¶ Intro / Opening
Hey , welcome back to KP Unpacked . My name is Jeff Eccles , I'm a Senior Advisor at KP ReadyCo and this is my opportunity to sit down with KP Ready , who is the CEO and founder of KP ReadyCo , Also the founder of Shadow Ventures . This is my opportunity to ask KP . Once a week I get to do this .
It's the only time I get to ask it and basically I get to do this while we're recording and we're live on camera , so he really can't react in any other way . I'm like KP , what were you thinking ? What were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn ? So , as I mentioned , I'm joined today by KP Reddy . Kp hi , how are you ?
Hey , how's it going .
It's going really well . You hey , how's it going ? It's going really well . The post that we're going to talk about today is , as always , it's a good post . It's an interesting post . We were talking before we went live . I just spent the last hour recording with Frank Lazzaro
¶ Welcome to KP Unpacked
on our team about unpacking AI and this is , for me , feels like a little bit of a continuation of that conversation , and this is , for me , feels like a little bit of a continuation of that conversation . But , as we were saying , this post got a lot of responses and I think it's going to become obvious why I think it's important .
It's short , but I think it's a really important .
I also got a lot of messages right . There are a lot of people wanting to spar with me , which I never shy away from a good fight . Okay , I never shy away from a good fight .
Okay , well , so what I wasn't prepared to announce . But what we are planning is we have rented a ring in downtown San Francisco for actual cage matches , you know , I did train on my sabbatical .
I trained MMA for almost like a year .
Okay , well , that's going to be Well they told me I was too old .
basically they're like you're 42 years old . What should take two hours to recover is taking you two weeks . You need to stop , yeah , and they're like oh , and , by the way , you take hits really well I think was that a compliment Like you're really good at getting hit .
That was . Was that a compliment ? Like , you're really good at getting hit that that was . That was not a compliment , just so you know . Just to clear that up for you . But , um , so keep your eyes out for kp in the cage coming to san francisco . If you're not following kp on linkedin , you should be .
You probably can't connect with him he's usually maxed out on his LinkedIn connections but you can follow him .
He posts several times a day and all those posts come from conversations that he's having , things he's observing as he does advisory work , as he's on the speaking tour all around the built environment , all around the AEC world , the clients that we work with that are shaping the built environment , and all of his posts are insightful , they're pot stirring , they're
things that you should be paying attention to . So follow KP on LinkedIn . Just look up KP , letter K to letter P , and then ready R-E-D-D-Y , you'll find him . You hit the follow button and you , too , will be able to see the posts that we talk about , that we unpack here on KP unpacked . So as we record this , let me check the calendar .
You must've posted this on about the 11th of March 2025 . So if you're listening to this in 2028 , go back a few years , go to March 11th , and you'll find this post .
Hopefully LinkedIn will still be around .
I don't think LinkedIn will die . It's like the cockroach .
It'd be a shame for me .
It would be .
The only friends I have are on LinkedIn .
You're getting a lot of inside baseball here today . Folks , kp's fighting in caves , he only has friends on LinkedIn and I don't know what else . Um , a lot , a lot of insights you weren't expecting . All right , this post goes something like this in the world of aec , ai disruption , it's the people that are in denial that won't see it coming .
Things move slow until they move fast . Being dismissive about quote , ai isn't ready , or hallucinations , or who will stamp the drawings , or my innovation team is doing AI , are all leading indicators that you are focused on the wrong things , that you are focused on the wrong things . Yeah , this one .
I had a conversation from outside of this industry that would fit . I actually thought about sending this post to somebody you know a lot of that's not relevant to them because they're way outside of AEC , but these are the types of things that we hear a lot .
I would say it felt to me , as I was having that conversation earlier this week , thinking to what we do see in here all the time . It's like ah , I thought most of these conversations were like so 2022 , but they're still happening . It's 2025 . They're still happening . So it's not hard for me , and probably all of our listeners , to guess .
But where did this come from ? What was the inspiration
¶ The LinkedIn Post: AI Disruption in AEC
for writing these few sentences here ?
Well , one , I think you know I deal with all these CEOs right and they say like , oh , we need to disrupt ourselves before we get disrupted .
Pretty common phrase .
That's never worked . No phrase that's never worked no . Right , it's never worked .
We like to see it though .
It's nice to say yeah , and I think it's this dismissive attitude like AI isn't ready , so you just got to put it . It's like early days of the internet , when we had 14-4 dial-up modems and things were very slow , right . We might've said like , oh , we're very slow , right .
We might have said like , oh , the web is so slow , this will never go anywhere , right . And what I'm saying is like yes , there are one . Most of what people are using is what I consider consumer grade AI .
Oh , absolutely Right .
The stuff I play with is definitely not that .
