The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 460: Ryan Fink and Ty Frackiewicz—Can AI Build My House?
Episode Date: November 25, 2025Mike sits down with the two innovative minds behind Digs — an app that's helping to streamline the home-building process. It's a candid look at what happens when tech guys wander into the world of l...umber, drywall, and delayed inspections—and try to fix it. If you've ever wondered whether artificial intelligence can actually help build a house, or at least make the whole ordeal a little less maddening, this conversation is for you.
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Well, here we go again. It's me, Mike Roe. This is the way I heard it. And Chuck, I'm at one of these homebuilders conventions a couple years ago, right?
Mm-hmm. And a couple entrepreneurs pull me aside after my speech. And they tell me a story about a company called Diggs that they were determined to start. And it was going to be a company that used AI to make the home building process easier. And I asked them if it was going to have any impact on the number of homes that that was going to be a home building process easier. And I asked them if it was going to have any impact on the number of homes that,
were behind schedule with construction and over budget and maybe, you know, could this AI thing,
remember this is over two years ago, have some sort of impact on hiring? And they were like,
yes, yes, yes, yes, it's going to change. It's going to change everything. And I'm like,
mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You know, I mean, how many entrepreneurs, you know, pitch me on these things.
But this company has more than a toehold. It's working. It's growing. They reached out later
and started advertising on this podcast, full disclosure.
So I just thought with AI in the headlines,
and with you impersonating a general contractor all those years ago,
these guys might be fun to talk to.
And as it turns out, they are.
I think I might have actually learned something.
Yeah, I'll tell you, you really hit the nail on the head
with me being able to use this.
If this had been around when I built the house that I built,
I might still be married.
Who knows?
Well, Chuck did get the house built, but maybe next week.
This is called Can AI Build My House?
If it goes well, if it's well received, we'll follow it up with Ken AI,
save my marriage, and I'll let you host that one.
Perfect.
Regardless, and in all seriousness, if you're getting your home built,
and if you're thinking about buying a home,
this is software with AI on it that's probably going to change the entire experience for everyone,
forever. I mean, my thing was, I'm already in the house. I bought it. I didn't have it built. But like,
where's my magical guide to every single thing behind the wall or under the floor? It didn't come
with a user's manual. No. Wouldn't it be great if it did? And that's kind of what this thing is.
I think it could be transformational. I don't know. I might run it by my buddies over at this old house as well.
they would probably dig it.
But I would imagine.
Yeah.
For now, I just thought it would be fun to see what in the wide world of sports is AI going to do in the home building industry.
Turns out quite a bit.
The show's called Can AI Build My House?
The answer right after this.
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Hey-haul.
Hello, geniuses.
Hello.
Hello, Mike.
That's the best interest of it.
I've got.
Well, it goes downhill from here.
No, I mean it, man.
The headlines have caught up to your thesis, it seems.
You've taken artificial intelligence.
You've applied it to something near and dear to my foundation.
Full disclosure, you've advertised on this podcast in the past.
I appreciate that.
And it's really been fun to watch and see how this is playing out in
real time. Ty, your last name is Frank Skivich? Yep.
Oh, nailed it.
You know that. Ty Frank Skivich and Ryan Fink.
Yeah. Isn't there, pardon me, but a more famous Ryan Fink than you out there?
Not that, not what me and my family. Yeah, I thought you were the most of us.
Yeah. Yeah, like a baseball player or something. I think there's their baseball player?
Okay. Yeah. You think AI's going to impact baseball in some way? Oh, absolutely.
Baseball is all about math these days, right?
Well, it always has been about math. I mean, is AI going to touch every single
daggone thing there is. Absolutely. Everything except, you know, what you can physically do with your hands
for the foreseeable future. See, that's where I feel like I look a little bit smarter than I am. You know,
I mean, not a day goes by where somebody doesn't ask me to talk about job security in the trades,
which is something nobody ever asked about. In fact, it was the opposite, right? Ty, you built houses
up north somewhere? Was it Montana? Montana, yeah. Yep, started in Washington back home.
Yeah, yeah.
So let's start there then.
Let's start with the trades and workforce and how the digs product is impacting careers in the trades.
Absolutely, yeah.
So there's actually a company or a school district we're working with, Copper Country School District,
and we're working with Corey Sumis, who's the program director.
And they've partnered up with Moyle Construction, and they've adopted Diggs.
So their students are actually using our software with morel construction to build two homes this year.
So before they even graduate high school, they're going to have two homes under their belt, which is pretty cool.
Okay.
Well, obviously, I started in the middle.
It's hard to know where to start with a conversation like this.
But let's assume the listener is not up to speed with digs.
And let's also assume that as a default position, they're bored by software, or sentences with software in it, like most people are.
Like, they know it's out there.
They know it matters.
But make it relevant, Ryan.
Yeah.
What is the product?
Why is it relevant to people who otherwise would just kind of check out of the whole conversation?
Yeah.
So if you're a builder, Diggs has a pre-construction software that helps you be more efficient on the collaboration through selections, through the takeoff.
So understanding how much quantities go into the home, all the way to diagramming, where those quantities belong.
And then if you're a homeowner, Diggs is really relevant because if you're working with a custom home builder, for instance, or you're just purchasing a production home,
Digs through the build process, our AI takes all of that unstructured build documents,
think the floor plan, the selection documents, etc.
And it structures it into a 3D digital twin all the way down to your paint colors.
So now as a homeowner, instead of getting, you know, a physical binder with about 30 documents
relevant to the home, you're getting a 2,600% increase on information on your home.
So now you can better maintain it, understand it.
Hopefully you don't have a leaky pipe that's going to burst because you have a cold front coming on
That's something AI can start to predict and say hey, there is this cold front coming on
You should probably go around and maintain your home and winterize your hose bibs for instance
The thing that I thought was ingenious about the product
Actually was like a click down from that so it's I get the builders
Need to implement it and I get the person having the house built will benefit hugely
from improved levels of communication
I get with the builder, the vendors
with everything that touches the home.
But what about when they sell the house?
Because most people who move into a new home
aren't moving into a home they just had built.
They're moving into a pre-existing home.
What the hell is behind the wall?
Exactly.
What's up in the attic?
What's in the crawl space?
What's in the basement?
Where are the pipes?
