Tastemaker
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
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Sections to complete：05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Tastemaker was a San Francisco online interior design marketplace from Y Combinator's Summer 2012 batch, founded by Joe Fraiman with Kyle Larson, Juan Vasquez, Esther Park and Natey Nartey. Under the tagline 'Design for everyone', it matched first-time decorating customers with vetted professional designers who delivered custom room designs — drawings, paint swatches, floor plans and itemized shopping lists — for $600 to $2,250, versus the $5,000 to $10,000 a traditional decorator charged.
02 / Tastemaker FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Tastemaker died of price discovery. Its target customers — people who had never hired a decorator — would not pay designer prices at any discount: within eight months of its April 2013 public launch, the homepage was selling $50 in-home consultations in San Francisco only, a tenfold price cut and a retreat from three markets to one. At $50 a session there was no viable business, and the roughly $2.9 million of seed capital ran out. A quiet wind-down notice went up in March 2015, and the closure was recorded in June 2015.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded and YC
Tastemaker is founded in San Francisco and joins Y Combinator's Summer 2012 batch; a closed beta launches in August.
- Seed round
The company announces a seed round of about $1.3-1.7 million from North Bridge, Crosslink Capital, Correlation Ventures and Y Combinator.
- Public launch
Tastemaker launches publicly in April under the tagline 'Design for everyone', pricing from $400 with free designer matching in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.
- Price cuts
By December the homepage sells $50 in-home consultations, San Francisco only — a tenfold price cut and a retreat from three markets to one.
- Wind-down and closure
A wind-down notice appears on the homepage in March, taking no new client projects; the closure is recorded in June 2015.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.