Revolutionizing Coastal Defense, 3D-Printed Living Seawalls with Anya Freeman of Kind Designs

The recent flooding in South Florida makes today's episode of Take It To The Board particularly timely.  Anya Freeman, the visionary founder of Kind Designs, sits down with host Donna DiMaggio Berger to explain her groundbreaking approach to protecting our coastal properties and shorelines. Anya explains how her 3D-printed Living Seawalls mimic natural marine habitats like mangrove roots. Not only do these seawalls offer structural stability and cost-effectiveness, but they also enhance marine ecosystems by providing habitats for marine life and sequestering carbon. Donna and Anya discuss the materials used, the large-scale 3D printing process, and how Anya’s groundbreaking work caught the eye of entrepreneur Mark Cuban, whose investment helped scale up production and expand her team.

Donna and Anya dive into real-world applications of these living seawalls in coastal cities such as Miami and New Orleans, showcasing their adaptability and long-term benefits. They also address common concerns from homeowners’ associations about costs and permitting, illustrating how successful projects like the Jockey Club in Miami have navigated these challenges. Additionally, they discuss the aesthetic appeal of incorporating public art into seawall designs, making them not just functional but also visually captivating and compliant with city regulations. Don't miss this episode if you're curious about how your community can benefit from the innovation shaping the future of our coastlines and the entrepreneurial spirit propelling these advancements.

Conversation highlights include:

• How living seawalls differ from traditional seawall designs
• The inspiration for the Living Seawall, and challenges during development
• How Living Seawalls benefit community associations 
• Ecological impact of Living Seawalls
• The 3D printing process
• Regulatory challenges associated with installing Living Seawalls
• Advice for community association leaders considering a Living Seawall for coastal or waterfront properties

BONUS: Learn about Anya's entrepreneurial family and why Anya is a such a big fan of the USA! 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hi everyone, I'm attorney Donna DiMaggio-Berger, and this is Take it to the Board, where we speak condo and HOA. Welcome to today's episode of Take it to the Board, where we are going to delve into the world of seawall construction and the innovative strides being made in this essential field. Seawalls have been guarding coastlines since the times of the Roman Empire, providing protection against the relentless forces of nature. While they traditionally safeguard against erosion and flooding, their impact on natural ecosystems has prompted a call for smarter, more sustainable solutions. Today, we're thrilled to have Anya Freeman with us.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Anya's journey has taken her from Ukraine to Israel and South Africa before finally settling in the United States. Her academic pursuits led her to the University of Miami, where she earned a law degree on scholarship. Anya's career includes notable stints at the US Attorney's Office and clerking at the United States District Court, followed by her environmental advocacy and litigation work at her own firm, freeman Law Group. The recurring flooding of her South Beach home spurred Anya to challenge the status quo of coastal defenses. This led to the birth of Kind Designs in 2023, a company pioneering the world's first 3D-printed living seawall, operating out of Miami.

Speaker 1: 1:16

These aren't your ordinary seawalls. Anya's designs incorporate the principles of biomimicry, functioning as artificial reefs that not only protect the shore but also enhance marine ecosystems, sequester carbon and gather crucial water data. Anya's groundbreaking work caught the eye of entrepreneur Mark Cuban, whose investment helped scale up production and expand her team. Today, kind Designs is at the forefront of climate and construction technology, transforming how we think about and implement coastal defenses. So let's dive into this conversation with Anya Freeman and explore how your community can benefit from the innovation that is shaping the future of our coastlines. So with that, anya, welcome to Take it to the Board.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Thanks so much. That's an awesome introduction. I think the podcast is done.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Now give us a little bit more time. We've got some things to talk about. So first of all, can you start Anya by explaining what a living seawall is and how it's different from traditional seawall designs?

Speaker 2: 2:14

Sure. So, like you mentioned, we are based in Miami and one of the biggest challenges facing our city and all coastal cities across the world is flooding, and rising sea levels have really contributed and exasperated that problem, and the way that cities have always dealt with it is building traditional seawalls. The problem with traditional seawalls, number one is they're very expensive for communities and number two, they destroy marine habitats for two reasons One is regular seawalls leach chemicals traditional concrete leaches and number two is that regular seawalls leach chemicals traditional concrete leeches and number two is that the seawalls are flat.

