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Turning Waste Wood Into Buildings · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Today's show is about wood. Wood literally grows on trees,
0:23
Speaker 1: or it grows in trees, or maybe wood is trees. Anyway,
0:28
Speaker 1: My point is we treat wood as this ubiquitous, worthless
0:33
Speaker 1: thing all over the country all the time, wood just
0:37
Speaker 1: falls to the ground, stays there and rots. And yet
0:42
Speaker 1: at the same time there is this vast industry devoted
0:46
Speaker 1: to growing trees, cutting them down, and selling them as lumber.
0:50
Speaker 1: This combination effects suggests a profound possibility that is both
0:55
Speaker 1: very simple and very hard to realize. What if we
0:58
Speaker 1: used more of the wood that falls to the ground
1:00
Speaker 1: so we didn't have to cut down so many trees.
1:15
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is what's your problem. My guest
1:18
Speaker 1: today is Ben Christensen. He's the co founder and CEO
1:21
Speaker 1: of Cambium, a company that is the largest seller of
1:25
Speaker 1: salvaged wood in America. Ben's problem is this, how do
1:29
Speaker 1: we take the wood that is literally falling to the
1:31
Speaker 1: ground all around us and sell it so that people
1:34
Speaker 1: can use it to build things. In our conversation, Ben
1:38
Speaker 1: and I talked about wood, and we talked about technology,
1:41
Speaker 1: about software and AI, and also about whether local wood
1:45
Speaker 1: actually matters or is just vibes and side note, we
1:49
Speaker 1: talked about running one hundred and thirty one miles without stopping,
1:53
Speaker 1: which is a thing Ben has done. Ben grew up
1:56
Speaker 1: in New Mexico in a house without central heat, where
2:00
Speaker 1: he had to chop wood for the fireplace. In grad school,
2:03
Speaker 1: he studied forestry at Yale. All of this to say
2:07
Speaker 1: that he has been into wood for a long time.
2:10
Speaker 1: To start, he told me about the moment several years
2:13
Speaker 1: ago when he was back home in New Mexico and
2:16
Speaker 1: he had this epiphany that inspired him to get into
2:19
Speaker 1: the salvage wood business.
2:21
Speaker 2: It was a hot summer day, was going into a
2:24
Speaker 2: grocery store and saw a bunch of firewood out front,
2:28
Speaker 2: and I thought, huh, you know, I just left a
2:30
Speaker 2: big pilot wood a quarter mile away. I wonder where
2:32
Speaker 2: this firewood is coming in from. We're in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
2:36
Speaker 2: and the firewood was being shipped in from Estonia, and
2:39
Speaker 2: I thought, that can't make sense. You know, what is missing,
2:44
Speaker 2: the fact that you know you've got less than a
2:46
Speaker 2: mile apart all of this wasted material and all this
2:49
Speaker 2: material that is getting shipped in from Europe. What's missing?
2:52
Speaker 2: And so that was a starting spark moment of diving in.
2:56
Speaker 1: I mean, I will say, certainly, what you're saying is
3:00
Speaker 1: it makes common sense. There's a common sense resonance to it.
3:03
Speaker 1: On the other hand, globalization is amazing and amazingly efficient,
3:09
Speaker 1: and so contrary to a contrary to what common sense
3:13
Speaker 1: might suggest, it might actually make sense to send firewood
3:16
Speaker 1: from Estonia to New Mexico, even when there's wood in
3:20
Speaker 1: New Mexico. Like things like that happen all the time,
3:23
Speaker 1: and often when you look into it for good reason.
3:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think there's truth in that. The
3:29
Speaker 2: most validating piece of that is somebody who's doing it.
3:32
Speaker 1: Right, and it was probably cheap, right, it was probably
3:35
Speaker 1: weirdly cheap to get that bundle of wood whatever that
3:38
Speaker 1: is seven thousand miles across an ocean and two thirds
3:41
Speaker 1: of a continent exactly.
3:42
Speaker 2: And we can talk about maybe what is left out
3:44
Speaker 2: and the value of that at a different moment, but
3:46
Speaker 2: the high level point there is somebody's doing it.
3:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
3:50
Speaker 2: And also there's a reason that people weren't using that
3:53
Speaker 2: waste material, and that's obviously what we're focused on solving,
3:56
Speaker 2: is taking what is this huge waste problem and really
3:59
Speaker 2: tying it in bringing in the technology and the tools
4:02
Speaker 2: to do that, creating the markets to do it. There's
4:04
Speaker 2: a lot of different reasons and a lot of work
4:06
Speaker 2: you have to do to really use that waste material,
4:08
Speaker 2: and there's a reason and why it's been a waste historically.
4:11
Speaker 1: So okay, so you had this idea of, you know,
4:14
Speaker 1: why can't we use the wood that is just sitting
4:16
Speaker 1: here in New Mexico in the US whatever, rather than say,
4:20
Speaker 1: flying it in from Estonia. But that's kind of like
4:23
Speaker 1: a big abstract idea. Was there some moment when you
4:27
Speaker 1: realized how it could actually work in a meaningful way
4:31
Speaker 1: at scale?
4:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we started to realize and this had always
4:36
Speaker 2: been my intuition I grew up in this industry, is
4:38
Speaker 2: that our goal started to become to create the fundamental
4:43
Speaker 2: technology for the industry. So when you think about wood,
4:46
Speaker 2: there's eight to ten different steps. A lot of people
4:48
Speaker 2: have to touch it before it, you know, ends up
4:50
Speaker 2: in your kitchen or ends up in an office building.
