Do they have the magic touch? Not likely. The founding team at Kontor has a total of zero years (or months, weeks, days, hours or seconds) of experience in the office furnishings industry. PHOTO: KONTOR
New proof that the latest internet bubble hasn't popped yet, and dumb money flows freely. Kontor Inc., a website and a visual search and discovery platform for commercial interior design, said Thursday that it has raised $4.6 million in an extension to its Series A financing of $5 million. Venrock committed $4.5 million in Series A funding, with Kevin Ryan and Tom Melcher as seed round angel investors. In the latest round, the funding came from Founders Fund’s FF Angel, Wellington Partners, Female Founders Fund and BBG Ventures.
The company is believed to be still in the "pre-revenue" mode.
The almost one -year-old company seeks to organize what the founders believe is a disorganized world of commercial interiors and A&D firms.
“the real problem is that none of the founders have more than 10 seconds of experience in the office furnishings industry - and it shows.”
The company originally described itself as sort of a “Houzz for office design,” allowing firms to upload both public and private photos to its platform. Kontor then identifies the items in the photos and tags them accordingly. Over time, the idea is that the furniture vendors themselves will aid in the tagging process, and hopefully also pay for better placement against various search terms, which will help Kontor monetize.
And while serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan has founded a number of businesses, including Gilt Groupe, Business Insider, database firm MongoDB, and wedding registry startup Zola, he has met his match with Kontor. He even boasted that setting up lot of offices has given him experience and more insight than the average CEO as to what goes into designing and setting up a new office space. Too bad CEO's don't set up or design office space however.
“For better or worse, I’ve designed more office space than people you know,” Ryan told Techcrunch last year. “It wasn’t my goal…but I do like it, and I care about creating a nice space, so I’m probably a little more involved than your average CEO,” he says.
One can argue the merits of Kontor, and certainly it can be a helpful tool. But the space of visual search is becoming crowded and Kontor faces a host of other competitors from Designer Pages, Office Snapshots and to some degree, Houzz itself. But the real problem is that none of the founders have more than 10 seconds of experience in the office furnishings industry - and it shows. They thought they saw a problem, but in fact the solution they are presenting isn't the solution to any problem that designers or specifiers care that much about. Pretty pictures are nice, organizing them even nicer, but pulling the kind of revenue needed to support such an operation, from what is essentially a small industry will eventually prove impossible. The market, commercial interiors, is a tiny fraction the size of the residential furnishings universe. Worse, none of the major manufacturers like playing on the same field as the others, making Kontor's signing of Herman Miller a no go for the likes of Steelcase and others.
Sadly, if Knotor's founder had bothered to research the market, ask a few basic questions, talk to any knowledgeable industry sources at all, they would have discovered it wasn't a market waiting for this magic tech solution.
No unicorn here.