Interior design software company Spoak began as a fully remote, international organization.
Founder Hilah Stahl started the company while living in Berlin, Germany, and collaborated with engineers in Ireland and Italy.
But when Stahl had to return to the United States, she chose the Hudson area for the company's headquarters.
"It's a very design-centric area. It's embedded in the value system," she said. "Everyone I meet, even not in a professional context, cares about it or works in it in some adjacent way — even if it's just like a hobbyist antiquer."
Spoak is software that allows users — both amateurs and professionals — to plan interior design projects by creating floor plans and room mockups, managing projects and sourcing products. It also has an in-software catalog of decor items created in partnership with small businesses and retailers through which users can purchase items.
Today, the company has nearly 200,000 projects using the software. The software has been featured in design publications like Architectural Digest, Domino Magazine and Real Simple.
The first version of the product launched in the spring of 2019, with the refined version going live in March 2020. When it first launched, Stahl said the company raised a friends and family round, followed by $2.5 million seed round raise in 2022. The company hasn't needed to raise any more capital since 2022.
Spoak is subscription-based and doesn't offer a free tier of the software. Memberships range from $9.99 per month for a basic package to $99.99 per month for access to all of its features.
Stahl got the idea for Spoak when trying to decorate her first apartment in New York City and couldn't find a tool for amateurs/DIY-ers like herself or professionals that fully visualized a design.
"I had always worked in tech, so I was up to date, obviously, with software that was available. I knew Adobe, I knew everything and felt like there was just an enormous amount of tools out there for the inspiration phase of a project — like Pinterest and Instagram — and then the buck stopped basically after that," she said.
As the company grew, Stahl returned to the United States and settled in Chatham. Now, three of Spoak's 10 team members live in Columbia County. The rest are remote, but on-site company events happen in Chatham.
Spoak doesn't have a physical office space — the Hudson Valley team rotates working at each other's houses or at local businesses/coworking spaces. They frequent the Old Chatham Country Store, Wylde Hudson, Barnfox Hudson, and Morningbird in Kinderhook.
Stahl said some of the company's investors see Spoak's Hudson Valley location as an edge. Not only is the company removed from more stressed competition, but the area — specifically Hudson — is known for being an antiques/art hub.
"Our biggest professional network is in Manhattan, but even those designers are really excited to come up because this is a design destination — architecturally, antique-wise, it's a place you go to intentionally from a design perspective," Stahl said. "I think for us to be at the epicenter of that, and hopefully build a community around it up here, feels really right for us as a brand."
As the company continues to grow, Stahl wants to double down on the Hudson area. The long-term plan is to buy a house, use Spoak to design it, and make it the company's headquarters. It would also offer out-of-town employees a place to stay.
"I think [we would] just fill it with our local brand partners' products, to host events there. It would also be an office for us," Stahl said. "That's just a fun thing that we've really always wanted to do."
