On today's episode, I'm chatting with Roger Krulak, founder and president of Fullstack
Modular, the leading modular innovator in the design, manufacture and construction of mid
and high rise multifamily buildings, hotels and student housing in urban environments.
Roger's 35 years of experience in the built world has transformed to the construction
industry with his progressive approach to design and manufacturing.
Driven by his belief that modular construction holds the key to creating sustainable,
affordable, and high quality buildings, he's using advanced technologies to elevate
modular construction within the industry.
Roger speaks at top universities like MIT, Harvard, and Yale, and has been featured in
media outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fast Company.
Special thanks to our friends of our brand groupies for connecting Roger and I for today's
episode.
So Roger, welcome to the Bold Brand Show.
Thank you so much, Josh.
How are you today?
Doing well, you know, it's this setup always takes me longer than I think it's going to.
And for some reason, I decided to do this solo today.
So I may be sweatier than usual, but I'm excited to jump into our conversation here.
So on this podcast, we always want to learn what you're thinking about the challenges
you're facing and some of the boldest moves that you've made with Fullstack Modular.
Today, specifically, we're talking about innovations that you've been part of around the
modular uh industry in construction.
And I love tech, I love all things new, I love all things cutting edge.
And so for those of our listeners who are perhaps maybe unfamiliar with what modular
construction is in 2025, maybe we could level set a little bit here.
mean, know modular, some people may think something very different in the zeitgeist from
decades ago, or may have no idea what modular is up to now.
How would you define what is making Modular unique today and what's the state of the
industry?
Thanks so much.
Well, let me give it my best shot in a 35 second history.
the first thing is that modular is just a horrible word.
Not that the word itself is a bad word, but it doesn't describe anything.
So our industry is made up of a bunch of industries and they're all related to
componentized manufacturing of portions, usually in our case of the built environment.
And so it could be a curtain wall,
It could be a panelized wall system.
It could be a bathroom pod.
It could be...
a series of desks that you put together in an office building.
They're all modular components.
em And of course, now it's a cool word, so they're calling everything modular, including,
you know, hope you buy a modular.
So anyway, but what we do at Fullstack is sort of the most integrated process you can do,
which is we build fully integrated volumetric modular
pieces of a building that get bolted together and attached to each other like a Rector set
and Legos and we do as much work as in the factory as possible including floors, walls,
ceilings, painting, accessories, even furniture for hotels and it's all done in the
factory and then we bring it with all of the connection kits which is why I think it's
sort of like an Rector set and connect it in the fact in the field and our product is
what's called Type 1
construction so it's non-flammable and it's really focused on mid to high-rise buildings
which is why earlier you said urban environment where we're normally well certainly on the
east coast the United States and other places sort of north of eight stories up to 45
stories and on the more seismically intense areas like California sort of above six
stories and
less than 28 and our system is completely integrated.
So it has all of the plumbing electrical structural and mechanical systems integrated
within the system and even in California, it's the seismic responsiveness to to to
potential earthquakes is part of our system.
So hopefully that helps.
So I think we said in your bio something like 35 years of experience in construction.
uh At what point did modular become something of a passion for you?
Yeah, it's interesting.
was on LinkedIn the other day and somebody posted a piece of modular history, was
something called Project Breakthrough, which was created by the United States to create
mostly uh sort of affordable, assisted or...
assisted or independent living facilities in the 70s.
And um my grandfather was actually part of that whole project breakthrough company called
uh Forth City Dillon at the time with an engineer named Tom Dillon.
So I grew up seeing it and I never really understood why it didn't stay and take hold.
That project breakthrough um got eliminated.
think during the Reagan administration so they didn't have any other customers for the
product which has driven my focus a little bit.
um So I uh was introduced to Modular very early on in life and then...
Um, I watched construction, uh, occurring was in the construction and development business
for a long time and did not understand how incredibly disintegrated and complicated the
process that we've created, certainly in this country on how do you build the built
environment, which is why it's often late and not on budget, et cetera.
So I, um, so I became, uh, re-motivated, um,
about 15 years ago, 16 years ago, to say like, there's gotta be a better way and we have
to have more technology.
And so going to the geeky side of it, when my grandfather and Tom Dillon, who is a genius,
shout out to him.
They didn't have really any kind of CAD technology or BIM technology to speak of.