Speaker 2: 2:50

So all the organisms that were living on the coast. They can't attach to a flat surface, so they migrate and the quality of water goes down 50 within one year of installation, because those guys are not there to eat all the toxins in the water. And so we start to think how do we come up with a seawall, a product that's number one, more economic for communities and number two, also something that's actually nurturing for the underwater ecosystem? And we were able to accomplish that by converging 3D printing technology with material science and very well established artificial reef science, and we did it by creating these 3D printed living seawalls.

Speaker 2: 3:33

So the living seawalls are structurally identical to regular seawalls, but they also function like reefs because the wet space the front of the seawall mimics local marine habitats. In Florida that's mangrove roots. Our seawalls look like mangrove roots. We have built-in sensors so the seawall is also collecting data and it helps dissipate wave energy in canals and more high-traffic areas. So those are the primary benefits of the living seawalls compared to traditional seawalls.

Speaker 1: 4:04

So I've seen the pictures of the living seawalls compared to traditional seawalls. So I've seen the pictures of the living seawall on your website Very cool. Like you said, it looks like mangrove roots. The material on you, though, is still concrete, correct?

Speaker 2: 4:16

It's non-toxic concrete.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Non-toxic concrete. So what other materials are seawalls made of?

Speaker 2: 4:22

Sure. So in the US there's four primary types of seawalls steel, plastic, wood actually, and concrete. Steel is used in the most extreme conditions like extremely deep water, very high traffic areas, like ports. They will use steel. It's the most expensive type of seawall. And the other extreme is plastic. That's used in like a lake in Orlando very soft ground, very little impact and they used to be cheaper. That's why people did plastic, but unfortunately now they're just as expensive as other types of seawalls and they leach microplastics so they've kind of become less popular. The third type is wood, which we don't have in Florida because we don't have forests here, like if you live in.

Speaker 2: 5:03

North Carolina you may see some wood seawalls. And the fourth and by far, by far the most popular type of seawall is concrete Number one because of its structural capabilities Seawalls in here 5,000 PSI. They can withstand extreme weather conditions and the price. So, given all of its structural capabilities, it's still the most affordable type of seawall for communities.

Speaker 1: 5:26

You mentioned 3D printing. I still cannot wrap my head around that you can plug in coordinates and actually print something. How big must the 3D printer be to be able to print? Is it like a 10 by 10 panel of the seawall? Can you walk us through that?

Speaker 2: 5:42

Sure, most people think of 3D printing as like a desktop 3d printer, which we do have those here but you know they're printing little parts like a knob for your oven or something, and and that's really great. But what we do is called large scale 3d printing. So the printer itself he's the size of like an suv. That's on its side, so he's pretty big. He's mobile, so we can print in our warehouse or we can move him to the construction site and he can print seawalls in someone's backyard. If the scale is there, then that's something that we would do, and our printer is specifically designed to print with our proprietary non-toxic concrete mix.

Speaker 1: 6:21

Where did you get this printer from? Did you create the printer or did you buy it somewhere?

Speaker 2: 6:26

My partner created it in Europe, in the Netherlands, and we have exclusivity to use it for seawalls. So my partner prints houses with it, which many of you may have seen, and we print seawalls. So basically it's just the wall part of the house. So we just do it again and again, and again and again. It's much simpler than printing a whole house.

Speaker 1: 6:44

So I just had my partner, valeria Angelucci, on the podcast recently, and Valeria is an intellectual property attorney, so she was talking about copyrights, trademarks, patents. I assume, given how phenomenal this product is, that you've protected it. You've got patents, you've got all the so protection you need. Is anybody else out there doing what you do with living seawalls?

Speaker 2: 7:09

no, we are the first and only company in the world to 3d print a seawall like living or not living seawall period the closest things that companies have done to us and are in other countries. One is in australia. Uh, there's companies there that they print. They don't print. They, I think, use molds to make little tiles you can attach to an existing wall to make it more green. So it's not a structural product, it's not a seawall, but it's an add-on product, which is great.

