Startup Explore

Luis Benavides (00:00)
Yes, we're building an AI landscape designer.

it is really hard to, as I was saying, visualize ideas. So when you come to our app, you just upload the photos of the areas. within a minute, get you ideas.

the full vision has always been, how do we help someone go from inspiration to execution? How do we create that?

operating system for home improvement

I would dare to say that is probably the best looking, landscaping app out there,

our cloud provider told us, we don't have more GPUs. We're maxed up.

Ali | Startup Explore (00:32)
man.

Luis Benavides (00:33)
we want to become the operating improvement in the exterior that that is the that is an north star.

Ali | Startup Explore (00:45)
Today I'm joined by Luis Benavides, the CEO and co-founder of Neighbor Brite, a seed stage startup that is on a mission to empower everyone to redesign their outdoor spaces and bring them to life seamlessly. Let's begin.

Ali | Startup Explore (00:58)
Luis, thank you so much for coming to the show. Very excited to have you.

Luis Benavides (01:01)
Thanks for having me.

Ali | Startup Explore (01:03)
Awesome. So let's dive in. Can you tell me what you're building and what is that big problem that you're trying to solve?

Luis Benavides (01:10)
Yes, we're building an AI landscape designer.

And the problem came from looking at where people got stuck when they were, you you think about remodeling or any home improvement process, especially when we were looking at this problem, ⁓ people would spend months and months collecting images all around the place on Pinterest and having their mood boards and stuff, but they just kind of get stuck there.

and they couldn't actually put everything together, visualize and start their projects. And so that's where we kind of started thinking, hey, you know, we launched our app actually almost two years, exactly two years ago. And ⁓ we were trying to tackle a different problem. So this was our first pivot, but it was actually helping ⁓ homeowners hire life scapers or hire contractors to do home improvement. And we just figured that that was the...

the play where people got stuck was like, how do they turn inspiration into actual something that is executable? And generative ai was getting to a point that was useful to generate inspiration so we could create a better Pinterest, so to speak. And that was kind of the beginning of the kernel of the idea. But the full vision has always been, how do we help someone go from inspiration to execution? How do we create that?

operating system for home improvement

where all the players are in there.

Ali | Startup Explore (02:36)
Yeah, I mean, that problem resonates with me as well. ⁓ Okay, so that makes sense. Interesting. Now, I know you've mentioned that you help customers basically to take the idea from ⁓ concept phase all the way through completion. How do you achieve that in more detail? If you can maybe provide kind of a walkthrough through the customer journey end to end, that'd be helpful.

Luis Benavides (02:58)
Absolutely. the, so imagine you're, you're this, this person thinking about like, Hey, you know, I just moved into this place and, I want the yard, you know, I want the place to fill mine. That's kind of like the, the process that every, every person that moves goes through. And you have some ideas in your mind of what kind of would go in the, in the outdoors. Actually people at first started with the indoors and remodeling and all of the stuff inside. And then they focus on the outside. That's kind of the general process.

And when you're looking at the outside, it is really hard to, as I was saying, visualize ideas. you could pay thousands of dollars to a designer, but you're not ready to do that yet. So you're going to get stuck there. So when you come to our app, you just upload the photos of the areas. within our goal was to get you, within a minute, get you ideas.

So in a minute, you use our app, you sign in.

And you generate, how would this space look if it was Mediterranean style or cottage style, English style or whatever style. So that was kind of, that's the beginning of the journey is like, help me ideate. And then, then we have been building the app towards the execution. So the next step you take is like, Hey, you know, I like this, but I don't like this other things. So we started building a lot of editing tools into the app. you can, for example, we have a feature that is called add elements. So you can.

I should have manually, and this was basically because AI was not really, you you tell it to play something specifically this place, it's not going to do it. So we were like, okay, let's just build the framework so that you can just drag and drop a tree or drag and drop a chair or a pergola or whatever you want to put on your patio and start just visualizing yourself. So you're like slowly, you start building the thing that you like. know, we kind of.

Ali | Startup Explore (04:36)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (04:51)
the idea was as if you were talking to a designer. It's like, hey, I like this, this and that. And then the designer is like, what about that? So that's kind of like the conversation you have with the app. You tell it what you want and the app responds to, what about this? What about that? And it is intended to be a very, very user friendly. kind of decided thinking Instagram, like you scroll through photos and that is, or Pinterest, you you scroll through.

Ali | Startup Explore (05:00)
No.