So all of it was in sort of pre-planning on, you know, single line drawings in a way that
was quite genius and worked very well.
Now, of course, you can do 3D modeling on something you download for free on the internet
and you could even get AI help on how to actually organize everything and make it to code
in Denver and Ohio, et cetera.
So.
that side of the technology has progressed to make what we do somewhat easier.
So with your grandfather's background in modular, ah perhaps Legos, Lincoln Logs, know,
sticks and tree forts, or you're experiencing construction, what do you think it was that
inspired you to go down the path of modular?
My grandfather was a uh second generation carpenter.
ah So I had all the things you just mentioned, a tree fort.
I had Lincoln logs in their basement.
I actually had a crane that was in the basement.
It was a mechanical crane, like a little toy crane that I could pick up the logs with, et
cetera.
So all of those things.
But I'm also, uh and I tell people, I'm pretty impatient.
I don't like waiting in line or wasting time or
pretty much anything that is what I think is a time suck.
So the idea of sort of sitting around and hoping that the parade of trades was gonna be an
effective way of putting things together, um constantly made me think about like, there
really is a better way.
Can we push it?
And the industry holistically has done that, both in the United States and around the
world.
And so we're making headway.
Well, we talk about the traditional industry, you it's typically something like design,
bid, build is the process.
I mean, there are even a lot of firms that are design build firms now.
So like, how is the modular approach different than that?
How does that process differ?
So good.
I'm glad you said that and asked that.
So design bid build is not really modularly friendly.
You can't design a building and hope that it's going to be modular and then go out to a
bunch of modular.
Because every system at this point anyway, is very different.
Although some of them can be integrated with each other and we do do that.
They're not the same systems.
So.
We are really best uh suited for what you would normally call a design build process.
We install, we insert into that industrialized construction.
We call it design, manufacture, construct or acronym.
We run DMC, so design, manufacture, construct.
That's design, build with industrialization.
It's also a pretty good band.
So my first experience uh working with a firm that was doing some level of modular was
more like bespoke modular.
If you will, was a firm in Seattle who was doing some, uh gosh, what was it?
They were creating a little clean room for a hospital, I think, and they'd kind of built
that off site and they craned it on.
And so that was about as close to modular as I had ever seen at that point.
So it was.
been happening for years.
Yeah, been happening for years.
I've got a friend in the industry who builds hospital rooms and appointment rooms and
those kinds of things.
A long time ago, I built a
Before I was even in the business, I built some MRI modular rooms, know, like completely
enclosed in copper.
So yeah, mean, things that are repetitive and predictable and organized are a good thing
to do for modular.
The other thing worth noting is that, you know, there is a transportation constraint.
So you can only ship things as wide as you can ship things.
And that's, know, and that's either, you know, train, truck or boat.
uh
Maybe airplanes, but I haven't really shipped a building by airplane, not even an aircraft
carrier.
it's really that form of transportation.
usually the last mile in most cases is a truck.
And so you can really go max 16 feet, max 58 feet.
And Armads never are those sizes, but that's one of the parameters that drives the design
process.
as you said earlier, our company
is really multifamily focused, student housing, hotels, uh apartment buildings.
That's really what we spend most of our time on.
So are you typically working with the owner or the city or the uh municipality or the
school as kind of the client on those kind of projects?
All of the above and we are now working with Cal Poly and building what's really the
biggest modular project in the country right now, is going to be seven to eight buildings,
4,500 beds and mid-tallest buildings in San Luis Obispo that have ever been built and
super exciting.
So we do do that.
um We are talking to a number of municipalities about partnering with them to build
affordable housing.
So rethinking the team members or the stakeholders in a process of creating housing.
So can a manufacturer partner with a city and create housing to the needs uh that is
responsive and not require uh some other stakeholders that you normally wouldn't?
So could we provide a complete turnkey solution for financing uh manufacturing?
development installation, city approvals, all of those things so that you can speed up,
there goes my impatience, that you can speed up the process by which you create housing.
But the reality is, is look at the news any day.
It's like, okay, now we're six and a half million housing units short.
Now we're eight and a half million housing units short.
And it just keeps growing.
We're not doing any better.
So uh the Cal Poly project in particular, I mean, that's remarkable in size and scale.
