Why We Invested In Mattoboard
Reach out to Brett Calhoun, Managing Director & Partner at Redbud VC, at brett@redbud.vc to learn about Redbud, and subscribe to our newsletter here.
Mattoboard is building an interior design supplies marketplace on top of it’s digital moodboard tool and 3D virtual samples (Vsamples) marketplace that replaces the billions spent on material samples.
Since the early 20th century, the interior design industry has relied on interior samples and mood boards to showcase materials to clients with little to no innovation. Sample boards are a tool used to show clients actual “samples,” i.e., which specific items will go into the space. Interior designers on tight time frames create sample boards by carefully selecting samples from their sample library and hand cutting, hand gluing, and placing those samples on a board. Sample board creation requires keen attention to detail and precision on the half of the designer and can take around 10 hours per board to complete. The Interior Design industry and product sampling have remained unmodernized while designers are looking for faster digital methods to develop concepts.
The cost and environmental impact of sending samples is piling up for brands. Sample-sending campaigns start around $10,000 but often exceed hundreds of thousands of dollars, a significant investment that strains the brand’s respective budgets and resources. Material suppliers spend 10% of their operating costs shipping product samples and designers. Brands have no pulse on what conversions from samples to sales look like. No actionable marketing and sales insights can be leveraged today as traditional samples exist. Designers often find themselves faced with an abundance of samples that are no longer in use, leading to the need for large-scale disposal. For example, the UK generates around 200 million tonnes of waste each year, 59% of which accounts for the construction industry — including interior fittings and fixtures. Excessive sample and material sourcing waste create environmental challenges, with a significant volume of materials ending up as waste, exacerbating the industry’s carbon footprint.
Mattoboard offers a cutting-edge product solution that revolutionizes the interior design industry through its online marketplace of 3D virtual samples called VSamples. Leveraging their innovative MetaSKU AI technology, the platform lets suppliers virtualize their materials through photographs, showcasing products in rich detail with textures, light, shadow, and trade-specific features. Mattoboard’s transformative technology sets them apart as the first to market, offering designers unparalleled accessibility and continued creativity in their design process.
Mattoboard has demonstrated impressive traction in the market, positioning itself as a promising contender in the interior design software space. With its current beta release, the platform has already garnered substantial interest. The 200 Beta users are dubbed as “founding members’ — which has created a stir in the design community on social media. Mattoboard’s Instagram currently has 80,000+ followers, and their Instagram reels have over 1.5M views, with each reel averaging 50k views.
Since Mattoboard’s launch just one month ago, the platform has been experiencing a staggering influx of users, with a consistent weekly sign-up rate of 2,000+ new users, all of which is purely organic growth without any ad spend. Their mailing list has seen an even more impressive growth rate, with 5,000+ new subscribers joining each week. Mattoboard’s rapid user growth underscores the effectiveness of their product and the platform’s undeniable appeal to designers. With 25,000+ users and an impressive mailing list of 70,000+ subscribers, Mattoboard’s growth trajectory appears to be on a solid and promising course. On top of users, Mattoboard has witnessed over 30,000+ downloaded projects and an astounding 1.8 million interactions with products on sample boards. These interactions are particularly noteworthy as they represent entirely new data, previously unavailable due to the offline nature of sample boards. The team is eagerly awaiting the emergence of valuable patterns and insights from this wealth of designer data.
When Co-Founders Guy Ailion and George Hart crossed paths, they immediately hit it off during their first Zoom call. Guy, a former punk rocker and now an award-winning Architect and partner at KSR in London set out to find a like-minded entrepreneur with a creative approach towards technology. Meanwhile, George, an avid backpack traveler, tech enthusiast, and exceptional coder, had just returned from five years of international travel. George had started traveling after two successful startups under his belt and was now eager to embark on a new project. Guy and George met online through a YCombinator Co-Founder matching and forged a strong connection after talking endlessly about their mutual interest in 3D image compositing and the future of software. Both Guy and Geoge are deeply driven by the future of 3D visual curation and storytelling online, and we at Redbud VC are excited to be backing that future.
Originally posted at https://www.redbud.vc/post/why-we-invested-in-mattoboard
