Balancing Trade-offs in a Fast Growing Startup

Weighing today’s good against tomorrow’s great.

Our goal at New Story is to close the gap for those living in survival mode.

For us, this means building safe homes to provide the basis for economic uplift. In the past year, however, we’ve expanded our focus to include research and development for the social housing sector. We want to explore just how much technology can multiply our efforts; so far, we’ve seen some incredible returns, but the process is a work in progress. Since our vision reaches beyond simply “build the greatest possible number of homes,” we are constantly weighing trade-offs. Resources aren’t infinite, so where do we apply them for the greatest possible return?

On the most basic level, a trade-off looks like this: we know a New Story home costs about $7,000. Every time we fundraise for R&D instead of home-building — two separate silos in our ecosystem — we’re spending effort and energy building technology instead of housing a family. At first glance, it’s an alarming idea. Should a family have to wait longer for a roof over their head, while we develop mobile apps in our safe San Francisco office?

Let’s imagine a long-term perspective. Building technology to advance 3D home printing took about a year of relationship-building, fundraising, marketing, press relations, and more. It was a massive energy drain for our team, on the one hand. On the other hand, now we have the ability to print homes in hours instead of weeks, for a fraction of the cost. Long term, more families will have homes, faster, because we divided our attention from merely building homes today.

To reach the greatest number of families possible, we are making thoughtful trade-offs. It’s the only way to come close to addressing a billion person problem. We continually ask ourselves, by doing this, what else can’t we do? Resources are always limited, so by saying “yes” to one thing, you create an inevitable “no” to something else. Is it worth it? Sometimes it’s not. But, then again, sometimes the most irresponsible thing you can do is make a decision to serve the short-term.

There is an emotional labor to the work. There is no right answer. You have to be prepared to make the best decision given your understanding of the current constraints… and then live with yourself as the unpredictable outcomes unfold. The human element is a huge part of what we do: the greatest gift and the greatest challenge.

Perhaps a few less families received homes in 2018 than our true capacity, but we hope to see exponential returns on that investment in 2019 and beyond.