If you've ever had to replace your windows, or even replace a water heater, you know how it goes. You buy the hardware at Home Depot or Lowe's and they connect you with an installer. The installer arrives at your house with a new price tag for the job and a hard sell. Enter Renoviso, which is raising a seed round with an AngelList syndicate led by Wayfair's co-founder and CEO, Niraj Shah.
Renoviso's founders are Eric Horndahl, a veteran of Flipkey (acquired by TripAdvisor), and Brian Waldman, who was at Cayan before starting the new co.
It started with a move to the suburbs. Horndahl bought a house and needed new windows. He found it to be a pain in the neck, but also an opportunity.
"It's a high-ticket item, it's a very big market; $10 billion just for replacement," he told me. "Good economics behind it."
Shah was introduced to Horndahl by a friend at NextView Ventures, where he's a limited partner. He saw an opportunity that has some parallels to his day job.
"I like the approach that these guys have in terms of being really end-to-end service," he said. "They're going to make sure it goes well and the customer is happy, (and) add price transparency."
E-commerce businesses like Renoviso's, or Wayfair's, (or Zulily's) starve or thrive by their ability to cost-effectively acquire customers.
"Here you have some guys who understand highly quantitative online advertising and have been using that successfully in prior ventures," he said.
So, he's leading a BOSS syndicate (which is run by another Flipkey veteran, TJ Mahony), hoping that will generate buzz for Renoviso. Unlike more hands-on angels, who aren't running $4 billion public companies, he doesn't do much other than that, he acknowledged. (Shah has done about a half a dozen angel deals to date.)
"He (Shah) reminds me a lot of (TripAdvisor CEO) Steve Kaufer actually in terms of being very practical, having good instincts and understanding what's important and what's not really," Horndahl said. "Getting data-driven online marketing, that's been an essential part of Wayfair's success."
Horndahl wouldn't say how much Renoviso is raising, or who else is in. But he did say BOSS has been helpful. "One of the challenges in Boston with consumers is there aren't that many investors who do seed-stage investments in consumer companies," he said.
And he said the business won't always be all about windows. Stay tuned.
