[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) - Interior design and furn...
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Launch HN: Pabio (YC S21) - Interior design and furniture rental as
a service
Hi HN! We're Carlo and Anand, and for the past few months, we've
been building Pabio (https://pabio.com). With Pabio, you can get
your apartment fully furnished by a professional interior designer
and rent high-quality furniture on a monthly subscription. After
exiting our previous startups, we had some time on our hands and
started visiting many friends at their homes for a coffee to talk
about anything and everything. One thing stood out: In most cases,
their apartment interior was awful -- it was almost always crammed
with cheap furniture that didn't match with each other or the
apartment. So, we asked our friends why they wouldn't hire an
interior designer and purchase nicer furniture that fits better,
and most of them gave us two reasons: first, interior design seems
elitist and expensive; and second, buying a full apartment interior
is (a) too expensive, and (b) doesn't make sense if you rent an
apartment and don't know how long you're going to stay in it. We
figured that if we combine both things--interior design and
furniture rental--we can create an affordable package for tenants
that's still very high-quality. Here's how it works: The user
uploads a floor plan of their apartment and takes some photos for
our reference. Using these, we generate a 3D model of the apartment
and one of our interior designers furnishes it. We send the user a
fully rendered, photorealistic view of what their apartment will
look like [1]. If they like it, they sign up, we deliver and
install all furniture, and the user pays a monthly subscription
fee. We also fully insure all items and offer optional add-on
services like electricians and bi-weekly cleaning. Once they move
out, we take all the furniture back, renovate it, and place it in a
new apartment at a discounted price. For the whole process to work
smoothly, we developed a semi-automated rendering workflow. We
built a web-based drawing tool that allows us to easily draw a
floor plan, drag-and-drop furniture items on it, and convert it to
structured data [2]. We send this JSON instruction file to a
Blender instance where we run a Python script to generate renders
using our custom Blender plugins. This process is not fully
finalized yet, so we usually have to manually adjust some
parameters like the camera placement or applying filters, but give
it a few more months (or years... heh), and we'll be able to end-
to-end automate the floor plan-to-render process. Although a lot
of our core tech is internal tooling such as the rendering service
[2], Pabio.com serves as the web app where users can plan their
furniture deliveries, file insurance claims, manage billing, etc.
You can test out Pabio at https://pabio.com, or check out a sample
proposal that we send to customers [1]. We're very excited (and a
bit nervous) to hear what you think! Please leave us your feedback
and share your ideas about how we can improve our offering. Thank
you so much! Carlo & Anand [1] Sample proposal:
https://pabio.com/sample-interior-design-concept [2] 30-second
demo of our internal interior design tool that generates renders:
https://pabiousercontent.com/marketing-assets/launch-hn/desi...
Author : anandchowdhary
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-07-09 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago)
| shafyy wrote:
| Hey Carlo, nice to see see you guys on here and great to see a
| Swiss company in YC! Congrats. Cheers, Can (from Chimpy).
| carlobadini wrote:
| Hey Can! Thank you so much, man! Really appreciate it! My phone
| is docked to a Chimpy right now (no joke).
| shafyy wrote:
| Haha, glad we can be helpful :-)
| DantesKite wrote:
| If I had more money, I'd definitely do this.
|
| Or at least work with an interior designer to get a sense for
| what I'd like.
| carlobadini wrote:
| I'd love to hear at what budget/price point you would be
| comfortable to use Pabio. I ask because our ultimate goal is to
| make interior design affordable for the masses.
| shireboy wrote:
| Interesting concept. I have an office I could see this being
| useful for (though possibly a bit out of my price range, if I'm
| honest). One thing that stood out to me though is that all the
| examples were similar style (mid-century modern, maybe? I'm not a
| designer). More examples showcasing a range of styles could
| entice different clients. Research into styles in various regions
| (ie beach rentals vs ranch style vs mission/craftsman).
