EP 282 – Derek Feebrey – CEO of Trendspek – Drop Everything, It’s Time to Start Now

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:07
Let’s do it. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia Tech Podcast. We have Derek Feebrey with us today, the founder and the CEO of TrendSpek. Derek, it’s great to have you here. How are you doing? By the way? I love the green screen in the background. How are you?

Derek Feebrey 0:25
I’m well. Thanks, Michael.

Michael Waitze 0:27
It’s great to have you. Before we jump into the main part of this conversation, can we get some of your background for some context, please.

Derek Feebrey 0:35
So it’s a bit of a random background, especially for a tech founder. But the three of us there’s three of us who founded TrendSpek, we actually all came from an aviation background. Wow. So we first met each other, as pilots in outback Australia, where we’re learning to, or building up our hours are flying hours. Ultimately, we all then went on to airline careers. So I didn’t nearly 10 years of flying Jumbos around the world, did you? Yeah, go ahead. It’s actually what led to our first venture together. So you know, we’ve known each other for going on 20 years. And then about 10 years ago, we started our first venture, which was actually a drone service based company in Australia. And we’re actually one of the first so by that, I mean, then drones weren’t a thing. They were like, built in living room. Yeah, tables, and to actually operate one commercially in Australia back then you actually needed a pilot’s license to fly one makes sense. So, for instance, our company, it was regulated by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, or Kassar and manage the same way, as they did with Qantas, for example. So that’s where it kind of lent itself to our experience. And then it was really over that journey, that we specialized and focused on asset inspections. It was predominantly working with those type of companies that we will quickly learning Well, it was one thing to use a drone to do an inspection and keep people safe on the ground, we were just creating a whole new set of challenges on what do you do with 1000s of photos? How do I interpret them? How do I store them, and ultimately, it just all these photos just ending up in the same old PDF report. So while we’re changing the inspection process, we weren’t changing the outcome.

Michael Waitze 2:39
You know, one of the things that I learned when I was at Goldman Sachs, is that the process is actually super important. And it’s not just the process of before you do something, but after you do something as well, right, we did some really complicated trades. And it sounds like this, where the prep into the trade is super important. But then what you do with all the data and the information after the trades, you then you can probably report it to your counterparty, which is similar to this is also super important. You can’t just dump the data on them. And the idea for me is always how do I create a process that’s replicable and easily repeatable? So that not that every client gets exactly the same data, but they get at least the same baseline data so that they can take it and do what they want with it as well, if we’re not providing them with the proper analytics. Does that make sense? And is that something you’re trying to do as well?

Derek Feebrey 3:27
Yeah, that makes total sense. And it’s weird, like, how we built TrendSpek was designed for a particular outcome, but the way it’s been built, we’ve been continually learning how other fields outside of like asset management, for example, are using the same foundational pieces of data for different outcomes. That’s kind of what you mean, isn’t it?

Michael Waitze 3:53
Yeah. Because, look, every client that we had needed to get their stuff reported to them net asset values in the mutual fund business needed to be reported by a certain time, you may not have the same time constraints. But they all needed to report to regulators. I’m sure there’s some regulatory environment for you to exist in as well. But the point is what they did with it after they got that data, we weren’t 100% Sure. But it had to be in a specific format first, just so it made sense to us. And then we could communicate with them about what it really meant, as well. Yeah.

Derek Feebrey 4:23
Yeah, no spot on. And that’s why it was important to work because we work across a pretty diverse range of, say, asset classes. Yeah. Same underlying process that they, they use and, and lucky for us, you know, it’s ISO standard asset management. So the underlying components are all very similar, but everyone has their own reporting matrix and how they assess and classify risk is always different. And that might be company based, industry based or even government or regulatory based,

Michael Waitze 4:57
or some combination of all three of those things right. For sure, depending on the region, the town, the city in the place where people are operating for sure. Can we? Can we back up a little bit again? Yeah, what exactly does trend spec do for people that may not be familiar.

