador that you've been supportive of. And it's using Bitcoin and the Lightning Network for the first time for unbanked families to make mortgage payments. And so, as you can imagine, that's probably drawn, you know, a few critics. And, you know, our thinking is the only way to prove out these innovations is to learn by doing and to just go do it. and prove it out and um and we look at these opportunities um and we put a filter on it and we say is it going to be challenging is it going to be hard of course any all of this stuff is super hard and challenging but what if it works right and you know like i hear a lot of bcs you know say like okay this is super hard it's hard but like but if it works you know and having that

optimism and that bigger picture thinking of what if this works and imagining what it could be like if it works. We're very drawn to that. And that's why we'd like to try things. Tell me more about what you guys are doing in El Salvador at Bitcoin Beach to help people actually get homes. Yeah. So I am incredibly excited about this. So we are working in El Zante with Bitcoin Beach and their team. Mike Peterson and their team are incredible. And what we are doing is we are designing a community of about 300 homes right in right in el zante and in el salvador and families will be making their longer longer term monthly mortgage payments using bitcoin on the lightning network through a local wallet in bitcoin beach and we've been

very fortunate to partner with with coinbase and coinbase given giving so they funded the majority of this project and it's like getting underway right now. So we are, um, building the homes right now. And, uh, and then families are being trained on how to make their monthly payments, um, through, through the wallet and, uh, using Bitcoin and lightning network. And, you know, what, what we saw in this and the opportunity is these are families, they're pretty much all unbanked, right. And, um, and a lot of them are getting their remittances sent to them. And, uh, in order to make any type of payments, um, and also where they use the dollar. So they're paying in cash and dollars. Um, they usually have to, to travel somewhere that's pretty far that disrupts

their day, whether they're going to Western union or whether they're going to some type of, of lender or bank. And they're, they're trying to pay in cash. And then whoever is collecting that it's, it's like the most, it's the least transparent way to track that over time, Right. Over a longer period of time. Right. Five, 10, 15 years where these families are trying to gain credit history. They're trying to make payments in the same way that probably everybody listening where we could just go on our phone and make a payment and it doesn't have to disrupt our whole day. And and right now there's there's it's really hard to do that if you're unbanked, you know. And so what we're doing with Enosante and with Coinbase Giving and this pilot is proving that low-income families can make consistent monthly payments in Bitcoin on the Lightning Network and being able to track that in the most transparent way, being able to have significant – there's basically no fees. There's no servicing costs because it's really just our team sending an invoice to their phone as opposed to the traditional way, which would be human labor either coming to their door or them having to go somewhere every single month and make a payment.

Like it's a disaster to do over a long period of time. And so that's what's so exciting to us about using the Lightning Network and enabling families to pay directly from their phone, having super transparent record of those payments, and we can just do it all digitally. Yeah. What's the response been so far from people in the community? So far, amazing. I mean, families, before they opted in to be part of this specific community, they knew that this was going to be the payment method. um we you know are doing we're doing training right we're doing financial literacy training we're doing um bitcoin beach team has done an amazing job of um of training people there of of how to use the wallets and how to pay and uh you know it's been incredible to see especially

the youth um really understand and be excited about this because they can see i mean they obviously are all on their their phones a lot just like we are and um and they're like why would we not just pay from our phones instead of having to try to do everything in cash basically. Right. So it's, it's absolutely fascinating. How can people help? Right. So there's a lot of people who are going to listen to this and they're going to say, this is an amazing story. Uh, I really like what they're doing. How do they either get involved or how do they help you all kind of continue in your mission? Yeah. Oh, I mean, the obvious thing is, uh, you know, donating just start and it could be, it doesn't have to be anything big to start. I mean, we have everything

from folks doing, you know, multi seven figures, which we're super grateful for and people that get started with $50 or $100 a month. And so I think just kind of getting into our system is the best way to do it. So you can go to our website, it's a new story charity.org. You can easily donate crypto. So our team built out our engineering team built out a very simple way to do that. So get involved. That's like an easy thing, even if it's a low level. And then if you want to involved at a higher level you could you know reach out directly um to me or our team and uh we'd love to hear from you we'd love to hear any ideas um thoughts you have opportunities that you have um innovations that you're aware of and uh you know just love to get to know people yeah so