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| You're absolutely right, we currently only offer three distinct
| styles (https://pabio.com/get-started), although our interior
| designers get to know you better and design something that's
| unique for you. We are currently doing photography for a few
| more case studies with different styles, stay tuned!
|
| > Research into styles in various regions (ie beach rentals vs
| ranch style vs mission/craftsman).
|
| For sure! We plan on adding several more styles in the future.
| The only thing that slows us down is creating the right
| furniture set and reliably sourcing items that will remain
| available to us. I love the beach-style idea!
| [deleted]
| freen wrote:
| Would you consider doing only a single room? Dining
| room/livingroom only?
|
| Would be much more compelling, at least for me.
| mschild wrote:
| Not OP, but they do offer that.
|
| [0] https://pabio.com/pricing/
| mschild wrote:
| You may also want to look and target companies that have a lot of
| expat contracts. Expats usually get a good allowance for housing
| and providing stylish, quality furniture with little hassle might
| be a big bonus as its one less thing they have to take care off.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| Absolutely, this is a great idea! We're in early stages of
| exploring partnerships with large employers, especially in
| tech, who typically arrange homes for expats. They sometimes
| use serviced apartments (which are significantly more expensive
| than renting and using Pabio) or use short-term rental agencies
| -- both are interesting channels for us.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I like this very much. I would use you guys at the $600/mo price
| point for two rooms in a home in Austin, TX that I will be
| inhabiting for four months.
|
| The lead time is the problem (along with the pricing in CHF). I
| want this today and not 10 weeks from now (more than half of the
| period of the rental).
|
| Cool idea. I am concretely interested but not at that lead time.
|
| If anyone has American recommendations I'd be thrilled. I'll
| probably use inhabitr otherwise.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| > The lead time is the problem (along with the pricing in CHF)
|
| We're currently only available in Switzerland, so the pricing
| is in CHF. I hope we're un Austin soon though, you're the
| second person who told us that they'd be interesting in using
| us there!
|
| > I want this today and not 10 weeks from now.
|
| I very much agree, this is something we're working hard on.
| Furniture is not a great asset class since warehouse costs very
| quickly outweigh revenue (large and bulky!), so everyone in the
| supply chain is incentivized to reduce inventory risk as much
| as possible, which basically means everything is ordered on
| demand. This is the reason why you usually have to wait 12
| weeks for a sofa when you order it online.
|
| We try and do it quicker, at around 4 weeks (sometimes even
| earlier, in case of super-urgent apartments, we've even
| furnished them within one-to-two weeks), but we're exploring
| ideas to make this faster.
| carlobadini wrote:
| livefeather.com is amazing and available in the US. They don't
| offer the interior design service part, though.
| crixlet wrote:
| Thanks. Livefeather is interesting
| juultp wrote:
| You should also check out oliver.space - more affordable
| than Feather, and available in Austin too!
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thank you, you two, for your recommendations.
| crixlet wrote:
| Lol, I would also like to use this service in Austin for 4-6
| month period starting in September :)
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Very cool, two random questions. Can you talk more about how the
| buyouts work? When you do the move out do you also have shipping
| for an extra fee? Often when I've moved out of an apartment I
| have at least a few boxes of personal stuff to ship and it'd be
| nice if the company already hauling stuff away from my place
| could just do it all
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| > Can you talk more about how the buyouts work?
|
| How the buyout works in general is that all your monthly
| payments go towards ownership. Say you have a contract for $400
| per month for 2 years, and your furniture costs $12,000. At the
| end of this period, you can either (i) pay the difference,
| i.e., $2,400, and you own the furniture; (ii) continue the
| subscription until you've paid the amount back; or (iii) you
| can sign a new contract and get brand new furniture with no
| extra cost.
|
| > When you do the move out do you also have shipping for an
| extra fee?
|
| At this point, we don't, but that's also because we haven't had
| any move outs yet so we didn't consider the person items. We
| currently only move all your furniture at no additional charge.
| We can perhaps add a one-time paid addon service where we also
| move your personal items to your new apartment. Thanks for the
| great idea!
