Reno: Founders should invest their time like seed investors placing bets
Jay Reno · Jay Reno of Feather, a Furniture Subscription Startup · Y Combinator · Aug 14, 2019 · at 32:22
Jay Reno, founder and CEO of furniture subscription service Feather, shares counterintuitive strategy advice on creating luck and serendipity in early-stage startups.
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“You have to be focused on what you're seeding. So you have to be clear and understand what the intention is there. They should be very high risk, but high reward and assume that like a seed investor, for example, you know, only one or two of the 20 will ever even come to fruition. And if they do, then magic.”
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“The reality is most people are using Feather and companies like us whether it's, you know, Rent the Runway or Uber or Lyft or Spotify, et cetera, because they don't necessarily want to own things and have things tying them to a physical space.”
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“The software that our business needs doesn't exist off the shelf.”
Reno: IKEA and Wayfair furniture is not meant to be moved
“Buying, you know, Ikea, Wayfair, what you might consider disposable furniture that can be assembled once and set up once in someone's home and doesn't really transport very well. It's not meant to be disassembled or moved.”
Reno: Furniture subscription MVPs require visual merchandising and aesthetic appeal
“For this to work, you kind of need to have a little bit of merchandising. You need to have a little bit of a visual aesthetic and appeal to see what furniture is with the prices, et cetera.”
Reno: Furniture buyers actually want the flexibility of subscriptions
“They're not addressing the massive opportunity, which are people who are currently buying furniture, thinking they want to buy furniture, but in fact, what they actually want is the flexibility to be able to subscribe to furniture.”
Reno: Delivering products in person beats phone interviews for customer discovery
“It's not enough. Typically to just do user interviews over the phone. Video is helpful. You can meet people in person or like I did do the deliveries and see the people who are using your products, see the living situation they're in and see the furniture that…”