It's like a minefield.
And so this digital twin you're talking about
essentially is a
schematic that goes
all the way down to where you got your
wallpaper? Exactly.
Yeah, all the way down to your wallpaper, your paint
colors, your tile, your grout,
the make and model of your appliances.
And not only that, once you have
the digital twin, it becomes the
home facts of the home.
So we have car fax,
so if you get an accident, etc.,
you legally have
to report any type of maintenance on
your car. And that's tracked in a
single database. We have nothing for the home. So you go into, you know, purchasing a home.
And if there's water damage, you have no idea that there's ever water damage or there's
mold or there's no, I mean, aren't there disclosures though through real estate?
Certain states have certain disclosures all the way down to some dark things. You don't have to
tell people, but certain states you are forced to tell people. You mean like murders and stuff.
Yeah, there are certain states that you're, you don't have to tell the buyer that that occurred.
then there are states that you have to.
It's pretty crazy.
This took a dark, too.
I know, I know.
What was?
I know.
I want to talk about paint colors and wallpapers and dead bodies.
I mean, that's so interesting that, okay, so if there's no obligation to disclose that something, you know, calamitous happened in the home, what if you're asked directly, are you compelled to answer, honestly?
I think that's up to the person themselves.
It goes up to their morals.
Yeah, exactly.
If they want to hide it or get a higher sales price
or if they want to be, you know, open and disclose it.
To be clear, digs in no way refers to the getting rid of the body
and efficacious way.
No, it's not about digging in a lot.
It's not about graves.
Slang for the home, just to be clear.
You build homes, obviously.
So like, this will sound obvious to you
and to anybody who's ever built a house, Chuck,
I remember you've impersonated a general contractor, what, 25 years ago or something?
Yes, a little bit longer than that, but yeah.
So like the details.
Yeah.
I've seen people just check out almost collapse under the weight of having to decide an endless list of things.
Is that that's not going to go away ever, right?
No, but I mean, hopefully it'll get easier.
That's one of our goals with digs.
But yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.
when I was building houses for married couples, building a house was so stressful.
It was the top three reasons of getting the divorce.
Like, that's how powerful that is of making decisions.
Sorry, Chuck.
I can't help.
Well, as it turns out, it didn't work out.
Yeah.
It was a nice house, though.
Yeah, great.
It's a great house.
Sorry.
No, you're good.
But with all of the decisions that are made, I mean, it's, yeah, it's pretty, it's daunting.
You go in and you have to pick out lighting, but it's, you think you're going to just pick out some ceiling light.
no, you have to pick out your garage lighting, your powder bathroom lighting, everything that's
going in the house. That's just one aspect of it. Then depending on the size of the house,
it just gets bigger. Yeah, and tracking all those decisions and do things work together or not?
Right now, you're just getting all this, you know, paper, you're taking pictures of that physical
products in the showroom kind of all laid out. And then you're pulling up all these different
pictures. It's just very, it's a very broken process today. And there's only normally one person that's
doing that, which is either the site super, the project manager on the job.
Right.
But they're working with all the vendors and the subs. And the vendors and the subs,
they only care about what their line of work is. So it's up to that one individual to
capture all that information, document that information, have it in one spot and make sure
that it's all accurate. And pass it on. And pass it on. Because what's easy to forget is that
this is a game of telephone. Absolutely. Literally. And the more people you have between you and your
basic decision and the ultimate implementation. I mean, it's math, right? People have done studies.
Like the odds of the miscommunication are 100%. Absolutely. 100%. It's absolutely going to get
screwed up. Yep. One of my first thoughts when I looked at the implications, and just so people
understand, you guys formed digs when? Was it three years now? Yeah, about three years, 2022. Yep. Yeah.
And I sat down with you guys in Vegas somewhere, like two years ago?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I don't want to say we were fan-boying out when we saw you were the keynote speaker.
Oh, right, right.
At like an IBS or something.
Yeah, at the builder show.
Yeah, at the builder show in K-Biz, which is the Kitchen and Bath show.
So there's, I don't know, like six or seven thousand people in the audience.
And you just, like, we were watching you and you're just commanding the audience.
And I went over to tie and I was like, we're going to work with him someday.
I chuckled a little bit.
And I was like, okay.
And then persistent paid off.
All right, so this is, just took another weird.
It's a big day for everybody.
Right, this is where Chuck gets up quietly and locks the door.
Well, yeah, I mean, those events are really interesting for me
because I usually come in kind of hot, and I'm a fan of your industry,
but I don't know much other than there's a giant gathering of entrepreneurs
and people in all different strata of business.
You know, they're all there for basically the same reason, but with a thousand different variations on a theme.
So it's possible really to know what to say to a group like that.
So I just get up there and essentially try and say, look, I'm a fan of building things and making things.
And I'm a fan of doing those things in this country.
And more recently, I've become a fan of doing them more effectively.
efficiency, that word gives me the creeps a little bit
because it just kind of feels like the human component
just gets completely rubbed out of the equation.
But yeah, you reached out,
and I thought if your product
does what I think you're saying it's going to do,
A, what the hell's going to happen to architects?
Because can't a home buyer sit down
and essentially in an animated way
create their home with the tech, just tell it.
I want this room a little bigger, this one a little smaller,
I want this porch, no, I want it bigger,
and essentially create, like rough it out
and then give it to the program
and then build the damn thing.
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of architects
that are building kind of the engineering plans
and then ingesting them into digs.
That's kind of where we start
when you have the construction docs.
of the floor plan.
And then the collaboration on the floor plan happens as well.
So if you want to move walls and whatnot,
that's where the collaboration with the architect happens.
But I think, and Ty knows better than me,
but AutoCAD is probably not going to go anywhere anytime soon,
where you actually create the structure documents.
Now, when you say you create, you mean the architect?
The architect, yeah.
I'm wondering when the end user has the rudimentary tools
to allow him or her to,
credibly impersonate the architect.
Like is the architectural field one of the ones that feels a little exposed right now?
I mean, absolutely good.
I mean, again, Ty knows better than me, but that's one of the areas where kind of AGI,
artificial general intelligence can really make an impact for architects in general.
Just because training off of, you know, thousands or millions of floor plans,
a smarter AI system could theoretically start to suggest.
based on your style, just have a conversation with the AI,
this is the type of floor plan, like as builds, it could output it.