4:54
Speaker 2: At each of those steps, there is a transaction. People
4:57
Speaker 2: are working and there's no connective tissue. And that's really
4:59
Speaker 2: what we saw in the salvage space first, because that's
5:01
Speaker 2: why it's being wasted. That's why you have a spot
5:05
Speaker 2: that is, you know, half a mile away from a
5:07
Speaker 2: grocery store. There's no connection. There's just no connectivity between
5:10
Speaker 2: those two worlds. And so what we saw is there's
5:14
Speaker 2: an opportunity to create the fundamental data layer. But to
5:17
Speaker 2: do that, you have to create demand. And so that's
5:19
Speaker 2: something I've always believed is you're going to bring software,
5:22
Speaker 2: you're going to bring AI, you're going to bring tools
5:24
Speaker 2: into this space. You have to create value by creating
5:28
Speaker 2: demand first.
5:30
Speaker 1: So how do you do that?
5:32
Speaker 2: You sell would and and that's the kicker.
5:37
Speaker 1: So like what does that mean for you? Like what
5:39
Speaker 1: does that mean in the case of your business.
5:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, starting with the demand is selling a material
5:46
Speaker 2: to the end customer. So we sell into large commercial
5:50
Speaker 2: buildings think like data centers or fulfillment centers. We sell
5:54
Speaker 2: into large furniture companies like Room and Boartant Steelcase. We
5:58
Speaker 2: sell into you know, large corporates when they build new stores.
6:01
Speaker 2: We do a lot of different work there.
6:03
Speaker 1: So what is the business now?
6:05
Speaker 2: So we sell would so we make it easier for
6:08
Speaker 2: people to buy wood that has sort of the best
6:11
Speaker 2: price in the market, that has the best sourcing in
6:14
Speaker 2: the market. So if you buy a million dollars worth
6:16
Speaker 2: of wood and have no idea where it came from,
6:18
Speaker 2: no idea when it's going to show up, you know,
6:20
Speaker 2: really sort of limited QAQC. And so that's what our
6:23
Speaker 2: platform really allows. Well, we sell what that's basically what
6:26
Speaker 2: we do to the end customer, and then we are
6:28
Speaker 2: building the supply chain full stack supply chain tool upstream.
6:32
Speaker 2: So we essentially are bringing AI transactions and payments into
6:36
Speaker 2: the industry for all of those steps that go into
6:38
Speaker 2: producing wood that is then sellable.
6:41
Speaker 1: So those are sort of two different businesses, right, and
6:44
Speaker 1: we can talk about them in turn. We sell wood
6:47
Speaker 1: is carbon smart wood, right, There is a brand of
6:52
Speaker 1: wood that one can buy called Carbon smart Wood. That's
6:54
Speaker 1: the wood that you sell, is that right?
6:56
Speaker 2: So we sell our own brand. You know, there's no
6:58
Speaker 2: real brands in wood. It's a trillion dollar industry and
7:02
Speaker 2: no one cares really if you buy it from this
7:05
Speaker 2: or that.
7:06
Speaker 1: It's a commodity, right, it's like oil or corn or
7:08
Speaker 1: some thing, right.
7:09
Speaker 2: Exactly, Yeah, but we don't think it has to be
7:11
Speaker 2: that way. And you know, by bringing in the Carbon
7:14
Speaker 2: smartweed brand, we're really doing that storytelling, you know, creating
7:18
Speaker 2: a lot of value for customers and loyalty around that.
7:21
Speaker 1: It's like conflict free diamonds or something like trying to
7:24
Speaker 1: differentiate the commodity exactly.
7:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically being able to understand where did this come from,
7:30
Speaker 2: came locally, it was salvage, or was reuse. All of
7:32
Speaker 2: those things are things that our customers care about, and
7:34
Speaker 2: this makes it really easy.
7:36
Speaker 1: How big is that business?
7:38
Speaker 2: It's been growing really rapidly. We basically will do over
7:43
Speaker 2: eight million board feet of material this year, so really
7:46
Speaker 2: large scale compared to where we started. So it's it's great.
7:50
Speaker 2: We're sourcing nationally now. We just expanded into Canada and
7:54
Speaker 2: are doing salvage at a really hard scale and we're
7:56
Speaker 2: now the largest salvage wood company in the country.
7:58
Speaker 1: So eight I don't know how to contextualize eight million
8:02
Speaker 1: board feet, Like I actually don't know if it's a
8:05
Speaker 1: lot or a little.
8:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's both a lot and a little. You know,
8:09
Speaker 2: when you're thinking about eight million board feet, you could
8:12
Speaker 2: basically think about that as like essentially call it ten
8:17
Speaker 2: large scale building. So if you think in your mind
8:21
Speaker 2: you're looking at you know, hey, these are really big,
8:24
Speaker 2: large scale like warehouses, that's essentially the volume of material
8:28
Speaker 2: you'd have.
8:28
Speaker 1: So that seems like a little for America it is.
8:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're definitely still in the early stage.
8:33
Speaker 1: Sixty billion Is that the right number of board feet
8:37
Speaker 1: America consumes the year?
8:38
Speaker 2: We're coming back to that word scale, which is there
8:41
Speaker 2: is so much room.
8:42
Speaker 1: To grow here, so so small, so very small, And
8:45
Speaker 1: I mean presumably part of that is because it's your
8:48
Speaker 1: young company. Part of it is because I imagine there's
8:50
Speaker 1: a there's a price premium, like how much more expensive
8:53
Speaker 1: is it?
8:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's largely not so wood is different in
8:57
Speaker 2: every region, but generally we are price competitive with the market.
9:02
Speaker 1: Interesting, So what is the what is the constraint on
9:07
Speaker 1: your growth at this point? Why only eight million? I'm
9:09
Speaker 1: sure eight million is hard. I don't mean to be
9:11
Speaker 1: sitting here in a room saying why only eight million?
9:13
Speaker 1: But like, but also why only eight million?
9:16
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, I mean we five x last year, so
9:18
Speaker 2: we've been growing like crazy. We're continuing to really see that.
9:21
Speaker 1: Will it be forty million this year?
9:24
Speaker 2: It should be close to that. Yeah, wow, So we
9:27
Speaker 2: are growing really really quickly. We have a huge volume
9:31
Speaker 2: of demand. But the truth of this is demand is
9:34
Speaker 2: it takes time. Right, you're building buildings, you're building products.