those would be the main things um talk to me a little bit about uh where people can find you on the internet and where they can actually go learn more about either the problem or what you guys you're doing is just the website yeah yeah so um our our handle on social is just uh new story charity and then the url is newstorycharity.org and then i'm on twitter uh just my name which is brett haggler got it yeah and we're hiring as well so hiring a lot what type of roles are you hiring for all types of stuff um engineers designers project managers um folks in finance that really want to want to help us um scale up how we're thinking about financing at a bigger at a big raising you know impact investment funds and um really scaling up our our financing

component um construction architecture a lot of different roles got it um i i feel compelled to ask you one of our sponsors is eight sleep and obviously you guys build homes yeah uh a huge piece of this is they want to help people improve their health right by uh um by having the thermoregulated bed uh how do you do it all right like like what's your sleep schedule and kind of what what is uh your day-to-day look like so i actually went through yc with the founders of oh very cool yep before um before they changed their they had their rebrand which is just beautiful it's incredible um so i've known them and had a really high high regard for their founders since we went through yc together um the last couple years i've been taking my sleep

more seriously, um, like trying to get between seven and a half to eight hours. Um, in the early days kind of founder entrepreneurial mode, I was very proud of just getting six. Um, I, you know, I watched videos of Arnold Schwarzenegger or, uh, other guys, Jocko Willick and like, you know, you only need six, only six. And I don't know, maybe at that time I was 24 to 28, um, maybe, but but yeah i've been investing in my sleep and it's made a it's made a huge difference um and the other ways is like just been very consistent with um i don't do anything crazy it's just it's just consistent workouts you know every day and um so just consistently working out getting good sleep any like uh kind of nuanced diets or anything like that from like a performance

standpoint um i'd say those are the things you just said the two main things um diet is uh leaning a little probably a little more keto but not like super strict um i'm during the day probably trying not to do as many carbs or sugar um fats vegetables and then uh at night i'll usually have have a good meal yeah that's kind of the way i've done it is like i get more energy during the day if i'm if i'm eating less and i've tried all different types of things especially like with you know crazy travel and kind of the entrepreneurial journey and um yeah i think during the day for me less is less is more and then uh try to eat a you know usually usually a good meal at night yeah that's awesome how about you um i very similar like i don't have some crazy crazy

diet and uh if i want to eat something i eat it like whatever um but i definitely don't eat uh i usually don't eat till like mid-afternoon yeah um and it's for this exact reason like when i eat in the morning or midday, I get very tired. Um, and I've thought it for a long time. I was like, well, maybe I was eating the wrong thing or whatever. I don't, I don't know. I think everyone's different and everyone's got to kind of figure out what works for them. But a lot of days I won't eat till three or four o'clock in the afternoon. Um, and you know, I'm hungry, right? So I'll eat. Um, and then, uh, uh, I'll eat again, you know, a few hours later. Uh, but for whatever reason that just makes me the most productive. And, and I think, uh, the way

i've always looked at it as like i feel better totally like on a day in and day out basis and it's a combination that's working out it's sleeping it's you know finding what from a food perspective um and then also like one of the like the the funniest things to me is just like i drink water yeah right like i i always uh i talk to friends and they you know we go to a restaurant or something right and i'm like you know hey man that's the sixth lemonade that you've drank or the the fourth coca-cola today right and you know by the way that makes you happy like knock yourself out uh but just like what is the balance between other liquids and water and it's usually like water is the best it's an opposite balance that i have right um and so uh i don't know i don't

think there's like one right thing to do uh but it does feel like uh if you kind of just approach this as i want to have healthy habits exactly and sure i'll stray from it here or there but as long as i'm generally uh you know kind of doing the right things then uh over time it compounds right to your point and that's that's what i've seen in your story and that's been a lot of my story too of like i just i for folks that are younger listening like started at a pretty young age like probably right out of college early 20s with just consistent boring healthy habits you know day after day and they freaking compound and it's a choice that anybody can make to have those and you don't have to have some crazy iq you don't need to have this you know certain resume or

credentials it's just these daily choices that really compound so it it uh it's not the sexiest advice but it definitely is the truest advice truest yeah yeah absolutely all right so we'll send people to newstorycharity.org they can go there they can learn more about what you guys are doing they can also donate if they'd like uh and then you're on twitter at brett haggler they can go follow you there that's right awesome thank you so much for doing this i love what you guys are doing. Thanks for supporting. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new

job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to palmscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.