Luis Benavides (05:20)
the right ideas that the AI is giving you. And then from there, you can get beautiful pictures, but is this plant going to survive in my yard? So that's where we started building all the intelligence, like the ⁓ plant knowledge, the horticultural knowledge on the app. So we now understand, ⁓ you are in this city, so you have a particular climate. And based on this climate, only these plants can survive this climate.

or, in this part of your yard, you get a lot of sun or it's very shady. And that gives you many, like, it limits ⁓ the number of things that you can put in the yard. So then we started adding all that intelligence. ⁓ And it ends up, it goes all the way to giving you a plant list. So imagine the flow is you get an initial image. Sometimes customers are like, that's it. That's what I want to do. What are those plants so I can go to the nursery and buy them?

So that was the first question. So we started building the plants, imagine like a plant ID, but the plant ID also gives you substitutions. So you get like, oh, this looks like a yucca, but it could be an agave, could be this type of grass. So you kind of like, what is the functional part of that plant in the design and what plants can you buy that actually work with your climate? And once you get there, we actually started a partnership with Thumbtack.

Ali | Startup Explore (06:26)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (06:44)
And you can find local landscapers to go and execute that. The call out in the app is get a quote. So you created the image, get a quote, get it executed. And there's no better way.

Ali | Startup Explore (06:45)
nice.

Luis Benavides (06:56)
If you talk to landscapers, they're like, there's nothing better than a customer that knows what they want. And they have a clear vision. so for me, quoting is easy. I just like, ⁓ that's what you want? Let's talk about the costs, and then you have a project.

Ali | Startup Explore (07:02)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (07:13)
So that's the place where we got it right now and we are working towards the next steps of involving more players. yeah, that's the initial, that's what you can see today in the app.

Ali | Startup Explore (07:24)
Yeah, I feel like that's pretty smart. When you give customers that little nudge or visibility into next steps by integrating that thumb stack, that's pretty smart, I think. then, so thumb stack integration, ⁓ do they have to go then to a different platform to book them or it's still within your platform where they can see like the ⁓ vendors and they pick and choose? That's awesome.

Luis Benavides (07:48)
within our platform.

we list, right there when you're scrolling through your designs, you see, get a quote from local landscapers and there's a list of like the top three. And the action is get a quote, get a free quote. You click there and it opens a sub window within our app and you can just follow the flow and request the quote. you never leave our app from that perspective.

Ali | Startup Explore (08:00)
Nice.

Yeah, that's nice.

That's nice. That's smooth. then when it comes to, guess, personalization items, ⁓ what are some of those cool elements that can tweak and customers can play around with basically?

Luis Benavides (08:26)
Yes, like the is generative AI. like whatever you want, have, we have all sorts of tools that, you know, we, we, ⁓ initially we were kind of like, if you think about it, is that like, we, were using models from companies that had them available, but in, in two years we've had to build for several use cases, several models. So yeah, we're hosting our own models and, know, we tweak them and put them together and train them in a way that, that it works for our particular use cases.

So we have a tool called magic edit. And that is like, once you get everything ready, you're like, you know, let's change the color of the door to this. then boom, it does it. like, it's like those final touches are there. There's a, another feature that lets you add by image. So you're like, I'd like a pergola, but the one you have is not exactly the one I want. So this is the photo. like an inspiration photo of my pergola. And then you render that pergola and it renders it right there where you want it.

⁓ What other personalization ⁓ features? ⁓ Yeah, like the custom styles that you can create yourself, providing images and saying like, I want something like this ⁓ and render it in my own image. ⁓ There's a erase, like a magic eraser that we have as well. So like there's a particular thing in UER that you don't like, just circle, boom, it goes away. So it kind of like lets you express.

Ali | Startup Explore (09:33)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (09:54)
Like if you think about chat GPT, like how far you can get with chat GPT with words, there's only so much you can do, but we go the extra mile on letting you, ⁓ actually one of the things that ⁓ separates us from a lot of other companies that are doing generative AI is that we built this selection ⁓ tool. you don't just give the image and say, do something. You can say like, particularly here.

Ali | Startup Explore (09:58)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (10:23)
I want X. So you can express that also visually, not only with words. So that kind of like improves the success ratio of the things you can do.

Ali | Startup Explore (10:34)
Yeah, that sounds cool. Awesome. And today I know you have a free tier as well as pay tier. So I'm curious, what are some of those features that paid customers get on top of the free tier?