Derek Feebrey 5:13
So trend spec, essentially enables you to do digital inspections of built structures, go ahead, and then ultimately generate 3d interactive reports. So what we’re actually taking is the status quo, which is typically physical inspections. So you look at building facades, they still use rope access people abseiling down, taking handwritten notes, tell them no really no bridge inspections, they use those bridge inspection units. So like a big extension arm that goes around the bridge, they get out their binoculars, they get out their big pen, they write their notes, then they get back to the office and type up a report. This is what really what everyone does. So we’re taking that process to essentially where they use a tool like a drone capture, say, a bridge, going from a two week process down to a four hour process. And then they actually do their inspection digitally, from anywhere in the world, just on a web browser, and actually do the assessment and markups on the 3d model itself. So what they actually end up with is a 3d interactive report where they can have complete context.

Michael Waitze 6:32
And unless I’m wrong here, there’s way more than just a time savings here, right in the sense that God if some guy or gal is physically going somewhere and taking notes, and then going back and typing them up into a PDF or something, how different is that than the type of data that you’re getting? By flying, I’m sure multiple drones taking tons of different angles, hours of footage, and photos, and then analyzing that in a short period of time. And then putting that in a report. I mean, the granularity must be completely different now.

Derek Feebrey 7:07
But the granularity is incomprehensible to some people, like they’re going from, say, 100 points of data to millions of points of data, I would think. But ultimately, like if you pitch yourself as you Michael, you’re responsible for this portfolio of buildings. If a bit of this building falls off and hits a pedestrian below, you’re responsible ultimately. Now when you’re making decisions, if I give you a report, a paper based report that’s been collected by somebody who’s abseiled down that building? Yeah. You’re relying on that person? Did he ever good sleep the night before? exactly did he whizzed past and miss something? Like

Michael Waitze 7:50
did his day like you just can’t account for this stuff? Sorry. Go ahead. Nine.

Derek Feebrey 7:55
Yeah, because then you’re it’s all subjective to one particular person hanging 20 storeys above the ground, right? Taking handwritten notes. And that’s the same, like a lot of the engineering firms. They’re very similar, where they’ll go to site, take some photos, take some handwritten notes, go back to the office. Now, if they’re looking at a photo, and like, ah, wish I’ve got one a bit to the left, because I can’t quite see this. Yeah, it’s usually cost prohibitive for them to go back out to site. Yeah. So they will start making assumptions. And then ultimately, you’re the one responsible Michael, because your portfolio, your risk I’m already doing with what TrendSpek delivers is the entire facade, it’s documented evidence based decision making, because you can see every angle, every point of that building, not only from one inspection, but you can go back in time, to his last inspection and make a direct comparison.

Michael Waitze 8:49
So for new buildings, I want to talk about this in a second because I actually went through the process of designing building something from scratch. But I want to talk about existing buildings. And you mentioned kind of guessing what should be there. But if I take a building that’s 10, or 15 years old, and I start doing trends back work around it, right, which is super effective. How do I account for all the stuff that happened in the previous 15 years? Right? Because I’m gonna go from basically like stone age data to, you know, space age data, in one fell swoop, right? Is there a way in the same way that Photoshop can look at a picture and say, I think the pigment should be like this? Is there a way that you can do that as well by going back and looking at some historical photos? And then you don’t I mean, filling in some of the gaps, or is that really hard to do as well?

Derek Feebrey 9:43
That is hard to do. A few reasons. One, previous like if you’re looking at data for the last 10 years, yeah, having any sort of record is the first challenge. And it may start new But it used to stun me. But now it’s just so widespread. It doesn’t at all. A lot of owners got no idea where any of these records and reports are. Because Jim retired last year, and Jim has been managing this asset for 20 years. And he took it all with him. And now we don’t know where anything is, right? It’s in Hawaii. No. Yeah. So that’s the first challenge. And then the actual having the imagery from all those previous inspections is hard to come by as well. But if we do have it, then it’s actually usable, and it feeds a system. And it’s the same as if I, if I predict where we’re going in the next 1020 years is that the AI will be that complex and accurate that it will start predicting what will happen in the future.