What do you think helped tip the scales for Cal Poly to say, yeah, let's do this one as
modular and let's work with you guys on this?
Well, I have to give them credit.
They realized they had a problem and they're unique in some ways in that they're a
college, sort of the premier college in the California State College system and they're in
San Luis Obispo, which has very little population.
And so they don't really have...
a lot of trades to come in and build something at this scale.
So that was one of the motivations.
then obviously, you know, having construction on a school site during operations is an
incredible problem.
So there's a huge advantage of being able to build it offsite and install it, you know,
while they're...
you know, in summer recess, et cetera.
So there's that.
And then, you know, they also have an architecture school there and an engineering school
there.
So it just, it just was a good fit.
The other thing that's interesting about sort of full stack modular versus most other of
what you might call our sort of people in the industry.
won't call them our competitors necessarily is that we're all type one construction.
non-flammable mid to high rise.
said that and that non-flammable in California is a good idea.
I I live in New York, but it's not hard to figure out that there's a lot of fires and it's
better if it doesn't burn.
I think shifting gears a little bit, firms in the construction space, the AEC industry in
general, uh we're not maybe typical about getting the kinds of press and attention that
you've gotten from New York Times and Wired.
What's the draw there?
What's the special interest?
Yeah, I mean, I think, well, I mean, it's interesting.
think the answer to your question is, that we are.
we are trying incredibly hard to integrate sort of tech improvements into a sort of an age
old process.
And so although it's slow, mean, if you look at sort of construction spending and
technology versus almost any other industry, it's pretty abysmal.
uh The reality is that with decreasing uh skilled labor, although it's doing a little
better right now and uh with the
scarcity of so many things.
It's just a, it's a look for a solution, right?
It's a, it's how do we solve this problem?
And so they hear it and are interested in it.
But,
You we also are, you you talk a lot about sort of brands and those kinds of things.
Like we realized about a year, probably three years ago, that the way you communicate to
people holistically, not just in our industry, is very different.
So we need to have social media presence and conversations.
And I am not.
You know, people want to talk about this and I've been doing it a while.
So that's, I think, part of it.
We have spent a lot of energy trying to create a presence because we feel like it's the
only way things get done.
Yeah, I think there's a thing that people don't really think about in terms of brand.
They think about branding.
They think about how do I change our look, change our logo, change our colors.
But there's this feedback loop, right, where you put a message out to the market and the
market sort of echoes it back to you a little bit differently.
And then you adjust like, OK, if they say this about us, what if we said that about us
too?
And so there's this little bit of back and forth, which I think is really interesting.
um
Speaking of which, how are you, there's a lot of very obvious answers to this, but how are
you uniquely trying to stand out in the market today?
Well, I mean, our system is by itself a standalone system, which we have been very focused
on, and it's pretty comprehensive.
we are, as I explained, are moving to transitioning to a fully integrated system, which is
we can work with you, whether you're a school or a private landowner or whatever it is to
build a complete solution to create the housing where you want it.
not make it 52 stakeholders, let's keep it as tight as possible so that we can actually
create.
So that's really a focus of ours sort of for the last three years and we're making lots of
headway.
think what's also worth noting is that we do some non-traditional things for sort of
developers, contractors, et cetera.
I uh grew up in the Midwest and I am a complete believer in the building trades, but I'm
also...
I also have acknowledged the fact that sort of building trades in a conventional process,
which is highly inefficient, is more costly than you can afford to build affordable
housing with.
And I've been working with the building trades to talk about that for the last, well,
probably 12 years and they understand it.
So our factories are actually signatories with the building trades, but we have basically
in
an alternative apprentice program for the building trades where they come in the factory
and they learn a set of skills and they work highly effectively, but they're not uh sort
of A-rate carpenters and plumbers, et cetera.
They're more learning how to do this.
And then we have in conjunction with the trades, people teaching them.
So we're treating, we're teaching a whole different class of...
uh
of aligned building trades in a factory that has a refined set of skills, but they go to
the same place every day, they have the same workers, it's more like a family, just like
you would expect in a factory, so it's a little bit of a hybrid, and it's uh in
conjunction with the building trade, so that when we finish our buildings and send them
off to San Francisco or New York or Massachusetts, that the trades are the people who
built it, so it works really well.
