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How Will We Live In The Future?
Blake Miller • 2022-01-04
Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to the Simple Questions Podcast. I'm your host, Dylan Carnahan. That was The Otherside by Michael Whitmire, Jesse Goode, and Joey Holiday. The Otherside was crafted from the heart and soul of Whitmire and friends. Whitmire has been releasing one song a week for all of 2021. Each song features a different genre or style with elements and infusion of jazz, lo-fi, hip hop, rap, alternative, and rock. Enjoy the good times, the low and high vibrations. Follow his journey as he spreads peace, love, and low-budget music. The question for this episode is, how will we live in the future? You will learn in this episode how smart infrastructure will change our home life, work life, and our cities. Our guest was a partner at the Think Big Startup Incubator, led the KC Smart City Initiative, which resulted in the creation of one of the world's largest smart cities, winning an Edison Award for Innovation. Forbes Real Estate Council member, voted Tech Connector of the Year by the KC Tech Council, the host of the Future of Living Podcast, and the founder and CEO of Homebase. I introduce to you Blake Miller.
Blake Miller:Thanks for watching! Blake, when you and I first met, it was at Messenger Coffee, and we started our conversation with the question, how did your entrepreneurial journey begin? You talked about coding, KU and your involvement with an arena football team. Oddly enough, that seems like a great place to start this conversation.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Blake Miller:So again, thanks for having me, Dylan. But now I do remember that conversation is a great conversation. Like I told you then, I was appreciated you reaching out. But for myself, I was lucky enough to have parents that got me on the Internet in the early 90s. And I kind of was always that weird kid that was spending way too much time on his computer. And in doing that, I kind of taught myself how to code, taught myself how to build websites, taught myself kind of easy to look back in this, just to be a citizen of the Internet. So only always just kind of learn the Internet and learn how, you know, it's the basics of everything we do today. And that led me into just really some amazing relationships and partnerships and opportunities because I was kind of the, at least in my area, you know, Kansas City area, the one kid that, you know, a lot of people knew that knew how to build some something like that. And so that got me opportunities with, you know, as you mentioned, coming out of KU with the arena football team that Kansas City had back in 2007, 2008, which called the Kansas City Brigade. It was a unique opportunity that I had to leave school, go with a semi-pro football team at the time, you know, was selling out Kemper Arena here in town, unique opportunity to go build the technology things needed for that, that to be able to really take off. Really exciting opportunities. And, you know, now I'm still working with the same guy that gave me some of those opportunities, Tyler, who's working with me now at Homebase.
Dylan Carnahan:How did you transition from that initial work to what you do now?
Blake Miller:I would never say you think it's a transition. It's always an evolution. And I think it's just, you know, just been a part of my path, if you will. You know, what I've always done is utilize the knowledge that I've been able to learn on the Internet myself and, you know, opportunities that I've had to just continue to try to build platforms for others. You know, that led into doing a business incubator here in Kansas City where we had one of the first co-working spaces in Kansas City. We had over 60 companies that worked out of there at one time. We were investing in startups and that led to opportunities in doing a Smart City effort that I led here in Kansas City, which also led to doing Homebase. And every one of those had, you know, many evolutions inside of each one of those kind of phases of my journey.
Dylan Carnahan:Can you tell us more about the KC Smart City Initiative and what you all did on that project?
Blake Miller:Sure. So, that was a really unique opportunity that came to us because of the business incubator that we were running called Think Big. And so we had a group from Cisco that came to us after Kansas City had gotten Google Fiber. We had a streetcar that was under development in Kansas City. And, you know, really a thriving and growing entrepreneurial ecosystem. And Cisco saw the opportunity to do a branded incubator, you know, a smart city incubator looking for new technologies that cities could deploy to help make their cities smart. And instead of just doing an incubator, I kind of thought of the idea to approach the mayor and do what we ended up calling the Living Lab, which was deploying a public Wi-Fi network along the streetcar, which is a 2.2 mile stretch. It's one of the world's largest public Wi-Fi networks to date. We deployed smart streetlights, digital kiosks, environmental sensors, and we took all of the all this infrastructure and used the analogy of turning the city into a smartphone. We have all these sensors, we have connectivity and data. What if we opened that up and opened that infrastructure up and allowed people to build apps on top of it? And that's what we did. We deployed it in 2016 when the streetcar launched and won an Edison Award in 2017 because of it.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow, that's interesting. It sounds like the public Wi-Fi and how that enabled systems and things like smart lighting and kiosk really was the foundation for all of that. Correct.
