There’s a new kid on the block. Blokable, a modular construction start-up from Seattle, is heading for sunny California. Its secret sauce is off-site construction: Why build everything custom if you can make it cheaper and faster, again and again? If this sounds familiar, it is because this is the same manufacturing process many American goods go through from car assembly lines to computer systems. It goes against the grain of the traditional on-site building model, but people are investing in this million-dollar modular idea.
After building its foundation in Washington state, Blokable is scaling in California.
The Seattle startup that takes a novel approach to home building announced Tuesday it has opened a corporate office in Sacramento and is planning a major manufacturing facility in the state.
Blokable hired Jeff Robinson to oversee the company’s manufacturing expansion, bringing experience from his tenure at Tesla and Ford. Jim Hurley will join the team as head of real estate finance, following nearly a decade of management work for the California Public Employees Retirement System’s investment office.
Blokable launched in 2016 with a mission to reduce the cost of building homes by making the process more efficient. When Blokable was just getting off the ground, its co-CEO Aaron Holm liked to compare the traditional home building process to the laborious way computers were once made. They were completely custom, requiring a lengthy building process. The former Amazon product manager who led the tech giant’s physical retail push saw that inefficiency as a big opportunity.
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