It's different , it's very different .
So I think I'm like maybe a couple degrees ahead of people just because of the things that I get exposed to . So I have a little bit of a bias there . But I think if you're just dismissive of like , oh , it hallucinates , it'll never go anywhere , like you were going to get so blindsided , it's not going to even be funny .
And if you're really saying I'm going to like , as a CEO of a firm , my team is working on it and you're not checking in with them every day , like we're having a conversation , how , like , social media trends change every day and all that AI things are happening every hour , and if you're a CEO and you're doing your check-ins with your innovation team on AI
once a month , once a quarter , you should be fired Like just outright . If I was on your board , I'd fire you . That is like a daily standup . Hey , I want to know . I want to know every day what's changed , what's happening , what are we trying , what are we doing ? What to know every day ?
What's changed , what's happening , what are we trying , what are we doing , what's the progress , what's working , what's not working . But if you start off with like , oh , it's not working , and I'm just gonna put it over here for a minute and come back to it in a year . That's way too late .
And I think it's this idea that , oh , I don't want to be an early adopter , I don't like , if you're not an early adopter , of ai , the , there is no adoption , there's no like . You know , we talk about early adopters and laggards and all that , and then , like that valley of death , the chasm . That chasm is very wide .
You're either an early adopter or you're dead . There's no phases in between .
Yeah , it seems to me , you know that the example of oh , it hallucinates , we're not going to use it , that one resonated with me . The image that popped into my head was because , again , these are tools . Right , these are tools .
We need to learn the right tool for the job , how to use the tool , et cetera , and that what you just said about it hallucinates , we're not going to use it . Immediately . I went to the hammer and nail . Right , because we talk about that . Right , how's it go ? Every hammer is looking for a nail . Or , when you've got a hammer , everything looks like a nail .
Yeah , you know the idea that , oh , the hammer bends nails . For those of you that have never worked on a framing crew , yes hammers absolutely bend nails if you're not using them properly , right right , just because the hammer bends the nail doesn't mean we don't use the hammer . It means that we learn how to use the hammer better .
And then you know there are outliers , you know , of course there always are . You know there are outliers , you know , of course there always are . You know , maybe we hit something , maybe whatever . But yeah , we , we have to , we have to learn . We have to understand the problem statement .
We have to learn understand the problem to to find the right tool , learn how to use a tool , apply it .
And I think you know I have this . You know , of course , you know I invest in startups . I think gosh , I think we're closing on like three deals this month . We're very busy on the investing side and continuing to our investment side's growing . I mean honestly , you know , like my world right now it's like . I'm doing 80 things just trying to keep up .
So everything seems to be every every cylinder is hitting right now , but so it's very busy . But what I'll tell you is I had this saying with startups right , I'm not interested in SaaS companies that have an AI feature . I'm interested in AI-first companies that have SaaS as a feature .
Right .
Right
¶ Consumer vs Professional Grade AI
and I think if you take that and put that on AEC firms , I'm not interested in if I'm an owner , I'm not interested in talking to architecture firms that have AI as a feature . I'm looking for AI firms that have architecture as a feature . That's where we're going Right .
So that's the shift , and and it's very , it's almost impossible to make that shift just like this . The startups I'm dealing with , right , they're like yeah , we added this ai feature . By the way , why does everybody call their ai chatbot a a female name ?
I don't know I saw a comedian doing a bit on this recently .
I can't repeat it so yeah's kind of funny , right , like okay interesting . But you know , I think you know , oh , we added a chat bot to our construction management software . I'm like no one cares . Or hey , I can use a chat bot . There's a startup out there like , oh , you can use a chat bot .
There's a startup out there like , oh , you can use a chat bot to talk to your contracts . Well , I have a lot of friends in the industry . Zero of them woke up this morning and said I wonder if I can talk to my contracts ? Zero people did that this morning .
Right .
But it's all this weird feature stuff that people are doing that's just a waste of time , right , and these companies are getting funded and everybody will lose all their money , and that's just how it is right . In fact , I was playing with Mistral AI . They had their new OCR image recognition stuff .
It like will demolish about half of the startups that have been funded in the last year .
Wow .
You know the startup's like oh , you can like read contracts using our AI . Like done Mistral , does it for free . Like you know , try to convince a contractor pay for something that they could get for free .
Right , so I think this transition from I'm going to be architecture using AI as a feature to I'm AI using architecture as if the architecture is my feature . That's not a transition . That is a separate company .
Right , right , which gives you a little bit more insight baseball .
All these CEOs have come to me and said , KP , can you go start ? Can you go start our alt company that competes with our core company ?
