Today we’d like to introduce you to Kurt Goodjohn.
Hi Kurt, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My brother, Kris, and I have been the best of friends since a young age when we stopped fighting and started aligning on most things in life. We had the good fortune of being able to go to the same College for three years in New York and playing Division I Hockey. We always talked about starting a business together, as neither of us really fit into the role of working for someone else. When we graduated, Kris went on to play professional hockey, and I figured I should try to use my Computer Engineering degree.
When Kris and his wife got pregnant with their first child, Kris retired from hockey, moved back home to Calgary, and soon after asked me if I wanted to start a home building company together. I had been working for an entrepreneur in Boston who had taken me under his wing, and for two years, I tried to learn everything I could from him. When Kris asked me to move home and start building homes together, I said yes, and that’s how we started. Neither of us had any idea how to build a home, but we knew we could learn.
After a few years of banging our heads and a few hammers against the wall, we started to get pretty good at building. We’d developed a solid team of people, but neither of us wanted to run a construction company. We didn’t believe in it and the whole process seemed broken to us. During college, we spent six months in Europe on a spring/summer term abroad and had seen modular homes being produced there. Over beers one night, we thought back to our time in Europe and started to wonder why nobody was using modular as a better way to produce homes in Canada; after a bit of searching, we determined to put the brakes on our traditional home building company and jumped headfirst into creating modular homes as an alternative solution…
My brother and I went through more ups and downs with our previous modular-home company, Karoleena, than most people could bear. However, we persevered through all of it. When that company was eventually acquired, and we were able to take a step back to reflect on what we had accomplished, we realized that there weren’t many people on the planet with as much direct experience and vision in space as the two of us. We also realized we had not even come close to finishing what started. So, we took our knowledge, experience and capital from that exit and decided to start Dvele.
We then purchased an existing yet struggling modular factory and worked to improve its culture and product manufacturing abilities. We began building a team, developed an initial product line and started to test it in the market. With some initial sales and the ability to produce a unique product, we went out to raise capital. We put together a strong vision and a compelling product and were able to raise a substantial amount of capital that allowed us to grow an even stronger team, increase our product development, improve our production capabilities and start to build a brand. We’ve grown 300% in the last year and increased our pipeline by tenfold while developing some real IP and are just starting to really pick up steam. But, it was the journey and hard road that prepared us and positioned us for what’s to come…
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In our past company, we were making everything up for the very first time, and we made a lot of mistakes along the way. We even made a few enemies, but for every one of those we had 100 supporters, and we accomplished a lot of great things. I’ve never met someone successful who hasn’t had to develop a thick skin formed through tough mistakes, betrayal and overcoming seemingly endless adversity. Even when you think you’ve learned enough hard lessons to stop making mistakes, you turn the corner and have to learn another one. I guess if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not growing. So far, in this company, the biggest mistake we’ve made are keeping the wrong people on the bus for too long. We’ve learned (again) that every time there seems to be an issue, it is better to deal with it sooner than later.
Building a business can sometimes feel like a never-ending cycle of huge ups and downs. Overcoming challenges, even ones that seem like that end of the world in the moment, really only means you have set yourself up to take on even greater challenges.
In our industry, it can be challenging to find other motivated, like-minded individuals that share in our vision for the future. In order to scale, we must recruit from an entrenched industry with well-worn mindsets. We’ve found that some industry veterans, while we want their experience, simply can’t embrace a new way of doing things. Everything about the home can be improved. Opportunity exists in the way homes are designed, produced, and ultimately lived in or experienced.
One of the biggest challenges to overcome is in the current permitting and inspection process for home building. As with a traditional home building, the permitting and inspection process is woefully antiquated. The way it was set up was to police an unorganized, corner-cutting industry. Producing homes as a product and service under a manufactured, engineered system requires a new way of permitting and inspecting that is similar to the automobile industry or any product on the market today (other than homes) for that matter.
If an impediment to progress and housing supply is the inefficiency of traditional regulation, and there exists a superior method, based on science and engineering, to overcome this impediment, we should be pushing for change.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
At Dvele, we build modern, customizable, prefabricated smart homes. We first announced our homes would become self-powered last year, anticipating that the housing market needed a forward-thinking, comprehensive solution to address climate change and power grid resilience. Through this initiative, every Dvele home not only runs on clean energy from solar panels but also utilizes it so efficiently that the home can be fully grid-independent with a battery backup system, effectively insulating homeowners from the inconveniences and safety risks associated with long-term power outages such as the one we saw in Texas this past winter.
As a result, all our homes are Passive Certified, meaning they make the most efficient use of their “passive” environmental influences like sunshine and shading to lower energy demands up to 90% in the living space. These renewable resources are insulated through an airtight building envelope and sophisticated ventilation system protecting our homes when built in our factory, in addition to a complimentary built-in software platform called DveleIQ, which uses self-learning smart tech and hundreds of real-time sensors to continuously make adjustments and provide recommendations that drive more environmentally responsible habits over time.
Our vision is to create homes that address a lot more than the essential, basic needs of homeowners, a concept that has been sorely lacking in homes over the last two centuries. When you think about the multi-dimensional depth and breadth that a well-designed, energy-efficient and healthy home can have on the world, people will come to realize, as we do, that better homes are the best and most meaningful way we can change the world for years to come. We want the homes we live in to stand for health and wellness for their occupants and the planet. We truly believe that normalizing this new approach to home-building will be our generation’s ticket to a clean energy future.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
My wife is my greatest supporter and confidant, and I’d probably have died off a while ago if I didn’t have her to keep me grounded. Additionally, my brother and I couldn’t have done what we did without one another. I have a ton of amazingly successful advisors and supporters. I have a great family, wonderful friends, and past clients who have become friends as well. If I had to pick one person who helped us the most along the way, I’d have to say it is Mogens Smed. Mogens was instrumental in guiding us towards developing our first brand and helped us through one of the most difficult times of our lives by sharing his similar experience and reminding us to put on our big boy pants and push forward even harder.
Contact Info:
- Website: dvele.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dvelehomes/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dvelehomes/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DveleHomes?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9qC3948nigdLCoD7Kw4yWA
