YC graduate Feather raises $3.5 million for furniture rental business
VentureBeat By Bérénice Magistretti
Feather wants to take the pain out of owning furniture and today announced the close of a $3.5 million seed round for its furniture rental business. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Bain Capital Ventures co-led the round, with participation from several other investors, including Y Combinator (YC).
Founded earlier this year, the Brooklyn, New York-based startup officially launched in June while participating in YC’s summer 2017 batch. It aims to remove the hassle associated with buying, assembling, moving, and selling furniture by letting customers rent it instead.
“Our bread and butter are younger people who move approximately 12 times between going to college and buying their first home,” wrote founder and CEO Jay Reno, in an email to VentureBeat. “It doesn’t make sense for them to own furniture.”
Having moved several times myself in the past few years, I can relate. Ordering from IKEA and assembling all the pieces only to put the furniture on Craigslist a few months later — it’s a pain and often a waste of time and money.
Feather purchases the furniture directly from retailers and manufacturers. Rental periods vary between three and 12 months, or longer for business partners. Customers choose from a range of packages on the website: two-bedroom home, living room, or standard studio, and pay a monthly fee. Feather then delivers the furniture, assembles it, and picks it up once the customer moves out.
Reno claims to have hundreds of customers in New York City and San Francisco. Competitors in the furniture rental space include Cort and Brook Furniture Rental.
Feather will use the capital to scale the business and grow its team of seven. The other investors who joined the seed round include SV Angel, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Leah Busque (founder of TaskRabbit) via Fuel Capital, PJC, Novel TMT Ventures, Blue Seed Collective, Joe Montana via Liquid 2 Ventures, and FundersClub.