Michael Waitze 10:49
Right. Yeah, I don’t see that as a big leap of faith. I mean, I definitely think that that’s going to happen, we’ve seen what’s happened. We’ve been talking about artificial intelligence for the last 50 years. But I feel like we’ve reached a tipping point in this as well. And that it’s starting to be able to do stuff that it couldn’t do before. Some of it is probably just purely database. But there’s also compute there as well, that we didn’t have before. Right.

Derek Feebrey 11:09
Definitely the compute power before. But I think what you said the word flagged me then was starting to Yeah, so in a lot of ways, I still see AI as kind of overhyped, because what we’re asking to do is quite challenging. But it’s starting to come around, it’s starting to get the intelligence behind it to be able to at least aid.

Michael Waitze 11:33
Can we talk about this from kind of, like a zero perspective? I’ve got a blank piece of land. And I’m going to build something there. Yeah. So when I built my house in Tokyo, we, we had an architect design it, but they also went to a rough ride. So we have a structural engineering company that kind of approves the design and says, Yeah, you can actually build this and people can actually live in it. But there was nothing there. And I remember riding my bicycle past the plot, and literally watching the house, go up bit by bit, dig the dirt, put the concrete and put the steel reinforced all that kind of stuff. Would you do that? As well, with trends back for a building that’s just being built? So you literally have birth? You know what I mean? Like womb to grave kind of stuff here, no grave yet. Yeah. But like, just from beginning to end? Because it’s that? What’s the word I’m looking for? It’s like the time lapse photography of every aspect of that building that I believe must become super valuable over time. If there are any defects in construction, or just things just start breaking down 1520 years later, you can see why does that make sense to?

Derek Feebrey 12:43
Well, you’ve, you’ve hit the nail on the head. So some of the clients we work with, especially who Build Own Operate their portfolio of assets. They do that with us now. And he almost got it right. Like they dubbed it the cradle to grave,

Michael Waitze 13:00
Dawn it. So they couldn’t come up with the word cradle. So shoot me,

Derek Feebrey 13:06
we started modeling the day before they break ground, right. And then we some inspect it weekly, some do it monthly. But ultimately, we build that historical layer upon layer. And also, we start with the actual 3d design model. So we’re now starting to compare, are they building to how it’s been designed. And you’ve, it’s amazing how many like defects you can find just during the build process or before things become hidden, like the wrong piping, going underground, which means they have to come back and rip up a slab and replace all this piping, that type of thing. Yeah. But where that then leads to is once the building is complete, essentially they they’ve got this evidence based, you know, rich data that they hold for the next seven years as part of their defect liability period. So if anything breaks, we can rewind to the day that bit was installed. So kind of where our philosophy sits. And this is a bit different, I guess, to a lot. We actually built TrendSpek for an asset, not necessarily the person. What does that mean, though? I’ll explain that. So we’ve built TrendSpek, for your property that you have, say built in Japan. Yep. Think of it like, we now become the ancestry.com have that particular asset. Because all of the different stakeholders around are really just custodians of, of that particular property like you own it for now. You might not necessarily always own it, another owner will come. You might use different engineering companies to do assessments on that building. You might change insurers, like all these people come and go in the lifecycle of a particular asset. Naturally, you’ve got the biggest interest or most vested in Just because it’s yours, the value sits with you, if you’re renting it out, the revenue comes to you. So you’re the most active person of that particular asset. But when you sell it, you would sell it with TrendSpek. Because that’s the DNA of the building. That’s its historical records. That’s all the intelligence about that particular building. So the new asset will new owner will come and take that along, and it becomes part of them.

Michael Waitze 15:27
You’re suggesting here that the TrendSpek data actually becomes part of the asset, particularly if you’re doing a cradle to grave, so it actually adds value to it as opposed to taking away value or being a cost associated with it, right? Because, again, when I built the house, I lived in it, and then I sold it part of the selling process was saying, this has been structurally approved by our up, which is a global, you know, structural engineering company that looks at gigantic buildings, as opposed to just individual homes. And we can tell people like this thing safe, particularly in Japan that is prone to earthquakes. Yeah, but it’s got to be the same everywhere in the world, right? Like this has been tracked by trends back forever. So if anything goes wrong, you can literally go back to its birth, and see like how it happened. And then go back and fix it in a way that you wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise, if you just like, I don’t know, I think it’s on the second floor. Yeah, no.

