Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Camille Mackenzie, CEO and co-founder of Kintail, a no code analytics platform that enables construction firms to integrate and automate data from any source and build insights in minutes without the need for writing code.

Or spending hours in spreadsheets. Camille, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm so excited to chat with you. As we were discussing before the show Construction Tech is so fascinating because you know it, a lot of companies are disrupting the industry and really making the whole process of building more efficient and more effective.

And I think, you know, as, as, as people in our day-to-day lives we will be directly influenced by, you know, the success of your company and other companies alike. But before we get into all that good, What were you doing before you started Kintail?

Camille: Yeah, that's actually a great question and thank you so much for having me on.

I really appreciate it and very excited to be here. And yeah, so before starting Kintail I was actually a serial founder of several design focused companies. I was actually the principal designer and owner of our custom residential in studio. And had the great privilege of working with some of the most accomplished and well known architects in the southeast and just the US at large, which was very cool.

And then more recently it actually founded a graphic design studio where we were crafting very compelling brand experiences for fellow creatives and designers. So I am everything like background oriented in terms of design have been in, in and around the construction industries for most of my adult life.

So it's, it's been very interesting background.  

Julian: No, that's amazing. I, I, Fascinating. I think from, you know, talking to people who come from a design perspective because they have such an insight into what people are attracted to or, or what is actually functional, as well as beautiful. You know, based on your background experience working with architects what are some really cool, you know, Projects you've been a part of and, and what are some other projects that that maybe missed in, in a certain area and in what area was that?

Was it, was it functionality? Was it usability? Was it you know, anything, anything under the sun? Yeah. So curious about, you know, your experience as a designer and, and from the design side?

Camille: Yeah. Love to share. I am a designer at heart. I've always been incredibly creative. I was yeah, I actually was in music for a very long time and had started college as a music education major.

And so design was kind of just a natural output of that. And really I had we attended Techstars this last year for what Kintail is doing, and actually our managing director at the time said, you know, Camille, nobody loves construction. And I actually had to laugh at that because while that may be true for many people, it's not actually true for me.

I actually love the whole construction process. I really love getting to see a design of what someone has created and it's all on paper. You know, you've only just got like an inkling. of what that's truly gonna look like. And then really getting into the process and seeing all this craftsmanship come into it with construction companies coming in and building out, you know, just amazing architectural designs in terms of like commercial buildings and bridges, even down to homes.

It's just amazing what you can create. And so for me it was really thrilling getting to work with some of these top architects. I work with the likes of like Jeffrey Dun Duncan Louis Ette, Bill Ingram. Been in the homes of like Bobby McAlpine. These are some of the top architects coming out of the southeast and have been for quite some time and are very influential across the rest of the country.

Yeah. Have won many awards. And it's just really interesting getting to see that I'd really say some of those projects were just some of the most just incredible getting to go into a lot of the homes that I worked on was so much fun. They just put so much heart and detail into what they do and it really shows just in comparison to walking through like a builder grade home and then getting to go into like a custom designed just for you space is, is just really a thing to see.

You really have to be able to experience it and be in this space to. Like, get the awe behind it. Yeah. But it's very cool. I actually spent a lot of time working on commercial projects as well. I helped do a lot of drafting and material design work for there's a series of hospitals that are located in the southeast that previously were known as Health South as the.

As the company, but they've actually since transitioned into something else. And with that, that's was a little bit harder to get into as the commercial side, only because the, like the functionality's there, you gotta build the space for the public. But it's, it lacks like that to me. That real aspect of creativity and that uniqueness that you get in residential design that just really.

That has been much more inspirational to me on that side. So commercial, not so much my forte, didn't love that as much, but it's always interesting to see what people are putting out there on that side of it as well.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It's so fascinating. You know, I feel like every time I go into a building and I'm, I'm a sucker for like a, a good Netflix or, or even YouTube video about a beautiful home that's built super custom into the landscape.

