Editor's note: In our 2024 Startups to Watch feature, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times present startups and founders building groundbreaking products and companies in the Bay Area. Cohart is one of 17 we profiled this year — to read more about our mission and the other startups we're featuring, click here.
Art collectors are often thought of as high-net-worth individuals who make purchases as investments, but Cohart wants to tap into artists and consumers who aren’t being served by Sotheby’s. Cohart co-founders Kendall Warson and Shyevin S’ng met prior to the Covid-19 pandemic while curating a digital art gallery in Asia, and are now developing software tools to help connect smaller artists and collectors.
About Cohart
- Founded: 2021
- Founders: CEO Kendall Warson, COO Shyevin S'ng
- Headquarters: San Francisco
- Employees: 6
- Total funding: $5 million
How would you describe Cohart?
Kendall Warson: We describe it as a vertical marketplace that provides independent artists the tools they need to manage their communities, manage their business, manage their brand and interact directly with their collectors. It’s like a little triangle. You have galleries, product marketplaces and Instagram, basically. And 85% of artists operate outside of galleries and mostly depend on Instagram as a way to build their community and their brand. And Instagram was never built for professional artists selling work that’s over $1,000.
Who are your target users?
Warson: On the artist side, there’s a perception of the market that it’s sort of like a pyramid. But what we see is actually more like what happened in music where galleries are basically the radio, and if you’re not in the gallery, people don’t really know where you are. On the consumer side, the group that we’ve had the most traction with are what we call the “Henrys” — 29-year-olds that work at BlackRock or 32-year-olds that just had an IPO and are starting to get disposable income. We’re also spending much more time at home, and we feel insecure about our white walls. This is the gap between Ikea or Wayfair and galleries on Fifth Avenue. The middle market is very much untapped.
What does you revenue model look like?
Warson: The simplest way that we're starting is taking 25% of sales from artists. Buyer pay for shipping. Galleries take 50% to 70%. Saatchi Art takes 30% to 40%. The second way we make money is artist subscription tools. There are a lot of exciting features that we're working on that don't exist today for artists. Having an accountability coach, price advising systems, ways to see analytics on what content is performing better than others and business insights from that.
What else would you like people to know about Cohart and why are you launched a fine art marketplace?
Shyevin S'ng: Before we started, we interviewed like 1,500 people. One thing that we found out is that artists and collectors don't have confidence. They will feel shame. As an artist, you don't make any money basically and your parents discourage you to go ahead. Please be a lawyer or a doctor. And then, if you collect over $1 million in artwork, then you are a collector. But we all are collectors. On both sides — artists and collectors — we want to emphasize building confidence and taking away that shame.