Derek Feebrey 16:21
Well, I’ll go back to my old past I gave you flagging that logic. So I’ve been watching this aeroplane repo show in America, you say that? Sounds way like go and repo planes. And if they can repo this plane with the logbook, it doubles the value? Yeah, just one little logbook for sure. You don’t have that the planes next to worthless because no one knows what’s happened. Yeah. What historically has happened to that? Yeah, we’re kind of the same for an asset. And as you write the value in the information, and the historical records within this asset becomes valuable over time.

Michael Waitze 16:57
So could you do this for us cars as well. And I mean, the airline industry is another perfect place for you to do this. But just think about cars. People are buying and selling cars all the time, right?

Derek Feebrey 17:06
Yeah. So we normally so we normally stick across like really high value, portfolios. But we do a lot in shipping. Now. For instance, yeah, big boats. Boats are a classic, classic example. Especially that they can model it. And you can have engineers doing their assessments and planning maintenance before it even while it’s at sea, before it even gets into port. So as soon as it goes into drydock, they’re not spending weeks doing an inspection. They’ve done it digitally. Yeah. And they’ve got a whole maintenance plan done,

Michael Waitze 17:42
but also means that anybody anything anywhere in the world can do it. How does like how granular is the experience? And how immersive is it? I mean, we can talk about digital twins, we can talk about precision reality twins, we can talk about the metaverse as well. But can we get this down to a place where like regular people can understand this? Whether it’s a an airplane, a big building a ship that’s going across the ocean? What is the experience? Like for the person that’s actually doing the analysis using this 3d model? What does it feel like to them?

Derek Feebrey 18:18
So the closest thing I could probably if you picture just going on to Google Earth right now. Yep. And having a look at zooming in on your place and being able to see in 3d, like, the thickness of paint flaking off your downpipe.

Michael Waitze 18:36
Got it. Okay, yes.

Derek Feebrey 18:39
Where you could read the address on the on an envelope, or read the name on an envelope.

Michael Waitze 18:45
Okay, that’s pretty impressive. What is the what’s the epiphany moment, like when you’re doing sales? Right? You know, one of the things is that startups can move really fast. But the companies to whom you’re selling probably takes time, I’m guessing six months or so to just fab them say, We love this. But to get through the procurement process and the payment process, and then onboarding you as a vendor, or whatever it takes takes time. What’s the moment you think we show this to someone? They’re like, Oh, this could change the way we look at buildings and big, big valuable assets.

Derek Feebrey 19:17
Yeah, it varies. Of course, you’ve always got to come up against politics within a large enterprise account, for sure. But you’re going to have champions that, no, they can’t wait and keep doing it the way they’re doing it. And that’s probably one of the most common common things they say after they first see trends back is like, you’re right, we can’t keep going on like the way we’re doing. And the bigger the pain, the faster they move. And I’ll give you an example, probably in audits, so you know, those big ship, shipping container loader cranes. Yep. They take about three days to inspect manually. And that’s only where a human can actually access it. So It is a big part of it that they can’t access. So they don’t really know the condition. Naturally, they’re all at port. So there’s a lot of corrosion, salt, corrosion, and then I get inspected a lot. Now, depending on what type of port, one, berth can load, multi millions of dollars worth of goods her day. Yeah. And take them out for three days, that’s an issue. And if they can inspect it, where the drone can actually capture that in an hour or so not really interrupt operations, they can then be inspecting it digitally, that same day, on a web browser, that’s where it changes the game. So you could increase the port’s output across X number of cranes, times x, millions of dollars of extra product moved. That’s when you start getting people going, okay, drop everything. It’s time to start. Now.

Michael Waitze 21:02
When most people think about drones, they think about kind of big apparatus. Right? They can fly around a gigantic building, and look at the externals. And maybe, you know, they think about Dubai or the UAE and employing these things that are self driving that can fly you from, you know, Abu Dhabi to Dubai in 20 minutes. Yep. But on the flip side, but you mentioned piping before, on the flip side, you could also in the same way that you can take a tube with a camera on it and put it on your throat and look into your intestines and get super high quality video of that right and great imagery of that. Can you build drones? Or are you using drones as well that are like the size of a bee or a wasp or a hornet that then fly into pipes and stuff like that? Not just in buildings, but across the board and ships and stuff like that. So you can see that imagery, too.