9:37
Speaker 2: Those are over several year time spans. And when somebody
9:40
Speaker 2: is going to use material. Again, we supply wood would
9:43
Speaker 2: from a material perspective, you know, white oak from US
9:46
Speaker 2: or white oak from somebody else is going to be
9:48
Speaker 2: very similar. But when they use a new supplier, there's
9:52
Speaker 2: always you know, you got to test it right. They're
9:54
Speaker 2: always going to want to see proof points that snowballs
9:57
Speaker 2: taking off. Right. We can point to really large buildings,
10:01
Speaker 2: we can point to really scaled products with national vendors.
10:04
Speaker 2: So we've got that now, but it takes some time
10:06
Speaker 2: to really get people to believe in the material.
10:10
Speaker 1: Is it hard to scale the supply side when you
10:13
Speaker 1: need a sort of reliable, consistent product.
10:17
Speaker 2: There's so much volume out there. We are supply chain
10:20
Speaker 2: constrained in the sense that who is going to use it,
10:23
Speaker 2: making sure that you have the right relationships and the
10:25
Speaker 2: right regions. All of that is what our software platform manages.
10:29
Speaker 2: But the actual volume of material is not really the constrain.
10:33
Speaker 1: So you've mentioned the software platform a couple of times,
10:35
Speaker 1: and I want to read a quote to you from
10:38
Speaker 1: one of your investors. You probably know what it's going
10:41
Speaker 1: to be, but I'm going to do it anyway. And
10:43
Speaker 1: it's about It's about the software side of the business. Right.
10:46
Speaker 1: The quote is it's critical for silicon value investors because
10:50
Speaker 1: we don't want to invest in a wood company. We
10:52
Speaker 1: don't want to invest in a construction company. We want
10:55
Speaker 1: to invest in a software company. Old school VC. I
10:59
Speaker 1: feel like new school VC wants to invest in wood,
11:01
Speaker 1: but that classic VC. They love software, no marginal cost,
11:04
Speaker 1: You're never going to be supply constrained. Great business. Tell
11:09
Speaker 1: me about the software side of your business. Also, are
11:12
Speaker 1: you a wood company?
11:14
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, is the answer.
11:16
Speaker 1: I won't tell the investor.
11:18
Speaker 2: Okay, you can tell them.
11:19
Speaker 1: Okay, they know, they know. They can pretend like you're not.
11:23
Speaker 1: But there is a kind of classic story where a
11:26
Speaker 1: company starts out to do a thing and then they
11:28
Speaker 1: build software to do the thing, and it turns out
11:31
Speaker 1: the software is what everybody is the great business. I mean,
11:35
Speaker 1: Amazon web Services isn't exactly that Amazon is a good
11:39
Speaker 1: company in anyways, but it's kind of that, right, Like,
11:42
Speaker 1: Amazon web Services is a very good business that was
11:44
Speaker 1: built to help Amazon sell stuff that's actual stuff. Tell
11:49
Speaker 1: me about the software side of your business.
11:51
Speaker 2: Sure. So basically what we are trying to build is
11:54
Speaker 2: the data layer for wood. So if you think about
11:56
Speaker 2: those eight to ten different businesses, you have wood that
11:59
Speaker 2: is you know at the tree stage. Wood that is
12:02
Speaker 2: logs on a truck. It's got to go to a sawmill,
12:04
Speaker 2: it's got to be dried, it's got to be cut,
12:07
Speaker 2: it's off and dried again. Then you have rye board.
12:09
Speaker 2: Those boards are going to get somewhere to be manufactured
12:12
Speaker 2: or shaped. Usually there's a couple of steps there. Then
12:15
Speaker 2: you have wholesalers and distributors who are going to sort
12:17
Speaker 2: of manage that inventory and then ultimately bring the commodity
12:20
Speaker 2: to market. There's a lot of different steps, right.
12:23
Speaker 1: And in each of those steps, is it a different company?
12:25
Speaker 1: Is it not a vertically integrated business industry?
12:29
Speaker 2: There are a couple of you know, really large vertically
12:32
Speaker 2: integrated players, you know, folks like Warehouser, Georgia pacifics your
12:36
Speaker 2: A Pacific, these really large players. Fundamentally, we're trying to
12:39
Speaker 2: be vertically integrated from a data perspective. So there's about
12:43
Speaker 2: forty five thousand smaller businesses out there that kind of
12:47
Speaker 2: sit as the other half of the market compared to
12:49
Speaker 2: those really large, publicly traded, you know, big market cap companies.
12:52
Speaker 1: And so that's like a guy with a sawmill or something,
12:55
Speaker 1: to be crude about.
12:56
Speaker 2: It, it's bigger than that, you know, thinking think about
12:59
Speaker 2: businesses that are going to be twenty to one hundred
13:02
Speaker 2: and fifty people that are you know, sort of core.
13:06
Speaker 2: It's your local sawmill, it's your local distributor. It's businesses
13:10
Speaker 2: that are very real, more than mom and pop. But
13:13
Speaker 2: they're kind of in that SMB space.
13:15
Speaker 1: And so they are just getting some product in the
13:19
Speaker 1: middle of the supply chain from some heterogeneous set of
13:23
Speaker 1: suppliers and then selling it on to somebody else still
13:25
Speaker 1: in the middle of the stack, or some heterogeneous set
13:28
Speaker 1: of buyers. And that's the universe that you are trying
13:31
Speaker 1: to bring information to.
13:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what you're touching on there is touching on
13:38
Speaker 2: the lack of sort of macro transparency. And this is
13:42
Speaker 2: the reason why the big players are vertically integrated, because
13:44
Speaker 2: they both exist at the demand stage and then they
13:46
Speaker 2: exist all the way back up to the tree stage.
