What if building a home was as fast and seamless as assembling a car?

In this episode, I sit down in-person with Alexis Rivas, co-founder and CEO of Cover, to talk about his company's bold efforts to reinvent how homes are built and the slow-motion disaster of LA's permitting system.

Alexis shares how Cover is rethinking every step of the building process—from design and engineering to manufacturing and on-site assembly. We explore how they set a new record for the fastest ADU ever built in Los Angeles (3.5 months from contract to occupancy), and why the biggest bottleneck he faces is bureaucracy.

We talk about why the current permitting system is broke and why real reform means deleting entire layers of red tape, not just “streamlining” bad processes. We also talk about how much potential California has left to grow and what it would look like to house 1 billion people. We also explore the deeper political and cultural shift needed to spark a true pro-housing movement in California.

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Chapters

00:00 – Intro
05:29 – Cover’s Long-Term Vision
08:23 – 1 Billion Californians
14:01 – Cover and California’s Identity
17:04 – Why Build in California?
20:17 – LA Fire Rebuild
24:17 – Policy Levers to Create More Housing
32:14 – Building a Pro-Housing Movement
35:00 – Hope for the Future of California