Blake Miller:Yeah. So, you know, the internet is if you're going to have the internet of things, you got to have a way to connect all the things. And so that internet infrastructure became the way to connect all the different things. And we also gave a way to have a business model because it allowed not only the machines to have a way to connect to the things, but it allowed people to connect as well. And you know, Wi-Fi increasingly or internet increasingly is, you know, the lifeblood of everything that we do. And that was just kind of a core or piece of the infrastructure to be able to make everything work.
Dylan Carnahan:Your business Homebase is very similar. Can you talk a little bit about what your business does?
Blake Miller:Yeah, so Homebase is a smart building platform. So we're a software and services business that focus first on apartments, multifamily buildings, but now moving into commercial and many other many other types of buildings that we spend, you know, over 90% of our time in. And we connect all of the things inside that building. So that's very nebulous, I know, but we start with access controller smart locks. You got to have a way to connect or get everybody in and out of the building. And then that internet infrastructure is something that we focus on heavily. You got to have a way to connect all the things inside the unit to provide a smart home experience for the resident. But you also have a way to connect all the other things throughout the rest of the building, like security cameras or amenity spaces, TVs, things like that. So same concept that we deployed the internet infrastructure throughout the Smart City. We deploy an internet infrastructure throughout the building itself. And that provides connectivity for all those devices. But it also provides a business model for property owners to own their internet infrastructure and sell access to the Wi-Fi network to the residents as an amenity. It becomes a way that they can pay for all of this smart technology that goes into the building, while also giving a really great living experience to the residents at a cheaper price than they would traditionally be getting internet at. And so we view it really as a kind of a win-win-win solution when you're trying to make your building smart as an early adopter and provides a way to connect all the things without having to have a bunch of cellular hubs or extra hardware throughout the building that you don't need.
Dylan Carnahan:Let's go back to a term you used earlier, which is the Internet of Things.
Blake Miller:Yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:What do you mean by that?
Blake Miller:I mean, literally, it's connecting all of the things. You're a thing, your phone's a thing, your computer's a thing, your watch that you're wearing is a thing, the lock on your door that's connected to the Internet now is a thing, the thermostat thing. All of these things are getting connected so that you can control them via your phone or via your voice, but also so that that data can be utilized to create new experiences for you or new ways of, frankly, living that can enhance and prove, make cheaper in a lot of different ways. And so we're really in the first pitch of the first, first inning, if you will, of where the Internet of Things as an industry is, I think. But what's exciting is it's being adopted. And now that it's being adopted, it's moving beyond just being able to control your thermostat with your phone and turn it off and turn the heat on or whatever. And it's, you know, becoming things like, you know, wearing a wearable on your watch or on your wrist and being able to have it detect when you've been sitting too long and just for you to move up. So really being functional and offering advice to you versus just being another tool.
Dylan Carnahan:Smart infrastructure is the first stepping stone that needs to be put in place before anything else can be done. Once that's in place, Blake, I've heard you mention things like an all in one app to pay in home grocery delivery and smart access. What other trends are you seeing using this technology? Yeah.