Luis Benavides (10:47)
Yeah, so free tier is our inspiration side of the app. So ⁓ you get four generations for free every day. And we have a ton of those users that they just want to see like, how would this look like in British, sorry, English garden or cottage garden. And then when you go to pro, you get all these additional features that let you customize. So that's when you get the add elements feature where you can drag and drop.

elements there, you're going to have to actually even draw a path. There's nothing more frustrating than telling an LLM, you know, put a path that goes from A to B, like, oh man. So, so we build it. So you can just like say, this is the path that goes from here to here. And it's, uh, you know, flagstone and it just renders that, that flagstone path there. So that, that is another one. Magic edit is another one. The plant lists is another one. so basically you, with the free version, you get the basic rendering.

Ali | Startup Explore (11:27)
yeah.

Luis Benavides (11:46)
which a lot of people use and love. And then with the pro version, you get to make it your own, so to speak. It's like that's when you put in your own input into the image. And we do have a business version that removes the watermarks and lets you also get high quality prints so that if you want to have a big image printed out, there's an auto enhance and we're working on building additional features for professionals as well.

Ali | Startup Explore (12:13)
That's awesome. Now, ⁓ How do you keep ⁓ users engaged after that? They're like initial project that they build. What are some of the, of those like value as that, that you provide beyond that first project, I guess.

Luis Benavides (12:28)
Yeah, this has been very often a question like, do you keep people engaged? And we actually don't think about it. If you think about the user, the user that we started building for is the homeowner. They have a project and when they do the project, they're ready, they're done. So there's no need for us to try to keep them like, hey, come back, you have another project. Some folks are...

Ali | Startup Explore (12:44)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (12:56)
there are really great apps that help you take care of plants, for example. Or if the plant is unhealthy, what can I do? What kind of fertilizer? So we didn't think we could actually bring a lot into that space. Or so far, the main gap in the market, so to speak, has been on the design side of things. So we have not even really tried to... ⁓

Ali | Startup Explore (13:18)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (13:24)
create features or create a product that people come back every day for all along the year. So we think about, we can get into that later on, like how our strategy works, but our user, the homeowner is a user that comes in, has a project, and we help them work with the project. So we are an AI landscape designer and we engage with landscape designer when we have a project and when we're done, we're done. And that,

It brings us to a different place when we start thinking about the other personas we're building for. But that isn't something that we actively develop or work on.

Ali | Startup Explore (14:04)
Yeah, I hear you. Now you've kind of alluded a little bit on the technology side of the product. ⁓ Can you maybe talk a little bit more ⁓ what AI technology powers the design engine and then ⁓ just provide a little more color on the technology side of things.

Luis Benavides (14:23)
Yeah, so we've been very agnostic in terms of technology. Not agnostic, it's more practical. We are not focused on the technology as much as we are focused on solving a problem, a user problem. come from the is my background. So for me, it's all about what is the tool, the best tool to solve this problem right now? And there are some tools that we are like...

you know, a model that erases an element using AI. You know, there are so many out there in the market. There is no point on as developing this, this tool, this, this model either or training it or anything. just like, it's already, it's already performing at a really good, know, 99%, 95 % success ratio. So, so for those use cases and think about it, like each of our models and our pieces of technology are, are, are geared towards a use case.

for the realistic renderings, that's where we have invested the majority of our work, where we've been kind of like hosting our own models. We have our own GPUs. You know, how do we tweak the model in a way that is able to render something that looks realistic? I would dare to say that is probably the best looking, you know, landscaping app out there, like in terms of the quality of the images that are generated. That's what we've been focusing on. And that's kind of the wow factor.

Ali | Startup Explore (15:21)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (15:44)
That's kind of like...

You know, we've had a lot of publicity that unpaid publicity of users who just use it and they're like, ⁓ this looks like so real. Like what is the AI part? What is the non AI part kind of thing? ⁓ So that, that is the part where we invest a lot of ⁓ stuff. And then there are some models that we are kind of like plugging them together. You know, I won't get into the specifics of what we're using because that's kind of our secret sauce, but the, in terms of the technology is like the, are things that are our priority that we host that we do our own.

our own models, and then there are other things that we just take out of the box from providers that are doing a great job at that.

Ali | Startup Explore (16:21)
And ⁓ so far as you're building these features and the company itself, what has been maybe one of the biggest challenges and how did you overcome that?

Luis Benavides (16:30)
I don't know the biggest challenge is. ⁓

Ali | Startup Explore (16:33)
It can be technical or maybe beyond technical aspects.

Luis Benavides (16:36)
Yeah, like I would say the...

Focusing, like finding the user to build for and really being disciplined about who you're building for and not trying to build for everyone.