So like, Ty, the AI is going to be, like, are you sure?
You want to put the salarium there?
Yeah, I mean, it's a weird, that's a weird area.
I don't think it'll ever replace an architect.
The reason why I think AI will be used to, I know I don't want to say make them more
efficient, but it absolutely will make them more efficient.
The thing that AI can't do is it can't go to the lot.
It can't go and look at the view.
It doesn't know that there's a river like 100 feet away from the property line.
So that's one of the things that architects and why they're so creative, they're artists,
especially from a custom home standpoint.
They go to that location.
They take pictures.
They look at it and they dream of what this layout and this floor plan can be based on their clients.
AI can't replace that.
Do do do do do do do do.
Dumb.
Well, are you sick of it yet?
Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth?
You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time?
Do you miss the rotary phone?
Well, get over it.
The genie is out of the bottle.
The poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid.
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And every business in the country is asking themselves the same question.
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Well, the answer to that question varies.
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Not yet.
But I mean, we got pretty great cameras.
We do.
And we got drones.
Yeah, we do.
And we fly a drone with a pretty great camera, and we map the site.
And I'm pretty sure the tech can identify the river at some point.
That's fair.
Right?
So, I mean, look, I don't know where the relative singularity exists in your world.
But I'm really interested in this idea that things are moving so fast.
I mean, last night in real time, Larry Ellison may have become wealthier than Elon Musk.
He just made $300 billion because Oracle reported unbelievable earnings with AI, from AI.
And it just seems like now a lot of companies have been making a lot of money because they've been spending on AI.
Now Oracle made a bunch of money.
And I mean, I just, my only hesitation in having this conversation with you guys is it's going to be obsolete in about 48 hours.
Yeah.
But, I mean, isn't that the world you're in?
Aren't you constantly waking up and looking around and going, you know, what's new?
Yeah, I mean, we've been building AI for about 15 years.
So we're excited that now the rest of the market has caught up, essentially.
I think what we're seeing with Oracle is that it's a really major problem.
proof point that X AI, that Open AI, all these large companies are investing in the infrastructure,
which is needed to accelerate the development of AI. So I think with these investments into the
infrastructure, we're going to see AI just accelerate faster than it already has over the past
two years. So things are going to get pretty interesting. I think impact for the smaller kind of
vertical specific software companies like us that are using AI for construction, for instance,
what it means for us is just people, they have to get on board.
These larger companies, every company needs to get on board.
Yeah.
I mean, you're talking about national home builders.
National, yeah.
Are you worried at all, either of you, about, you know, The Terminator?
Are you worried?
I mean, it just seems like the average person is really being asked to, you know, ignore the implications of efficiency taken to Huxley's,
logical end who said the enemy of freedom is total anarchy, but the second biggest enemy is total
efficiency. So you either ignore that or you're just 100% on board with this is just going to
dramatically improve everything. Not a lot of nuance. Yeah, I don't think I could be that certain
about anything. You can use anything for evil, of course. I think, did you see Elon Musk's new pay
package that they're contemplating. Oh, so it had a T in it. Yeah, yeah. So a trillion dollar pay
package. Part of that was to sell a million robots, these humanoids. So if you would ask me
before that, I would be like, ah, Terminator, that's not going to happen. Now we're pushing
million robots out into the world and we reach AGI where the robots can think as well or
better than a human. It's pretty scary. So I think at that point, yeah, we need to have a lot of
regulations in place. We need to, we can't centralize AI to any one company. It really needs to be
more open source so that there could be more general oversight over it. But any one company having
controlling AGI, I think that's where things could get a little scary. And the robot thing, too,
I don't know how to think about that because I have no idea. What, what's the dexterity? What's the,
I mean, what's the real facility of these things? Is it a Rumba with arms or is it a thing that can
actually walk up your stairs and start turning a wrench on your toilet. Like at some point,
I think Musk said he thought there would be more humanoid robots than Americans in like 10 years
or something. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, like everybody's going to have one. Now, I don't know what that
means. I don't know what they actually do, really, what they're capable of. But I mean,
you're, you said 15 years ago, you started playing around with this. Yeah. What did that even
look like 15 years ago. How did you even talk about it in a board? Well, we didn't. Most people
didn't understand it. It wasn't really dubbed as AI back then either. It was more on the
techniques to build AI. So it's computer vision machine learning. And we kind of fell backwards
into it to try to solve a problem. Computer vision machine learning, AI seemed to be the thing to
solve it. Our first product that we built, because Ty and I've been...
Define the problem just a little more. Yeah, yeah. Before we solve it. So that I'm not sure I know what it is.
Yeah, so I was an avid runner at the time, and I'd run the same route every single day.
And I wanted to know, you know, where I sped up and slowed down in my route.
And so I wanted to see a visual representation of my old ghost to race against it.
So as I did some research around, well, is this even possible?
Computer vision and machine learning kept coming up as a way to not only create a 3D digital person,
but then how do you anchor that 3D digital person to the real world?
So it stays on the ground.
Where do you experience it?
Like, are you wearing glasses when you run?
Yeah.
So I had these big bulky glasses on up at the time, looking like a madman.
It was like wired down to my phone.
And I was running around all these parks and people were just giving me like the most weird looks.
I mean, you can't blame them, too.
Yeah, no, that's fair.
But it's worth pointing out, too, that if you run, and I used to run every morning and I guess I probably fell into the same rut now that I think about it,
which is why homeostasis kind of kicks in and pretty soon the benefits of running the same speed.
in the same distance, diminish.
And so if you're running with someone,
you can be pushed.
But if you're running alone, you have to push yourself
and that's hard.
So you want to create a ghost of yourself
to run with you and what,
a little faster in areas where you slow down?
Exactly.
So you would see your old self start to push you,
be like, hey, this is where you're slowing down
or this is where you're speeding up.
You could even set times around like,
okay, I ran a six minute mile yesterday.
to run a 545.
And then your ghost would run that pace and you could pace with your ghost.
We're going to take that all different types of places where you can race with your,
it worked.
Yeah.
I think the one hold back there where we had to pivot is the hardware, which today, I don't
think you see too many smart glasses around.
We're still waiting for the hardware to catch up.