Speaker 2: 7:37

And then there's a company in Israel that was working on the concrete mix. So it's a very environmentally friendly mix that encourages attachment of sea life. They don't do any 3D printing, but they sell their materials for different coastal construction applications. But that's pretty much the closest to what we do. No one has printed a seawall in the world. And, yes, the intellectual property component is very important, especially because we're now venture backed. As you said, mark Cuban is one of many investors we have. We raised a $5.6 million seed round last quarter, and so for all investors it's very important that we have an entire portfolio of intellectual property to protect us from competition, because being first to market is awesome. We're really capitalizing on that, but we absolutely anticipate that competition will follow eventually.

Speaker 1: 8:26

Well, I mentioned in the intro that you're an attorney and you had your own law firm, and environmental advocacy seemed to be one of your focuses. But what inspired you to come up with this, to think this into reality?

Speaker 2: 8:39

Just living in South Beach. I was in Miami Beach living in a house with my friends and we just started getting flooded worse and worse every year and actually we all got a letter one year from our car insurance company saying that we're no longer covering flooding and literally cars would float down the street in South Beach and this still happens today.

Speaker 2: 9:00

It's actually much worse today, and so I just became very curious in this phenomenon of increased flooding, increased storm surges, and so I just became very curious in this phenomenon of increased flooding, increased storm surges, and what I saw is there's a lot of attention on the problem, but the narrative is very doom and gloom. It's like you know you'd be crazy to buy a house in Florida. We're all going to be underwater by 2060. There's a lot of haters out there.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Oh well, listen, I'm inland and I'm on a golf course no-transcript?

Speaker 2: 9:36

No, of course not. To me, that conversation is very boring. It does not take into account all the incredible innovation, technological innovations that we can not only contribute to but also converge already existing science. It doesn't take into account all the great minds that have moved to coastal cities like Miami in the past few years. I never wanted to stand on a soapbox and talk about the problem of rising sea levels. I think there's enough. There's enough attention on that, but really I wanted to focus on coming up with a solution and building it right here in Miami to protect Miami, first and foremost, but then to democratize this product and scale it not just in the US but but to every coastal city in the world that's at risk from flooding and storm surges right now I was going to ask you that.

Speaker 1: 10:20

I mean Charleston, you've got New Orleans, you've got cities all around our coastline. Are you currently doing business in those cities and producing seawalls for them?

Speaker 2: 10:30

No, just Florida. We're hyper-focused on Florida. It's by far well, it's our home, first of all. Second of all, it's by far, by far, the number one seawall market in the world. If you look at the top 10 cities in the US hardest hit by rising sea levels and who's spending on seawalls, five of those cities are in Florida. Number one is Miami, by far, number two is New York City. So that will be our second market, but five of the cities are in Florida.

Speaker 2: 10:56

So in this year we will only be producing seawalls in this state. Next year is when we launch a licensing model. So we will keep key markets for ourselves where we have a key connection, primarily to my investors. A lot of my investors are in construction or government, so we would ourselves open warehouses in the Bahamas, for example, or on the West Coast of Florida. But outside of that, to get to all the major cities in time doesn't make sense for me to open warehouse by warehouse right. It's going to be about franchising and enabling, empowering contractors in those cities to buy their own robotic arm, give them a local materials partner, a library of designs that's customized to their local marine habitats, and then give them tech support so they can print these seawalls themselves. So let's talk about.

Speaker 1: 11:48

Florida. So we, you know, look, the name of the podcast is Take it to the Board, and who's listening is a lot of people living in the 60,000 plus associations in Florida condominium cooperative and homeowners associations. Many of them are clustered along our coastline. Now, I don't know, Do you?

Speaker 2: 12:06

live in a condo or HOA. Yes, I'm only renting.

