Jeremy Weisz 18:41
At what point do you decide, we really need to create something to make it easier. And that looks like an AI SaaS tool?
Andria Santos 18:51
Yeah, so it came to be when we’re having so many of these discussions with clients where it’s show me your dream show of your floor plan, continue. And it was again, 2020 So we had just raised our first round of financing, and 10 people and a ton of time on our hands. So, we kind of put our heads down and we’re like, okay, if we’re gonna do this at the scale that Airbnb just showed us, we can do this and the demand that there actually is then we really have to build the tool that will get us there the fastest, right, and that will accelerate and scale that type of demand. So we started to look at how does the funnel currently work? Right?
How does that client command and how would it invitation signal cetera? So we ultimately realized that to get the client from when they enter the funnel into an order, right to do that, we have to always have this designer handhold them through every piece of the puzzle, which is like what do you really want and all of those very many filters that identified earlier. So we ended up asking, realizing that a very poor way to have that communication with a client is language. So language is a really bad thing to use when you’re talking about design. And I’m not saying that there’s not a design language to be had or design communication to be had or conversation. It’s more so that when a customer comes to us, and they tell us, okay, I want modern, what does that mean, right?
And what is their interpretation of modern or contemporary or mid-century. So, we realize that if we can understand what they mean by their image, and by that dream, and we can interpret that, then we know exactly what to procure for them. Right? So exactly, as you’re seeing right here, you come right, and you upload that inspiration image. So that dream that you have, you upload that there, and you can select a room or a unit. And there you go. So if you select a unit, the zoom controls in the way, which room you ultimately want to start with, and boom, Ludwig presents you a furniture package comprised of everything you need for your unit. So you have your living room, bedroom and dining room. And it’s based on your image inspiration that you have uploaded in advance.
So then you go in here, and you actually filter everything, you can see stock levels, you can swap items, so you don’t like the sofa, you’ll get liquid recommendations, and also see all products in the library. You can filter by budget by size, by availability. And I mean, the best thing about it is it just allows you to do all of that fun little design tooling that’s ultimately necessary to visualize how it all comes together. You can add your backgrounds, so you have assets, you can upload and do background, and you can add your doggo as well. That’s a must. Yeah. Finally, yeah, what’s great, as you see it all come together in this really simple item list. And you can see what’s available, and checkout in one place, and you don’t have to manage multiple orders, multiple arrivals, multiple products coming from different suppliers. So you can imagine this is really easy to use in a single-unit format.
But when you’re doing 100, and you’ve got 100 units, and you have 100 sofas, or 30 different ones, and one needs replacing or there’s changes to be made properties change, and things happen. So, when you’re in that world, and it’s such a big expense, you really do want to come back somewhere and manage all of this and be able to scale that cost and those assets.
Jeremy Weisz 22:54
Talk about, up to that point. You’re bootstrapped. Right, what made you decide to say, okay, we need to raise our own capital for this.
Andria Santos 23:07
Yeah, it’s funny, because, you know, we started this company with $600. That was the first spend that our first auction, right, so just like 600 bucks and a website. Yeah, so then we started to raise, I guess, after in 2019, we did our first million in sales. And so we started to raise at that point. And it really was to kind of, we know that the demand is there. Now, we just kind of need to scale it. And it required this tool to help us kind of get access to everything immediately, in this format. So that’s really when things kicked off.
Jeremy Weisz 23:49
Yeah, I mean, it’s a capital-intensive industry in general. Now, you’re talking about developing a SaaS tool, which can be complicated. How did you go about? Now, you go from being in the legal field, you have shipping experience to furniture now. SaaS? Right, so who are some of the resources you use to start to get this project across the finish line.
Andria Santos 24:17
So we are based out of Canada, which is a huge benefit for most companies that are developing technology of any kind. So we really had a ton of support from various institutions out here from grants to other types of lending and financing. But it takes convincing, right? And it took a lot of legwork really convincing these people that we’re going to go from this furniture provider to this app company, and this is what we need to do it. And technology had just, AI was just kind of becoming a thing at that point. Right? So it was very much the time when we started to see AI being able to identify certain X-ray images and certain things across the medical field, one of the big ones that you may know is the Chihuahua muffin comparison. I don’t know if you’ve seen that graphic where it’s like, is it a Chihuahua? Or is it a blueberry muffin? So I haven’t seen?