13:49
Speaker 2: When you look at how the rest of the market operates,
13:51
Speaker 2: that's not true. You kind of know who's above you,
13:53
Speaker 2: and you know who's downstream of you, but you don't
13:55
Speaker 2: know two people above you, and you don't know who's
13:57
Speaker 2: actually buying it at the end of the day, and
14:00
Speaker 2: that leads to a lot of inefficiency. There's a lot
14:02
Speaker 2: of opportunities, particularly around having and holding inventory that you
14:06
Speaker 2: don't need to hold because you're trying to hold it
14:09
Speaker 2: so that when somebody calls and says I need wood tomorrow,
14:12
Speaker 2: you're ready. If you actually work at the front end
14:14
Speaker 2: of that project, you know that they're going to need
14:16
Speaker 2: wood in nine months and you can have that deliver
14:18
Speaker 2: just at time. So that's a big part of what
14:19
Speaker 2: we do.
14:20
Speaker 1: And so just to be clear, like it's costly to
14:22
Speaker 1: hold inventory, right, it's a bad use of capital if
14:25
Speaker 1: you can avoid it in a consistent way. Do you
14:29
Speaker 1: know flexport weird question, But like I talked to Ryan
14:34
Speaker 1: Peterson when he was early in the early you know,
14:38
Speaker 1: not long after he'd started that company, and it reminds
14:40
Speaker 1: me a little bit of what you're talking about. Right.
14:42
Speaker 1: He talked about they do freight forwarding, and he talked about,
14:46
Speaker 1: you know, trying to start a little business importing something
14:49
Speaker 1: from China and being shocked that like shipments of stuff
14:53
Speaker 1: going around the world on giant tankers. It's like a
14:56
Speaker 1: guy at a port with like a pad of paper
14:59
Speaker 1: is actually how that business worked. Reminds me a little
15:01
Speaker 1: bit of what you're talking.
15:02
Speaker 2: About, absolutely right. In the similarities with flexport. You know,
15:06
Speaker 2: we had somebody on our team who is working with
15:08
Speaker 2: one of our suppliers who literally there they were like,
15:11
Speaker 2: I got to go to my office and get you
15:12
Speaker 2: a you know, a slip and their office was a
15:16
Speaker 2: porta potty and they came out with this slip like
15:18
Speaker 2: happened like two weeks ago. You know. It is one
15:20
Speaker 2: of those things.
15:21
Speaker 1: That slip is like a piece of paper and invoice
15:23
Speaker 1: something a bill of late exactly.
15:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a scale slip. So just giving like this
15:28
Speaker 2: is how much what I got?
15:29
Speaker 1: So right, so that port of putty is your opportunity exactly.
15:33
Speaker 2: There's there's our new marketing campaign for sure. So the
15:37
Speaker 2: basics of it is there's a lot of these different
15:39
Speaker 2: steps and so to your question of how does this
15:41
Speaker 2: work from a salvage perspective, well, there's a lot of steps,
15:43
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of steps in traditional forestry, there's
15:45
Speaker 2: a lot of steps in using material to coordinate that effectively.
15:50
Speaker 2: It's a data questioned and to really use data, well,
15:54
Speaker 2: you have to get it onto your platform very efficiently,
15:56
Speaker 2: and then you have to make it connect. You have
15:58
Speaker 2: to make it interoperable so that at the end of
16:00
Speaker 2: the day, when we deliver wood to the end customer,
16:02
Speaker 2: we know exactly where it came from. We know all
16:04
Speaker 2: of those steps. I mean, the way to think about
16:06
Speaker 2: it is salvage would was our starting point. What we
16:09
Speaker 2: do now is we want to be looked at as
16:12
Speaker 2: the future of wood. We want folks when they are
16:14
Speaker 2: buying wood to buy it in a way that is modern,
16:17
Speaker 2: that is better sourced, and that gives them the type
16:20
Speaker 2: of optimized pricing that everyone is looking for in the market.
16:23
Speaker 2: And so we are always going to be you know,
16:26
Speaker 2: have you know this sort of core ethos around salvage,
16:29
Speaker 2: around reuse, around resiliency, and also we've expanded beyond that
16:33
Speaker 2: very significantly. So somewhere around fifty five ish percent of
16:38
Speaker 2: the total material will move this year is going to
16:40
Speaker 2: be salvaged.
16:41
Speaker 1: You know.
16:41
Speaker 2: The other you know of that is going to be
16:43
Speaker 2: sustainably harvested is part of you know, the bigger piece there,
16:47
Speaker 2: And the real theory of change here is that when
16:49
Speaker 2: you look at actually changing how we manage our forests,
16:54
Speaker 2: making that better, making that better for our planet, making
16:57
Speaker 2: that better for our communities, whoever you're optimizing for, it's
17:01
Speaker 2: very difficult to go to somebody who's managing that forest
17:03
Speaker 2: or to a logger and say hey, do better. Right,
17:06
Speaker 2: they are interested and really driven buymarket dynamics. If you
17:11
Speaker 2: are the buyer from them, if you are purchasing from
17:14
Speaker 2: them at scale, you can then really update and control
17:17
Speaker 2: and say, hey, we need you to do better if
17:19
Speaker 2: you want us to keep buying from you. And so
17:21
Speaker 2: that's that theory of change in which we've expanded from
17:24
Speaker 2: just salvage into forestry and wood products much more broadly.
17:28
Speaker 1: And in the current system or in the system absent
17:31
Speaker 1: your software, the buyer typically doesn't know what forest it's
17:34
Speaker 1: coming from, so they can't have any lever for change.
17:37
Speaker 1: That's the sort of problem that is being solved generally. Yes,
17:41
Speaker 1: And what's an example of a better forestry practice that
17:46
Speaker 1: a buyer might want?
17:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely want local. Local is often a big driver.
17:52
Speaker 2: You know, they're going to want things that are really
17:55
Speaker 2: optimized for forest health. So what we really are focusing
17:59
Speaker 2: on is making sure when we're working with partners who
18:02
Speaker 2: are harvesting, that they're doing that really, really well.
18:05
Speaker 1: Is there a specific example of a of a way
18:09
Speaker 1: that some forest was better managed because the buyer could
18:13
Speaker 1: see through to the source via your platform.
18:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's tons. I'll give an example. I
18:22
Speaker 2: can't name the buyer yet, I can talk about the
18:24
Speaker 2: sort of scale. So Hurricane Helen came through, you know,
18:28
Speaker 2: recently in the southeast, knockdown tons and tons and tons
18:32
Speaker 2: of material. That wood, you know, all those knockdown trees
18:35
Speaker 2: is in a lot of different spots. It's not all
18:38
Speaker 2: in one place.
18:38
Speaker 1: It seems like the kind of challenge of salvage wood, right,
18:41
Speaker 1: that's on at least a superficial level. It feels less efficient, right.
18:45
Speaker 1: I suppose you don't have to grow the trees in
18:46
Speaker 1: the first place, but getting the wood when it's knocked
18:48
Speaker 1: down and getting the right kind of wood to the
18:50
Speaker 1: right place seems quite hard. Seems like a fundamental hard
18:53
Speaker 1: thing about your business.
18:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a coordination challenge. So there's all of this wood,
18:58
Speaker 2: you know, in this case, we're focused mostly on southern
19:00
Speaker 2: yellow pine, and there's you know, hundreds of thousands of
19:04
Speaker 2: trees down, and we were able to do that coordination.
19:07
Speaker 2: That complicated work in a lot of different communities to
19:10
Speaker 2: get that material to be processed, to be saved. As
19:13
Speaker 2: soon as material comes down, there's a clock on it.
19:15
Speaker 2: You know. If you think about wood that comes down,
19:18
Speaker 2: it's eventually going to rot, It's going to be you know,
19:21
Speaker 2: not usable. It also is going to off gas into methane.
19:24
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of sort of you know, negative
19:26
Speaker 2: impacts there. We were able to do that, We were
19:29
Speaker 2: able to coordinate that, we were able to use it.
19:31
Speaker 2: And the reason is because we had a large buyer
19:33
Speaker 2: who is ready to say we will use this wood
19:35
Speaker 2: at the end, go do this coordination for us. We
19:38
Speaker 2: want to buy it and we're really excited to use it.
19:41
Speaker 2: And so we were able to save you know, hundreds
19:44
Speaker 2: of tons there.
19:45
Speaker 1: That's a great case study. Tell me more about it,
19:48
Speaker 1: like was it across several states? Like where was it?
19:51
Speaker 1: How do you get people to go do it? Why
19:53
Speaker 1: does the buyer want it?
19:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a few things. It's a crossover states, you know,
19:59
Speaker 2: lots of different sort of players there. And this is
20:02
Speaker 2: a thing that we really believe as a company is
20:04
Speaker 2: there's all of these great, amazing local businesses already. It's
20:08
Speaker 2: the truck drivers who can move logs, it's the sawmills
20:11
Speaker 2: who can process them. So we work with all of
20:13
Speaker 2: those folks. They already you know, have you know, they
20:17
Speaker 2: already know the region, they already have the tools. Largely,
20:20
Speaker 2: what they need is they need coordination and again they
20:22
Speaker 2: need to be told, hey, this is where the material is,
20:26
Speaker 2: We've got a market for it. Go do it, We'll
20:28
Speaker 2: pay for it. We'll take on some of that risk
20:31
Speaker 2: in the process in order to actually kickstart and manage
20:34
Speaker 2: that supply chain.
20:35
Speaker 1: Tell me about the buyer, like why would somebody want
20:37
Speaker 1: to buy that? Would?
20:38
Speaker 2: People love it? People love the story of your reusing material.
20:42
Speaker 2: It becomes a very charismatic thing. It's the thing they
20:45
Speaker 2: talk about in other projects. It's a great pr story,
20:48
Speaker 2: something that matters. But it better be at a at
20:53
Speaker 2: least an equivalent price, if not a better price. Then
20:56
Speaker 2: this is a place where you're starting to see like, oh,
21:00
Speaker 2: this is how salvage would can work, probably in a
21:02
Speaker 2: way that it couldn't have worked fifteen or twenty years ago.
21:05
Speaker 1: So wait, why is it that salvage wood can work
21:08
Speaker 1: now it couldn't have worked twenty years ago.
21:11
Speaker 2: So there's this really amazing new technology called cross laminated timber,
21:16
Speaker 2: which is basically you can think about having a bunch
21:19
Speaker 2: of boards and then you take those boards and your
21:23
Speaker 2: finger joining them. So you're cutting these little you know,
21:25
Speaker 2: sort of connections between them, and you're making really long boards.
21:28
Speaker 1: Between those boards, you're putting your fingers together like so
21:32
Speaker 1: that your fingers are interlocking on your left and right's hands.
21:35
Speaker 1: That's what's happening exactly wood.
21:37
Speaker 2: So you're interlocking those joints and then you create these
21:40
Speaker 2: big sheets of wood. Right now, you've got a huge
21:43
Speaker 2: sheet of usually two by fours that are you know,
21:47
Speaker 2: laying there, and then you are laying another sheet where
21:52
Speaker 2: everything is perpendicular, so it's cross laminated. So you've got
21:57
Speaker 2: essentially like a waffle pattern from you know, the orientation
22:00
Speaker 2: of the boards and that's sitting on top of it,
22:02
Speaker 2: and you make a bunch of these layers and so
22:04
Speaker 2: you've got a very thick panel and from that panel
22:09
Speaker 2: you can replace concrete and steel in a builds. And
22:12
Speaker 2: there's a few different things that are really important about that.
22:14
Speaker 2: So you've highlighted some of the challenges of using salvage wood.
22:17
Speaker 2: You know, it's a little less consistent. You know, you're
22:20
Speaker 2: pulling it from different places. This is a great example
22:23
Speaker 2: of a new technology that's perfectly suited for that because
22:26
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter what the wood looks like, right, You're
22:29
Speaker 2: just putting it directly into it, So you're able to
22:32
Speaker 2: use a much larger spectrum of that waste. That's where
22:36
Speaker 2: you start to get better unit economics. That's how it
22:38
Speaker 2: starts to scale. So those new technologies are a big
22:41
Speaker 2: part of how we're able to use this material in
22:43
Speaker 2: bigger and bigger waste.