Groups like Apple have released heads up displays since then, but it's still in a pretty
bulky form factor.
So I think, yeah, once we get the hardware to catch up,
that type of use case is going to be phenomenal.
What did it do to your times?
I'm curious.
Well, with the bulky glasses, it didn't really help my times too much.
But, yeah, I mean, I was able to bring down my times by 10, 15 seconds.
Which is significant.
Yeah.
So this was a different company.
This wasn't Diggs.
What was this company called?
So on the go platforms or OTG, as we dubbed it.
We built that out.
I would say we kind of just failed forward with that company.
I remember when we went through an accelerator called the Portland Seed Fund.
And on the first day, they basically put you through a three-month class around how to be an entrepreneur.
And on the first day, they had this list of like, here's 10 or 12 things, don't do.
And I picked up that list, and I was like, I've made every mistake on this list.
Cautionary, too.
Great.
But, you know, perseverance picked up.
I always played sports when I was younger and grew kind of a big chip.
I didn't want to fail.
And so we ended up kind of struggling to get that one to an exit.
And we pivoted the technology to a gesture interface because one of the issues is it was connected with your phone.
So it broke the experience.
You couldn't reach out and touch the virtual information.
Right.
So we took some computer vision, Michigan learning experience.
We had gained and we said, okay, well, let's interact with that virtual content with your hands.
And a company came along and acquired that technology.
Were your partners at the time?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the one thing with that gesture technology is we did it with a single RGB camera.
So where before you would need a dual camera set to even try to capture that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know what that means.
RGB, red, green, blue?
Yep.
Yeah.
Okay.
He's the camera located.
So it's all, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, that must have been clunky.
Very.
But you still built it and you sold it?
Yep.
Yeah.
So you made a little money?
Yeah.
Got a little taste of like, oh.
That was kind of cool.
What'd you do after OTG?
So we stayed at the acquiring company for about
two years.
Yeah.
And we helped build and launch a remote collaboration software for them.
So think GE and Porsche were two of our earliest customers.
So you'd send a pair of heads-up displays with a remote collaboration software
instead of flying a human around to service these large machines.
So now you could remote call somebody an expert back at HQ who can walk you through a fix.
But we saw that technology in the adoption and the enterprise and we thought there was an opportunity
to bring that to consumers.
And this was right before Apple released AR kit, their AR platform.
And so we jumped out and we started building our second company stream
and applying the remote collaboration learnings to connect homeowners to brands
and our AI experience to take a camera feed and understand what's in that feed and start to structure it.
So stream connected homeowners to like Lowe's and Best Buy and Trigger and IKEA,
all of our, you know, customers of our last company for things like remote estimates and quoting.
Because if you think like a Matterport scan, you use the phone to scan a place and you get a 3D model.
Now think of that on like steroids.
We are running it through optical character recognition to recognize serial number and model numbers.
As you're on this video call, we're creating a 3D digital twin and the background in real time so that the remote expert can take measurements to capture dimensions of the job.
So that company, too, was acquired in 2019 by front door who owns a bunch of home warranty brands.
So we scaled that company to tens of millions of users through these great brands.
And then our ultimate goal is to create that digital twin.
But it wasn't in a very scalable way.
So you could imagine if you're calling lows for a flooring estimate, that's for one room, not your whole house.
So we had all these micro video calls and we're piecing together for the homeowner because they got to keep that digital imprint.
How is it AI driven?
I mean, it sounds like it's just a lot of communication.
Yeah.
But how did the AI impact stream?
So we weren't only taking the video feed in.
We were running it through our algorithms.
So using computer vision to understand the spatial information.
So to actually create a 3D model of what the camera was seen.
And then our machine learning model to recognize the different appliances and how they're oriented in 3D space.
So it's actually really hard for the camera to understand what it's seen.
So we're training the camera to basically have a brain and understand everything.
Is this happening because you see a need?
Are people, are you responding to the market saying,
hey, I really wish we had this and we don't?
I'm just curious to know where the inspiration comes from to actually launch something like that.
Yeah, no, I mean, we saw it play out in the enterprise and how much ROI that these companies were getting remotely solving issues and not rolling trucks.
And we thought it'd be really applicable as, you know, a homeowner instead of going into the store to,
get new flooring, for instance, I would have to bring in, like, I think my dimensions are
10 by 20. Then they would give me a quote, and then it turns out my dimensions were wrong
most of the time. So how do you pull the context of the home and bring it into the retail store
remotely so that they could have a curated experience and provide you with exactly what you need?
So it's borne out of a need and just some experience from seeing in the enterprise really work
and trying to bring that into the consumer space. So you sold that one too.
Yes, yeah.
You really can't hold a job, man.
I know.
Yeah.
And if you realize, so after everyone we sell, I always leaves, too.
I don't know.
So he'll go and he worked to Amazon after the last one.
And after the first one, it was LexisNexis.
So it's like he's trying to get away.
It's a little weird.
But you've been to fifth grade.
I do.
I enjoy it.
Why has tech been so historically slow to get integrated into building,
at least on a comparative analysis?
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I don't know if it's just the tech in general,
but I do think like when it comes to tech,
it's being built by folks who have never really been in.
Like I'm speaking for a residential home perspective.
They've never really done it so they don't quite know
what problems they're solving for exactly.
It's also built in a non-user-friendly way.
So it's very robust, which takes a lot of time for training
and setting up, which can be very very.
cumbersome. Yeah, you have a technologist trying to build software for an industry where they
haven't felt the pain point. Yeah, exactly. So I think that's one aspect, but then also the other
aspect is in like construction in general, the generations that have gone into it have so much
knowledge and they've been doing it their way and it works for them. It works well for them. And so
introducing something of a technology or a new software, it might scare them or they're like, nope,
I'm doing it fine my way. I'm good. So there's kind of that hesitancy to make that leap into
change. That's what I think is most interesting. If you think about, you know, shows like this old
house and they kind of remind you that the craftsmanship has been on the decline in a general way
for generations. And so on the one hand, there's this idea that what we need to do is get back
to the time when homes were built to last. And so in order to go back, you know, like that
That's a directional metaphor.
AI is clearly going forward.
So do we go back to go forward?
Do we go forward to go backwards?
Right?
