Ken Sobel — Co-founder and CEO of Hyperframe.

Ken is an engineer and repeat founder whose entrepreneurial path started early — out of college he launched a fingerprint payments company that predated Apple Pay, which he took through Y Combinator and ultimately was acquired by Visa in 2016.

Ken grew up in construction though… recalling memories being in his father’s workshop as a kid — and his longstanding passion for construction coupled with his love of engineering and problem-solving has culminated in an entrepreneurial desire to rethinking of one of the most fundamental parts of construction — steel framing.

Through Hyperframe, Ken has taken traditional metal framing process that’s been slow, manual, and largely unchanged for decades, and re-imagined it as a system that’s faster, safer, and far more efficient. Hyperframe’s snap-together framing system, paired with a full-stack software and manufacturing platform, is enabling construction crews all over the world to build walls dramatically faster, with less labor and less strain.

What started as a conversation about reindustrialization coupled with a desire and need to massively scale his operations, Ken made the bold decision to move Hyperframe from California to Ohio, where the company is now headquartered and where they are building out their first large-scale manufacturing facility.

In our conversation, we talk about Ken’s path into construction, the early insights behind Hyperframe, and what it actually takes to rebuild a physical industry from the ground up. We get into the realities of scaling a hard tech company, earning trust in construction, why he decided to move his whole company and family from California to Ohio, and why Ohio is such an advantageous place to build physical companies.

So please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Ken Sobel.

00:00 — Building for Builders
00:54 — Origin Story
05:41 — Construction’s Realities
06:35 — California to Ohio
10:41 — Hard Tech Lessons
20:22 — Pain Points
32:17 — Innovating the Metal Framing
27:11 — Gaining Trust
36:23 — Scaling Up
41:47 — Real World Adoption
44:08 — Hardest Lessons
46:15 — Reflection
49:08 — Being in Ohio
52:27 — Wrap Up & Ways to Connect

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LINKS:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-sobel
https://www.hyperframe.com/

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#249 Ken Sobel (Hyperframe) — Constructing The Future