22:44
Speaker 1: So was some significant chunk of the Hurricane helene wood
22:48
Speaker 1: cross laminated timber.
22:50
Speaker 2: So that whole story I just told you all went
22:53
Speaker 2: into two CLT.
22:58
Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a minute. You mentioned that
23:11
Speaker 1: one of the things that that buyers, you know, the
23:14
Speaker 1: kind of final buyers want often is local wood. And
23:18
Speaker 1: I get that from a kind of vibes standpoint, but
23:22
Speaker 1: from a sort of fundamental, kind of environmental footprint standpoint,
23:26
Speaker 1: it's not so clear to me that that is meaningful.
23:28
Speaker 1: I mean, on a superficial level, I get that there's
23:30
Speaker 1: some amount of carbon footprint of driving the wood whatever
23:33
Speaker 1: across the country. But I would imagine in the sort
23:36
Speaker 1: of arc of the project that's not that significant, Like
23:41
Speaker 1: is it vibes or is there something more than vibes
23:43
Speaker 1: to wanting local wood?
23:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are for sure vibes and.
23:49
Speaker 1: Vibes fair okay, fair, No, I get it. And like
23:51
Speaker 1: especially if you can see the wood, right, if it's framing,
23:54
Speaker 1: then it's like something. But if you can see it
23:56
Speaker 1: and it's like, here is this beautiful wood that is
23:59
Speaker 1: whatever a wood floor, Like I get that one. But
24:01
Speaker 1: that again seems back in the kind of artisanal not scalable,
24:06
Speaker 1: like I like it when you're in a commodity business
24:08
Speaker 1: and price can right, Like if I want you to succeed,
24:11
Speaker 1: I want your wood to be indistinguishable from all the
24:13
Speaker 1: other wood and maybe a little cheaper, right, Like that seems.
24:15
Speaker 2: Like the dreams, which is what we are doing. And
24:17
Speaker 2: again this is where we have you know, a bunch
24:20
Speaker 2: of different products with room and board where nationally you
24:23
Speaker 2: can walk into any room and board and you can
24:25
Speaker 2: source you know, you can buy you know, a chair
24:28
Speaker 2: or a console made with you know, salvage material. That's
24:32
Speaker 2: the scale.
24:32
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that seems like a good kind of
24:34
Speaker 1: that's like the Tesla roadsterre one, right, like room Board
24:37
Speaker 1: is a relatively expensive furniture store. Some universe of people
24:41
Speaker 1: who are already paying a lot for a chair, it
24:43
Speaker 1: might get a warm feeling from having a salvage chair
24:47
Speaker 1: like that that I is understandable. Like that seems like
24:50
Speaker 1: a good ad for what you're doing, right, a good
24:54
Speaker 1: kind of wedge yep.
24:57
Speaker 2: And we're doing that with more and more furniture companies.
24:59
Speaker 2: Space that's been growing really rapidly. And I want to
25:01
Speaker 2: go back to what we just said there, which is
25:04
Speaker 2: it's definitely vibes and when you say vibes, you mean
25:06
Speaker 2: how does it make you feel?
25:07
Speaker 1: Right?
25:08
Speaker 2: And there's some real power in that. I think the
25:11
Speaker 2: main thing to emphasize that what we're trying to really
25:13
Speaker 2: push is you can have again the right supply chain
25:18
Speaker 2: if you have the data, and sometimes it's going to
25:20
Speaker 2: be more efficient to do it locally. And you know,
25:23
Speaker 2: a good example is we were working with a company
25:25
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia. They were sourcing their logs also from Eastern Europe,
25:30
Speaker 2: so you know, actually shipping them in. We were able
25:33
Speaker 2: to get the material from you know, a very sort
25:37
Speaker 2: of close within fifty miles and that was much more efficient,
25:40
Speaker 2: and you know, their customers loved it. It was like
25:43
Speaker 2: a very very easy yes for them. That's a great
25:46
Speaker 2: example of like an optimization. We also sometimes you know,
25:49
Speaker 2: not every species grows everywhere in this country, right, If
25:52
Speaker 2: you want to source southern yellow pine, you can't do that.
25:56
Speaker 2: You know, in the Pacific Northwest you use the different
25:59
Speaker 2: species up they're used to dug fur instead, and so
26:01
Speaker 2: you have to optimize those supply chains. So the point
26:04
Speaker 2: if you can have the data, you can then make
26:07
Speaker 2: those choices that are closer to right every single time.
26:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. Good, So what are you working on now?
26:13
Speaker 2: So we're really leaning in and scaling our technology. So
26:16
Speaker 2: part of what we've uncovered here is theyre's such a
26:19
Speaker 2: fundamental gap and bringing in AI at scale into this
26:22
Speaker 2: industry and bringing in payments and bring in transaction. So
26:25
Speaker 2: we're really building out that full data layer and you know,
26:29
Speaker 2: verticalized servicing there. So that's big for us. A lot
26:31
Speaker 2: of scale.
26:32
Speaker 1: You mentioned AI. What are you doing with AI?
26:36
Speaker 2: So do a lot of things, you know, back to
26:38
Speaker 2: that main point. A lot of steps in this business,
26:40
Speaker 2: a lot of data that comes in on paper or
26:44
Speaker 2: in different forms. We make that interoperable largely using AI,
26:48
Speaker 2: so you can take a picture of it, you can
26:50
Speaker 2: scan it, and then you know, you can actually use
26:53
Speaker 2: that data. The second thing that I think is the
26:56
Speaker 2: big opportunity which we're building a lot more of, is
26:59
Speaker 2: a lot of folks who we work with are not
27:02
Speaker 2: folks who want to necessarily be on a screen. They
27:05
Speaker 2: want to have a conversation. So our truckers, you know,
27:08
Speaker 2: folks are I having a ske steer around a sawmill.