And so, I mean, how does this old house think about AI?
Yeah.
Is really the question.
I mean, I think AI allows you to go back.
Because now AI takes a lot of the monotonous tasks that you have to do as a builder,
tracking all of the information, like Ty said, organizing it, the communication, the collaboration.
It does that for you so that you can focus on the user experience and the finer details.
You touched on something you just mentioned.
I just had this conversation with somebody the other day about because I walked into an older house.
It's probably 20, 30 years old.
Just you walk into that house and you just, it just feels sturdy.
It's tight.
Yeah, it's tight.
It's just, and then you walk into a new house.
It's like, it's light.
It's, I don't want to say it feels cheap, but it feels cheap.
But I think going back to your.
your question or point about how do we bring craftsmen back, I think, or the craftsman ship
back. I think that really comes down to the builder themselves and what their goal is. Like,
are they in it to make money? Are they in it to build a beautiful portfolio of homes,
make customers happy, or build a beautiful, sturdy product? Yeah. And that also flows all the way
down to the subs and vendors. Because if everybody's looking at it just to make quick money and
speed, speed, speed, you're not going to build a sturdy home that's going to last for 30, 40,
50 years. That's appealing and interesting.
Yep.
Is your product ultimately saving people money?
Yeah. It's saving people money, money and time.
So we're finding that builders that are using a software like digs are eliminating
five to seven critical errors on a project, so each project that are really costly.
They're eliminating 90% of truck rolls.
Truck rolls?
Truck rolls.
So thinking, you know, warranty.
You have to roll a truck to go see what's wrong, and then you come back, you capture all the product information, you come back, you see if it's in warranty, roll another truck with the material.
On average, they're rolling two to three trucks for each warranty issue.
So we're able to eliminate 90% of that.
Just because they have all the information on the home and what's potentially wrong out of the gate, that's something we provide with that digital twin.
And we're seeing during the construction process that builders are saving five to 10 hours per person on each project each week.
So each employee and tradesperson that they have is just more efficient because now they have the information on what's going to be installed
What changes were made or what change orders happened
It's immediately accessible through digs and through our AI
You could ask digs which is our AI chat what's the new faucet that's supposed to be installed in Bath one and immediately get the answer instead of trying to go back and look through all your texts or
Look through all the documents or emails to try to find that information
How big is this company going to get?
I mean, selfishly, we're hoping this is the last thing, you know, we do, and this is a generational type of brand.
So we want to take this company all the way.
We think it would be a big public company.
So how do you get there?
I mean, I know when we first talked, the idea was big builders need to understand this tech exists
because it can dramatically impact their bottom line.
but in the end, like who's your real end user?
Who's your real customer in this?
Is it the builder or is it the homeowner?
I mean, at the end of the day, it's the homeowner.
If the homeowner's involved during the build, it's them.
It's the client experience.
It's enhancing that.
But ultimately, it's getting that digital twin to the homeowner to power the home facts
of the home for them, to give them that digital record on how to maintain their life's
largest asset.
That's absolutely our end goal.
How much time do you spend explaining to people how this works and just kind of petting them on the head and say, you know, it's going to be okay?
It's going to be all right.
I would say three years ago when we first started a lot more than we do today.
I think it's just, I don't know what has shifted.
I think just the amount of companies that have adopted AI, it's kind of become, it's coming out of the hype cycle.
So I think that helps.
But I think today, most of the builders ask us, they're, they, they,
say, look, we know we need to adopt AI. We know it's going to have a positive impact on our
business. We just don't know how. So help us figure out how we can implement AI in meaningful ways
in our business. And it's not always the same. Yeah. But that's probably the main question we get.
There's less fear today. Maybe when you go down more to the trades, there's a little bit. And we always
assure them like, you're working with your hands. You're not going anywhere. What is the current
state of play? I think I know the answer. I just
filmed with D.R. Horton in Texas on really what amounts to a recruiting campaign. And they're all in.
It's like there's an alarm bell ringing throughout the industry to get more skilled workers in this
thing. What's the impact of AI, which is the first question I ask you stupidly because it's
obviously on my mind. But let's talk about it now. How is this going to help close the skills gap in
construction?
I think that's a really great and big question.
I think initially, you know, there's only so many trades today.
So how do you amplify your existing workforce?
I think AI can help do that, make them more efficient.
Beyond that, the up and coming generation, they live in their phone.
They live in a digital world.
And then when you try to get them to come work for a builder who works off of pen and paper
or works with some really antiquated technology, that's a really hard ask for
the younger generation to come in and just have kind of a bucket of cold water splash on them.
So AI is going to not only be enticing for them to come into these different organizations,
it's not only going to make them more efficient, but it's, yeah, it's just going to make them
so much more productive. They're going to be not an expert, but nearly an expert when they come in
because they're going to have a co-pilot. AI can be their co-pilot as they're onboarding.
We're working on a new product. I'll give you an example.
takeoffs. So today, takeoffs are a very manual process for builders. What a takeoff essentially is,
is they take the floor plan and they redraw it digitally so that they can get all the dimensions.
And once they have all the dimensions, then they can understand how much flooring they need for each room,
for instance, countertop, vertical surfaces, etc. You need an expert to do that, to understand
how to draw it out, where to start, where to pull the flooring, you know, up to the cabinet or under the
cabinet, and so on.
AI, we can train on all of those floor plans and rules, essentially, and within a few seconds, not weeks, we can create a takeoff.
So now you can have somebody come in out of high school, and they can be an expert in takeoffs, whereas before it would take them, you know, months and months to spin up to understand how to provide a valuable takeoff.
I'm just thinking about the way people adapt.
You know, I mean, for a kid coming out of high school today, it's, I mean, the expectation is different.
the attention span is different.
They're wired for a digital.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I guess maybe that's great news for your business when you think about who your
customers are going to be in the next 10 years.
And it's not going to be Manila folders and a bunch of.
No.
No. Spreadsheets.
Yeah.
There's just no way.
Yeah.
And because we're starting with, you know, the homeowner experience, so it has to be a really
easy to use experience.
And we're pulling that back to builders because, as we mentioned, our end goal is the
homeowner.
now it makes it really easy for any builder,
no matter your age, to come in and use our software.
Because it's really meant to be a consumer-grade experience for an enterprise.
