My friend Bruce of getrefm.com (real estate financial modeling) just introduced me to a new real estate startup called Envelope. Basically it’s 3D mapping software that allows you to quickly visualize the zoning envelope for a particular site. It’s similar to what Flux.io was initially trying to do.

Now, I think this is very cool, but my first reaction was: What if the zoning is out of date? What if approvals/entitlements are done a site-specific basis? This isn’t the case in every city, but I’ve heard some people in Toronto argue that this city basically has no zoning code. (We can debate that one in the comments, I’m sure.)

That being said, there are still many design guidelines in this city that shape built form and I could see a tool like this being incredibly useful. They’re still in private beta but I would like to try it out. Hopefully they’ll see this blog post and let me have an early peek.

Image: envelope.city

San Francisco Sunset by Nathan Camarillo on 500px

The title of this post is a line from a Medium post that Biz Stone wrote back in August 2012. For those of you who might not know, Biz Stone is one of the cofounders of Twitter, as well as the cofounder of something called The Obvious Corporation.

Obvious is a “company” that I’ve been following on and off for a number of years – I’m fascinated by the model and how it has evolved. It was founded back in 2006 by Biz Stone and Ev Williams (another Twitter cofounder) as a kind of “product lab” for new ideas. But since then it has gone through a number of iterations.

Though I suspect that most people haven’t heard of Obvious, it was actually the parent company of Twitter before Twitter took off and became independent.

But even more interesting is the fact that Twitter was actually a side project for a company called Odeo (a failed podcasting startup) that in turn was owned by Obvious. So specifically, Twitter started as a side project of one of the companies within a larger “product lab.” Nobody said innovation was straightforward.

When Twitter eventually took off, their focus naturally shifted away from Obvious to it. They had a rocket ship of a company to build and run. 

But in 2011, Ev and Biz, along with Jason Goldman (of Twitter), decided to “reboot Obvious.” The most notable outcome of this reboot has been the creation of writing platform Medium, which I believe still technically sits within Obvious. (Click here if you don’t know what Medium is.)

Then in December of last year (2014), Ev Williams announced the third chapter of Obvious – now called Obvious Ventures – with this post called: It’s Obvious. Again. In short, they’re a venture capital firm with an approach that they call #worldpositive:

We’re entrepreneurs. We’ve helped a lot of companies launch, grow, and generate great financial returns. A few of these companies also deliver positive social and environmental benefits with every dollar of revenue they earn. We want to fund and build more of those. That’s what we call #worldpositive venture capital.

Already they’ve publicly announced investments in 10 companies, one of which I’ve written about before on Architect This City (Flux.io).

I decided to tell this story today for 3 reasons.

It shows you how non-linear innovation and careers can be. I love the idea of #worldpositive investing. And finally, because some of the startups that Obvious Ventures has invested in – such as Flux.io and Loup – are directly related to the future of cities.

I recently wrote about a startup called Flux.io in a post titled: How technology could completely change the real estate development industry. Given that I received a lot of positive feedback on this post, I thought I would let you all know that, as of today, you can now test out the product yourself for free online.

Here are a few snippets from today’s announcement:

At Flux we believe that data, analytics, and visualization can help bridge understanding between stakeholders and result in smarter growth and faster development and faster building. The Austin Preview of Flux Metro is an important first step in this direction.

Flux Metro aggregates geographic data from public and private sources to build a three dimensional visualization, starting with downtown Austin. Alongside a rendering of the existing landscape, Metro shows what can be built on a lot or parcel under the zoning code. It considers more than 10,000 code sections for land use guidelines, height limits, floor area limits, setbacks, and view access rights as well as the locations of protected trees and daylight shadows to project what can be built and how it fits into the existing environment.

We believe that everybody should be able to understand what a zoning code means for their city and that visual representations are the best way to create a shared understanding.

Click here to signup and give it a try. It is based on Austin’s development code and on the same building site that was shown in the video I shared in my post.

Image: Flux