interior design
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Gwyneth Paltrow invests in The Expert, a video marketplace for high-end interior designers
The pandemic-induced lockdowns halted many a home decoration project, but the irony was that our homes became even more important. But where to get ideas to decorate? Home décor experts could no longer visit. Now an LA-based startup is addressing this digitization of the interior design market, but kicking off with a typically LA-oriented, high-end clientele.
The LA-based The Expert — a platform for video consultations with interior designers — has raised a $3 million seed funding round led by Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Sweet Capital, Promus Ventures, Golden Ventures, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo, AD 100 designer Brigette Romanek and CEO/founder of goop, Gwyneth Paltrow.
The Expert offers 1:1 video consultations with leading interior designers, it says.
The founders consist of Jake Arnold, a celebrity interior designer (who has worked with John Legend and Rashida Jones and Chrissy Teigen, among others) and YC-alumni, Leo Seigal, who previously founded and sold Represent.com to CustomInk for $100 million in 2015.
After being “inundated” with DMs during lockdown asking for his advice, Arnold says he realized he didn’t have the business model to help non-retainer clients. So he joined Seigal to create The Expert.
The Expert features 85 designers, so far. Clients click on designers’ profiles to see rates and availability, then click to book. Clients can upload any relevant floor plans, images of the home, inspiration ideas, etc. for the designer to review ahead of time. They then join a Zoom link (the platform uses the Zoom API) to meet with an interior designer, and can leave a review afterward.
The company claims it has 700 designers on its waitlist and will hit $1 million of bookings after its first quarter, after launching in early February this year.
The startup has some competition in the form of Modsy and Havenly, but The Expert says it is going for a more high-end experience, where clients are willing to pay $300-$2,500 for an hour of a designers’ time. The startup takes a 20% cut of the transaction.
Co-founder Leo Seigal said: “We were able to attract a crazy roster of designers partly thanks to co-founder Jake who is so highly regarded in the industry, and partly due to a timeliness of offering which is far above anything that has been tried in the home space.”
In a statement, Gwyneth Paltrow said: “I’ve always felt that access to great design – and those who create it – is too rare of a commodity. It’s a game-changer for someone without the budget for a full-time designer to have this roster of talent on speed dial.”
Nicole Johnson, partner at Forerunner, said: “We’ve been thinking through new models for the interior design sector for years at Forerunner, observing room for improvement for the trade and consumers alike. Interior design is arguably the ultimate, best-suited source of home inspiration and commerce enablement for consumers, but the trade is a famously walled garden. The Expert solves for this, connecting anyone, anywhere with the world’s leading interior designers via video consultation—allowing Experts to broaden their reach and monetization in a predictable, rewarding, and low-friction way.”
Pippa Lamb, partner at Sweet Capital, which led their pre-seed investment round last summer said: “The Expert is democratizing access to top creators in the $150B global interior design industry. By partnering with leading talents like Amber Lewis and Leanne Ford, it’s solving both upstream discovery and downstream services: bringing Instagram feeds to life. Leo and his team are visionaries and Sweet Capital has been proud to back them since Day 1.”
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Interior design startup Havenly raises $32 million
Interior design platform Havenly is raising $32 million in new funding to create its first private label brand as the startup aims to integrate its own products into its design recommendation engine.
The Denver-based startup is an online interior design consultancy of sorts that pairs with expert designers users looking to redesign their homes or apartments.
For Havenly, there have been two sides of the business, commercial partnerships with vendors and the paid design services for users. It’s a model we’ve also seen from the folks at Modsy. Havenly puts a bit more of an emphasis on pairing users with an individual designer with whom they can chat on the phone and share their hopes for the space, something CEO Lee Mayer says can help make the space feel more customized to them.
“Your home is very personal, if you and I show up to work one day and we have the same shirt, that may not be that weird. It is a little weird if I walk into your living room and it looks exactly like mine,” Mayer tells TechCrunch.
The big evolution with this raise will be that Havenly is going to start putting its own products into the mix with a private label called Cove Goods. The line largely seems to be focused on accent pieces, but they are working on some furniture as well.
Pricing for their services sits between $69 and $99 depending on whether you’re starting from a blank slate or just want some additional pieces recommended to you that you can buy through the platform. The startup can also send you custom floor plans and layout renders to show you what your space will look like.
Havenly has now raised $57.8 million. Series C investors included Foundry Group, Lerer Hippeau, Kickstart Ventures and Gingerbread Capital.
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How startups can make the open office work, for employers and employees
Alejandra Albarrán is ROOM’s Director of Design and Innovation, responsible for shaping the company’s iconic approach to creating products that make the open office open to more.
The open office plan was intended to help collaboration and productivity across employees and teams while better utilizing less square feet per person. But the results haven’t always proven to be very successful, based on years of analysis.
Yet it is still the norm for tech companies of all sizes, and will likely stay that way.
Based on my years of experience working with hundreds of companies, I’ll lay out a basic framework below to help you think through how to adapt an open-office situation to best meet your needs.
I’ll also walk you through the example of a growing venture-backed startup that’s staffing up in one of the tougher office markets in the world: Manhattan.
But first, take a look at the data. Studies have shown that open floor plans can inhibit productivity and health. Open office workers take 62% more sick days than those in private offices, and a mere three hours of steady noise can cause measurable distress and a decrease in motivation. Face-to-face communication has been observed to actually decrease in open plan environments, with a measurable negative impact on productivity.
Considering that 70% of Americans today work in an open office, the issue of constant noise and distraction is ubiquitous across the country. The result is a bad rap—one doesn’t need to look very far to find one of the many articles online criticizing the design.
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Hutch wants to virtually redesign your living space — then sell you the furniture
Everyone can recognize great interior design. But it’s much harder to actually design a space and pick out all the items you need to make it look great. Hutch, a Los Angeles-based startup, is aiming to fix this. DIRTT’s ICEreality puts VR to use for interior, office design
Manufacturers of custom prefabricated elements to be built into office and other workspaces, DIRTT Environmental Solutions is the latest corporation to adopt virtual reality for the enterprise, rather than entertainment. The company unveiled their ICEreality software this week at an annual construction industry trade show, called Neocon, in Chicago. (Yes, tech news had the audacity to… Read More
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Home Services Startup Porch Sheds 90 Employees, Key Executives Bolt
Porch, one of the many companies positioning themselves to be the go-to place for “home services,” has laid off 90 members of its staff according to Geekwire. We’ve reached out to Porch for a statement (See the update below). The company has raised $98.85M to date in 3 rounds. Their competitors include Amazon, Angie’s List, Pro.com and HomeAdvisor, just to name a few.… Read More
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Guildery Raises $2.1 Million For Customizable, Digitally Printed Fabrics And Home Goods
Guildery, an e-commerce company that’s putting technology to use by offering digitally printed fabrics and other home accessories like pillows, drapes, ottomans, and more, has closed on $2.1 million in seed funding from Forerunner Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, SoftTech and AOL’s BBG Ventures*. The funding comes at a time when Guildery is also now expanding its retail presence and… Read More
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