Blake Miller:So you obviously have to, I mean, part of the part of what we're doing is very real world. So you've got to have the infrastructure, you've got to have the things actually connected to the Internet. Once they are, then it enables a lot of new new things, as I was mentioning. So what you said, we were doing in home grocery delivery. So once you are able to securely get the right people in and out of doors, you know, in an apartment setting, you know, we can get the residents who are supposed to be living there with their phone in and out of the building and in their apartment unit. But now we can allow residents to allow service providers into their building. And so we partnered with Walmart here in Kansas City to test in home grocery delivery. And this was a service that residents could sign up for, pay $20 a month, and they could get unlimited deliveries into their literally into their refrigerator. The Walmart driver would come and put them put the groceries into the refrigerator and all of that. And we built technology via a Bluetooth SDK that Walmart put into their delivery driver app that securely got the driver into the building and into the unit when they were authorized to be able to do so. And they wore body cameras, so it was extra secure. People could watch it in real time or can watch it in real time. It's still happening today. I actually had my last order last week and watch this delivery happen. And this is like the tip of the iceberg of turning access control or turning smart locks into truly a service versus just a security, which security is first and number one. But once you once you do that, it becomes more about keeping or getting the right people in versus keeping all everyone out.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow, that's very futuristic, especially you bring up the security element and adding, you know, body cameras. It's definitely a paradigm shift. You usually think of smart access as a deterrent. And as you eloquently put it, it's letting the right people in.
Blake Miller:It's definitely about letting the right people in. And I think that that's where some exciting things, where it gets exciting. And you really are able to start creating new living experiences for residents or in a building. But also it affects how that building is managed now going forward. And as that happens, I truly believe we can make buildings not only more profitable, which is a great thing to hear for investors, but make it more makes it more affordable to be a resident or a tenant in those buildings at the same time. And I think that's where things are going to get really, really interesting as we, you know, as the technologies progress and we get kind of out of the shortage, the chip shortages, the labor shortages and everything else we have.
Dylan Carnahan:You bring up property management and we've talked about this in home grocery delivery. It sounds like we're progressing towards automation.
Blake Miller:I mean, you nailed it. I mean, we ultimately what we're doing, we're doing a lot with Homebase, but ultimately, I think what we're doing is we're automating the management of buildings. We're automating the function of living in buildings for a lot of people, too. And that's what the Internet of Things fundamentally enables is the ability for that to happen. And it's because of data, but it's because of the real world functions of a physical lock, the bent metal and the smart lock and the smarts inside that bent metal to enable that.
Dylan Carnahan:Before we move on to work related things, what other applications of this technology do you see impacting our home life?
Blake Miller:I mean, literally everything, literally everything. It's everything from sustainability and making our homes more efficient to making them, you know, more just more fun to live in. I think literally the possibilities are infinite. And like I said, we're at the very tip of the iceberg. Just right now, the work is being done still just to connect the things.
Dylan Carnahan:Again, laying that foundation. Now, you own your own business. You work with others and have people that work for you. How will the office be impacted by this technology? Are we just all going to be virtual? What's going on there?
Blake Miller:I definitely don't think so. I definitely think the people that are sounding the alarm, that the world's fully remote now and everything, are people that are kind of missing the mark. I think that it's nearly impossible. I'll take that back. Like I will say that truly great things are built with people being in a room and people being able to collaborate and physically collaborating. And there's no doubt that incredible things can be created remote. Incredible things are being created remote. But I think that the future of work is going to be very hybrid. I think it's truly going to test the limits of what people think of work-life balance, because I think the future of work is going to be very, you know, sprint-based. You might spend a bunch of time with your team members collaborating, you know, working. You might work an 80-hour week. But that next week, after you finish everything, it might be a very chill week. And you might be able to do that week from wherever you want, because you can go travel and spend it with your family the whole time. I really think that the future of work is going to be flexible. It's going to be collaborative, even more collaborative. And it's going to happen, you know, kind of in pods and people being able to meet up and do their work and then or do the collaborative work and then go on and do their individual contributor type work wherever they want.
Dylan Carnahan:Interesting. You bring up sprints. How can smart infrastructure enable that?