So at the beginning, we didn't know exactly what was the actual perfect user. And we were like, well, is it designers? Yeah, it would help designers a lot. They have these drawings and they can throw a drawing and then they get a rendering. And same thing with landscapers. They have a particular...

you know, use cases and all of that. and, and just having the, and also like seeing the opportunities just kind of popping everywhere. And we get, we got like, I don't know, I remember the, we get still like three, four, ⁓ you know, large companies a week or so that they're, they're writing and like, Hey, you know, I have this big project. I'm interested in your software. Can you do white labeling? And so we're like, white labeling is also an option.

And it's like, we do, do we do an API and all of that stuff? I think just the getting the, having the discipline and also together with like, this is a long-term play. And you brought up a very clear question at the beginning is like, how do you keep people engaged? If these are people that come and go, and then they're gone. It's like, no, no, no, this, this is the right user. and, you know, if I kind of like develop a little bit, my point is like in a two-sided marketplace, like landscaping.

the side of the, of the, of the marketplace that, that is going to drop $15,000, $20,000 on a project. You know, if you have that side with you, then you're good. The other side will come, you know, that, that kind of the, you know, there's a hard part, a hard side and an easy side of, marketplace. I don't, wouldn't say easier, less hard, I guess. but that's yes. Like they just keep getting the discipline of like, yeah, there's churn. ⁓ I don't call it churn. I call it people come for a project.

and they are done with the project. So that it is a project-based ⁓ service that we are offering. And that is what it will unlock in the future. If you get it right, that is what matters. just getting that discipline right is hard.

Ali | Startup Explore (18:49)
Yeah, I feel like that's very wise. It's very probably easy to lose your focus and, but you, gotta stay focused, I guess, and do 10 X better for your ICP or a hundred X better for your ICP and start from there. ⁓ that leads me to my next question. Who is your ICP? Is it just homeowners or it sounds like it's more because you have a pro plan now for businesses. So who are those ICPs on both sides?

Luis Benavides (19:15)
Yeah, so I think the best way to describe the ICPs is that our company, the vision of the companies is building the operating system for landscape, not landscaping only, but starting with exterior. So home improvement in the exterior. And there are, I would say three phases of our business. The first phase of our business is building

landscape designer for homeowners is winning the landscape. Sorry, sorry, not the landscape designers, the homeowners. it's bringing, winning the homeowners. That is the first bet that we have. ⁓ yesterday we were celebrating half a million registered users. So it was like, okay, ⁓ okay. that's an validation check, sort of. Of course then we want to get to millions, but...

You know, the, the, our validation that homeowners have found this very useful. And the next, once you have homeowners, we, will develop, we're working on developing like the, think about the marketplace initially two-sided. Uh, uh, now we're moving to landscapers and the, needs for a landscapers are actually quite similar to homeowners. Thankfully for us, it is like, no, you know, I, I want to go to a, to a customer and I want to show them what is possible. and.

And the customer that I've seen things like on the spot, it's a customer that is much more convinced that they can close sales much, much quicker. I have landscapers that call me and say like, dude, I just closed the a hundred K business just because of your app. The homeowner was so impressed. So, so it is like the, landscapers have this single player mode where they can use this as a sales tool, a visualization tool.

to work with the homeowners and the homeowners similarly. It's kind of like serves the same purposes, but in different ways. Once you, so the first stage is building for homeowners, second stage building, ICP is landscapers. And the third stage of the business is when we start adding the retailers. So there's nothing, know, and this is something we're starting, nothing to announce yet, but we are kind of like working right now on it and ready, you know, in the next, I'll say a couple of weeks.

we would have, we were starting a partnership with nurseries. And the, idea here is like, there's no one better that knows what grows good in the region than your local nursery. So whatever they carry in their inventory, it's actually all good. It's like hardiness zone is matching the pH of the soil matches. So there are so many variables of what plants grow well in different regions. Like even the colors, like I didn't know that hydrangeas, I live in Utah. the, the, the,

purple colored hydrangeas, they don't grow in Utah because of the pH of the soil, they need more acidity and whatever. All of those things you learn from nurseries because people come and say like, me the white, sorry, the purple hydrangeas and they're like, no, we don't have those. So the idea, that's when we start integrating them and their inventories into our platform. now when you're designing as a professional or as a homeowner, you're also seeing like, this is what I can buy locally.