So there's probably a bunch of stuff you're not allowed to talk about at this point, right?
There's a few.
I mean, it's a, is the plan to get bought?
Is the plan to go public, like you say, and just, and just digs is going to be, like, who do you hope to become?
Or is it utterly unique?
I think it's pretty unique.
I mean, if you look at the scale of someone like a Zillow or an Airbnb, I think that's
the scale of what we are talking about here, not only just impacting.
There's a really big business to impact how homes are built.
I think there's an even bigger opportunity and how you own maintain a home.
So I think the scale here is infinite.
I mean, some people call me optimistic, but.
Well, I mean, look, you've kind of done it twice before.
You know, how did you guys actually meet?
Yeah, we were in fifth grade.
School, yeah.
And then we went to school all through high school.
So we were just friends.
Yeah, just friends.
I think the first we wanted to, his dad was a bit of an entrepreneur.
And the first company we wanted to start is we wanted to open up Baskin Robbins together.
So we've diverted a bit.
Well, eventually all roads lead back to Baskin Robbins.
Yeah, he's great.
We will get it one day.
So, I mean, that's interesting.
I went to high school with Chuck.
We've known each other, I don't know, like 45 years.
Yeah, something like that.
Wow.
Yeah.
He likes ice cream.
Our first customer.
We're coming up on our 30th.
We are.
Well, I mean, I keep thinking about Chuck building this house 30 years ago
and wondering if you'd had this thing,
how different might your life be?
Like, I mean, really, who knows?
It would have been vastly different.
I'm sure of it.
I mean, when I first heard about what Diggs does, I, that's the first thing I thought is that this would have come in handy in, I think it was like 1992 or 93.
It was done in 93.
And it took about a year, yeah.
Well, I remember calling you when you were in the midst of it and saying things like, how's it going?
And then just listening to five minutes of sentences that never ended and just you developed a facial.
tick, you know, it's gone away. But I know, I mean, it was an overwhelming thing. And I've never done it.
I've never, I've never built a house from the ground up. So I don't really know, you know,
how transformational it could be. But you must be overwhelmed with letters. Feedback.
Yeah. Yeah. And just back to that point, it's me and my wife actually went through a home build
ourselves. We built a custom home. And that was part of the inspiration for Diggs is I want to
this as a homeowner not only through the process but then I was left we actually burst a pipe
we had a cold freeze and the sink in our outdoor barbecue burst and they're like oh yeah you need to
winterize that it's like I've never owned a home I had no idea yeah um so yeah got together with Thai
and it's like there's got to be something something here and applicable to our background
no feedback I mean that's one of the things I love especially with I call our digs community
because um our customers and partners they they have no problem telling us
the good, the bad, the ugly of the product, which is amazing.
You want that.
Sure.
Works at all.
Absolutely.
Because you want to build the best product that you can build for them.
But yeah, we hear feedback on the daily.
I was actually, I just called an HVAC company for the HVAC at her house yesterday.
And we got started talking and having some issues with it.
And then he goes, well, you're digs, right?
I was like, yeah?
And he's like, oh, yeah, use it all the time.
And he's like, I got some feedback for you.
And I was like, let's hear it.
He's like, I'm sure this is what you want to hear it.
And I'm like, no, I absolutely want to hear it.
What was it?
Just like some small things about providing more information on a project, like the address
and who's the site super and things like that.
But that's the type of stuff where hearing it directly from them and how they would use it
and why it would make them better at their job all the time.
We get that on the daily.
Is it weird to love people but despise human resources?
If so, well, color me weird.
It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people
who work in HR departments and companies all over the country.
I do.
It's just that I don't envy him.
That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department for better or worse.
And it's also why I use ZipRecruiter whenever we need to expand.
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ZipRecruiter works for me, and they'll probably work for you too. Post
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resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. Ziprecruiter.com
slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. Yeah, we have, right now,
I think we have like double the amount of homeowners that want digs. Right now our only way to really get in
is through a builder.
But we are starting to see some demands
start to build from homeowners
saying, hey, I want this thing.
Either I'm about to build
or I already have a house.
So for them, we're like, cool, let's learn why.
And so we try to hop on regular calls
every week with them to say,
okay, if you are a homeowner
and you weren't to come through a builder,
what would you want the experience to be?
So it's been really cool just to see that
kind of pull demand.
Hey, man.
Well, look, take this for what it's worth.
I don't know anything about AI.
And I can't build a house myself, that's for sure.
It seems like there's a lesson in the marketing world, at least we're, like, what did Big Pharma do?
Big Pharma went on TV and created a demand for drugs that most people can't even pronounce.
And the people went to the doctors and said, I would like this.
I'm not comparing your product to, you know, ED medication or something like that.
But, thank you.
I mean, people need to know that it's out there.
Yeah.
And, you know, back to Chuck.
if he knew there was a software that used AI that could have turned that job into something far less
what did you call it pain point driven yeah eliminate the pain points yeah he would have gone to the
builder and said hey do you guys have this and they would have said no we don't and he would have said
well I get it I insist uh huh 100% yeah and like like they were saying before there there's just
a thousand different things you have to think of the builder will come to you and say what do you
want in this bathroom, you know, what faucets, what door knobs, what door stops, what
crown molding, what trim, just everything, the color, the appliances, there's just an
endless list of things.
And the more rooms you have, the bigger those, these lists get.
And there are only two kinds of people.
They're the kinds who, who love those questions and love to think about it.
Those are called wives.
And then there's me who, you.
would eventually get worn down.
You would just abdicate.
Say, I don't know.
A-Crew, beige, A-G-Hel.
I got into a lot of fights with my builder.
Yeah.
Look, man, I think you got a tiger by the tail.
It definitely feels like it.
And we're excited to eventually pull that switch to, to turn it on for homeowners.
So I think everything that we learned today, through the builders, through the collaboration
with their end customer, through the handoff and warranty experience with the homeowner.
that's all just building towards this ground swell to eventually where we do open it up to you have an existing home or you're building a home, come get digs because everybody should have a digital twin or home fax on their home.
And this basically all started because you just wanted to run a little faster.
Yeah.
And you wanted more ice cream.
Absolutely.
All of it's for the ice cream at the end of the day.