Yeah , don't you think the ultimate or the fundamental problem , right , that we're going to be in an architecture firm that adds on the AI feature ? We've seen that before , right ? We're going to be an architecture firm that adds on AutoCAD , that adds on CAD to keep it , you know , non-denominational .
I guess we're going to be an architecture firm that adds on BIM . That type of approach has always been about what we're doing in-house . It's always been about our efficiency . You know things like that rather than our value proposition . You know things like that rather than our value proposition , rather than how we're creating value for our owners .
So it becomes this add-on that nobody cares about , especially on the client side , versus if we did actually have an add-on that we fully integrated and and you know , understanding and not disagreeing with what you're saying it's very , very hard , yeah , right , to take a legacy 30 year , a hundred year , 10 year , whatever firm and say , well , we're going to , all
of a sudden , we're going to completely switch gears and become this thing that we weren't previously . That that's , that's . That's a very steep climb , but I think I think that's where it starts is the add-on has always been about us on the , on the firm side , rather than about creating value for our owner yeah , I think so .
You know you always mention on the on the bundus pod that , like you know , follow kp , uh , on linkedin , I think also follow our company page , because what I'll tell you is I post on my personal stuff . I would say it's engagement , it's quippy not a lot of actionable items on my LinkedIn posts , right .
What I do on our company page is I post things that are a little bit more actionable . So obviously , you know , jeff , you can tell people where to find that , but I published this thing on our company page . It's very relevant to this conversation and I called it the DTD innovation journey , which is digitization , transformation , disruption .
So it's like yesterday and I said digitization , paper to computer files , excel , cad , workflows are the same . Business model is the same . The client experience is the same , right , I don't care if you're drawing on Vellum or using AutoCAD , customer doesn't care , right ? Then I said from there you're going to go to transformation .
Transformation is computer files , other things . So , like application layer versus a file layer , workflows vary . Business model is the same , client experience is enhanced , right . With bim I can show you a 3d model , blah , blah . It's enhanced . It's not different , right , it's just a little bit better right with disruption , your applicate .
You go from applications to starting a new company right , you have to start a new company . Do over , right ? Yeah ?
¶ AI-First Companies vs AI Features
And for the new co , it's kind of like netflix amazon . I mean , could barnes of noble sold books online and become amazon ? No , too busy managing their core business . Same thing , netflix . Could blockbuster really become netflix ? The answer is no . The answer is no . We can say , oh , they missed the boat .
Yeah , I mean , they could have invested in Netflix when they were a $15 million valuation . That's a big miss . But that's a capital allocation miss . It's not a business model miss , right . And so for disruption , the workflows are different , the business model is different , the client experience is different because it's a different company .
Right .
And so I say the fallacy in AEC is we can disrupt ourselves before someone else does . My answer is that is not true . You can either be part of or start a new company or not . Right , right . So could a blockbuster have started a new company that did streaming and allocate money ? Yes , they could have and they should have .
If you're a structural engineering firm , if you think you're going to transform , disrupt your own business , it's probably wrong . You probably need to start a different company , go head to head . And go head to head . Right , go head to head . That's what it is .
If you want to disrupt yourself , set up a new company different metrics , different strategy , different everything and , most of all , different client experience . Yeah , and I think that's where , like the oh , everyone's missing the boat .
Okay , Hot take . Is anybody going to do it ?
What's that ?
Is anybody going to do it ?
I'm getting calls . I'm getting calls . A lot of people are saying well , here's what I'll tell you . Nobody disagrees with me In private session . 0% of the ENR 1,000 CEOs I don't talk to all 1,000 , whatever the sampling size is in there 0% of them disagree with me .
A hundred percent of them do agree that they can't do it with their own teams and they can't do it in their own business . So they're kind of and they're not sure if they can or want to . It's kind of a personal choice . If I'm two years from retirement , I'm like hey .
I'm going to sell the private equity .
I'm going to get the hell out of here . That's one option . Get the hell out of here is an option . But I'm having several of them coming to me like , hey , can we joint venture and start an AI-first company with you ?
And I'm like .
I'm listening , I'll talk to you . I'll talk to anybody . You know that .
All right , reach out to kp ready . You got to follow him first on linkedin .
Yeah , kp reddy yeah , and follow the company page because I am going to start it's almost like my , my personal stuff . It's like I said , it's fun , it's interesting , it's to get you thinking . I don't give people a lot of answers though , I just give them more questions yeah yeah , company page I'm trying to add more answers like here .
Here's how to like actually go do something right , yeah , I mean , there is that right .
This is that's the purpose of of this particular version of the podcast . Right , is us stirring the pot ? Um , you know , looking at it from 30 000 foot view , etc . Frank and I were talking about this as we were . We're recording earlier the ai unpacked version . It gets , it gets more , it gets actionable .