Ali | Startup Explore (22:19)
Ha

Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (22:33)
So

it is like much more actionable than, this plant lives in your region. No, this plant lives in your region and is available at this nursery, you know, go and order. And think about it as like from hardscape ⁓ suppliers, like buying rock, buying mulch, buying all these different things, the pergolas, all these tiles, whatever is needed in order to ⁓ design your exteriors. So now you see that there is like all of these players come in and it's the same product.

is the same designing, but design is so fundamental to start the project. Like, what are we going to do, especially for this kind of thing? it's like, now you have the picture, you have the things, you have the materials. And that kind of unlocks as well the two versions of homeowners, the ones that are like, I want to do it myself, or the ones that are do it for me. So if I'm not doing it myself, I know where to buy the plants. I can just get it done. that is the, so three ICPs, homeowners.

Ali | Startup Explore (23:02)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (23:31)
landscapers, and lastly, suppliers, retailers of all the materials.

Ali | Startup Explore (23:36)
awesome. That's very exciting stuff and congrats on the number of users. That's a big milestone. And that's something I wanted to ask as well. Can you share any other key metrics about the market traction that you've been having so far? Number of users is one. Is there anything else that you can share? And of course, without divulging anything sensitive.

Luis Benavides (23:40)
Thank you.

What can I share? I think the number of users is the main metric that we share. Well, over 10 million designs is another metric that we've been sharing ⁓ as well. not only is it, you know, people, although they stay for a short time until they finish, they go and like creates all sorts of images. We actually had to put the four generations that they limit because we, you know, and this is true. ⁓

Ali | Startup Explore (24:07)
Nice.

Haha.

Luis Benavides (24:26)
I don't want to say which cloud provider, but our cloud provider told us, we don't have more GPUs. We're maxed up.

Ali | Startup Explore (24:32)
man.

Luis Benavides (24:32)
We can give you more GPUs. So we were like, okay, we need to do something because there are people paying and the people paying are not getting the quality of service that they expect. So we had to put a cap. ⁓ And it's kind of also different from other companies that right now it's really hard to find any AI provider that gives you

Ali | Startup Explore (24:33)
Wow.

Luis Benavides (24:56)
a free ⁓ tier. everything is paid from the beginning, even trying. And we from the beginning with our idea was actually, you know, this should be almost free from the consumer perspective. So that's how we gain all the demand. And then the supply is the one that is going to pay us because we're going to give them business. That was the thought process there.

Ali | Startup Explore (25:18)
interesting. I'm assuming your cloud provider is one of the big ones. And I would never expect them to say something like, hey, we don't have enough GPUs. It's impressive. It's kudos.

Luis Benavides (25:28)
Yeah, the scaling, the scaling

was like the automatic scaling. The one we are with right now, well, I can say that because we're happy. Azure is our ⁓ GPU cloud provider. And they like, they scale all the way. we've had times where we're like, holy, that's a lot of GPUs that we are spinning up. But ⁓ yeah, especially at the beginning of the year in spring was crazy.

Ali | Startup Explore (25:38)
There you go.

It's a good problem to have.

Luis Benavides (25:58)
We got a couple of influencers posting about us and got millions of views and stuff. a lot of people came over and checked it out.

Ali | Startup Explore (26:08)
Is that the main way how you acquire customers today? Like through influencers and social media or is there, is there something else?

Luis Benavides (26:16)
No, would say the because we were so early, we are very active in social. we've gotten, I wouldn't say it's half, but I would say probably a third of our traffic has come from social. And this is a combination of ⁓ Reddit posts and ⁓ influencers themselves. We've had the, don't know how, let me ask for the high level.

Ali | Startup Explore (26:28)
Okay.

Luis Benavides (26:43)
So yeah, like a third is about social and all of that. The majority of the traffic, would say that two thirds ish, has been search. People searching for AI landscape design, find that has been, although people say like Google is bringing less, we are also getting not. One of our top sources I can say is open AI. people are asking LLMs for.

Ali | Startup Explore (26:43)
Sure.

Got it. Got it.

Luis Benavides (27:11)
Hey, how can I do AI design? We are one of the recommendations.

Ali | Startup Explore (27:15)
Now, let me take you back. Can you talk about your background, your co-founder's background, education and prior projects work history? That would be very interesting to hear.