How do you consider, or how, how, you know, what goes in the process to really elicit emotion and, and experience from, you know, building? I think a lot of. Maybe think it might be easy. I think everyone's kind of a pseudo expert in interior design, but don't necessarily, you know, but are, are limited by, you know, the space.

But how do architects and designers maximize and also, you know, create kind of an experience through a physical space It seems like. I don't, it seems so abstract to me. You know, as, as someone who doesn't work within it. But I'm curious from your perspective, is what goes into the process to, to take certain things elements and, and create a physical space that gives somebody an emotion or experience.

Camille: Yeah, that's actually a great question and so often that is very true. I know everybody loves to play amateur designer. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Definitely something that is not limited to what your role is in life. Anybody can design, you know, a space for themselves and have it. Be something that's very special and specific to them.

But when it comes to interior design, like often we get this idea that it's this very glamorous job. But there's like really so much hard work that goes into it that I never realized before I got into the profession. How much like drafting is involved in that? Mapping out floor plans, space planning really having an understanding and good concept about design in general in terms of like proportion.

Scale. Understanding how color plays into that textures, like what you're really kind of creating when it comes to that, that it's more so than just aesthetics. It's that feeling that's very hard to capture which is why it's so often like. It misunderstood. I think for design, you think you could just so easily just slap some things together and have it create that thing you're talking about, which is really that environment.

And really so much of that comes from just a deep study into who you're designing for, trying to understand like how they think about the space, what it means to them for either their home. Or like what you're trying to create at your company in a building, and really just having like a good grasp of what that means and then utilizing things in a way that most people don't think about in order to create that environment.

Using color, using texture, using like details in what the design is that you're doing through materials on the wall or the flooring or how lighting plays into that. How natural light comes in through windows and how that affects space during the daytime versus lighting at. And it's really like so many different small little things that when they add up, create that really special effect that it's once you get talked to by an interior designer of what they did for their space, it's amazing the things that you didn't even notice that one element tied into another thing over here, and it's all just these little things at the end of the day when they explain and walk you through the design.

It's like you can really start seeing how much detail and thought went into a space, which is always just what was just incredibly astounding to me and why I'm so attracted to construction and just design in general. It's just the constant creation of something that didn't previously exist. Yeah, and it's there for like, I mean, in some cases centuries it's just amazing to see.

Julian: Yeah. I, I always get so fascinated, you know, how some things just have such a legacy once they're built in a certain way or in a certain fashion, a certain style. I lived in, you know, San Francisco and New York, and both have a lot of historical you know, buildings and, and, and still a functional to the purpose that they were built to or built for at the time today.

Mm-hmm. . And it's so beautiful how. The environment really, really has so many elements taking place. I love how you Yeah. That word is so, so perfect because there are so many elements even both, you know, within nature, but also structurally and physical objects. Tell us a little bit about the, the.

Process that, that Kintail kind of affects and, and where the challenge was and what really inspired you to create a solution to, you know, help builders create a space and environments you know, efficiently, effectively, and, and, you know, really enable the success of, of, you know building a project.

Camille: Yeah. That's actually a really great question. So, like I just explained, there is so much that goes into creating a project from start to finish. From involving like the architecture team Yeah. To really mapping out what pre-construction looks like, to actually getting in and building that structure and then even having to maintain it after that point and manage it.

There's just so many different trades involved, people with specialty knowledge of different aspects of that project. And then you've got people that are having to handle and project manage all of that simultaneously with different things going on. You've got weather delays happening. There's just so many things going on.

It's a very exciting thing to be involved in, which is why I find the industry just so fascinating and interesting. It's just no two projects are ever the same. No two situations are ever the same. The site's different. The building's different. Yeah. The team is d. . And so we actually noticed my co-founder and I, when we were building out Kintail that a lot of the data that was coming in for these projects, they're really producing this mass amount of information that, as you can imagine trying to coordinate.