Speaker 1: 12:10

Ok, so you're not going to the board meetings, you're not serving on the board, so that's maybe, if you ever move in by, we'll have you back and we'll talk about your experience being on a board or going to board meetings, but you're in a condo. Many of these communities are look, they have seawalls, okay, and right now they're looking at maintaining, repairing and replacing those seawalls. But many of them are also very budget conscious. So what would you say to them? In terms of living seawall, I think the product looks better. It's certainly much, much more desirable for our ecosystem, but if you're talking to just a board of a volunteer board of directors, that's like we need to replace our seawall. It's at the end of its useful life. Why should they consider a living seawall?

Speaker 2: 12:57

Sure, we just signed a contract with a board, an HOA. It's called the Jockey Club in Miami. It's very iconic, I know them.

Speaker 1: 13:04

You used to go there when I was a kid with my dad, but okay, yes.

Speaker 2: 13:09

So you know they have a massive seawall, 1,500 linear feet. I mean it's like 15 residential projects in one, and we will be providing the contractor that they chose all the panels, the living seawall panels, and we are able to do it for exactly the same budget that they had for traditional concrete panels. So, with all of those environmental benefits that we have been talking about, there is no additional cost. Number one. Number two he did not have to start over with permitting, so in Miami, unfortunately, it takes two years to get a seawall project approved, and so we created a product that was as traditional as possible.

Speaker 2: 13:49

So it's the same reinforcement, meaning the same type of rebar and spacing. It's the same PSI, the strength of the material, still concrete. The only difference is this design element on the wet face. But because it's structurally identical to traditional concrete walls, if you already apply for a permit for a concrete seawall, you can just plug in our panels. You don't need to start over or apply for any modification if your permit is still pending with local government. So that's why we're able to provide the living seawalls to that HOA and they didn't have to pay an extra dollar.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Oh, that's fantastic. Now the marine life tell me how it is. So are you monitoring how the marine life attaches to the living seawall? How quickly that happens? Do you have any data on that yet?

Speaker 2: 14:39

Yes, we're working with FIU, florida International University, and they're sending out students every two weeks and they are taking samples, taking photos and they're monitoring what kind of organisms attach the rate of attachment. So, because that data is something you can't really simulate in a lab, it's something that once we've installed we just installed the world's first 3D printed seawall in February of this year, so just two months ago. It's all been happening very fast, oh wow. And so after that first installation, we started being able to do the long-term studies with local universities.

Speaker 1: 15:11

So one of the things that the volunteer boards have to think about, anya, is maintenance of the common elements. So the seawall is a common element for a condo and for homeowners association. It's a common area. Are there going to be challenges associated with maintaining the wall if there's marine life on it that they don't want to disturb?

Speaker 2: 15:28

Actually something called bioconcrete, which is a principle that when organisms start to attach to seawalls, they actually deposit our skeletons into the wall and the skeletons repair minor cracks, so it really extends the life of the seawall. It's almost like self-maintenance. You know, it's just amazing, because what we're doing is really just providing space for sea life to attach and thrive, and then the organisms and the sea life itself brings so many benefits to the seawall. The quality of water even sequesters carbon by itself. The skeletons sequester carbon through biocalcification. So it does not mean that there's any additional maintenance requirements.

Speaker 1: 16:09

That's incredible. I mean, you build it. It's constructed, I assume, with rebar in the wall, correct? Because, again, I had another guest recently, alessandra Bianchini, and we were talking about concrete restoration projects all the balconies, all the concrete restoration that many of these older coastal buildings are undertaking right now because they have deadlines to do so. So this is. That is very interesting. Maybe I should get you two to talk.

Speaker 2: 16:35

Yeah, sounds good. So right now we have to use rebar. It's mandated by building codes, but we would love to not use rebar at all. My COO comes from the Boring Company. He was Elon Musk's employee number seven. They were making concrete panels for tunnels and there, instead of using rebar, they're using fibers Randomly. They randomly dose the concrete mix with fibers which reinforces it, but it doubles, triples the life of the seawall because it does not erode in the same way as rebar. So it's much lighter, it's cheaper. We just haven't been able to install those projects yet because building codes prohibit it.