Yeah, sounds like there’s a lot of like AI kind of working on imaging technology, which was really important to what we wanted to achieve, we wanted to go from image to multiple pieces of furniture that make up that same style. Right? So that was kind of just starting, and we really were testing into it. And luckily, we got some help to work with the Computer Research Institute of Montreal, to help us understand, like, is this technically feasible? Hypothetically, is this doable? And so they were kind of saying that, yes, it was. So at that point, we got some funding to be able to hire the necessary machine learning. And developers that we needed.
Jeremy Weisz 26:06
Take me to the evolution of the team? A little bit, obviously, early on, is just two of you, it sounds like, how did that evolve over time?
Andria Santos 26:13
Oh, man, it’s the fun thing about being in a garage is that people walk by a lot, especially when you have the doors open. And that’s how we acquired our first, not necessarily always the case, but a lot of times, you know, people had heard about us, and they kind of just walk up and they’re like, I have these tools, and I have these skills. And like, can I help, and it was just kind of like, it was at that point that I started to understand, the value of employees and how they can actually help you scale your business a lot faster. But there was a time when, of course, we’re hard-pressed and we’re bootstrapped. And we had this giant Studio, it’s like, the first thing we signed was a five-year lease when we made our first $50k. Right, so we have this huge garage studio, and we have bills to pay. And so we’re like, okay, what do we do, we need money, blah, blah, blah, it’s not easy to find this and that, like, you know what we actually need, we actually need people.
And what we have is space. So let’s offer the space for free in exchange for help on the company. And that’s exactly what we did, we started offering free co-working, and you’d contribute time. So what happened was, we turned this giant warehouse into a co-working space of some kind with all of our vintage furniture, and neon lights, and like pinball machines, one of our first people was a website designer, so he then designed our website, another guy was a pinball mechanic. And that’s how machines came from. And so he did all of our installation and ops. We had other people come in from different walks of life that would just assist in this product. And then it was incredible, because everybody had this kind of common goal. Outside of just, you’re a freelancer, you’re working on a client project and everybody was kind of like working together also part-time, which really created this amazing community. And yeah, it was a great space.
Jeremy Weisz 26:53
And then what about the development side? How many teams did it take for you to get that off the ground and also maintain it?
Andria Santos 28:30
Yeah. So we started with, like, our first developers, we went to the universities and went to the kind of career days. We hired developers, which then they’re like, okay, we need a machine learning guide, we need this person and we need that person and we’re learning our way through this entire thing. Yeah, my family is quite technological as well. So my brother works in software, and my father has a few patents as well. So I’ve also been kind of exposed to that reality of understanding what our needs are, and just kind of in that entrepreneurial spirit, and kind of just get it done, and find the people to do it.
Jeremy Weisz 29:13
Andria, if you’re looking back, what do you wish you would have known now that you’ve gone on this kind of SaaS journey in the beginning, when you first started?
Andria Santos 29:27
How expensive it is. I think that of course, we went through crazy changes, but we could have never expected I think what we’ve seen over the past few years, we’ve been developing this like I said since about 2020. So we can only plan so much obviously right? But I think when we had set out to endeavor to do this, I don’t think we thought that it would take three years and X number of dollars to invest in this idea which has proven to be incredibly fruitful. But, you know, I think that planning would have been hard to plan, but ultimately would have been really interesting to have known in advance.
Jeremy Weisz 30:12
I mean, there’s obviously a lot of changes, and the only way to do that is to, for you to use it and other people to use it, what were some of the key things that you implemented into the software because of, maybe it’s your team’s feedback or an external feedback?