Multiple teams of people, multiple materials, just all the things going on. Like what a nightmare that could possibly be. Trying to get all of that working in sync with one another, keep a project on time, on budget, so that way at the end of the day, you know, your company still needs to be profitable. You need to be able to supply jobs to the team members that you work with and really have everybody working like in concert with one another.

And so we actually saw when construction. very notorious for being sort of a technical, like laggard in the industries. You know, it's, it's, it's been behind, but they've been like getting much, much better about that in just the last couple of years. They've really started getting into technology adoption.

You know, they've got drones on projects now you've got some VR technology, you've got bin modeling. So much of that that's happening and it's great because it's really made so many things that they do so much more efficient, productive, profitable in a lot of, But what's happened at the same time is that in the adoption of that, it's created kind of a problem and one that I don't think a lot of people foresaw coming, but Carson and I did just a few years ago.

So what starts happening is when you start getting a lot of technology in places it's great because it's automating processes and making things more efficient, right? But it's also doing two things. One, it's creating a lot of important data, very vital, critical information that you might not have previously had because now that you've got technology, it's now creating like a digital footprint.

So you're being able to like, go in and assess what does that mean for my company in things and situations and scenarios that you couldn't previously look. , which is awesome because it's creating all kinds of valuable information to really dig into. Problem is, is that so much of the technology that they utilize is very legacy.

So a lot of things don't connect to one another. This is an industry that, unlike many others that we see today and are very familiar with in what we do even as what you might have, Julian, is just that you've got the ability to connect and integrate a bunch of different applications. You know, you're sharing data all over the.

But in construction, they don't have that ability. And so for them, like over 80% of their software doesn't integrate. It's very legacy. They, they don't have APIs to easily connect things. And then on top of that, you're talking about construction managers that just trying to pull out data out of systems like that.

Spend about 1300 hours annually. Just trying to assemble that data into some kind of usable state so you can get insights out of that. And so that really for us, was something we saw coming a couple years ago. And so we had started building and working on this platform before 2021, which is when we were founded, was last year.

And really started looking at how could we help companies be able to coordinate this type of information so that we can extract all of this valuable information that they're creating on a daily. And be able to put that into a way that we're all familiar with in other industries of being able to gain that data driven type of decision, those insights.

And so that's really what we do and what we formulated as a platform that helps with that so that way anybody in an organization can get the insights they need and they can do all of that without having to hire a data engineer, without having to hire a data scientist and really get all of that done in minutes, which is pretty crazy and pretty awesome at the same.

Julian: it, it's incredible the ability for technology to really decrease the amount of impact like data has on a project or even. Tracking the information and communication. 1500 hours is, I don't, I don't know if a lot of people consider how much time that's half of the working hours in a given year.

There's like, you know, two 2000, what, 2080? So 2,800, you know, working hours for, you know, if you work a 40 hour work week, some people work more, obviously, but you know, that's a, that's a significant percentage of the amount of time you spend and, and. And decreasing that amount of time. I can only imagine the effects that it, that it's had.

I, I love what you're doing, especially because it's an, you call it a no code platform. And these, I think, nowadays are becoming so popular. We have, you know, like bubble.io where you can build, you know, web platforms and, and mobile platforms we use Airtable to create kind of our own internal, We, we, you know, run a recruiting company for Latin American engineers and we have Airtable to create an ATS and plugs in with Zap and all these automations that that and APIs that are built in that, that really allow you know, businesses like ours to run at a different level versus, you know, a few years ago it wouldn't be able to be at where it is.

What goes into building, you know, a no code platform? What are, what's kinda like the, the product roadmap that you have to consider when you're building something that, you know, whoever your customer base is going to be interacting with has to be simple and has to involve complex technology, but offer very simplistic ways to connect those technologies.

What goes into the process of building?