So speaking of that, so you're currently based East Coast, your New York area, and then
you've got projects like Cal Poly.
Are you producing those East Coast and shipping them or is it more efficient to have a
factory out there?
we have a factory in Carson, California.
uh And it is specifically focused on the Cal Poly projects right now.
uh
And we are talking to a number of cities, as I mentioned, about doing this uh in other
places as well.
And I've talked to mayors of some of the big cities in the country about potentially
putting a factory, uh union aligned, in places that have uh major housing deficits.
You can guess where they are.
Well, knowing that modular itself is a very innovative thing and very much a trend, I
guess you could say at the moment, what are some of the more surprising innovations or
trends that you've noticed in the past year, kind of within modular?
Well, I am like most people with in awe about of the opportunity that sort of
uh AI brings to our process.
Like we have created, I told you it was much farther along than when my grandfather was in
the business.
We've integrated building information management design process designed for
manufacturing, all of these terms which people may or may not know.
But the idea of being able to take an organized process and not have to do all of the...
uh
clicks and strokes that are required to do a production drawing for a thousand mods that
are mildly different.
You can actually write a program or a dynamo script or something that actually does that
quite quickly.
uh
And you can also then use that as a quality assurance process by which you can say, okay,
I've installed all this and you could put a Matterport in the location and it can do a
scan against that to say, yeah, you didn't build this, right?
Here's the problem.
So to me, I don't think it's unique because everybody should be paying attention, but in
our industry, the opportunity to increase
velocity using artificial intelligence, think is uh exciting, mildly terrifying, but
absolutely you need to pay attention because it is happening real time.
So maybe a generational question.
What do you feel like the impact from a generational perspective will be for the modular
housing that you're creating and then also kind of the company that you've created?
Mm-hmm.
Well, hope I hope well, I know that the industry I know that I am part of helping the
industry grow I'm not the only reason there are so many both organizations and and and
people who have done incredibly well in this industry that have pushed it a farther I did
read last week.
I think that uh
Modular is now 9%, 9 % of all multifamily starts in the country.
It was 3 % five years ago.
It was 5 % a year and a half ago.
So the growth is, is happening.
So, so I think that we, the ball is rolling down the hill.
I just don't know how fast it's going to roll, but it, will not be by the way, the answer
for everything.
It is not, but it is an answer for a lot of things.
How does that change, especially with adoption kind of increasing and you're getting a lot
of good press, how does that change how you're thinking about marketing and business
development for your firm?
um Yeah, such a good question.
Well, I think that we're changing a little bit who we market to, you know, so, you know,
we're marketing to align.
Developers, uh municipalities, hotel.
developers rather than necessarily hotel flags.
We could talk about that a little bit, but also the flags.
um really our focus is on creating sort of footprint and capacity in conjunction with
those types of, whereas, you know, when we started, we were just looking for developers
who wanted to try out Modular that were pioneers.
You know, that's really what we were doing back then.
It's not that anymore.
We know what markets we have a huge sort of just value proposition
I'm obviously host of video podcasts.
I'm a pretty big fan of video as a marketing strategy.
How do you see video fitting into your marketing approach?
Well, we've done some videos.
We've had some, still have a few, if you sort of Google them, you can find some videos of,
know, some of the projects that we've done in collaboration with the city of New York, et
cetera.
that we use them a lot for training.
uh, and, the rest, I don't know.
It's interesting.
I, I, um,
I don't know, I don't have an answer for you.
I wish I had an answer for you.
I think it's valuable.
But I, you know, I did, I certainly would do a video of what we're doing before I would
put a print ad in a magazine, you know, or a commercial on television, you know, for what
we do.
So, you know, if I'm sort of grading what they, but I don't, we haven't done a video in a
while.
We did a bunch.
Three four years ago and we haven't uh we haven't done any new ones lately.
Obviously I've been on some podcasts and you know, the media presence is definitely there
But I haven't done a lot but you know, what can I do?
I keep up with as much as I can I Don't even need to be here for a video anymore.
I could just have right our case og, you know AI thing do a video and
you next time and I could do something else at the same time.
anyway.
We could have the uh virtual Roger.
Exactly.
You wouldn't even know.
I mean, that's the sad part about it.
It is pretty spectacular what you can do.
Finding a deep fake is quite complicated, I guess.
