Post-mortem: Pallet Materials
Startup #2: Reusing Reusable Building MaterialsGoal and Audience
What follows is a quick reflection on my second time cofounding. It was a startup called Pallet Materials.
This piece may be relevant if:
- you’re looking for more information about Pallet Materials.
I’ve also written a less structured narrative on my first two attempts at founding a startup. If you’re looking for something like that, you should read Prior Art.
The team
All three of us met at Brown! Aiganym and Christian both studied Architecture.
- Aiganym Raimzhanova (c/o 2024)
- Christian Wu (c/o 2024)
- me, Brown (c/o 2024.5)
I was the technical cofounder. Aiganym and Christian started the startup together out of an interest in doing something together, and later approached me in their search for someone technical.
The problem
11% of global carbon emissions stem from buildings (construction, use, and demolition). Something like half of that is due to the production and transportation of building materials used for construction. Many buildings and interiors contain parts that could viably and safely be reused, but builders don’t reuse reusable materials. We choose to buy newly-manufactured pieces instead — which costs money and carbon.
What we built
We saw the problem as one of connecting supply and demand. Our hypothesis was that if builders had a database of available reusable materials, they’d use those materials instead of buying costly new ones. In order to build that database, we built an asset management and carbon accounting platform that allowed space owners to catalog the items in their spaces & compute the embodied carbon and monetary value. (You can still see it at palletmaterials.com, though the images won’t load because we image hosted of off Google Drive. Don’t laugh it was free and fast!)
How it went
We talked to hundreds of people in the construction & building management & sustainability sectors, and got Brown to agree to allow us into spaces slated for demolition to conduct surveys of the interior materials. We did not manage to convince anyone else to work with us. Building owners and tenants just don’t get that much value out of seeing their things reused. On the other side, builders are wary of reusing materials for reliability reasons. We were trying to incite end-user behavior that didn’t exist, and failed to find a good reason for people to change their behavior.
Cause of death
We weren’t a compatible team. Our commitments to the venture varied significantly, and I don’t think we worked terribly well together.
Reflections
I wrote up a small reflection shortly after our disbanding. It’s copied below.
Things I’ve learned about buildings and sustainability
- Embodied carbon. Scope 1/2/3 emissions. No one really cares enough to pay! It’s not even really clear who should pay. It will happen eventually. Everyone’s pro-sustainability. We’re not dealing with people in denial, we’re working with fiscally-responsible business professionals.
- There are a lot of people involved in buildings. Architects, interior designers, project owners, general contractors, subcontractors, demolition contractors, deconstruction contractors, furniture liquidators, furniture dealers, furniture manufacturers, building owners, tenants, portfolio managers… am I missing anyone?
- The market is wide and fragmented and everyone faces different target submarkets.
Reflections on this startup
- There’s a Paul Graham essay in which he talks about only having room for one “top of mind” thing at any given time — something you think about during your showers, something that occupies your entire headspace. He says that “it’s a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.” I propose a corollary: if your startup isn’t at the top of your mind for the majority of your life, then you probably should not be doing the startup. In the past, I’ve had dreams about the startups I’ve worked on. I don’t mean I had aspirations. I mean that I was thinking in my sleep about the work I was doing. This was not the case for Pallet.
- Part-time founding didn’t work out for us. It was really hard to actually make any progress with less than full-time dedication. The asymmetric time commitment led to lots of catch-up meetings, differing senses of commitment, and a weird team dynamic. I’m trying to avoid generalizing in these reflections, but I’m tempted to say that you shouldn’t found a startup with a team that’s going to have drastically different levels of time commitment.
- Some of our most productive conversations were directly before or after meetings. Having agendas worked for making sure we got through the things we needed to address. But the time outside of the agenda naturally leads to important conversations. I don’t think we had enough unstructured time together.
- Our team dynamic (couple + third founder) is a bit strange, and I probably should’ve interrogated it more thoroughly at the start. I also remember thinking that I didn’t get to do my full interrogation of Christian at the start. I probably should’ve went back to that; there were a lot of lingering questions that we didn’t fully address. (I remember having a really weird feeling about the fact that we were all okay with me saying that this isn’t my first priority…) It all boils down to not enough hours.
- I learned how important it is to pour enough time into a startup.
- I learned a lot about creating processes. I learned how to use notion to make meetings and tasks transparent, how important it is to make sure we’re all on the same page about what communication channels work, and how to form processes that work slightly better for everyone.
- If you define success as an entrepreneur must, then success is inevitable.
Reflections on myself
- Sustainability is nice, but it’s not my first calling. Does that mean it can’t be an adopted calling? Could I throw myself into it and make it top of mind? Perhaps. But I think asking that question is a sign that the work is unsatisfactory. There will come a day when I’ve tried my hand at my own first calling, and I sit at the edge of a cliff having gone as far as the path leads. I will choose a new purpose then, but no sooner.
- It’s not worth doing a startup if I don’t put my all into it.
- I think I came into this startup with a background of user-centeredness that I didn’t advocate enough for. I’ve previously only worked with teams that had the same education as me, and so I forgot that user-centered design thinking is not a default. And that it doesn’t happen if I don’t push for it.
- I came in with a pretty big ego. I thought I’d be able to make everything work well and smoothly and that our team dynamic would always be happy and healthy. I’ve learned that it takes much more work than just natural success.
- I also had a pretty big ego about the technical side of things. I wanted to own it all.
- I am inspired.