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Brett Hagler, co-founder and CEO of New Story, explains how the organization shifted from philanthropy-driven housing gifts to a market-based model that lets low-income families buy homes and participate as customers. The conversation traces New Story’s origin, its Y Combinator experience, its experiments with 3D-printed housing and AI-enabled credit underwriting, and the leadership and faith journey that shaped Brett’s approach to scaling impact.
Operators, investors, and founders who want a real-world example of how to redesign a mission-driven organization around market incentives, technology, and long-term ownership.
A philanthropy-only model can cap impact when the underlying problem is measured in trillions of dollars and the supply of donors is tiny relative to need.
Letting families buy homes changes the psychology of ownership; people maintain and improve assets they consider theirs, not gifts.
A housing solution scales better when lenders and builders can earn fair margins, because profitable counterparties keep participating.
Innovation should start from a hard operational problem, not from the novelty of the technology itself.
Mission can stay fixed while the operating model changes dramatically; New Story kept its homelessness mission while replacing charitable gifting with market participation.
Preparing obsessively for high-stakes opportunities can create an edge even when you are an underdog.
Long-term leadership requires separating identity from short-term results and focusing on becoming the kind of person who can sustain the mission.
Technology bets like 3D printing and AI work best when they are tested in small pilots against specific bottlenecks in cost, quality control, or underwriting.
Families should be treated as customers and participants in the housing market rather than passive recipients of charity. The model is designed so the family’s ownership, the lender’s return, and the builder’s margin can all coexist.
When to use: Use this when a social mission needs scale and repeated market participation rather than one-off charitable delivery.
Start with the operational bottleneck—such as cost, quality control, or credit access—and only then choose the technology that solves it. New Story applied this to both 3D printing and AI underwriting.
When to use: Use this when evaluating whether a new technology is a real leverage point or just a shiny distraction.
New Story estimates 1.6 billion people live without adequate shelter, with the number expected to reach 3 billion by 2030.
The audio clip frames the scale of the homelessness problem and why charity alone cannot solve it.
The organization describes global homelessness as a roughly $15 trillion problem.
Brett uses this figure to argue that donor funding cannot scale to the needed level.
New Story says the supply of people willing to gift housing is less than 0.0001% of demand.
He uses this ratio to justify moving away from a donation-only model.
Y Combinator’s final interview reportedly involved about 300 startups and lasted 10 minutes.
Brett describes the fundraising and acceptance process for New Story’s cohort.
New Story prepared more than 100 hours for that 10-minute Y Combinator interview.
The team treated the interview as a rare opportunity and overprepared accordingly.
New Story’s original YC goal was 50 houses in 3 months, but YC pushed it to 100 houses in 100 days.
The accelerator raised the bar immediately after acceptance.
New Story says it completed about 106 houses in 100 days.
Brett cites this as an early proof point for the team’s execution.
He says the Red Cross built about 6 houses in the same period referenced in the conversation.
The comparison is used to highlight New Story’s early pace relative to a much larger charity.
A first successful 3D-printed house launch with Icon happened in Austin in 2020.
Brett references the 3D-printing partnership as a major technology milestone.
Design social impact models so the local provider can earn a fair, healthy margin.
Why: If the builder or lender cannot make money, the model remains a one-off project instead of scaling through the market.
Solve the cost problem before trying to expand housing access.
Why: Lower-cost homes improve affordability and make lending and repayment work more effectively.
Pilot new technology in a small test environment before making it part of the core model.
Why: Small pilots reveal whether the innovation actually addresses a real bottleneck without distracting the organization.
Treat rare opportunities like YC interviews as preparation problems you can control.
Why: Brett credits 100+ hours of prep for a 10-minute interview as a controllable edge in an underdog situation.
Keep mission fixed but be willing to rewrite the operating model when the old one cannot scale.
Why: New Story preserved its purpose while replacing philanthropy-only delivery with a market-based structure.
Use local workers, local materials, and local market structures whenever possible.
Why: The early New Story model intentionally avoided over-reliance on volunteers and outside-country delivery.
Brett describes a family of five living on a landslide-prone hill in a precarious shack. After moving into a home they paid toward, they added two rooms themselves, improved their income by roughly three times, and put their daughter on a path toward college.
Lesson: Ownership creates incentives for maintenance, expansion, and long-term family progress in a way gifting often does not.
The team went into YC with only a small chance of getting in, prepared more than 100 hours for a 10-minute interview, and then had its housing target doubled to 100 homes in 100 days. They ultimately built about 106 homes in that window.
Lesson: Extreme preparation plus a willingness to accept stretch goals can create early credibility and momentum.
After rapid early growth, New Story hit scaling limits around 2020 to 2022 and experimented with government partnerships and tech tools for other nonprofits. Those paths did not produce the desired scale, which pushed the organization toward a narrower market-driven model.
Lesson: A mission can survive failed experiments if leadership is willing to kill off attractive but non-scalable paths.