NREL Submission - Raw form

Part 1: Opportunity

Elevator pitch: There’s a better way to build the newly popular mixed use communities: Modular, Environmentally Sustainable and Fast. The worldwide emergent middle class is desperately looking for a cost effective option that allows them the high-tech luxury of the modern, semi-urban American lifestyle, AND earth friendliness. Demanding it all, and willing to pay a premium for it.

Part 2: Target Market

Customers: Multi-Family builders, urban-planners, municipal governments, and ultimately the urban public. Market and Industry: Large Scale ($150 million or larger) Multi-Family construction is scratching the surface of sustainability, finding that it’s good for the bottom line as well as marketing image. But the builders aren’t going “Deep Green” because they don’t have a proven option that can be easily duplicated. Modular construction of a facility with integrated advanced on-site waste recycling and renewable energy production improves on the cost structure of site construction and reduces the impact the construction company and ultimately the end users have on the environment. Competition: Multi-Family engineering firms adopting similar design criteria: We will work to establish public standards that encourage the extension of the designs, thereby driving down the ultimate cost of the construction. We’ll look to license and consult on the model with other industry players. Barriers: The status quo: construction and land planning is a very conservative industry. Experimentation is rare and celebrated as architectural marvels, yet the majority of residential construction follows a few standard models: Stand-alone single family/Duplex, Row House, Apartment complex, and High-rise.

Part 3: Business and Resources

Inception: Looking at American apartments, suburbia, and urban lifestyles and contrasting them with the concepts of sustainability. Found a dramatic dissonance. Current Structure: Brian Drake, Entrepreneur Management Team: TBD Intellectual Property: 5D (3D plus Time, and Cost) building models with integrated energy co-generation, bio-digestion; coupled with manufacturing processes for rapid, cost effective construction. Tangible Assets: Building Information Models (BIMs), System of mass-customization modular construction.

Part 4: Product

Function and Benefit: A complete virtual model of an eco-city campus, called a GaiaShip, allows for rapid site design and customization, exact resource and cost estimates, and hyper accurate construction schedules. The integration of municipal services like waste recycling and renewable power generation provide highly desirable selling points for both the municipalities and the end-users. Buildings that provide net positive power to the local grid and only barely rely on existing municipal waste and water treatment systems will be quickly approved by cash strapped municipal governments. Environmentally friendly housing with walkable retail, office and transportation systems integrated in them are highly attractive to an aging suburban populace, young high tech students and workers, families and New-Urban enthusiasts. Building a GaiaShip is dramatically cheaper due to the elimination of waste from the construction process and the dramatic compression of time from ground breaking to ribbon-cutting. Selling a GaiaShip to a management company is also correspondingly easier than normal. It has built in revenue streams from surplus power generation and a highly marketable product for end-users and home-owners. Development Stage: Stage 1: Engineering and model development (Current); Stage 2: manufacturing system design. Stage 3: marketing and sales Future Needs: Prototype campus with a forward thinking Land Developer and Builder

Part 5: Path-to-Market Strategy

Market Strategy: Publish interior design systems using 3d applications like Maya, Revit, Google Earth and even the CryEngine2 3D game engine. This allows Architects, students and even the general public to design interiors for the GaiaShip which they can then purchase and have constructed or publish online to popular social media sites and virtual worlds like Google Earth, Second life and others as they come available. Ads will be placed in targeted publications for industry. Public-Space design contests will be sponsored at local schools and non-profits, with spaces actually being built. Supplier and Distributor Relationships: Just In Time Manufacturing; exact suppliers to be determined after sites have been defined for local sourcing of materials. Distributors of product will be Multi-Family Land Development companies around the world who will license the use of the design IP for particular sites. Purchase of licenses will include consulting and site specific architectural plan generation. Deployment method and partners: As primarily a software model and manufacturing process specification; IP is transportable to any location world-wide where construction sites and resources are available. Key Milestones on the Path to Deployment: Engineering Development of Model; Design of Manufacturing System; Construction of prototype campus (proof of concept); Refinement and Customization of Model; publishing of 3d-interiors; Marketing and Sales

Part 6: Sustainable Advantage

Business Model: Develop and License 5D BIM model of GaiaShip. Consulting, Refinement, and miniaturization of the model to extend the applicable markets. Competitive Advantage: “Deep Green” - Tight Integration of power co-generation and water/waste management systems; coupled with manufacturing standard and 3d marketing. Focus on reducing the size requirements of the facility while still employing core benefits of municipal level resource management. Cost / margin benefits: Post initial model development, resale and re-use of the design becomes inexpensive and margins over 1000% are possible. Incubator Affiliation: None

Part 7: Financials

Sales and Gross Profits (in millions): Year 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Revenues -3.15 -2.73 9.90 9.90 49.50 EBITDA -3.15 -2.73 7.17 7.17 46.77 *First sale is 20% of $150 million prototype project in 2012 amortized over 3 years. Second is scaled up $600 million project. Once proven; design can scale to multiple simultaneous projects with corresponding income. Funding Needs: $5,882,800 for Model and manufacturing system development Exit Strategy: Sale of BIM model, web-site & engineering resources to global architectural or land development firm.

Part 8: Key Risks and Future Needs

Risks: LEED specification changing dramatically (low); Market shift away from new-urban mixed use (low); Inability to find Builder willing to execute. (moderate) Needs: Seed Capital, Engineering Team; Executive Team; Builder Partner