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Sweet, best of luck! I'll look you up the next time I move to
| Europe :)
| arjonagelhout wrote:
| Hi Carlo,
|
| A while back I came across Feather, which seems to be a startup
| trying to do the same thing:
|
| https://www.livefeather.com/
|
| They were part of the YC S17 batch. Even the styles of the
| websites are quite similar. What differentiates your services
| from Feather apart from geographic location?
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| Feather is only for rental furniture (you can rent individual
| items) but doesn't offer interior design. Here's an excerpt
| from a previous comment:
|
| > ...Feather (YC S17) which is ecommerce + rental furniture.
| For us, the interior design aspect is a large part of our
| offering because you don't have to imagine what your apartment
| will look like with all of these items. Plus, we can offer
| better prices and spend more on acquisition since we have a
| large ticket (an apartment or at least a room worth of
| furniture rather than renting a single chair).
| fd542 wrote:
| Very cool! Smart to automate part of the rendering service. That
| can take a ton of time manually. What's the experience been like
| for users to upload floor plan and photos? Any best practices or
| lessons learned you could share?
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| Great question, this has been something we're thinking about
| for a while now. We can do a much better/more realistic render
| if people upload floor plans, but not everyone does that (maybe
| they don't have one and don't know how to use those floor plan
| apps), which is why we are currently exploring ways to
| generating proposals without the strict need of a floor plan.
|
| People usually drop out of the funnel when we request a floor
| plan. This has been the main reason we're unable to convert
| some customers. For now, if you upload a few photos from
| different angles and the dimensions, we can probably work with
| that too, but we need more data before we're sure!
| AliTheLord wrote:
| Have you thought about trying to sell this to new build
| developers/people buying new builds? Or even just people buying
| houses. I would happily pay more than what you're charging for
| someone to just sort my whole house out (including finding a
| decent decorator).
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| Yes! We've been focused on B2C, but we already worked with our
| first B2B housing complex in Bern, but that's it. This is an
| avenue that we still have to explore, but you're right, this
| could be a great channel for us.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Have you guys heard of Fulhaus? I saw them on Dragon's Den
| (Canadian Shark Tank for you Americans) and they seem to have a
| similar model to this. Is your business model fairly similar?
| carlobadini wrote:
| CEO here: we actually didn't know them yet. But the website
| looks awesome. They seem to have a similar business model.
| We're operating in Europe as of now, though (That's across the
| Atlantic for you Canadians) ;)
| na85 wrote:
| >(That's across the Atlantic for you Canadians)
|
| It's probably safe for you to assume that most Canadians know
| where Europe is.
| nullspace wrote:
| This is actually really cool, and something I would seriously
| consider for my house.
|
| One question about the economics. You are going to get a lot of
| cases where people stop subscribing after the furnishing, and
| then decide they don't really want it / don't think it's worth it
| (think good faith - not abuse).
|
| Would you be able to handle that without too much of a dent in
| your costs? Would you offer refunds / cancellation, and then own
| the costs to take the furniture back etc?
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| > This is actually really cool, and something I would seriously
| consider for my house.
|
| Thanks so much! Excited to serve you!
|
| > Would you be able to handle that without too much of a dent
| in your costs?
|
| Since we fully insure the furniture and depreciate it over a
| longer time, our goal is to refurbish and reuse most items
| after your subscription is completed. If you cancel sooner,
| chances are that the furniture is in an even better quality so
| we can probably use more of it. So it shouldn't be too bad if
| people start to cancel early, but of course, we wouldn't want
| too many people to do this.
|
| > Would you offer refunds / cancellation, and then own the
| costs to take the furniture back etc?
|
| Yes, we allow for monthly cancellation. We're still trying to
| figure out exactly how this would work because the prices are
| lower for longer contracts and we're not fully sure how much of
| a "penalty" we will charge for early cancellation. For now,
| we've decided that people will only have to pay an
| administrative fee of $1k-$3k depending on how soon they cancel
| it, and then we'll take all the furniture back, refurbish it,
| and put it in a new apartment.