Derek Feebrey 21:56
Yeah, so there are internal, capable drones. It’s a fast moving market. And we’ve seen the birth of it, where, you know, the ones we first had were 25 kilos, you know, metre and a half across. And now they fit in the palm of your hand and a fully automated and you can say, show me that water reservoir capture that an offer will go on or capture it. And we’ll get all of the imagery that you know, we need to feed into trends back. So that is 100% automated now. So from our perspective, we see we talk about drones a lot, only because it’s the most common tool, yeah, using something that people understand. Where in reality, it’s any robotic, because all we’re looking at is ingesting imagery, whether it’s photographic imagery, whether it’s thermal imagery, anything that takes a camera is really what we’re looking for. And if the robotic itself can do that in an automated fashion, that’s another step. But you know, there’s ones coming out now where you can literally put a little box on your site, it will go off and capture what you need, when you need no one touches it. It uploads straight to trends back in the cloud. It’s processed in the cloud. And you could and then anyone, as you say globally can access that.

Michael Waitze 23:18
So are you working with sunflower labs that does that stuff with their drones that just announced that they were moving into Australia actually, hi. So sunflower does this for security purposes, is built by a guy named Alex Pacheco of I believe in Silicon Valley, just announced a partnership with some drone society in Australia, but again, has a box that sits on your lawn, it’s for, you know, obviously for commercial use, but also for personal use. It gets launched automatically, if it notices sort of suspicious behavior. It’s for security purposes, like, hey, there’s a guide your front door, not like a raccoon kind of thing. But again, it does launch itself. So I just thought that that was kind of interesting. You mentioned earlier, a moment ago, actually, about temperature, and I hadn’t considered this, right. But if you use, I’m gonna say infrared, but I really have no idea what I’m talking about. But if you use a camera that can measure temperature, and some device that can measure sound, and then you can combine the imagery with the sound and the temperature, you should be able to learn a lot more about a building a ship or something else as well. Are you doing that to

Derek Feebrey 24:28
set the temperature really helps from an engineering perspective, because temperature says a lot whether there’s moisture behind it or not. So it aids that kind of process. But where we’re seeing it mostly used is around the global push around ESG impact. So by not only doing your visual inspection, save a building, you’re doing the thermal inspection to see where there’s any heating or cooling loss, because those areas will come out. Yeah, at a different temperature. So that’s a way of them plugging. up those holes to improve energy efficiency, the other area was seeing, actually, we were running some experiments. Now there’s, by measuring sound you can, what they do is they they send off a high frequency pitch, where the, say a drone is trying to record that pitch. And it kind of builds a 3d model of where that sound is most prevalent. So instead of, you know how they running ASG tests, they kind of seal up your house and put vacuums in there to see a pressure loss or build up to identify how how sustainable the property is, they’re doing that now using sound. So we’re always looking at different types of data that will aid that intelligence piece around how your assets actually performing.

Michael Waitze 25:56
Interesting. You also mentioned and I didn’t expect to talk about this today, but because you brought it up, I have to go there. So I have, I have the largest insurance and InsurTech podcast in Asia by for our listeners in 170 countries. And the idea that then you can provide this information or work together with insurance companies just tell me how this works and what their reaction to this type of stuff is as well.

Derek Feebrey 26:19
So where we sit within insurance is more around a surance.

