This is our final episode of the year, and we’re ending it with the kind of conversation AEC needs more of.

In this episode of KP Unpacked, KP sits down with Dr. Barry Clark (CTO) to connect the dots from “physical startups” (robots sewing denim) to what comes next: robots + humans coexisting on jobsites, AI-driven motion control, and a coming wave of materials + manufacturing innovation that could reshape how we design and build.

If you’re a founder, operator, or AEC leader wondering what’s real vs. vaporware, this one will sharpen your lens.

Key topics covered

• From robotics in apparel to robotics in construction: why “physical startups” are back
• Why construction is the hardest automation environment (unstructured, bespoke, constant pivots)
• AI’s impact on robotics: from brittle logic to learning systems that handle “unknown unknowns”
• Digital twins + simulation: getting cheaper, more practical, closer to daily use
• KP’s thesis: a materials renaissance for AEC—and the real bottleneck (commercial scale)
• What “motion control” actually means (path planning + actuator control)
• The missing layer: orchestration across people + robots on live jobsites
• A hard truth: project tools often become archives, not systems that drive behavior

Guest bio
Dr. Barry Clark is KPR’s CTO with a background in mechanical engineering, optimal control, computer vision, and automation, spanning robotics startups and large-scale automated assembly (including server assembly and software-defined manufacturing).

Turn your 2026 plan into real Q1 momentum.
Join KP Reddy and a small room of AEC leaders on January 13 in the SF Bay Area for the first KPR Quarterly, where strategy meets execution in the first 90 days.
👉 Learn more: https://kpreddy.co/kpr-quarterlies?utm_source=buzzsprout&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_campaign=lead-gen-boost

If you want to understand the future of construction, look at your phone. In this episode of KP Unpacked, KP Reddy and Nick explain why the next major shift in AEC will mirror the moment Uber replaced the taxi. Not because of sci-fi tech, but because of something simpler: total transparency.

Today’s owners operate in a black box. Schedules slip, change orders land without context, and updates lag behind reality. KP and Nick argue that the construction company that embraces real-time visibility will dominate the next decade.

From jobsite cameras and drone data to cultural shifts inside design and engineering teams, this episode lays out what it takes to build the first truly transparent construction firm and why owners will reward it.

Highlights

1) The Uber analogy

• Real-time tracking vs radio silence
• Why transparency became a competitive weapon
• How expectations changed overnight once riders saw the truth

2) Transparency on the jobsite

• Daily visibility instead of weekly reporting
• Drone imagery, progress photos, and time-stamped reality
• Owners checking job status as easily as tracking a car

3) Culture as the real blocker

• The fear of showing mistakes in real time
• Old school habits inside design and engineering teams
• Why new firms may adopt transparency faster than incumbents

4) Incentives and stress

• Why most GCs do not actually want surprise change orders
• How hiding small issues snowballs into major delays
• Transparency as the ultimate stress reliever for teams

5) The technology already exists

• Reality capture, project management, AI context layers
• Why this is a full stack shift, not a point solution
• The first GC to commit wins disproportionate market share

If you believe construction is overdue for its Uber moment, this episode shows why transparency wins and how the industry gets there.

Ready to go deeper on modern AEC leadership and operations?

Join the KPR Co Q1 Event for hands-on sessions with founders, operators, and owners.

Founders, if your board meetings feel pointless, this one’s for you. Rethink the people shaping your company’s future.

Private company boards should drive growth, not block it. Yet too often, they become performative, disengaged, or simply wrong for a company’s stage. In this episode of KP Unpacked, KP Reddy and Nick unpack what makes boards work — and why so many founders get them wrong.

They break down the difference between governance and guidance, how private equity’s rigor reshapes accountability, and why boards need to evolve just like product or operations. From “dead board members” to mismatched corporate execs, this episode is a blueprint for building a board that adds real value.

Highlights

1) What Makes a Bad Board

• Unengaged board members: the silent signal of a dying organization
• Corporate mindsets in startup spaces: when governance eclipses problem solving
• Analysts and placeholders: why some seats are signs investors have checked out

2) Building the Right Board

• Functional expertise over resume shine: the power of one domain expert who actually adds value
• Founders as architects of their board: setting expectations, structure, and chemistry
• Evolving governance: how Series A and B boards should look different from pre-seed

3) Dynamics and Chemistry

• Why founder board trust breaks when communication stops between meetings
• The “honeymoon” effect of early boards and how to keep engagement alive
• How to fix board structure without burning relationships

4) The Private Equity Pattern

• Pattern recognition through repetition: why PE backed AEC boards outperform
• Experience as leverage: what seasoned investors see that most founders miss

5) Real Talk on Board Power

• Why many investors lose interest when companies plateau and how founders can counter it
• The hidden tension of “board coups” and replacing founders
• How ego defines leadership longevity from Larry Ellison to Bill Gates

If you’ve ever left a board meeting wondering what the point was, this one’s for you. Learn how to build a board that keeps you accountable and scales with your business.