| oliv__ wrote:
| Sorry to be a downer, I like the concept but the renderings on
| your website look so cold and impersonal to me, like tired
| cliches of their styles. I personally wouldn't want to live in a
| WeWork
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| We try to furnish your apartment based on your taste and needs,
| the two case studies or the sample proposal on our website
| aren't the full picture (we're working on more photos from some
| of our other apartments). We first get to know you better (do
| you work from home? live with a partner? like colors? etc.) and
| try to send a very personal proposal.
|
| That being said, I agree that the Scandinavian style (warm,
| wooden, etc., what you refer to as "WeWork") is overrepresented
| in our photos, so we'll definitely work on changing that.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| Very interesting, and something I'd be interested in at the
| moment.
|
| But I am hesitant on the price point. At ~$4,800 / year as with
| the sample proposal, it might be a tough sell (or "rent", in this
| case).
|
| The other options are to hire a designer and buy the furniture.
| High upfront cost but you still own the furniture and can always
| re-sell it to recoup some costs. Yes, this is a hassle. But how
| much is the hassle worth?
|
| I can also just do a long-term AirBnb rental that comes fully
| furnished, many already with great style. Then I don't have to
| worry about any of this.
|
| If I had a lot more disposable money than I currently have, and I
| had to get a place for an extended period of time, I'd do this in
| a heartbeat. So perhaps I am not the target market.
|
| I wish you luck, there is certainly a market out there for
| something like this.
| whiddershins wrote:
| I paid an extra $500/month with an 11 month commitment for a
| furnished place over a non furnished. Maybe a little steep, I
| think I overpaid, but the one thing I will say to anyone
| reading this:
|
| The benefits of living in a nicely arranged and furnished home
| can not be overstated. I work from home and my productivity ...
| and income ... and my peace of mind ... went up dramatically.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| > The benefits of living in a nicely arranged and furnished
| home can not be overstated
|
| Same! Even though we're based in and only service Switzerland
| for now, I live in Groningen, the Netherlands (we're a fully
| remote team), and I got a fully furnished apartment. A
| comparable unfurnished apartment is ~EUR800 and I pay
| EUR1400, but damn -- it's just so much nicer! And that
| combined with having a cleaning service [1] so you don't have
| to think about much at all, it's almost like living in a
| hotel!
|
| [1] Pabio optionally offers a bi-weekly cleaning service (2.5
| hours every other week for ~$100/m) through a partnership.
| chris11 wrote:
| I second the price question.
|
| I might not be the target customer in this case. But I'm not
| sure how a professionally designed interior is a good option
| for saving money. I'm cheap, so my first choice is looking for
| quality used furniture off of places like craigslist. I've
| gotten some pieces I'm happy with.
|
| But the issue with furnishing an empty apartment that way is
| that it takes longer to find pieces, especially if you want it
| to match. My assumption is prices would be more than retail at
| a minimum. I'm also not usually comfortable with in-store
| financing offers. They usually aren't a good deal. But your
| terms could be good, debt seems to be cheap right now.
|
| This does definitely sound like something I would be interested
| in though if my place was empty and I was happy with pricing.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| > I'm not sure how a professionally designed interior is a
| good option for saving money
|
| If you have to manually hire and pay a professional interior
| design, it's not very affordable, I agree. At Pabio, we have
| several in-house designers from eastern Europe so it costs us
| (and therefore, you) a very small (bundled) amount. This is
| also because they don't need to spend too much time on each
| apartment (each designer does multiple apartments per day) as
| they are aided by our technology, for example our drag-and-
| drop floor plan design tool and automated rendering engine.
|
| > My assumption is prices would be more than retail at a
| minimum
|
| You'd think so, but this is excitingly not the case. You
| never pay more than retail. This is possible because we get a
| discount from our retail partners much larger than customers
| would get because of our volume. Also, furniture has huge
| margins, so we're planning on going direct-to-consumer later
| this year, which means even more savings for the customer.