In terms, so I was talking to a friend of mine, J.
Sabatini on the show a couple months back.
He's with Swinerton Builders.
the concept that I shared with him is one that I think would play really well in your
space too is almost like the documentary of a project, right?
Like meeting with the client, meeting with the customer, getting their story and then
seeing the project come together and then what the impact is with the folks who live there
in the future, I think.
Yeah, it could be.
Yeah, I mean, definitely, it's definitely something I think would be interesting for sure.
um
Yeah, uh it's interesting that sort of the life cycle would be super interesting once it's
occupied.
Once it's occupied, we're sort of into our next world, right?
So it's very interesting, yeah.
The market is the question.
mean, like, who am I marketing it to is the question.
But I do think, you know, we go to a lot of trade shows.
I can't ever figure out whether it helps or doesn't help.
mean, it's a threatening thing, but it's supposedly valuable, or at least the people who
market it thinks it's valuable.
Maybe we could get a screening in the Sundance Film Festival.
That's right.
uh Sundance, I think, is the one that's moving to Boulder.
So that's going to be right around the corner from us.
That's right.
Hit it with a rock from here.
um Is there anything that you see other industries doing, or is there anything that you'd
like to see the construction industry maybe do better or differently?
Well, I mean one of the things that you know hasn't happened a lot of and it's been sort
of stalled is this sort of investment of you know sort of nationally in You know moving
this industry along there hasn't been a lot of that
incentive like what do do to make it better and there are smatterings uh of that right
now.
uh You know housing affordability funds with a focus on industrialized construction etc
and those are hugely helpful because the one thing that is
A fact with industrialized construction of any sort is that the only way you really can be
effective is to have enough repetition, you know, the ideas of economies of scale, it's
born out of industrialization and uh have the factory producing all the time.
And if you're making, you know, something that is exactly the same, a spatula and it's
industrialized and you can create market need for all of that, you know, or do a
documentary on why it's
best spatula in the world.
uh It has value but trying to do that with the built environment has all kinds of other
constraints and so you're really spending your time trying to figure out how to do that.
I think we have a game plan but...
uh
That really is the thing that I think has opportunity is to embrace and why we're talking
to cities now about having a factory that they're providing pipeline for even in
associated with developers so that we can get those economies of scale, produce cost
effective solutions in a timely fashion.
So there is at least more focus now than there ever was.
uh So if I put my designer hat on, what are some of the opportunities for customization or
to help a property stand out uniquely, especially if a city's gonna have you do half a
dozen of these things, are they all identical or can they all have kind of their own look?
No, you definitely go on our website and look at some of the buildings that we have.
mean, they're, can be incredibly varied, both in use type.
I've talked about hotels, student housing, multifamily rentals, et cetera, but they're
also in look and feel.
I mean, you can do something very, you know, very sort of that looks incredibly modular.
That's, you know, very, you know, very more industrialized looking where you can do
something that is very soft and sort of compatible with, know.
um
you know, a more traditional environment or something in a more sort of wooded
environment.
There's, there's, there's lots of opportunity for that.
The one thing that we do try to do per my earlier comments is that we try to, we try to
limit the variability to meet the market needs.
So in other words, we can have different types of different types of mods, different,
different lengths of mods, et cetera, but you want as few of those as possible to meet the
market needs.
So you're trying to optimize for a
Yeah, totally makes sense.
um Maybe we can take a minute to have you look in your crystal ball and tell us, what do
you see happening with the future of the industry?
uh And this could be process, could be marketing, could be whatever kind of inspires you
at the moment.
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's two major drives.
I've already mentioned sort of how AI is going to influence, but I think that there's two
things that I think are happening.
One of them, and I mentioned that Fullstack is moving towards very rapidly, which is a
fully integrated solution so that you are part of creating the built environment and the
development process that handles that.
So I think you're going to see more of that because building a factory, hoping somebody
comes and gives you orders has historically caused a lot of failure.
And I don't think it's gonna get any better.
So you're gonna see more of that and how that happens You know whether it's the gray star
who decides to start their own company or whether it's some Some consortium that says
we're gonna put all our business into this type of factory and you know, we're gonna
partner I think you're gonna see more of that em On the product side.