Michael Waitze 26:27
So more on that again,

Derek Feebrey 26:29
more around a short got it. Okay, go ahead. So if we, if I’m insuring your buildings, and you’re using technology, such as TrendSpek, you are showing me that by far you can better not only identify, prioritize and mitigate against risk, the chance of you coming in making a claim with me is reduced. So how does that reflect in Oh, how do I reward that? And it might not be big across, say a homeowner. But if I’m a property owner, and I own $50 billion worth of property, and you’re doing this across your portfolio, the chances of you making a claim have dropped for me. So I reward that. Secondly, if you do say there is a catastrophe of fire flood, or partial building collapse or a bit of infrastructure collapse. The challenge now is, like most of the big owners will have some sort of business continuity. Protection. Yep. So I’m paying for every day that assets down, I’m paying out that claim. Now, because it’s a collapse site, it might take me days, weeks months to get an assessor there to actually do inspection, that means I’m paying this out for months, where I’ve got the full history recorded, I can capture it in an hour, even if it’s an unsafe site, drone can be launched anywhere from a safe spot outside that area. Yeah, do the full modeling. I can then share that with any contractor I have or all the assessors, then that can be shared instantly with certain contractors to do works, scope of works, provide quotes that can be done in days now. And no one has ever been to that site. Right. So it helps in that, you know, claims process or post loss process as well. So it definitely plays its impact on the insurance market.

Michael Waitze 28:41
Yeah. And it also opens up a bunch of new different and interesting business models for you as well as on the I was on a call. A month ago, I think with a guy named Gene you who runs a company called Black panda and black panda does sort of cybersecurity mitigation. Yep. And one of the original ideas was to sell insurance policies around it. They do have an underwriting company that they work with, but it’s a different story. But one of the things that they did was they went back and they looked at how fire stations started. Right? Like why do we have fire stations anywhere? And the thing was, apparently, according to his research, he said that in 1660, something the Great Fire of London, the insurance companies who were at that point only insuring maritime, right? Like if you’re going to go to India, someone needs to ensure that yeah, said well, if everything’s gonna burn down, maybe there’s a way to ensure that too. And the best way to protect against the insurance is to have little fire stations everywhere. So if something does catch on fire doesn’t burn down. So instead of selling the insurance, it’s selling the protection, it almost sounds like in a way you could do the same thing if you’re not already doing that too. Right.

Derek Feebrey 29:48
Exactly. And interesting. Like one of our investors is IAG fire mark or IG one of Australia’s largest insurers. Good stocks and And yeah, the adventure side of it is biomark Based on that story, I love it. I love Yeah. Because each community had a fire mark where they pull together those resources protect each other.

Michael Waitze 30:13
Okay, before I let you go, I want to ask you one more thing. Do you miss flying? I, I’ve never spoken to a guy. Honestly, I’ve never spoken to a person who’s piloted jumbo jets. Never. I mean, I got 1000 Questions about that. But we won’t go there. I’m just curious. Because you’re still flying stuff. But do you miss that feeling of like, flying a jumbo? You know what I mean?

Derek Feebrey 30:33
Yes and no. So yes, the flying? No, to airline Sure.

Michael Waitze 30:40
Didn’t ask you about that at all. Don’t really, I mean, I get that part. But it’s just like getting on the plane and flying. That thing must have been super cool. No.

Derek Feebrey 30:48
Yeah, but you’re looking at it looking at the cool bits, which are, you know, the takeoff and landing, which is a couple of minutes to take off a couple of minutes for landing. And then because it was, you know, based out of Australia, our flights were Sydney, Johannesburg, Sydney, Santiago, LA. So then there’s 14 hours of sitting there in the darkness. And if you’re going to those southern routes, like, I think Johannesburg and Santiago, the most isolated routes only really caught us doing them. Well, so you’re down over Antarctica by yourself. In the dark? Oh, my gosh, that in 14 hours. But the jumbo itself was by far like, I don’t think there’s many people who don’t have a fond memory of a jumbo. Did you see them all go?

Michael Waitze 31:34
Did you follow the 380s? No, I stopped before that. Before that. So I’ve been super cool. So what’s the what’s the future of TrendSpek? Like what is what is growth look like to you?

Derek Feebrey 31:47
So growth is it’s been fast organic growth at the moment across multiple industries. But now we’re loving it because we’re seeing organic growth now, not only across APAC, but you’re the Americas as well, I would think. So we’re just continuing to build on that. Around our core focus on how do we help owners and engineers better inspect and better report. Got it. So really good collaborative network of clients and channel partners, who essentially just collaborate with is where we become the facilitator, and we help build on the different outcomes and how we can solve those.