| Either way, our offering is more affordable than buying all
| your furniture upfront from a retailer, especially when you
| think of the bundled services, e.g., fully insured furniture
| (don't be afraid of dropping coffee!), free delivery and
| installation, and optional paid addons like electricians and
| cleaning services.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| > At ~$4,800 / year as with the sample proposal, it might be a
| tough sell (or "rent", in this case).
|
| Thanks for the feedback, I agree that it's not extremely
| affordable yet, and we're trying hard to get the price down. We
| currently work with a retail partner but plan on going direct-
| to-consumer soon, which should make our package more
| affordable.
|
| Since we currently only serve the Swiss market, it's common for
| unfurnished apartments in Zurich cost upwards of $2,000, so
| adding $400 on top of that for a really beautiful interior
| package is not that big of a jump, especially when compared to
| fully-furnished apartments which cost significant more.
|
| > The other options are to hire a designer and buy the
| furniture.
|
| We also offer a buyout option, so all your monthly payments go
| toward ownership. Our goal is to ensure that you don't end up
| paying more during the course of your subscription than the
| retail price of the furniture if you were to purchase it all
| upfront.
|
| > I wish you luck, there is certainly a market out there for
| something like this.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| Oops, missed that last one.
|
| > I wish you luck, there is certainly a market out there for
| something like this.
|
| Thanks so much! We're looking forward to more feedback!
| fawniture wrote:
| > it's common for unfurnished apartments in Zurich cost
| upwards of $2,000, so adding $400 on top of that for a really
| beautiful interior package is not that big of a jump,
| especially when compared to fully-furnished apartments which
| cost significant more.
|
| I'd be mindful of that assumption across markets. I'm in
| London and while furnishing may have an impact on the list
| price for some properties, list price is almost always a
| product of the market and it's rarely possible to quantify
| the _cost of furnishing_. For example, apartments in my
| building are roughly the same price whether furnished or
| unfurnished. Furnishing is seen as a convenience here[1], not
| a financial benefit.
|
| I do think this is a great proposition and that, once prices
| come down, you'll have a good opportunity in London -- just
| challenging the assumption that furnishing is universally
| reflected in price :)
|
| [1] Typically, a furnished property is easier to tenant, so
| landlords can choose between furnishing (easier to find a
| tenant, risk of expensive damage) or unfurnished (harder to
| find a tenant, no risk of damage). Very common to see a
| furnished property offered "furnished or unfurnished" if
| someone wants to bring their own furniture, and that doesn't
| impact the price.
| carlobadini wrote:
| > For example, apartments in my building are roughly the
| same price whether furnished or unfurnished.
|
| I would question that statement. :) That doesn't seem to
| make a lot of sense economically. The only two reasons that
| come to mind why this may be true are a) the furniture in
| the furnished apartments is super cheap or b) the furnished
| apartments are located subpar in one way or another. But I
| may be wrong.
| fawniture wrote:
| Just a quick follow-up to provide an example, where
| furnished is cheaper than unfurnished, despite being
| identical: same building, same floorplan.
|
| https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/110025968
|
| https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/110204747
| carlobadini wrote:
| That's fascinating! We'll look into this.
| fawniture wrote:
| At the top end of the market the amount of money involved
| means it's often more economical to focus on maximising
| occupation, rather than minimising initial costs. My
| apartment, for example, is worth around PS1m and has
| around PS10,000 worth of furniture in it provided by the
| landlord: if during the lifespan of the furniture the
| convenience of the apartment being furnished reduces
| tenancy voids by a total of 3 months then the furniture
| pays for itself.
|
| I don't want to expose my address but you can browse
| "London" on the UK property website Rightmove and find
| comparable apartments (same building, same floorplan)
| with furnished/unfurnished prices that are no different.
