#67 - 3D Home Printing for the Developing World - Alexandria Lafci and Brett Hagler of New Story Charity

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast. Today's episode is with Alexandria Lafci and Brett Hagler. They're co-founders of New Story Charity. New Story Charity builds homes and communities in the developing world, and they were part of the Summer 2015 batch. So they just 3D printed their first home in Austin, Texas, and you can check it out at 3dhome.org. We'll also post the video and links on the blog.
All right, here we go.
How about we start with you guys explaining what you do, and then we'll go back in time and talk about how you ended up doing YC and all the rest of it.

**Alexandria Lafci** (0:35)
Awesome.

**Brett Hagler** (0:36)
Sure. So we're a non-profit, one of the first ones to go through Y Combinator, and we build houses and communities throughout the developing world. So right now, throughout Haiti and Latin America, and you can kind of envision a plot of land and then about 200 to 300 homes being designed, kind of like an urban designer would do, for some of the poorest people in the world.
Is the really high level of that? And Allie, can I add on to that?

**Alexandria Lafci** (1:04)
Yeah, so we'll essentially work with local governments, we'll get large pieces of land, typically granted, bring in utilities, subdivide the land, and then families who were previously living in, let's say, tent slums in Haiti post-earthquake or in active landslide zones in El Salvador, we'll bring those families into the communities. They actually help design the homes and the communities.
And then the families not only own the houses, but they own the land that the home sits on. And land ownership is so crucial as a path out of poverty.

**Craig Cannon** (1:34)
And were you guys working on nonprofits before? Or did you just get excited about this idea?

**Brett Hagler** (1:39)
Yeah, Alexandria was. I definitely was not. Probably the last thing in the world I thought I'd be doing.
And like literally. But I kind of had a big 180 in my life, and then when I was in my early 20s, had a for-profit startup before this. So I loved entrepreneurship, loved technology, loved innovation, all the things. Then took a trip to Haiti a couple years after the 2010 earthquake. So like not right after, but just like a couple years after.
But it looked like it was a few months after, you know, and was just blown away by the tens of thousands of people that were living in tents. Because the earthquake destroyed, I don't know, probably close to like a million households, something like that. And everybody was given temporary aid, right? Which is necessary at the time, but it was only supposed to last for like maybe 90 days.
And as of today, it's been almost, I mean, over eight years. And people are still living in tents. Like little kid, mom and her, you know, three little girls are living in a tent with no protection from intruders, from storms, from anything.
And you kind of just go back to like, I don't know, first principles, Maslow's Hierarchy, and think food, water. And I think sometimes we forget about shelter. And you just, we saw it firsthand and came back. And right before I met Alexandria, I actually tried to find other nonprofits that could like really champion and support that were solving this issue. And then as we went out and started telling more people about it, kind of found another problem, which was skepticism. And so many people that were skeptical about where their money actually went.
So we're here in Silicon Valley, we're giving to X organization. How is the money actually being spent? It kind of seems like a black hole. What percent is going? How efficient is it? Like all these things. And so we uncovered another problem, which was a lack of transparency, a lack of accountability, and kind of like a status quo. Yep. In a sense.
And then teamed up with Alexandria and our other co-founder Matthew. And like the early catalyst was, how do we take those pain points that we know donors have, right? Like our end user, reverse engineer a new experience for that. And then we also have another, obviously, the most important end user, which is the families that we partner with.
And how do we provide a better experience for them as well, which Ally can talk through. And that was how it started.

**Craig Cannon** (4:12)
But just to clarify, there were companies or nonprofits working in this space, the money would just kind of like, you know, seeps out from little cracks in the business, and then they kind of end up living in tents.