We have takeaways at the end of , or action items at the end of each of those episodes . So go over to the KP ReadyCo LinkedIn page and I'm not going to try to tell you what the URL that is , check the show notes Producer will drop links to the things that we talk about in the show notes and you can just go down there and click it .
But there , on the KP ReadyCo company page , you will find a different sort of content produced by KP and others on the team . You'll find some of the research we're doing and some of the other things that we're doing , but there's definitely a different flavor over there on the company page .
Yeah , and I think Frank does a good job . Some of the stuff that I post short form , he's like , hey , that's a great idea , let me flush it out , and then he turns it into a downloadable white paper that you can .
Actually he just did one on monetizing your innovation journey , which was basically came out of some of the workshops that I do , and it's like he took like my 10 bullet points and turned it into an actual actionable document toolkit .
so definitely yeah , now that url will also be . Or the url to the page on our website where you can find those downloadable white papers . You find that link in the show notes as well , but that
¶ The DTD Innovation Journey
one's a little bit easier . Go to kpreadyco slash research . That's only a couple of words long . The LinkedIn URL is a different animal , but both of those links will be in the show notes below , so go down there , click through .
You know what's interesting , jeff , I got a call from a very large investor the other day that's been tracking you know his friend and tracking he's like if people only paid attention , like actually paid attention to what you post and what you say , they would realize that you're giving them the playbook , like like there will be no surprise in a few years when
some things happen . You've literally kind of said here's what's going to happen . And it's not just like you're predicting it , you're doing it , you're funding the companies , you're doing the things like you're telling everybody exactly what you're going to do and they just kind of don't pay attention .
That's the thing with leadership .
Because this investor like called me up . He's like hey , do you want to go start a new company ? Do an X , y and Z . I saw your post how much money do you want ? Go build a team ? Put some of your money like whatever Right . And it's like how did you know that ? That's what I was saying Like , oh dude , like you're so transparent .
If only people would get it out in their own way . My son actually told me , dad , you should stop . You should take a break from LinkedIn . You're sharing too much .
That's an interesting insight . Is that Devin ?
Yeah , devin's like Dad , you're sharing your secrets in Open . Like it can't be secrets when you share them in Open , people have to be paying attention .
I'll ask Devin about that . That's funny . That's funny . So you should be following both KP , kp Ready on LinkedIn and KPeadyCo on LinkedIn , the company page , and again , you can find the links to those in the show notes below . What we've been doing is we've been unpacking , as is the whole format for the show KP Unpacked .
We've been unpacking KP's LinkedIn post from March 11 , 2025 . And it goes something like this 11th 2025 . And it goes something like this In the world of AEC AI disruption , it's the people that are in denial that won't see it coming . Things move slow until they move fast .
Being dismissive about AI isn't ready , or hallucinations , or who will stamp the drawings , or my innovation team is doing AI All are leading indicators that you are focused on the wrong things . This one got a lot of engagement , as many do , but this one is one of the ones that spikes and we look for those right .
We talk about the ones that people care about , the ones that we think have the most impact , and this is certainly one of those so . KP . Thank you for joining me today to unpack this post . Now that you and I have recorded and I was just recording with Frank I feel like I have .
Well , I know I have spent the last two hours talking about AI in different ways and on different levels . So it's been . It's been a good couple of hours , so thank you for this .
All right , good to see you .
And everybody else that's out there listening . Thank you for joining us . We'll be back again next week with another edition of KP Unpacked . What will it be this week ? If you go to LinkedIn here , we'll make you a deal . If you go to LinkedIn and follow KP Ready , make you a deal .
If you go to LinkedIn and follow KP Ready and you see one of his posts that you think that we should unpack here on KP Unpacked , drop that in the comments , give it a thumbs up or you know whatever reaction you want and put in the comments .
Please do an unpacked and we'll watch for those comments and maybe , maybe we will choose the one that you asked for .
Uh and maybe we'll have them on .
Maybe we will .
That's one of the things . We'll make you a star . We'll bring you here All three of our all three of our listeners will be exposed to all three of our listeners . My mom loves this show . She just loves it .
So if we bring
¶ Disruption Requires New Companies
on the person that votes and we bring on your mom , there's no listeners left .
It's like my mom calls like hey , I haven't heard from you in a while . I'm like you listen to my pod mom , like why do we actually have to talk ?
All right next week .
Next week we are kp's mom on kp unpacked no , that's , that's fine , as long as I'm not there okay . Well , you're in trouble now by the way , my mom thinks I'm still a civil engineer oh , all right .
Well , maybe we should have the producer cut this part out . We don't want to get you in trouble . You've been lying to your mother .
All right .
All right , thanks , kp . Thanks everybody for listening . We will be back next week with another episode of KP Unpacked . Thanks everybody .