Join the KPR Co Q1 Event to connect with founders and investors shaping the next generation of AEC growth.

Register for the Owner Training Webinar happening on Nov 20th to go deeper into leadership, governance, and scaling for the real world.

The closeout process is where most projects quietly fail. In this episode of

KP Unpacked, the #1 podcast in AEC, KP Reddy and Nick pull back the curtain on why handovers break, why owners get stuck with the bill, and how to design for decades instead of deadlines. From BIM’s broken promise to the CapEx vs OpEx split, this is a hard reset on how AEC should finish work.

Highlights

1) Documentation and data

• BIM vs reality: digital models did not eliminate banker boxes or fragmented handovers
• Documentation as asset value: warranties, submittals, service records as the true owner’s manual
• Modern handover standard: digitize everything, make it queryable, and keep data portable across owners

2) Incentives and ownership structure

• CapEx vs OpEx: split mindset drives short-term choices that hurt operations
• Incentives and warranties: tie first five years of maintenance to designers and contractors
• Design–Build–Operate: operating accountability changes what gets built

3) Operations and economics

• Maintenance economics: lifecycle costs can exceed build costs and should change design choices
• Manufacturers and feedback loops: lost warranty visibility and how direct data ties prevent waste

4) Process and workflows

• Decentralized workflows: hundreds of contributors, no single system, and why forcing one platform fails at closeout

5) Owner playbook

• Set closeout requirements early, enforce data standards in contracts, and involve operations from day one.

This is exactly why we launched the Owner Training Series to help owners and owner reps fix what breaks between design, build, and handover. Learn how to manage risk, enforce better closeouts, and align your teams for long-term success.

2nd Webinar is on Nov 20th.

Enroll now and get the replay of first one → https://kpreddy.co/owner-training-series

AEC leaders, operators, and innovators, this one matters. Listen now and fix your closeout before it burns value.

Sounds like you? Join the waitlist at https://kpreddy.co/

Check out one of our Catalyst conversation starters, AEC Needs More High-Agency Thinkers

Hope to see you there!

If meritocracy starts at a web form, do you still need warm intros or just relentless curiosity?

Track3D founder/CEO NK Chaitanya joins KP for a field-level riff on founder-led sales, learning on job sites, and why doing the unscalable early creates durable moats later. We unpack how a cold application turned into a partnership, why “works on day one” beats roadmap theater, and how automating the boring parts brings joy back to building. NK also breaks down Track3D’s $10M Series A, the tech vs distribution dance, and what it really takes to earn a customer’s time.

Highlights

• One front door: meritocracy via a website form (and why it works)
• Founder in steel-toes: two years on sites to earn insight (and trust)
• Tech moat vs distribution moat: when to swing between them
• Design partners > pilots: time commitment beats small checks
• “It has to work now”: MVPs that are job-ready, not demo-ready
• Why this industry hates being sold to and how to sell by serving
• Doing the unscalable early to make scale possible later
• Founder-led sales past $1M (and why the founder stays in the room)
• Automate the drudgery, protect the joy: AI that frees real work
• Immigrant advantage: beginner’s mind as a superpower

Learn more about KPR Co Mastermind Groups here!

Upcoming KPR Co events

• Owners’ Training Series: practical moves for owners and owner’s reps

Turn your 2026 plan into real Q1 momentum.
Join KP Reddy and a small room of AEC leaders on January 13 in the SF Bay Area for the first KPR Quarterly, where strategy meets execution in the first 90 days.
👉 Learn more: https://kpreddy.co/kpr-quarterlies?utm_source=buzzsprout&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_campaign=lead-gen-boost

If you can ship a site plan with one click, do you still need the degree or just better prompts?

Director of Innovation Brandon Blackberg (RTM Engineering) joins KP for a fast, practitioner-level riff on how AI is reshaping civil and structural work. We cover the “McDonald’s vs gourmet” future of delivery, why generalists win in a systems world, and how to avoid getting locked into someone else’s feature stack. We also talk vibe coding, token bills, and what KP would do if he started a firm tomorrow.