Speaker 1: 17:13

In terms of using the let's say, the finger piers, the docks that extend out. Does there need to be some sort of special attention so that's not constructed where it's abutting directly up against or in any way harming the marine life that's attached to the wall?

Speaker 2: 17:29

Well, there's always pilings right and seawalls, the seawall design on the wet face. The mangrove roots never go out further than the pilings, so it's protected.

Speaker 1: 17:39

Now you have living tiles too. I saw, right, that would be like we have a flat surface in traditional concrete seawall and now maybe we don't need. We're not at a point where we need to replace it, but we kind of like what you're talking about, so there's an option for those folks too, right?

Speaker 2: 17:57

Yes, so the living are very new uh innovation here as of literally a few weeks ago, because we got a lot of requests. Number one a reason people are reaching out for living tiles is for lead points. So in many cities like miami city in miami, when you do a construction uh, you build a house or a building that's over 6 000000 square feet you have to be gold LEED certified, so you need an X number of points and you get points for different environmental components of the building. Well, the living seawalls count towards those points, obviously, but if a building or house already has a seawall, they can also purchase these tiles, which count towards the same points. It's innovation points for creating the marine habitats, basically, like an artificial reef structure is attached to the seawall.

Speaker 2: 18:47

So that's the first reason people are using the seawalls is for lead points. And the second is that they've seen more governments have reached out to us because they installed a seawall. For example, we're doing one which is applied to do a seawall project on the West Coast. It's a 300-foot seawall. For example, we're doing one which is applied to do a seawall project on the West Coast. It's a 300-foot seawall. It's made from plastic and unfortunately, all the sea life left, and the quality of the water has just dramatically gone down. And so they asked us to come up with a system of how can we attach our tiles to a plastic wall to bring back some of that life.

Speaker 1: 19:21

I wanted to ask you about if you were engaging in any PPP projects, public-private partnerships. Is Kind Designs engaged in any of that, or are you trying to engage in any of those?

Speaker 2: 19:33

I've actually never heard of it, so probably something I should look into.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Absolutely. That's where and that was there was a PPP project where they built the tunnel through the to the port of Miami. So, yeah, we can always talk offline about that, because it seems, as I'm talking to you here, that your company would be extremely well positioned to conduct a PPP, so that's a great idea. I would love to find out more. I wanted to ask you further are you eligible for any grants? Because are you working with local and federal government? I mean, I would assume at some point you're going to get on their radar.

Speaker 2: 20:08

We just won our first grant money, like two days ago. We got phase one. It's Air Force grant, so it's pretty awesome. Phase one they give a small amount. It's an Air Force grant, so it's pretty awesome. Phase one they give a small amount it's like $25,000 but you use that funding to then go out and talk to all the Air Force bases and actually walk away with a contract. So in this case it would be a contract for us to build living seawalls at a local Air Force base to protect their coastal assets. And then, once you have that contract, then you get phase two, which is the funding for the 3D printing and the materials and the cost of the actual seawall.

Speaker 1: 20:45

Listen, your product really involves community engagement, so how are you educating people about this?

Speaker 2: 20:53

Good question. We've been really lucky. We have not spent any money on advertising. I just think it's the right place, right time and that there is already a lot of attention on this problem. So communities, local media, local government, they're happy to see innovation in this space and therefore we've had a lot of coverage. We were the BBC recently. The NBC just a lot of local media, which helps us a lot to reach homeowners as well as contractors. So I don't think it's something we've actually done proactively, but it's been an organic process. And also I think people love to see photos of the robots. You know, it's just like a really cool and exciting, I know. I did.

Speaker 1: 21:33

I know I enjoyed your video and watching all of it, but podcasts like this the word is going to get out and I imagine it's going to be like a snowball rolling downhill once people start realizing that there are alternatives. And look, you're right. I don't think it's doom and gloom regarding sea level rise, but these are going to become seawalls and are going to become even more important than they already have been. Towards the end, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about New Orleans. So I have a lot of family members in New Orleans After the horrendous. They get hit with hurricanes from time to time and they flood, so they built up their seawalls, they built up their levees, but in parts it almost looks like they're living in a bathtub and they're at the bottom and they're looking up at a very high wall. With your seawalls, do you necessarily build them taller than what the code requires, or can you talk about height and where you see if there's any trend that we're going to have to keep building seawalls higher?