I think you're going to see em
some more and not complete, but some more standardization so that integrating of say
sub-assemblies, bathroom pods, curtain walls, et cetera, is a little more universal in the
process than it is currently ah so that you can.
create things faster, right?
If I'm just assembling bathroom pods and facades and putting in the electrical
distribution, it's a lot faster than if I'm building all that stuff.
So I think you're going to see more and more of that uh sort of integrated productization.
And there's a bunch of people working really hard on that.
And I do see that happening.
And then...
I, I do feel like there will be some...
There will be some material advances that I think will ultimately find their way into the
built environment or that are starting to find their way into the built environment, know,
sort of intelligent concrete or lightweight concrete or responsive windows, or there's all
kinds of really interesting things.
think that there will be a marriage somehow at some point between sort of printing and the
modular construction that sort of my, you know, my world.
Those are the.
of things I think about when I'm laying awake at night but you know those are the things
that I think are happening slowly now but you're gonna see velocity you know in two to
five years that would be my guess.
How far are we from a 3D printed modular multifamily building?
Yeah, that would be more like seven, six to seven years.
think, you could print the structure now, but like the fully integrated thing, it's a
comp- I believe that there will be printed components of modular buildings, like in the
next two years that are, that are valuable.
I mean, you can do it now, but I mean, that are valuable.
But, uh, I do, until it's sort of-
I don't know.
still, yeah.
mean, you know, printing circuitry and all this stuff.
I mean, obviously we know it's possible.
We print chips and stuff.
But like the idea of sort of printing that all into a substrate is fascinating.
But I don't think I'm watching anything that's real yet.
For that.
I can imagine in the world that you're playing in, of pioneering a little bit in this
space uh and scaling that there are needs and things that come up.
What are some of the challenges that you're facing right now or what are some of the areas
maybe that you're looking for help in?
Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty simple thing to me.
Well, I mean, obviously, financing, which I mean, we're working really hard on, but the
idea of financing something that's actually not on site is a big thing for the
construction industry for the manufacturing industry.
They do it every day, but that's a big thing.
And that's uh sort of uh sort of not very techie.
then uh and the thing that always astounds me because I deal with engineers every day is
that the hardest thing
in my view, to engineer is mechanical systems, right?
So uh there's the responsiveness of the building envelope that you're creating and its
resistance to heat and cool, et cetera.
Then there's the actual weather, which of course is changing all the time and every day.
And then there are the systems that we create.
m
in order to try to be responsive to that.
So some of it could be sort of passive design of the exterior wall, which I think is a
huge value proposition.
And then the other thing is the actual systems themselves.
And so it seems like the mechanical engineering side of our industry holistically has been
very, it's had a hard time adopting.
Anyway, so that's the biggest thing that I see.
Excellent.
Something that I didn't tell you before I hit record is that the really cool thing about
this system is it continues to upload and record you even if I lose you for a second,
which is what happened on the last question.
So if you felt like I was not responding to you because I have no idea what you're saying,
but I think we're good and you're back here now.
So it may just take a second for it to finish uploading.
So after we say, OK, we're good, then I may just need you to hang on for a second until it
finishes the upload.
All good.
I've done this before I know this system.
Okay, very good.
Well, um before I let you go here, I'm curious if you have any asks or challenges for our
audience today.
Yeah, I mean, if you are associated with government in any way, if you're associated with
a bank, uh if you are a great mechanical engineer, um I sort of laid out the issues
associated with our industry and step on in and help.
We'll just create more housing and bring down cost of housing and make people capable of
buying houses and meeting all the needs.
So jump on in to the team.
Awesome, love it.
Well, I appreciate you hanging out with us today.
Tell our audience a little bit more about where they can learn, more about you and
Fullstack Modular.
Yeah, thanks.
So you can go to fullstackmodular.com.
You can learn a little bit about what we're currently doing.
um And, uh you know, if you're in town and uh somewhere near Carson, California, and you
want to see full production, uh you know, uh you know, give us a call and we'll, we'll try
to give you a quick tour so you can see industrialized manufacturing of type one.
Student housing, uh real time, it's pretty fascinating.
uh And our website has tons of information.
If you want to get in touch, there's a form, please send it, we will get back to you.
Well, Roger, thanks for being on the show and thanks to everybody for listening today.
We'll see you next time.
Thanks, Josh.