Luis Benavides (27:25)
Yeah, for sure. So I am an engineer by training. my bachelor's was telecommunications engineering. And after I studied that, I did a master's in like an MBA in Europe. And right off the MBA, I got hired by Google in Ireland. so the engineer by training and Google spent most of my career doing product related.

things. although I do code and I can code, I'm not a proficient coder. But now with the live coding thing, I'm able to push changes in our code base ⁓ after my co-founder reviews them, I guess. They don't get pushed to production without review. But yeah, so my engineering and at Google, spent over

Ali | Startup Explore (27:56)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Luis Benavides (28:23)
14 years in different roles and the delay. Among the things I did on product, I worked as a product manager for Google Shopping. the, you know, I did all sorts of marketplace related things like on the apps marketplace. I did ⁓ work on the apps marketplace, just building ⁓ solutions for, for gamer gaming companies to monetize. And, and yeah, like shop Google shopping. I worked on, on the ⁓

⁓ recommendation systems. And then at the end I was working on search quality. yeah, a lot on AI, like all my career at Google was AI related. And Yao, my co-founder, ⁓ he's ⁓ in PhD and he worked as a researcher, an AI researcher at Google, ⁓ went over and did a startup IB doing like visual recognition of shopping patterns, among other things.

And then I was leading a team of researchers at Meta. So he brings all the of the AI expertise, all the, you know, he has the one, he's the one that built all the, you know, models and all these custom things that we've, we've done. So, yeah, so essentially I take over all the product design side of the, of the business. I look after that and he looks after all the technology.

Ali | Startup Explore (29:45)
That's pretty impressive background. And I can see you guys have complimentary skills to each other. And did you guys meet at Google or somewhere else?

Luis Benavides (29:51)
For sure.

We

didn't meet at Google. think we didn't coincide at Google. ⁓ Interestingly enough, ⁓ I was working with a different CTO before and, and, ⁓ you know, didn't work out and the things didn't work out. So I started looking for a co-founder and of all places I went to the YC co-founder match and, ⁓ yeah, I found the best co-founder ever. So I recommended every time, you know, you know, we didn't go to YC, but I found my co-founder, which is,

Ali | Startup Explore (30:19)
That's all.

Luis Benavides (30:22)
Way more valuable, I guess.

Ali | Startup Explore (30:24)
That's awesome and a little about me. usually sit on that website as well and I find it very helpful. Like I meet a lot of great people and very smart, intelligent. ⁓

Luis Benavides (30:35)
Amazing. Yeah.

I met great people there and yeah, I couldn't have been better. We've been working together for a year and yeah, the best co-founder I could ever have wished.

Ali | Startup Explore (30:45)
That's awesome. Great to hear this now switching gears to competition. I know you kind of alluded some of the elements, but if we would summarize what makes you different from existing those tools, whether it's a, I believe it was ice scrape or home designs.ai, what makes you different? If you can kind of summarize that point, that'd be helpful.

Luis Benavides (31:07)
Yeah, among those two only, like if we are focusing on the design market. So you can think about like different players there. There are the app related players like Icecapes that you mentioned. There are the AI players like Home Designs AI and there are plenty of others. And then there are the proper services companies like Yarts ⁓ and others.

Ali | Startup Explore (31:11)
Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (31:32)
And so the place where we play is we're trying to give a service at the level of a professional designer. like the, like, if you think about the, expertise on the, the, the subject matter expertise, all the AI companies are not thinking of like, Hey, what is this plant good for full sun in hardiness on seventy? Like they're not, they're not designing that kind of product. And even when you think about other, you know, ice caves and stuff, they, don't go at that level, like identifying the

Ali | Startup Explore (31:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Luis Benavides (32:02)
the plants that will, you know, ⁓ or maybe they do. haven't played with their product enough. But I would say for, if you compare it with all these vectors, if you think about the professional designer, the yard sense of the world, you pay thousands of dollars, you get a really good design, but it's pretty costly. If you think about the ice caves, their AI, you need to know what you're doing essentially with a software like.

ice skates or, to that extent, any landscape design software, you're like given free range of like, I put a tree here for the plant here. The key thing is making that look beautiful. You need to be a designer to be able to get that working. And that's, that's what the limitation of those apps are. And I would say on the other end, the, the pure AI, they, I feel that they, they're trying to do everything. So they do outdoors and indoors and all sorts of like everything you can do at your home.

But I wonder, like, they don't get as deep as us. And we decided, let's go deep into landscaping and really nail that use case ⁓ so that we can, like, if our goal is just only visualize, maybe that those AI companies do a good enough job. But if our job is to get the design, like, actionable to execution, we really need to drill in and learn about, you know, the subject matter. So that differentiates us from that part.

Ali | Startup Explore (33:24)
Nice.

That's awesome.

Now looking into the future, let's say three to five years, what is the North Star for the company? And also like, what are some of the cool features that users can expect in the near future?