27:12
Speaker 2: When they need to get something done, they pick up
27:13
Speaker 2: the phone and make a call, right, That's how they
27:15
Speaker 2: want to get it done. What AI allows you to
27:18
Speaker 2: do is it allows you to take that sort of
27:19
Speaker 2: verbal piece and then actually connect it to software, so
27:22
Speaker 2: you can have a conversation about, hey, where do I
27:25
Speaker 2: need to drop off this log or I need to
27:27
Speaker 2: fill out this piece of paperwork. Let's have a conversation
27:30
Speaker 2: and I just filled out that piece of paperwork rather
27:32
Speaker 2: than I need to actually go fill out that piece
27:34
Speaker 2: of paperwork. And so that's a big way that we
27:35
Speaker 2: get more and more data.
27:36
Speaker 1: In like the calling an AI on the phone, calling
27:39
Speaker 1: an AI agent, Like, how's that working for you and
27:43
Speaker 1: how is it working for you six months ago? Like,
27:45
Speaker 1: is it not quite working yet but you know it'll
27:46
Speaker 1: be working in six months or where is that?
27:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in process. I think that the way to
27:52
Speaker 2: think about it is specific use cases today and what
27:57
Speaker 2: we're moving towards is something that is more ubiquitous. But
28:00
Speaker 2: that's not where it is today yet.
28:02
Speaker 1: Like that's one that I can imagine people getting frustrated by,
28:05
Speaker 1: Like the guy who doesn't want to enter something on
28:07
Speaker 1: the computer, imagine, really doesn't want to call an AI.
28:13
Speaker 2: Yes, And we also see a lot of people starting
28:17
Speaker 2: to adopt it, right, So there's some real opportunity there.
28:21
Speaker 2: There's also some resistance, you know, where we're bringing in
28:23
Speaker 2: these new tools And this has always been our thesis.
28:26
Speaker 2: This goes back to starting with demand. Is that if
28:29
Speaker 2: you can create real value and you are a buyer
28:32
Speaker 2: or you're actually really driving revenue, then you can start
28:36
Speaker 2: to bring folks onto those tools in much bigger ways.
28:38
Speaker 1: Oh it's like, hey, we're going to give you a
28:41
Speaker 1: bunch of business. All you got to do is call
28:44
Speaker 1: our AI and you got the business up to you. Yeah,
28:47
Speaker 1: fair enough. We'll be back in a minute with the
28:53
Speaker 1: lightning round. Let's finish with the lightning round. Great, tell
29:10
Speaker 1: me one great tree fact.
29:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean one of my favorite trees is Pando,
29:17
Speaker 2: which have you ever heard of Pando?
29:19
Speaker 1: No?
29:21
Speaker 2: Have you? Are you familiar with the aspen tree?
29:24
Speaker 1: Presumably that's like many many trees. It's like a giant
29:28
Speaker 1: grove that is one organism.
29:30
Speaker 2: Exactly, So they're they're all a single organism, and Pando
29:34
Speaker 2: is the largest one, so the largest organism in the
29:37
Speaker 2: whole world. And it's like the size of a valley,
29:40
Speaker 2: which is pretty unbelievable. I mean, just to like think
29:43
Speaker 2: of a single living entity as.
29:46
Speaker 1: That's one guy. It's one guy, that's miles and miles big.
29:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's some debate on age, but we're talking
29:54
Speaker 2: like potentially forty.
29:55
Speaker 1: Thousand years for zero four zero.
29:57
Speaker 2: Pretty crazy. Yeah.
30:00
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow, it's funny because when I was thinking about this,
30:03
Speaker 1: I was thinking of the of the like the bristle
30:06
Speaker 1: Cone pines you know on the California in Nevada border
30:09
Speaker 1: that I always thought of as the oldest, but those
30:11
Speaker 1: are like four or five thousand. I had those ready
30:15
Speaker 1: to go, and this question.
30:17
Speaker 2: This is a real ship of theseus moment, you know,
30:20
Speaker 2: is it the same organism that is alive, like you know,
30:24
Speaker 2: the bristle cone, that tree has been there for that
30:26
Speaker 2: amount of time as well, are referred to as the oldest,
30:29
Speaker 2: but also the tree pando has been there for that
30:32
Speaker 2: amount of time. But was it the same tree or
30:35
Speaker 2: was it you know, it's it's that's the debate.
30:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's not a tree the way we would
30:39
Speaker 1: say a tree.
30:39
Speaker 2: Right.
30:39
Speaker 1: If you look, you would it would look like an
30:41
Speaker 1: aspen grove right to the to the untrained eye. But
30:45
Speaker 1: the issue is it's all genetically.
30:47
Speaker 2: Identical, right and connected? Yeah?
30:50
Speaker 1: Connected, and it's been there for forty thousand years same.
30:53
Speaker 2: Guy, I mean, depends on who you ask.
30:56
Speaker 1: Oh, because you can't just take a core because the
30:58
Speaker 1: trees sticking up out of the ground have not been
31:00
Speaker 1: there for forty thousand years exactly. So how do they estimate.
31:04
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how they date it. I don't know.
31:07
Speaker 1: I have an old friend who's attend chronologist, who I
31:10
Speaker 1: have not talked to the nearest I'm gonna ask him.
31:12
Speaker 2: Good reason to make a call.
31:15
Speaker 1: I know that you run ultra marathons. Many of the
31:18
Speaker 1: interviews with you seem to be mostly about the ultra marathons,
31:21
Speaker 1: which I get but I am interested in would but
31:22
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about ultra marathons.
31:26
Speaker 1: I heard you say that you give yourself a little
31:28
Speaker 1: mantra something to you know, repeat to yourself as you're
31:32
Speaker 1: running each time. And you mentioned joy in darkness as
31:35
Speaker 1: when you did. I like that one. What are some
31:39
Speaker 1: other mantras you've used in long runs?