Speaker 2: 22:35

Unfortunately, I think so. We don't build our living seawalls higher. The customer decides the height. By the way, we don't decide the height and the code Exactly. The customer is never going to voluntarily build a taller seawall, so it's usually just the code that mandates the height. What I do want to do is make our seawalls modular, because as we incorporate different rebar the fibers we keep extending the life of the seawall. So right now, traditional seawalls last about 50 years. If we're able to use fiberglass rebar, then that can be 70 years. With fibers it's actually 100 years. But the sea levels will keep rising. So what we would like to do is create extensions. You can remove the cap, add an extension and then put the cap back on, instead of having to build a brand new seawall every time you're getting flooded or every county mandates a higher seawall.

Speaker 1: 23:30

Well, that would be incredibly important to be able to just add on, like you said, in a modular fashion. Exactly.

Speaker 2: 23:36

That system doesn't exist now, but also because of traditional seawalls have the steel rebar, so they have to be replaced after 50 years, there's really no point in making them modular.

Speaker 1: 23:46

So you talked about dissipation, wave dissipation. So for our people who don't live on the coast and don't know, that means boats whizzing by. So how does the living seawall dissipate? Do a better job at wave dissipation.

Speaker 2: 23:58

Well, you can imagine, if there's a flat wall and there's a wave bouncing against it, that wave energy just gets bounced back, either across the canal, so to the neighbors to the right and left of the property, because we have this mangrove root design and the wet face of the wall, the mangrove roots and the caves absorb a lot of that energy. So it really helps improve, well, extend the life of the wall. The mangrove roots and the caves absorb a lot of that energy, so it really helps improve, well, extend the life of the sea walls and also improve how the whole community is affected by storm surges and and wave energy and the sequestration of carbon.

Speaker 1: 24:32

Can you explain that that?

Speaker 2: 24:33

happens organically. When sea life attaches, they deposit their skeletons into the wall, and I already talked about how the skeletons help repair cracks. But those same skeletons actually sequester carbon through biocalcification. It's not a huge amount, but it's extensive when you look at the volume of seawall. So each panel can sequester about 40 pounds of carbon per year, which is equivalent to a mature tree.

Speaker 1: 24:58

So it becomes like an underwater forest in a way, you know, this product sounds too good to be true. I mean, I'm listening to you. I, as I said, I live inland, I live on a golf course, but if I lived on a coastline I would be so interested in this, as opposed to the ugly sea walls I see, and many of them are crumbling as you're driving by on a boat and looking at them. What else are you? What other designs are on the horizon for kind designs?

Speaker 2: 25:28

So we just started incorporating art into the seawall so it can still be a living seawall, so it has the rugosity, the texture, special nooks and crannies for sea life to hide from predators. But also we're partnering with local artists to make the seawall public art, essentially, and one it's beautiful, that's very cool. But, number two, there's actually an economic reason behind it. Everything I do is always I think I'm more of a capitalist before I am an environmentalist, meaning that I really believe you have to have great economics to make a product scalable, globally scalable, and therefore make the environmental impact that's attached to it globally scalable. So with Living Sea Walls, from day one, we've been really focused on how do we make it a no-brainer for homeowners, for HOAs, right. So everyone should switch to a living seawall. And one of the things we're looking into is expedited permitting, special tax incentives that they have for solar panels and for Teslas, right.

Speaker 2: 26:27

And the third one is this art and public places. Many cities like Miami, they mandate that when there's a large construction project, the developer has to pay 1.5% of the budget of that project towards public art, and usually they just put that money in a fund and they don't see anything. Well, by incorporating art into the seawall, then we transform that seawall into public art, because even if the seawall is on private property, it can be enjoyed from the public space of the water. In fact, the homeowner is the only one who doesn't get to enjoy his own seawall, because they can't Unless they go across the canal right Exactly. And with so many high rises going up in Miami Beach, we're really trying to take advantage of this opportunity, because they have to spend that money anyways. Why not use it to make the seawall incredible?