Luis Benavides (33:39)
Oh, without without spilling the beans. I would say so like, just in general, like, I think it's all about division, right? It's like, we want to become the operating system of home improvement in the exterior that that is the that is an north star.

Ali | Startup Explore (33:42)
Hahaha

Luis Benavides (33:55)
So how much of the market or of the industry moves? You know, are we helping that that is that is like, you can think about it as GMV or

you know, the exchange of ⁓ value in that supply chain. And so in the sense like that, that is why we're working on these three pronged Like let's get the demand, let's get the supply, let's connect demand and supply, let's bring materials. Like those are all the layers. So, you know, without spilling the beans of like cool features that you can expect is like, think about features that help.

homeowners be more effective, think about landscapers being more effective. among being more effective is also being able to, for example, price a project. And if we are connecting with the retailers, now you know what the price of the plant is and you already have the plant list. It all becomes so much easier and so much more effective for all the players. So we want to be there. We want to play that role in the industry. And so in three years, hopefully, we are...

working with all these three ICPs and providing value in every single direction.

Ali | Startup Explore (35:09)
Now, as you grow the company, you would need to hire more and more people. I'm curious to learn how do you approach hiring? Like what are some of the qualities that you look for in candidates that that's most important to you?

Luis Benavides (35:22)
The, so the, are, like, this is one of the things that hiring is one of the things that we've been learning a lot, ⁓ as, as we go. And we, like we, from the get-go, we set up, ⁓ kind of like a culture document so that even before we started with my co-founder, we, we wrote a document, a culture document of like, what are, what is the type of person we want? And, and the, you know, we essentially took things from the companies we've worked at.

And we love the customer centricity of pretty much every successful company. Like I think Amazon, think Google, like QSER first, that was kind of one of the first tenets. And, you know, so we are looking for someone that thinks and lives the customer. So when we interview, we want to hear, you know, when I asked you as an engineer or as anything, it's like, why did you do this? Or like, what was the best project you worked on?

You're not like, ⁓ the technology X was great. And I learned this protocol and I learned this, but what was the thing you were solving? So thinking about like putting yourself in the shoes of the user. that is, that is number one. And then just like the, among things like moving fast and that velocity and having initiative. We, we don't, we hate being, we are terrible micromanagers, both of us. And, and not like, not because like if I, I, when I try, I just, I'm angry about it.

because like I micromanage when things aren't working and that is like ⁓ the worst kind of situation. So it is someone that ⁓ has agency and it just goes out and executes and brings ideas to the table ⁓ that is able, you know, we like to be the candid feedback kind of thing. ⁓ We like to have it there. Every time there's a proposal, I like people to say like, I disagree. But then

after some disagreement, we need to disagree and commit. So that's one of the other principles that we have from, that we love from Amazon is like, you know, there's only so much you can discuss. And actually one of the things that frustrated me at Google was like, there, there's a consensus driven company. So like, if you didn't have everyone on board, the project wouldn't move. So it could take quarters and quarters to get a project off the ground because

you know, someone was not really sold ⁓ on it or there was like, you know, I guess that culture works in, many other ways, I guess. But, but if we, know, like when, when I worked at Coinbase later on, you know, I saw how, how, how different and how fast things like decisions were made. if there was a single decision maker and he's like, okay, everyone's input is here, but now we're making a decision and the decision is done, move on, ⁓ you know, learn iterate that kind of thing.

but is more action driven. ⁓ Yeah, so like all of these characteristics we're looking for from people, we are all remote at the moment. ⁓ So it kind of like, it's even more important that we don't have, we don't even know if you're working or not. We've said a lot of processes to kind of keep us, ⁓ you know, linked and connected as we work every day. ⁓ But yeah, like the agency is one of the most important things there as well.

Ali | Startup Explore (38:41)
Yeah,

that makes sense. ⁓ Love to hear those qualities that all make sense. Now, let me flip the question. And ⁓ if I ask you, why would those candidates join Neighbor Bride? What would you tell them? Why should they join?