Camille: Yeah. This is my favorite part of the discussion just because this is what makes Kintail just so unique. So we're a two founder team, so it's myself and actually my husband. We're both the co-founders of the business. And it really, for something like this takes for lack of a better word, a marriage, if you will, of different skill sets, really having to come together.

And really like digging into who your user persona is, Having an understanding of how that person works with technology. Mm-hmm. , like what's their level of technicality when it comes to understanding this very technical concept and how do you take what is essentially a very technical concept. and like boil it down to something where you can democratize analytics across an organization.

Understanding that many of the people that would utilize a tool like this do not come from a background of understanding analytics and how to build metrics and things like that. They're not all like power users of Power BI and things like that. So you really gotta like, Take what I have as a skill set for design.

Understanding how to like work with minimal design, how to like take things that are very complex concepts and make them very easy to use. And then take what's a very complicated backend and be able to do it in a robust way to where you're handling like a lot of different data, a lot of volume of. And be able to run it through seamlessly to where data is instantly available to that end user.

So for us, really it is trying to, if you're in any company, it's trying to build a product like this, it's really having to sit down and take it down to its most basic concepts and whatever. That's like that high level concept, you're really having to like walk it back. To where you've got that really non-technical, beginner level understanding and then trying to make the design just something that's super easy, super simplistic.

Yeah. And don't make anything that's too complex to where you've got this very, like long winded time that you're spending in an app. Just because your user, in a lot of cases this is not where they live. So for like a construction manager, this is not like their day to day tool. They've got things that they are using to do their job.

This is really something more to get them that information that they need that's locked up in those tools and being able to see like, how is my project progressing? Like, how well are we performing? You know, like, what does my team look like today? And so we really need to do something in a way that gets them that information as fast as possible.

So you gotta like really bring in those design concepts to be able to achieve that and achieve it flawlessly. .  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. What goes through, you know, I've heard this a lot from, you know, people who are building product and, and creating a simplistic view. What is the type of questions you're asking or the feedback, how are you receiving that feedback to really know the, the effectiveness of that product?

Is it, you know, often kind of like touching base with your client? A lot of times going through a very involved onboarding process and user experience. I'm always curious on how they're developing, you know, in that way. You know, boils it down cuz I think we all understand what the concept means, but the mechanics I think are a little bit you know, obscure to those who don't come from a, you know, a design background.

But I'm curious on, on what's the process and the mechanics behind getting to that level.  

Camille: Yeah, that's actually a really great question. And I would say a lot of that does come from the customer onboarding, customer experience, spending a lot of time with your end user. And so often it is said repeatedly in technology too often teams and companies build things that people don't want.

Yeah. And the reason for that is, is that you don't spend enough time building, maybe more at the back end of a. To understand how the technology works before you start really getting into that end state of what that platform will be, which usually tends to be the ui ux. So you really gotta one, understand if what you're building can be done is that technology capable of achieving what it says it can.

And then once you have that in place, really sitting down with your customer and asking them, you know, what's your level of technical know? on this subject. What is something that would get you the results that you're looking for, but in the fastest time possible, how do we make it to where we're improving your workday, improving your workflows automating all of that information, but doing it in a way that's really meaningful.

For what you're trying to achieve out of that. Because you know, from our perspective, running a construction tech company, you know, we're very different than the end user themselves. So we have two very different concepts of what technology might mean to someone. So really taking the time to understand like where they're coming from.

How they use technology, how they view software, even, especially if you're talking about working in a very legacy industry. You're talking about people that don't often think as technology as the first solution to something. A lot of times it's more manual or gut-based decision making that's involved and trying to put these things together.

So especially in that regard, you gotta like, take that into account and be very empathetic to how they approach tools in, in their day. And so really using that to your advantage, I think is one of the biggest things you could do to really be able to be successful in building out a really strong ui ux that resonates with that particular end user.