31:42
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I have a number. I think.
31:47
Speaker 2: One is when you are in the moment, and this
31:50
Speaker 2: is this is always the case with the mantra, is
31:52
Speaker 2: can you make it accessible? It has to be like
31:55
Speaker 2: when you feel you know, you're eighty miles into a
31:58
Speaker 2: run and you're feeling not good. Usually you're usually not
32:02
Speaker 2: feeling good. It has to be like something that you
32:04
Speaker 2: can actually access and that you can pull up. One
32:07
Speaker 2: of one of my favorites is do not despare. You're
32:12
Speaker 2: not here to win, You're here to create beauty, and
32:14
Speaker 2: that is always possible. So that is one.
32:17
Speaker 1: Seems long for mile eighty. It seems like a lot
32:19
Speaker 1: to remember at mile eighty.
32:21
Speaker 2: It maybe is a little earlier in the race, but
32:24
Speaker 2: it's a it's a good one. Another one that is
32:28
Speaker 2: constantly coming up for me, you know, in the space
32:30
Speaker 2: is like you earned this, like in the sense of
32:33
Speaker 2: this being the spot. And you know, this is always
32:37
Speaker 2: a critique and I think a reasonable one of ult
32:39
Speaker 2: running is you are choosing to put yourself and this
32:42
Speaker 2: this position, which is obviously a choice. And so when
32:46
Speaker 2: you think about, wow, I'm feeling really bad right now,
32:49
Speaker 2: connecting that back to why, like I put myself in
32:53
Speaker 2: that position, and you know, really tying it back.
32:55
Speaker 1: To that tell me more about that one.
32:58
Speaker 2: So what I what I mean there? This is the
33:00
Speaker 2: one that I often feel, you know, comes up, especially
33:03
Speaker 2: in the darker moments, is being like, hey, this sort
33:07
Speaker 2: of reason, the bigger existential why and doing ultras to
33:10
Speaker 2: understand the sort of expansive parts of who I am
33:14
Speaker 2: and what I'm capable of. And you don't do that
33:17
Speaker 2: on mile eight when you're feeling good and you just
33:20
Speaker 2: had a snack. You do that when you're in it.
33:23
Speaker 2: And so again to this point of like, oh, do
33:27
Speaker 2: I view the thing that I'm going through as you know,
33:30
Speaker 2: a thing I'm trying to run from, or do I
33:32
Speaker 2: view it as the whole reason I am there? And
33:34
Speaker 2: the point is to experience that and to move through
33:37
Speaker 2: it in a real deep way and to learn from
33:40
Speaker 2: what that can teach you.
33:41
Speaker 1: So I chose this, This is freedom exactly exactly. Yeah,
33:46
Speaker 1: this is freedom is an interesting matra in many settings, right,
33:50
Speaker 1: in many settings. What's the farthest you've ever run?
33:56
Speaker 2: I did a one hundred and thirty one miles continuously
34:00
Speaker 2: this summer, and then I also did just under one
34:03
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty mile er across the Sahara a couple
34:06
Speaker 2: of years ago, but that one involved sleeping at night,
34:09
Speaker 2: which is different.
34:11
Speaker 1: Is there some distance you think no one should run?
34:16
Speaker 1: You know?
34:16
Speaker 2: Something that I've become profoundly afflicted by is this belief
34:20
Speaker 2: that you kind of go exactly as far as you
34:23
Speaker 2: think you can go. Yeah, since that the first time
34:26
Speaker 2: I ran a marathon, I thought, yep, no way, no
34:30
Speaker 2: way I would go further. First time I ran a
34:32
Speaker 2: fifty mile er, I remember thinking like I literally could
34:35
Speaker 2: not go another step, and then it just keeps going
34:38
Speaker 2: and going, and I just got into the Moab to forty.
34:41
Speaker 2: So I'm going to attempt two hundred and forty miles
34:43
Speaker 2: this fall. That's way further than one hundred and thirty.
34:46
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're quick at math, it's a
34:48
Speaker 2: lot more. It's a lot further, and so we're gonna
34:50
Speaker 2: have to see out ghosts.
34:52
Speaker 1: So you're going to try and run two hundred and
34:53
Speaker 1: forty miles all at once. Correct, How long is it
34:57
Speaker 1: going to take you?
34:59
Speaker 2: I mean we will see definitely a big extension. The
35:03
Speaker 2: cutoff is just under five days.
35:05
Speaker 1: Wow, that is so wild. What's the longest? I don't know.
35:12
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's niches. I'm sure you can't even ask
35:14
Speaker 1: what's the longest continuous ultra marathon? But what's the longest
35:17
Speaker 1: continuous ultra marathon?
35:19
Speaker 2: I mean the one? And again, this is where you're
35:21
Speaker 2: like the orders of magnitude are just.
35:23
Speaker 1: Totally remembering that a marathon is twenty six right, Like, Yeah,
35:27
Speaker 1: as it gets bigger, it's like it's so many better.
35:30
Speaker 1: You're gonna run nine marathons in a row, right, Yes.
35:34
Speaker 2: It's unbelievable. Yeah, I mean the longest one is there
35:36
Speaker 2: is this thing called the Self Transcendence three thousand, which
35:39
Speaker 2: is a three thousand miler and it's around a city
35:43
Speaker 2: block in New York and that's beautiful sixty days and
35:47
Speaker 2: they just run around and around and around.
35:49
Speaker 1: Which I love that it's around one block. That's actually
35:53
Speaker 1: so good.
35:54
Speaker 2: I mean, the whole point is, you know, it's not
35:56
Speaker 2: about where you are, it's it's what you're doing.
35:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not about what's going on outside. Well, good
36:04
Speaker 1: luck in Moab.
36:06
Speaker 2: Thank you.
36:13
Speaker 1: Ben Christensen is the co founder and CEO of Cambium.
36:18
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was
36:21
Speaker 1: edited by Lydia Jean Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguer.
36:25
Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
36:29
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
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Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.