The Magic of Atmos Engineering
Imagine a world where anyone can build any space - a home, a shop, a skyscraper; anything that can be dreamt about.
In this world, what would you build?
When we launched our home configurator last month, what was possible suddenly became clear: personalized spaces for everyone. An acoustic marvel for your music studio, a high-tech startup hut focused towards building your dream (no more garages), a zenned-out backyard yoga room for your weekly meetups. All possible with a low-cost, low-stress experience. Your space should be a reflection of you and your passions, not a retrofitted cookie cutter home.
The configurator was a huge first step towards this dream, and pulling it off was no easy task. Other companies have tried, but failed for a few reasons:
They don't provide the optionality homebuyers deserve
They don't properly convey the "feel" of the home
They can't help you build it
Atmos Engineering works with a considerable amount of complexity. When anything can be changed, several assumptions about homes we take for granted are broken. Big builders (read "cookie cutter builders") get around this by removing options; it's convenient and low-tech. This isn't a compromise we accept: there is a way, and we've found it.
That's where the magic is: all bets are off. We don't cut corners just because it's easy or profitable. The configurator is a first step, and it's still an early prototype of what we're working on in the background. We want to build the real-life Sims, where designing your home is fun. Everything else we help with (the mortgage, the lot transaction, the build) isn't fun by nature, so our goal there is to make it easy. This means we have to not only manage the innate complexity of real estate and construction, but transform it into something we own, completely hidden from users. Instead of giving users a wrench and a car manual, we're the mechanics.
So what makes Atmos such a hard problem? And why is it worth solving?
We manage the entire homebuilding process
It's generally understood (in most fields, though particularly engineering) that more moving parts means more points of friction and, consequentially, less cohesion. Several companies try to manage a single part of the process; the design of the home, the building of the home, the title transfer, etc. We elected to span the entire flow for a few reasons, but most importantly it allows us to optimize the process in ways the others can't. For example: builders don't want more tech, they want more customers. Our proposition is simple: help us improve the homebuyers' experience, and we'll grow your business.
Of course, this opportunity begets multitasking: we're an N-sided marketplace and have to cater our product to all sides. We have to offer an excellent experience to homebuyers, clients to Realtors/agents, and homebuyers to builders. These parties have different needs, and so dashboards/integrations are essential to ensure everybody derives value. As we expand, N may increase to include architects, interior designers, lenders, and others. Simply put: there's lots to build.
How simple and fun can we make the experience for homebuyers, agents, builders, lenders, and everybody else? Help us build the magical products they all deserve.
Real estate is messy
When you think of a lot, you probably think of an address. But lots are more than that: they're coordinates, boundaries, elevation maps, soil type maps, setback geometries, and all the data pertaining to the lot or area around it. Finding the perfect piece of land to raise your family near good schools within walking distance of a shopping center is doable, but then you have to know whether that perfect mediterranean barndominium you saved can even be built on that lot. In addition, all of this data is messy or hard to find - if it's available at all.
The lot search is one of the most painful parts of building, so we automate it. We have to understand every lot and home to incredible detail in order to compute whether they're compatible. Once that's done, we have to build out a seamless search experience on top to make sure homebuyers know exactly where they're going to live. Real estate is messy, so we build tools and gather data to clean it up.
What would it look like if users could find the perfect lot in under 5 seconds? Help us build the world's smartest lot + home recommendation engine.
Configurable homes are complex
How do you turn a CAD-ed out home into a realtime-rendered model you can play with in your browser? Well, first we have to model it in a specific way. Then, we have to transform it into a universally accessible format that all of our systems understand. Then, we have to build out interactions to make the experience feel real. It's a tough job, so you can imagine what we did next: we automated it! We have complex data structures and pipelines to list new homes as fast as users' preferences change. Need a new home design? Model it out, test it, run it through the pipelines, done - it's ready to list.
There's still a lot to do with our design tech. Next up: updating existing designs with new materials. Carbon fiber windows just dropped? Model it out, test it, run it through the pipelines, done - it's available in every home.
How fast is too fast? How can we allow users to choose between any material, any appliance, any color, on any home? Help us build the most flexible plug-n-play architecture suite.
Pricing is chaotic
One of the first things homebuyers begin to dread when they think about building a custom home is the cost. The issue isn't that it costs more (it's typically about the same as buying an existing home), but that you usually don't know the price tag until the builder gives you a quote. You can pick what you think is the cheapest option, and still end up 20% over-budget (and then, during the build, you might find the price rise more). With Atmos, you get transparency: design the home with a budget in mind so you don't need to go back to the drawing board when reality strikes.
How do we do this? You guessed it: automation. With dynamic pricing on every material in our home plans, we can accurately estimate what that cost will be. It sounds simple, but under the hood the machinery is heavy; prices fluctuate and depend on location/supplier, bulk discounts save money if we take advantage of them, and builders have different labor costs and pricing structures.
How can we get estimates within 1% of the actual cost every single time? Help us build the source of truth for realtime construction material prices.
Building an evolving platform
Like every tech company, we have to build a platform that scales with us. We're laser-focused on building a timeless company, and we're planning for it early:
It starts with the people: empower the team, and let them build. Tech is art, a reflection of the creator, and we believe giving talented people the opportunities to build great things is what fosters a culture of innovation.
Focus on loose coupling: teams should work together, not be dependent on each other. We're taking advantage of microservices and optimizing our team workflows to ensure our processes work for us, not slow us down.
Always adapt: event-based architectures, GraphQL, and robust internal libraries/tools are part of the larger march towards fast iteration and a painless dev experience. A proven technology is only proven for a time, and will eventually be superseded by something new; it's best to stay ahead of the curve by constantly experimenting.
How can we build the tools, systems, and processes to move faster every day? Help us define the tech stack of the future.
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Imagine that world again. In that world, what do you think the future of living would look like? What would a neighborhood look like? What would a city look like?
For me, I imagine a world where form and function adapt with time; spaces appear and disappear at will, the materials sustainably reused and recycled. I imagine cities forming around communities, instead of communities being a forced byproduct of proximity. I imagine living as a basic right, where safe, high-quality housing is guaranteed to all people. I imagine a world where people can move freely, unhindered by systems which aim to keep them anchored in place. I imagine a home being a place where people rest and make memories, not a time-sink for maintenance. I imagine other things, too, but now I need to focus on building towards this dream.
Whatever you might build, that's the future we're creating at Atmos Engineering. If you want to build the future with us, consider working at Atmos