Julian: Yeah. Makes so much sense the way you broke it down. And I, I'm so curious about the traction now that you're facing, you've, you've built this really really simplistic product to, to you know, affect an industry in so many ways and, and creates such a unified kind of, Experience for, you know, builders and I'm, I'm assuming so many different stakeholders that go into this technology.

What's the traction you're seeing? How many customers do you have right now? Who, who are you excited that you're working with? What's the growth look like right now? And what are you kind of, what's your expectation for not only the end of the year, but you know, the next the next couple months and quarters and things like.

Camille: Yeah. That's a great question. So we actually, we were founded last year, but we spent all of our time last year in accelerators. I was the only person working full-time at the company at that time. So my co-founder was still working full-time at another construction tech startup in Birmingham, Alabama, which is where we're from originally.

And so once we came up here to Indianapolis, we moved here after attending tech. That cohort this past fall we really only just had gone into market earlier this year. And so over the last about six to eight months, we've gone into market. We've already assigned multiple large enterprise construction firms to annual subscriptions in about six months time.

And are now scaling up our product for this next year with a second version of our product releasing in June. Which is pretty awesome. We've probably built out about 14 integrations for what we're doing with the two person team is, is to me pretty impressive use of our time and work. And already had customers excited about what we were doing before the initial first version of the product was even available.

So really now at this point, it. Struggling to keep up with customer demand and just trying to figure out how we juggle all of that, which is a good problem to have but still something you're having to work out and try to assess what you do with that as a startup founder. .  

Julian: Yeah, no, extremely impress with the, the level of growth and you know, adoption of your platform.

And it sounds like people are more and more seeing the value of, of, you know, implementing something like, like your platform. And yeah, I, I think that's a great problem to have is, is staying up with customer demand. What are some of the biggest challenges that Kintail faces today?  

Camille: That's great. And that's exactly the problem that we're having today is that's really our biggest risk. Yeah. Is struggling with having two co-founders and that being our whole and only team is the two of us. Trying to juggle multiple customers that have, you know, a lot of different things that they wanna see connected in terms of their data.

Being able to expand the product further, add new features, you know, keep up with onboarding. And all of that has become probably our biggest risk is just being able to juggle all those different roles. There's just so many different things that just between the two of you that like one minute you're working on sales, the next minute you're marketing, next minute it's product development.

Next minute it's onboarding a customer. Like every day it's all up and down and it just feels risky just because you're like at, at the end of the day, there's only so many hours. You have to give as a founder and just trying to like, weigh which thing was the most important to work on that day versus that week versus that month.

Like what's the next six months ahead? Like, just trying to keep your head above water. Really for us has been the challenge. But the great thing is, is that we're actually currently fundraising to help in that regard and have really big plans going into 2023 for hiring or go to market or product development.

So a lot of like great fun things on the horizon that I think will really help mitigate that risk for us going forward.  

Julian: Yeah. And I'm so excited to, to see what, what comes of it. And yeah, I love the founder experience. I mean that it's like you don't do one thing, You do probably 10 to 20 things in, in a given day out of, out of necessity, but also I'm sure out of excitement, enthusiasm to what you're building as well.

If everything goes well, what's the long term vision for Kintail?  

Camille: So really our biggest goal is to become the industry standard for data a. I, I just find this whole industry just very fascinating. It's very near and dear to our hearts. And so to be able to go in and be that industry standard and really help pave the way for what companies are looking to do in the near future, you've got, I would say at least 30 to 40% of that workforce is about to be retiring in the next five years which is a big challenge and that's what's putting a lot of strain on that labor shortage that they're facing.

So really that adoption of technology has been like a big factor. And why they're pushing forward with that is you've gotta get more of like the millennial age group, Gen Z. Yeah. You know, top of millennial age group is about 40 now at this point. So you really got like, so much more of that with people that grew up with technology.

