StartupRealities

StartupRealities No 148 TilesOut is an architecture design and construction company which has developed and patented new house roofing technology based on thick layers of alternating plastic cling film and bubble wrap. The roofing material is continuously applied on a roof beam structure by a robotic arm resembling the flying shuttle of a textile loom, suspended from a cherry picker . The thickness of the roofing sheets reaches up to 50 layers of alternating clingfilm and wrap, with minimal weight. ADVANTAGES The new roofing material has several advantages over traditional ceramic or bitumen tiles: 1) light weight; 2) translucent to sunlight (without being fully transparent); 3) providing perfect heat insulation in winter; 4) flexible and pliable (unlike corrugated PVC roofing sheets, which are brittle); 5) continuously applied on site, so no preliminary calculations and delivery specifications are needed; 6) easily repairable by applying more layers of sheeting. CEO QUOTE...

StartupRealities No 104 PrefabDomes  is a building design company which has developed and patented a half-elliptic pre-fabricated domed roof of glass tiles and metal frames that is custom made for individual houses and can be installed in a day. The domed shape of the roof creates a fully-functional additional floor at the top of the building, so house owners will no longer need an attic conversion in the future. The dome is custom-produced at specialist manufacturing facilities off-site and is delivered in large segments that are assembled on-site. Windows and chimneys can be integrated into the design of the dome at the manufacturing stage. CEO QUOTE "PrefabDomes draws inspiration from the domes of mosques in Central Asian. We create so much additional space in a house and the fact that the rooms under the dome are fully functional spaces makes them the most expensive part of the house. If all houses installed a prefab dome, this would increase house-specific residential sp...

StartupRealities No 46 MembranePackaging is a next-generation TetraPak-type packaging manufacturer which has developed synthetic membrane packages for liquids and bulk products. The company's flexible membranes resemble balloons that provide optimal durability and volume-to-space ratio for packaging milk, orange juice, wine, flour, sugar and even construction materials such as sand and lime. When products are packaged into membranes, this leaves no empty space between individual items when loaded onto a truck/train/plane or when put inside a box delivered by Amazon or Alibaba. CEO QUOTE "MembranePackaging was inspired by the traditional plastic packages used in rural areas in emerging markets, where alcohol and flour are often sold in nylon bags. This is also how you bring your new goldfish from the pet shop to your home aquarium: in a plastic bag of water," said company founder and CEO Melvina Pecchio. "MembranePackaging has a B2B model of selling its packagi...

StartupRealities No 21 FlattenHills Limited is a construction and real estate company which buys coastal hills, mines the rocks in the hills for construction material, and converts the flattened plots into seaside residential developments. INTERVIEW WITH THE FOUNDER "Two people have inspired me to start my business and they lived more than 2,000 years apart," FlattenHills founder and CEO Phil Halls told us in an interview. "The first one is Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing. His ports and properties empire makes perfect commercial sense. When the shipping and ports business is down, he converts port sites into prime seaside real estate. This business model cannot go wrong," Halls noted. "My other inspiration is China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang. He said he would dig out the mountains and fill up the valleys. I am not sure why he said that but it makes sense if you are building a road, for example: you remove the obstacles and the rubble from the obsta...