| carlobadini wrote:
| Ah now I get it. Yeah you're absolutely right. I can
| imagine that we'll be working with landlords in markets
| like these instead of going directly B2C. While landlords
| may not care too much about the financial aspect of
| renting furniture they may care about the service aspect.
| We take care of the furniture, insure it, replace it ect.
| :)
| valvar wrote:
| >it's common for unfurnished apartments in Zurich cost
| upwards of $2,000
|
| I'd say that's the lower end, actually. Zurich is indeed
| pretty pricey.
| thedevelopnik wrote:
| As someone who owns a 2 bedroom condo and plans to stay for
| awhile but is still mostly furnished with Ikea, I would
| absolutely be interested in a buyout option!
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| Yep, we've seen homeowners or long-term renters especially
| interested in the buyout option. Fast furniture is a big
| climate problem, and although IKEA tries to show itself as
| sustainable, it's really the other thing. This is we only
| offer high-quality furniture, the kind that you won't
| replace every few years. That, combined with full
| insurance, things last longer and can be refurbished when
| you want to move out.
| raghavkukreti wrote:
| cool concept :)
| carlobadini wrote:
| thank you!
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > Why work at Pabio?
|
| > You'll work mostly with cool people (Not all of us are cool,
| but the majority are.)
|
| Seriously wondering who the uncool people would be and what it
| would be like to work with them
| CSDude wrote:
| Why would they even say that: "There are uncool people here,
| beware." Obviously not everyone in a workplace can be "cool"
| but I see no point mentioning it.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Because it's funny and implies that they don't take
| themselves too seriously?
| vincentmarle wrote:
| A lot of workers are suffering from PTSD from abusive
| managers who were "uncool" and micromanaging the living
| hell out of them. I wouldn't call that funny. Not saying
| that's what's happening at Pabio but that was the first
| thought in my mind.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| You won't find any abusive managers at Pabio... I'm just
| not very cool, that's it, I promise!
| carlobadini wrote:
| Agree with that statement once again.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Explain away social awkwardness/weird interactions? Cool
| would not be a word I associate with myself for that reason.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| I'm the uncool one
| carlobadini wrote:
| Agree with that statement.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I think the idea is great.. but it would only be attractive to
| most users if the furniture was rent-to-own.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| It (optionally) is! Here's an excerpt from a previous comment:
|
| > All your monthly payments go towards ownership. Say you have
| a contract for $400 per month for 2 years, and your furniture
| costs $12,000. At the end of this period, you can either (i)
| pay the difference, i.e., $2,400, and you own the furniture;
| (ii) continue the subscription until you've paid the amount
| back; or (iii) you can sign a new contract and get brand new
| furniture with no extra cost.
| itronitron wrote:
| An alternative approach might be to let subscribers browse a
| warehouse of inventory and select items for you to move into
| their apartment. That might broaden the appeal of what you are
| offering to a larger audience, especially families.
|
| I really like the idea of having a company take away all of my
| furniture when moving out, and if even one third of it didn't get
| trashed that would be a win.
|
| Finally, a lot of people only buy new furniture because they are
| afraid of pests hitching a ride. At some point you will need to
| address that from a quality assurance and liability perspective.
| anandchowdhary wrote:
| > An alternative approach might be to let subscribers browse a
| warehouse of inventory
|
| This is closer to Feather (YC S17) which is ecommerce + rental
| furniture. For us, the interior design aspect is a large part
| of our offering because you don't have to imagine what your
| apartment will look like with all of these items. Plus, we can
| offer better prices and spend more on acquisition since we have
| a large ticket (an apartment or at least a room worth of
| furniture rather than renting a single chair).
|
| > Finally, a lot of people only buy new furniture because they
| are afraid of pests hitching a ride
|
| You're right, this is food for thought. We already fully insure
| all items in the customer's apartment, so day-to-day wear-and-
| tear and some pest control can be fixed for free. But yes,
| we'll definitely need to think about this more when we
| refurbish furniture and put it in another apartment.
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