I got to come back, though, to the labor force because I really, I am still.
starting to think that it's been underreported, the Horton guy. I said to him, it looks like for
every five who retire to come in. Yep. In your industry. Yeah. And he said, it was about two years
ago. Now it's more like one and a half. You know, everybody's aging out, the basic demographic.
People are having less kids. Boomers are retiring. And when you go on some of these sites,
especially with the custom guys.
You know, you just see 55, 60-year-old dudes.
And they all just say the same thing.
Nobody's standing in line to learn my trade.
Do you worry about that at all?
And I'm sorry to keep coming back to it,
but I just don't know.
I don't know that I understand how tech can help that, really,
or what the industry is going to do, if anything,
to make a more persuasive case
for the jobs that exist in it.
Yeah.
I mean, it comes down to getting it back in high school.
I mean, not to kind of say you're talking line,
but it really does.
I mean, getting construction tech and programs
like copper countries doing for their school district,
that's where it begins.
You need to re-educate the high school students
that having a job in the trades
sometimes can be a lot more fruitful
than going into tech or going into other industry.
and it's more future-proof in a lot of cases. So I think more programs like that, more funding
that goes into re-educating kids, that there is a really great career that you can have in the
trades. I think that's step one. I think where AI comes into that, I'll steal it from you,
it's two sides of the same coin for what you're doing. I think we can make those kids that are
coming into the trades more efficient immediately and have a bigger impact on those companies.
I also think it's a really good carrot to dangle for kids as well
because it's a really cool technology at the end of the day.
It's a really cool experience.
And it's going to be fun to use.
How many industries do you go into where you have such a high job satisfaction?
I just read an article in Forbes that said the trades,
I think it was a 90% job satisfaction for the trades.
Yeah.
Like that's huge.
It's enormous.
Yeah.
People will hear that.
And by and large,
their first reaction is,
I don't believe it.
They don't believe it.
In the same way, I remember the first time I shared a story about a welder who was making $130,000 a year.
I mean, a photo, a story, it was in the Wall Street Journal, interviewed the guy, and still, people just are like, nope, I was told that, no, nope, not going to.
So the resistance to accepting the reality of a career in the trades might have something.
to do with the resistance of believing that the tech that you're talking about is truly going to be
accessible. Yeah. Because it just, it just still feels like you've got to be kidding me. Yeah.
I just, it's another magic trick. So I don't know. What is the biggest challenge then that you guys are
facing? Is it just the misunderstanding or the ignorance around what AI is or what it can do? Or is it
something more practical about just taking a startup and turning it into a public company that I don't
really understand. Yeah, I mean, some of it comes back to the infrastructure. A lot of these,
especially larger builders, they have been fairly technology adverse. I think that's pretty,
you know, everyone's pretty aware of that. And so they've built their software stack in a way
where it's, a lot of them are on-prem, on-premise, which means it's not in the cloud. So,
which means it's not accessible to any type of AI experience.
So for a lot of the builders that we talk to,
we just start at square one and we say, okay, what's your technology stack?
Are you on-prem?
Are you in the cloud?
If they're in the cloud, that's a huge step forward.
But still, there's a lot of work for them to structure their back-in software
to be accessible for a third-party AI software.
We don't need to name names, but I know some of the biggest builders in the world
are not in the cloud.
Yeah.
There's still, what, PDFs doing everything on site?
Yeah.
Like printing things out?
Yeah.
Yes.
I mean, I'm not appalled by it because, you know, I'm older than I've ever been.
And I grew up with that, but I don't.
How do you get a multi-billion dollar national builder to change course to that degree?
How will you do it?
I mean, I think it starts with a lighthouse builder.
So we've recently, we can't say who, but we've recently partnered long term with a top 10 builder who sees the benefits and the ROI of actually implementing AI and going through all the work of restructuring their software stack to make it accessible and possible.
So we're working directly with them around, okay, well, how do we structure your software system to unlock AI?
And then in parallel, we're also building out, you know, some of our new functionality with them.
And then I think taking that lighthouse customer and the success story and the ROI that they're going to have,
which we're talking massive ROI is what we're projecting.
A return on investment.
Yeah.
So people understand.
So we're talking about a top 10 builder who's going to spend a chunk of money so you can help drag them into the future.
Exactly.
And if you do that successfully, then nine other top 10 builders are going to go, oh, what?
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, they all hurry up to follow in this industry.
So getting that, you know, getting a really great brand to go prove it out, I think step one is the biggest, step one through 10, essentially.
Yeah.
And then everyone else will follow, and they should, or they're just going to get drastically left behind.
Ryan's absolutely right with everything that he just said.
And we, they all talk to one another.
They're all competitors, but they all talk.
They all partner.
Well, they were all at the event where you and I met.
Exactly.
They go to these conventions.
Most people have no idea, really, how these industries work.
But it's so true to have, I mean, it's Vegas, it's booze, it's debauchery, it's business, everybody's jammed together.
And so competitors have a chance to get, I'm just really amazed by the whole dynamic and what you can learn in that scenario.
Absolutely.
I mean, we sat at a keynote a couple years ago for one of the conferences that we go to down here in California.
And we got to listen to a CEO of a top 10 builder.
And one of the things that she said that kind of stuck with us was to this other group of execs and CEOs of top 100 builders.
that they're all behind the times.
They're 20 years behind the times
and they need to innovate now.
And part of that innovation
is creating these wow moment experiences.
So I think for her to get up and say that
and be like, let's do something here
because we all know that we're behind the times
and we need to change that.
It's scary to be first.
Yeah, absolutely.
As entrepreneurs, do you get,
I mean, you're on a roller coaster.
Big time.
Do you just get used to it?
I mean.
Well, the noble whiskey helps.
Yeah.
Level them out.
It'll help yourself.
There's plenty around.
No, but I mean, it's really the stakes are impossibly high for you guys.
Yeah.
Must be excited.
Yeah, no, it is.
I think for the first two companies, it was really interesting.
We were, it always felt like we're expected to fail because, you know, we're one time, two-time entrepreneurs.
Now being three-time, it's almost flipped.
It's almost more stressful when people expect you to succeed.
succeed. So we're just trying to take like every little win, remember to celebrate them.