Blake Miller:I think in terms of what we're talking about in terms of sprints, some of the things that we think about are the ability for very flexible short-term type stays that enable people of all types of teams to come together, collaborate in a city or in an area, be able to flexibly stay in those like an Airbnb or executive type of a stay, and be able to sprint, do all the work, all the collaborative work needed in a short, condensed period of time, a couple days, being able to stay where they're working with their team and then leave and then go on. I think that's just one of very, very many types of experiences that smart infrastructure can enable. But there's obviously the zoomification of everything is another thing that smart infrastructure is enabling. Just saying something smart infrastructure doesn't mean that it just is going to enable the future of whatever.
Dylan Carnahan:Now, going back to the KC Smart City Initiative, what are some effects that that had on the city?
Blake Miller:I mean, it's really hard to talk to any specifics, and there's some things I'm not allowed to talk about. But I think it's just more important to look at what doing projects like this enable. It enables cities to think in large scales, and it enables second and third order effects of technology to be able to be tested, created, and kickstarted, and I think that's a lot of what happened with our project here in Kansas City, was a deployed infrastructure that people were fundamentally able to test and create on in a real world setting that was never able to be done before.
Dylan Carnahan:Earlier, we had talked about emerging trends. Let's focus on things that are falling out of style. What business or service do you see becoming obsolete in the next 10 years? In other words, who is the next blockbuster?
Blake Miller:Oh, you're stealing my favorite question.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Blake Miller:You know, right now, I think potentially, I think real estate brokers, I think real estate is going to change fundamentally. And not necessarily brokers are going to go away, but I think how real estate changes hands, I think how real estate is managed, and I think how it's owned is going to be changing.
Dylan Carnahan:What do you mean by how it will be owned?
Blake Miller:Well, I think you have all sorts of new ownership structures that are being explored in cryptography, with blockchain, with decentralized organizations. So I think some of those things are going to become pretty pervasive with smart contracts and in real estate.
Dylan Carnahan:Outside of real estate, are there any other services or businesses you see changing or going away?
Blake Miller:I think our traditional bars and restaurants and the hospitality industry will continue to evolve. I don't think it's going to become obsolete by any means. I think that it will evolve into something even stronger, more experience driven.
Dylan Carnahan:And perhaps it will evolve utilizing the Internet of Things.
Blake Miller:Maybe. I think literally the world is, just calling the Internet of Things or the future, whatever, everything is already that. So like, it's things are, technology is the underlying layer of everything that we do. So just saying that it's going to be the thing that changes everything is not. It's our behaviors. It's our, the way that we want to experience things. That's how, that's what's going to change. It's people. People are the, that's what, that technology is just the underlying thing. It's how people use it.
Dylan Carnahan:You're saying that people's behavior drives the utilization of this technology.
Blake Miller:Yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:Blake, how can people find out more about you and Homebase?
Blake Miller:I'm pretty easy to find online. You can get me on Twitter at imbmills. That's I-M-B-M-I-L-L-S. Or you can find me on LinkedIn. Just search my name, Blake Miller.
Dylan Carnahan:Awesome. I want to say thank you for coming on and for allowing me to reach out. You were actually one of the first people I reached out to, and that gave me the confidence, and it's enabled me to continue to reach out to other people and have awesome discussions like the one we're having right now.
Blake Miller:Well, that's really cool to hear. It's cool to see what you're doing on your own. It's a really cool building.
Dylan Carnahan:That wraps up our conversation with Blake Miller. We talked about trends within the home tech space, the future possibilities that can be unlocked with the use of smart infrastructure, and how smart access allows Walmart employees to deliver groceries directly to your fridge. Go ahead and listen to Blake's podcast, The Future of Living Podcast on your preferred platform, and follow Blake on LinkedIn and Twitter. Check out Whitmire's music on all platforms and his social media as well. And lastly, subscribe to the Simple Questions Podcast to get notified when our latest episodes are released. The next episode is a conversation with someone you may tune in to watch on your weekday evenings. If you've been following our Instagram page, you know exactly who we are talking about. Thank you for listening, and remember to keep asking questions.