Highlights

• Why entry-level engineers will start closer to “junior-plus” with AI at their fingertips
• Generalist thinking vs narrow specialization when failures are system level
• Rethinking drawings and phases when iteration is cheap
• Time and materials, lump sum, and the real impact of token costs
• Multi-LLM strategies to avoid platform lock-in
• Guardrails that keep creativity alive and production safe
• Build vs buy: when an internal tool beats a vendor, and when it doesn’t
• Career paths that don’t look like ladders: engineering, coding, sales

Learn more about KPR Co Mastermind Groups here!

Upcoming KPR Co events

• Owners’ Training Series Kickoff: practical moves for owners and owner’s reps
• Vibe-a-Thon: vibe coding for non-coders, prizes included
• 9th Annual KPR Summit: the room where AEC’s next moves get decided

Turn your 2026 plan into real Q1 momentum.
Join KP Reddy and a small room of AEC leaders on January 13 in the SF Bay Area for the first KPR Quarterly, where strategy meets execution in the first 90 days.
👉 Learn more: https://kpreddy.co/kpr-quarterlies?utm_source=buzzsprout&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_campaign=lead-gen-boost

KP Unpacked, the #1 number podcast in AEC breaks down how early-stage teams actually win attention and revenue in 2025.

KP and Nick go deep on founder-led distribution, “signature marketing” vs checklist B2B tactics, and why authenticity beats AI-generated slop. You’ll hear concrete examples from guerrilla stunts at conferences, product-led marketing, event strategy (sponsor vs booth), and running tight experiments you can pivot from fast.

We also cover brand risk, mission-first messaging, and hyper-legibility: publishing the “exhaust” of your work at a useful cadence. If you build, sell, or invest in AEC or construction tech, this is your field guide to differentiation in the AI era.

From Shadow’s portfolio lessons to classics like “1,000 True Fans,” this episode gives you practical moves you can ship this week.

The #1 podcast in AEC. KP and Nick. No fluff. Real tactics you can use.

Key topics for search

• AEC marketing, construction technology marketing, B2B growth
• Founder-led go-to-market, distribution, demand gen, ABM
• “AI slop” vs human creativity, signature marketing, guerrilla marketing
• Product-led marketing, brand risk, mission-driven storytelling
• Event strategy: sponsorship vs booths, trade show timelines
• Experiments, attribution limits, small-batch campaigns, “1,000 True Fans”

Turn your 2026 plan into real Q1 momentum.
Join KP Reddy and a small room of AEC leaders on January 13 in the SF Bay Area for the first KPR Quarterly, where strategy meets execution in the first 90 days.
👉 Learn more: https://kpreddy.co/kpr-quarterlies?utm_source=buzzsprout&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_campaign=lead-gen-boost

In this episode of KP Unpacked, KP and Nick break down one of the toughest choices for hardware and robotics founders in AEC:
Should you sell the equipment, offer it as a service, or self-perform the work?

We cover how to size distribution and reduce friction, when CapEx vs OpEx tilts the deal, what risk transfer really costs, and why your choice is not static. We also get into channel pitfalls like exclusivity and rights of first refusal, and share field lessons from companies building real robots for construction.

What you’ll learn

• A simple way to map distribution size vs friction before you pick a model
• When RaaS wins due to OpEx and risk transfer
• When to sell equipment because the interface is mature and buyers have CapEx
• When to go Prime/self-perform for fast payback and control
• How maintenance, spares, and uptime reshape your margins
• Why channel exclusivity and ROFR can box you in
• How to use customer conversations to validate the model early

Examples referenced

• Lumina: electric construction equipment and why self-perform can align incentives
• Okibo: drywall finishing robots and why RaaS speeds product learning

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro and warm-up
• 03:05 Why cheerful, constructive podcasts work
• 04:45 Founders Podcast and dense learning
• 07:06 The big question: sell, service, or prime
• 09:20 Framework start: distribution size vs friction
• 14:35 Leasing, risk transfer, and unfamiliar tech
• 17:20 RaaS realities: maintenance, spares, support
• 22:35 Heuristics for RaaS, sell, and prime
• 25:20 Incentives when you operate your own machines
• 28:36 Okibo case: production scale and feedback loops
• 33:26 CapEx vs OpEx and incentive alignment on projects
• 39:44 Channels, exclusivity math, and distribution maturity
• 40:39 The ROFR trap and how it kills deals
• 42:19 Ask customers early and often
• 47:39 Wrap

If you’re building in AEC and wrestling with go-to-market, send us your scenario. We’ll pressure-test it on a future episode.

Sounds like you? Join the waitlist at https://kpreddy.co/

Check out one of our Catalyst conversation starters, AEC Needs More High-Agency Thinkers

Hope to see you there!