Luis Benavides (38:58)
Yes, there are several things. with the engineers, ⁓ my pitch is you're joining a team that is at the edge of the technology. We're pushing the envelope. We're learning things every day. So if you want to come here, you're going to be learning a lot. You're going to be working with Yao, is my co-founder, who's been doing... It's a great... ⁓

It's one of my best selling points, I would guess, the, know, for many engineers working and learning from a very experienced and successful engineer, that is another thing that, you know, I loved about Google. Like you had Vint Cerf and you had all sorts, like the creator of Python and, you know, all sorts of like ⁓ celebrities in the technical world there. So I think that there's a passion for learning. There's a passion for pushing the envelope. ⁓

And it's a team that is very honest, is a team that wants to move fast and that wants to really have an impact in the world. We're tackling a big problem. This is like a multi-hundred billion problem ⁓ that this particular industry hasn't really adopted technology. So we're kind of bringing this technology to a new segment of the industry. And also it's a segment that is

probably the last one or one of the last ones that is going to get automated by AI or so. It's going to take a long time until the robots are going to start planting your agaves. So yeah, it's like a long-term, ⁓ big, big hairy goal. And it's exciting. It's really fun to work on.

Ali | Startup Explore (40:32)
You

Yeah.

Yeah. That's awesome to hear about the impact that you guys are building. All right. So let me take you now outside of work. What kind of hobbies would you like to do?

Luis Benavides (40:52)
I like, it depends on the, on the season here. So, ⁓ in the, in the winter, love snowboarding. I live very, very close to the ski resorts. and, ⁓ yeah, snowboard is right, right. Like 20 minutes drive from, from my place. ⁓ so I do like doing that, for example, in, you know, during the winter, I take a couple of mornings, in the weekend and just, you know, do a, do a morning snowboarding session and then go come back and continue working.

I don't go on the weekends. It's very crowded. But yeah, snowboarding in the winter. During the summer, I picked up here, I picked up mountain biking, which is kind of like using the same mountain, but in the summer. And yeah, those two things are kind of sports-wise what I love doing the most. And then I also love playing guitar. I go to jazz jam sessions when I can. There are like a couple jam sessions in the area.

And I play guitar all my life. that's, you know, I wish I was better, but that's one of the things that for me is like meditation. pick up the guitar and then you get lost like time flies and everything else kind of like fades away ⁓ as you're kind of like tackling a song or like improvising for me. Like that's kind of like gets your mind really going and thinking what, you know, what do you want to play next? ⁓ So yeah, those are my main things.

Ali | Startup Explore (42:19)
That's awesome. That's a lot of talents you have. ⁓ right. So I know we've talked a lot about the company, about the product, about the team. Now, is there anything that we haven't touched on that you want to share with the audience

Luis Benavides (42:23)
I don't know if talents, I do enjoy those things.

I mean, the obvious thing would be for folks to try. Neighborbrite but that's too obvious. I'm wondering, like one of our discussions around, you know, we've been thinking about job replacement and, you the ⁓ types of startups that are coming out, like we are the AI landscape designer, there's the AI programmer. And there's a lot of ⁓ thoughts about like, ⁓

Is there a job replacement? Are people going to have like a worse time later on? I think that is a conversation that goes through our minds and goes back and forth. And since the beginning, one of our advisors, he's also working as a consultant, John, he's the landscape designer for the VYU campus here in Utah.

And he reached out to me and is like, I'm really excited about what you're doing. So we talked a lot and he has helped us develop the app. So he's kind of like the landscape designer in residence, so to speak. he helps us kind of like design the app and make sure that it really has the proper knowledge built into it. And he's like...

What you're doing, like you're not replacing any landscape designer because there's no landscape, the majority of the people just don't hire landscape designer. And I think this applies to many things that AI is doing is like, you know, I think the percentage was like 90, 95 % of people don't hire landscape designer. It's not something I don't have the actual number, but it was like the vast, vast, vast majority.

don't have a landscape designer. So we come in and we have 95 % of people not only are like, we're filling a huge void in the market, but also we are also increasing the amount of landscaping that is done in the industry. we're also growing the market. Think Uber, know, Uber is not like the taxi drive, not the taxi industry, Uber just made the whole pie much, much larger. So I like to think, I mean that, you know, when we discuss that we are

essentially growing this pie. So whatever landscaping is or exterior design is today is going to be way, way bigger because like you will have also design expertise for every little thing you do. You cannot get a landscaper to build a little planter. They will be like, oh, that's too small. I'm not going to go there. So yeah, like we are definitely, we think about it as growing the pie for everyone.

Ali | Startup Explore (45:21)
Yeah, that's very relevant, I would say, kind of perspective and would help people probably to change their take on like AI and replacing labor. It's more about probably creating additional value on top of the existing that you have in the market today. Well, Luis, thank you so much for coming to the show. Really enjoyed our conversation and hopefully we will meet sometime soon again and you will have even bigger successes to share.

Luis Benavides (45:48)
Thank you so much. was a pleasure.