They kind of expect that in a job and find, you know, that to be fascinating to work with. So really for us, Being able to be at that great stage where we're at that millennial age group, so we're like that exact group that they're trying to target. With getting more people interested in construction and I think just being able to be a part of that, where that big change is happening to where you see them adopting this technology, they're bringing in analytics, they're getting insights into their business.

They're really being able to ramp up so much of what we saw as a struggle for like manufacturing. It was kind of an issue for even InsureTech with healthcare. Like that was what was happening to them just a few years ago, and we see where they are today. I mean, it's such a huge change in those industries just based on like productivity and efficiency alone by being able to adopt that, getting inside, like just such a massive positive change for them.

That like really that test is like super exciting that we're getting in where we are now today. It's like the best time that we could be starting this. And really just getting to be that, that industry leader is what we're really getting for there.  

Julian: That's a, that's, that's so exciting. And, and yeah, you mentioned healthcare.

I was talking to another founder and he created pretty much a, a way for just overall practitioners to communicate better and, and keep track of information on, on patients. And I can only imagine kind of using that philosophy. And creating kind of a more efficient process, one that allows more communication visibility.

It's, it's interesting, you, you think about those who are coming into these current, these older spaces that have been, you know, around since the dawn of time. You know, construction has been around since we started. We started building things and making fires and, and things along that nature. Yeah. The process behind it I think is, is so fascinating and the adoption of technology with, with people of these age groups because yeah, I feel like you're right.

There is a certain expectation you have going into it about, you know, even just having some visibility and accountability and technology kind of allows that without. You know, without kind of old procedures that, that we're comfortable. Mm-hmm. , I know we're coming to a close and I always like to ask this question selfishly for my own research, but also for my audience, whether it was throughout your career or currently now, what books or people have influenced you the most?

Camille: Oh, that's a great question. And I'm going to shamelessly plug him, but Kyle Lace. He is just like a behemoth in the marketing space. He was previously with Leslie Lee, and then when Leslie Leah was acquired then Seismic I had the great pleasure of meeting him recently here in Indy. And I told him that out of all the people that were there on the evening that we met, that he was the one I was most nervous.

Just because he has just such a great understanding of branding, of marketing, just really being able to read the personality of a company into what you put out there into the world. And I just was so thrilled to meet him. He just has Lessonly as a company. They are another indie based startup that was just recently acquired.

I've just always admired just the ability to take what a company stands for its mission, its purpose, its team, and be able to reflect that back into your branding, into your marketing, and be able to create this entire world around what you do. That just really envelopes people in a way that gets them inspired and very motivated to work with you just because it's like fun. You create like a really interesting, unique atmosphere that for like company culture, like that's huge, right? And so he's just one of those people that I have always like, had an interest in meeting and was absolutely thrilled that he loved our branding, that he really loved our pitch and our story, which was fantastic.

And so that, that was just really inspiring to me and, and really great to get to meet him.  

Julian: That's incredible. I, it, it's always amazing in terms of marketing how to create kind of an ecosystem around and an experience around what you're building. Obviously, you know, you can boil it down to a problem and a solution, but you know, people are really entrenched in the stories behind, you know, your product and, and your experience.

It was so amazing speaking with you, and I'm so excited to see what comes of can tell as as you continue to build and raise, raise money and, and disrupt the industry. Last little bit before we end, I always like to ask my founders, where can we be a part of the story? The where can we support you?

Give us your LinkedIns, your, your Twitters, your websites. Where can we be a fan and, and the supporter and maybe even a customer of can tell.  

Camille: Yeah, it's kintail.io.io. It's our website link, so feel free to join us there and sign up to fall alongside us as we build this journey. And really excited to have everybody along for the ride.

Julian: Amazing. Well, thank you so much Camille, for taking the time. I hope you enjoyed yourself and, and I'm really excited to spread the message and and what you're doing. And again, thank you for being on the show.  

Camille: Yeah, absolutely. Love coming on. Behind, Company Lines, and thrilled to have been here with you today, Julian.

Julian: Awesome.