Michael Waitze 32:30
So again, I said I was gonna let you go, but you just brought this up. And I have to ask, I have this theory of like, there are things we know, we know. And then there are things we think we know. And particularly when you’re dealing with clients, you can look at a client who owns like you said $50 billion of real estate and feel like it’s very similar to and their perspective is very similar to another client who owns $40 billion of real estate. And yet, it could be super different. Do you find that the feedback that you get from a new client or a potential client or even just from a conversation makes you then go back and reevaluate and say, What else? Do we need to build into this thing? As opposed to what have we already built? And why don’t you use it?

Derek Feebrey 33:10
Both. To put it simply, that is the whole reason TrendSpek is here. And this way, we never, we never went into it going, you know, we want to start a software company. We had to come up with the solution. We’re trying to solve an outcome, right? And we’re trying to find all the different ways that, you know, we could help solve that outcome for all of those clients we had. And when it never existed, we’re like, Well, what are we going to do? sort of waited, waited and hope somebody came up, you know, started building it, and

Michael Waitze 33:44
we could use it, right? No, that’s not the way it worked out. And so,

Derek Feebrey 33:48
and having that, you know, being that reason while TrendSpek was born, is because we’re just trying to solve the outcome. It’s just stay within our DNA. Yeah. So our team is always feeding off those ones who own the $50 billion portfolio and those ones who own the 40. It’s, we work with all of them, because they’ll there’ll be commonalities, and we will see how this works with the $50 billion owner, we’ll see how it works with the $40 billion in it. And we’ll find the best outcome that solves both of those challenges. And I think that’s where we’ve been successful.

Michael Waitze 34:22
And I have more says, Now I’m really starting to think about this deeply. You’re gathering all this data, right? And whether it’s cradle to grave data, or this building’s been around for 15 years, but we’ve been following it for five, you’re gathering all this data. And the more you do it, the more granular that data is going to get because a drone today is and the cameras that are on them, but also just their ability to move is way better today than it was even just five years ago and five years from now it’s going to be even more even better. Is there a data play here as well where then you can take this accumulated data not just of buildings in Australia or assets in Australia So it’s all over the world, and then make ship design airplane design, building design better from the get go, as opposed to trying to mitigate it later.

Derek Feebrey 35:12
Exactly. There’s two components. And this probably goes back to your question on Where’s trends back where our vision is and where we’re going. One component is most organizations now internalizing their own drone programs. So they’ve got their own teams out there collecting their data of their own assets, which is perfect for us. Because they’re just now uploading all of the imagery ready to be processed. So we’re collecting more information of more assets. And ultimately, where that goes is. Say we have 10,000 industrial warehouses in TrendSpek. Yep. If we can then leverage that to go okay, this type of material has x number more defects than this type of material or this area suffers more defects, then surrounding areas, you can start getting quite analytical to it feed that information into design. Like we got owners say, stick with this industrial thing. Trends back in two clicks will give you the exact roof slope. What’s the best roof slope? Which roof slope has? Or what roof slope ultimately leads to less water defects?

Michael Waitze 36:36
So do you work with companies like TM X and Australia Timex global, that go around and do warehouse and all that other kinds of stuff, all building all those types of buildings as well.

Derek Feebrey 36:48
We so most of our most of transport users are either the asset owners themselves, because ultimately, they’re commissioning all of the work, or those in reporting. So a lot of engineering firms. A lot of those engineering firms who are doing the inspections and doing the reports, they’re mostly now feeding those two owners. But the same from all different other types of reporting output. So you talked about insurance. And whether that’s having Marsh do all of our risk engineering and replacement cost assessments and all of those things, or it’s, say CBRE and property who are doing capex reports, technical doodlers reports or history reports. So anyone who is providing report on a particular asset Yeah, is most of those channel partners.

Michael Waitze 37:40
Got it? Okay. I’m gonna let you go. How can people get in touch with you?

Derek Feebrey 37:44
Our website is https://trendspek.com/. Touch base with us. Tell us that you heard about us from Mike’s marvelous podcast.

Michael Waitze 37:56
Derek Feebrey is the founder and CEO of TrendSpek. Thank you so much for doing this today.

Derek Feebrey 38:00
Man. Thank you