Because when you're working towards that big, you know, long-term goal, the little wins is what
gets you there. Yeah. Because it is ebbs and flows and, you know, it's the toughest thing I've
ever done in my life is build a company. So, yeah. Well, you know, I think for me the,
some ideas are so good that you can't screw them up. I mean, you can, but you got to work really hard
to do it.
And I think of like QVC.
They did a lot of things wrong, in my view, from a production standpoint.
And they made a lot of mistakes.
But the fundamental idea was so good, you know, take the mall to people in rural America
who can't get to the mall.
Just take it to them.
And that was ingenious.
I was going to do a quick sidebar when we were talking about this old house because
I did a show before Dirty Jobs, and the idea was so good that it was on the air for 15 years.
It was called Your New Home.
And I might have talked about it at that convention.
Did I?
Do you remember anything about this?
I feel like you did.
Yeah.
This thing was so ridiculous that it was all based on the fact that if you're a residential builder, well, if you're a big builder and you're building a
community, you're going to be working for seven, eight years putting this community in.
And that means you need to market it, right?
You need to sell it.
And selling a community that's under construction is totally different than selling a single
standalone residential home.
Like opposite, really.
And these communities, they had something that I just never really thought about before,
and it was a model home, you have to have model homes.
But what is a model home?
It's a decorated set.
And there were a bunch of them, you know,
because you might have seven different models
in a community that's going to have 3,000.
Anyway, the idea was, let's just sit in this set
that's already decorated and interview sales agents
who are in charge of selling the community.
And I'll just ask them simple questions,
and they'll tell me their stories,
and then we'll have B-roll of all of the amenities in the community,
everything that's coming.
Long story short, the show was on the air for 15 years.
It sold over a billion dollars in real estate.
Wow.
And I didn't get any of it.
Because I was so interested and I thought I was so clever in figuring out a production model
that I got paid for.
I wasn't unhappy with it.
But a few years in, I realized, you know, people are sitting home.
They're getting decorating ideas.
And then they come out later that Sunday.
And they've already had a tour, a virtual tour of the place.
And they've already met the sales agent on the premises.
So all that exposition is done.
And now these people are what you guys would call qualified buyers.
Right. And so the sales in these communities, they sold out two, three years early.
than they had planned.
The moral of the story is
it was a really good idea
unfortunately implemented by a guy
who wasn't a real smart entrepreneur.
I could see that part of it.
I couldn't see the whole thing.
And my defense, had I gone in with a plan
and explained to these builders
how you're going to be able to sell out of your communities
years in advance, and all I want is a small percentage.
They never would have agreed
to it that they never would have given away the equity, right? So for a lot of people who are just
clever enough to figure out a new way to do a thing, they don't get the ball over the line
because they didn't see how it truly ends. I hope you're smarter than me. I hope you've seen
the end game in this. Yeah, I think we have. And I think, you know, the flip side of that is,
is having a big vision without any execution.
Yes.
You had a lot of execution.
It sounds like without that larger vision.
And I think that's something that we balance here really well.
Is we started with, okay, where do we want to end up?
Yep.
And then how do we get there?
And we got really fortunate with the team, too,
is over the past 15 years,
we've just collected the most talent-dense people we've ever worked with.
Yeah.
And brought them along with us.
And so we have a team march into the same drumbeat.
Yeah.
Well, that's smart.
I'll tell you, now that I think about it, and this is a good place to land the plane because it goes back to efficiency, I outfoxed myself with this thing.
I was so impressed by the fact that I could come to, like I would go down to Baltimore, and this was just on the East Coast.
It was in three states.
And we only shot eight episodes a year.
But, in other words, every eighth Sunday was a repeat because, you know, it was a repeat.
because these communities are under construction for years.
It didn't matter.
So I wore the same khakis, right,
and the same button-down blue shirt.
And it said, your new home on the little pocket there.
And I was so delighted by the fact
that I could be on the air every Sunday
after Charles Kerald is doing, you know, this morning,
CBS this morning.
We had a huge...
This show had so many...
It was an infomercial,
and it had so many viewers.
that we were selling commercials into the infomerase.
That's amazing.
It was ridiculous, right?
So it's a home run, and then it's so efficient
that I can go once a year for maybe two and a half weeks
and shoot the entire year's worth and then go away.
And that's what I did.
I went back to Pennsylvania, where I was living,
or up to New York, and this show aired every single Sunday,
and I wasn't there to see it.
I can't stand to watch my stuff anyway.
But that's the moral of the story.
I took my victory lap too early.
I wasn't there to see that the real benefit of the show
was going back to the builders.
And we were moving crazy amounts of real estate.
And I just wasn't there to see it and connect the dots.
I was too proud of myself for wearing the same stupid shirt
for 15 years doing the show.
So, I mean, whatever, you know, you live and you learn.
And AI wasn't even a thing.
Well, artificial insemination was.
Artificial intelligence was not, at least to my knowledge.
So I got, you know, I wanted you guys on here because you're young and you're smart.
And if this works, I need to be able to tell people that I knew them when.
So make it work.
Yeah, that's the goal.
Yeah.
It's a good goal.
Maybe I'll start running again, too.
Does that exist, that earlier tech?
Has it evolved to the point now?
So we had a patent on it and everything,
but the acquiring company now owns it,
and I think they've sold it since then.
I've tried to buy it back.
Really?
Yeah, to no avail yet.
Because I know the glasses have evolved.
Yeah.
At some point, you're going to do it with contact lenses, probably.
Yeah.
There's a company Vuzix that's made tons of progress in the glasses.
What are they called?
Vusix.
Yeah.
They've been.
around for like 30 years. There were the bulky glasses I was originally using. They've got
some that look like sunglasses now, so they're getting close. What's with all the fake names,
men? I mean, Diggs is at least a word, I understand. It's a verb. It can be an analogy. It can be
any number of things. Vizix and Akimbo and, you know. Try to be catchy. Yeah, it's a thing. Diggs,
what is it?com? Diggs.com. Yeah. One G or two? Just one. Not getting cute. Don't get cute. Don't get
No extra letters.
Yeah.
Ty, Ryan, thanks, man.
Good luck.
I'm rooting for you.
Thanks, Mike.
It's been a blast.
A happy AI story.
I love it.
All right, guys.
See you next week.
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we were hoping.
Four.
Just a quick review with five stars too.
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