Speaker 1: 27:20

Do you come from a family of entrepreneurs? Yes, tell me about that.

Speaker 2: 27:25

Sure. So my father is a very well-known scientist in his field. He has hundreds of patents. He's in the Tantalum Hall of Fame. He creates capacitors, electronic components in military applications, so missiles, military defense in the United States. That's how we came to America. He got a job with the space program here. So that's kind of the science part of the family. And then my brother. He just took a year of absence from Harvard and MIT, where he's doing his PhD, to work on a company that's revolutionizing the collection of cancer related data.

Speaker 1: 28:06

So a family of underachievers. Ok, we know it's like the American dream. I'm just clearly, clearly overachievers.

Speaker 2: 28:14

It's just so fun to be in America I don't know if you're born here, like you can realize like, how freaking awesome this country is and also because we're from Ukraine, from Israel. Our friends and family in Ukraine are definitely not building impact companies right now, and Israel recently too, although Israel has a great culture of innovation and startups. But to be in this country and have access to investors who want to fund startups, to grants right, that want to support innovation, it would just feel for me like a huge waste of this opportunity it was given to not go for something not just huge economically, but something that's incredibly impactful and will be a great legacy for our city.

Speaker 1: 28:54

I really appreciate you saying that, because hearing that enthusiasm from somebody who wasn't born in the United States and perhaps sees our country through an entirely different lens you know, if you watch the news these days or have been for a while, you can get very disillusioned. But to hear somebody who's come in and still sees the American dream and is living the American dream, that's really cool.

Speaker 2: 29:21

Yeah, thanks so much. The first thing we did when we moved to our warehouse we just moved to a 50,000 square foot warehouse in the Miami River is we literally bought the biggest American flag you can buy online. It's like almost as big as the one they shake on the football field, you know, before a game and we hung it up on the wall because, just like it symbolizes freedom and possibility, it's really exciting just to be, to be a part of that.

Speaker 1: 29:44

American dream culture. How many people are on your team now, Anya?

Speaker 2: 29:48

We're eight full time and six part time, so 14. And it was just me a year ago, so it's all happened quickly.

Speaker 1: 29:54

And how difficult was it to get the seed money.

Speaker 2: 29:58

What's that process like? Yes, you know, I always say I'm glad I didn't get the memo. It was hard to fundraise people to even like my CEO was like you know. He said, wow, like all my friends are telling me, it was like the hardest year for raising capital. Literally nobody told me and it's something I've never done before.

Speaker 2: 30:13

So I just kind of went for it and I think what helped us is having an awesome, not just well, number one, a story that's really inspiring, exciting people want to be a part of this movement.

Speaker 2: 30:25

But, number two, having a gigantic market, like, even though seawalls may seem like a boring product, it's actually a huge market that nobody was paying attention to. It's a product that's mandated by the government and, and so to have the combination of both is something that helped us raise not only raise money but raise it from very strategic investors. We were oversubscribed. We had over 7 million interest and we got to choose the 5.6 that we accepted and we chose the individuals who are very involved in opening doors with government, in helping us with sales, getting us into Marvina. So right now we're talking to, like Bimini, other markets through the connections from our investors. So I have a very unusual relationship with my investors. I give them a very detailed update every four weeks, like even if there's like a hurricane. I am writing the update, they're getting it in their inbox and I have a lot of asks from them too, and they always over deliver. So that has been a huge reason why we've grown so quickly just in the past 12 months.

Speaker 1: 31:28

Well, the passion's there and that's what you need to be a successful entrepreneur, so I've loved having you on the podcast. Where can people find you? Kinddesignscom? Well, that's easy enough, anya. Thank you so much for your time and your expertise, and best of luck to you with Living Sea Walls. I'm sure this is going to take off.

Speaker 2: 31:47

Thank you so much. I hope so.

Speaker 1: 31:50

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