Andria Santos 30:30
Removed background. So one of the really annoying things that I think a lot of designers will understand is that, whenever you’re creating your vision or mood board, or whatever you want to say, to present to a client, you have to remove white backgrounds of all the products, right. So that was definitely something that they were like, if he could just solve that one thing in one place, that would really help. So that’s a fun one that a lot of people when they see it, they’re like, you know, that is just such an annoying thing that everybody has that we step outside of their tool to figure out and fix. So that was fun. And there’s lots of things. Ultimately, this was built based on an industry that we already understood really well. So it wasn’t like, let’s make up SaaS, let’s make up a tool that we think might work. It was that no, we actually had tried tested this, and we know that this is a huge improvement on the current state of affairs.
Jeremy Weisz 31:30
What about little features, like, when I showed the if, by the way, if people listen, the audio, there was a video version, and we were actually walking through a demo. And what’s kind of cool about that is, if you’re watching, I’ll bring it up again, for a second. It’s this, and I’ve not seen that on other sites before. So it’s pretty cool. But there’s a little red dot that actually from a user experience is pretty cool, right? And so this little dot kind of follows you on like actually brings you I mean, I’ve seen like, there’s maybe a next button, but not quite like this. So I don’t know if this was like a major conversation or how you came to this user experience, I guess you could say.
Andria Santos 32:18
So funny story. But let’s give credit where it’s due. So that is actually Storylane, which is this demo, Creator tool. And they actually create this demo for you. So you can walk through an example of your entire software. So yeah, so this is actually created in Storylane. So yeah, very great UI, definitely. But it’s, this is kind of the demo version. So when you actually get out of here, and you actually do log into your own platform in your own dashboard. That’s when you really start creating.
Jeremy Weisz 32:53
Awesome, bringing it back to what you were saying before I kind of pulled this up. So you reframe it to our or muffin? So talk about what you’re explaining here related to AI?
Andria Santos 33:08
Yeah, so the question is, this was a time when does AI know the difference between a Chihuahua or muffin? Right, so this was one of the examples of those images. And so, this had only started developing around that time, really, I don’t even know 2017. Yeah, this is all kind of coming to fruition. And people talking about like, okay, AI can tell between these images, what else can you tell? Right? So it was also exploratory at the time, and then it was funny, because when we launched in, I mean, last year, it’s like, every AI tool came out last year, right, in 2023. So it was just like, has everybody just kind of been heads down working on this in the background for the past three years? And I guess the answer was, yes. Right. So, it was interesting to see that, yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 34:03
I didn’t realize the actual resemblance between a Chihuahua and a blueberry muffin until you just showed me that. Talk about Unos. For a second. So like, just, to go back, there is an enterprise version where you can use a tool, but like, you guys basically handle all the back-end stuff. And then there’s the tool people can just use on their own. And that may be for property managers or interior designers that they may use for their clients as well. Was there a thought of well, I’m not saying you’re creating competitors, but why even release it to the public, you could just use it internally and streamline it and help clients with it, you decide to actually make a front facing version. So then we talk about the decision to do that, as opposed to just keeping as an internal tool.
Andria Santos 34:53
Yeah, I think what’s fun is the community that comes together around a technology that’s new and innovative, and that is actually useful as well. So I think it’s beyond only what Fülhaus can do with it, right. And I do have that kind of philosophy about you do have to kind of keep certain things available to the masses and available to other people to use them, if you’re gonna create something new and innovative, you might as well see other users and their use cases for it. So, yeah, so there’s logic and not keeping it to ourselves as well. And we’re very niche at the same time, right?
So Fülhaus is very much focused on servicing the b2b side of real estate, the business, the real estate investor and developer. There’s some amazing consumer sites out there that could really see value in this. And I do think that that would be a great, we’ve dabbled in consumer, and it’s not my cup of tea. So I would much rather put this tool in other consumer site hands and see what they can do with it.
Jeremy Weisz 36:01
So, one use case would be Unos? To talk about you deal with Uno’s? I mean, I’m in Chicago, so I’m very familiar with Uno’s another deep-dish pizza places, but talking about Uno’s?
Andria Santos 36:16
Yeah, so they came to us, because they’re launching kind of a new angle as well for their brand, and they wanted something that was kind of new, and one design forward. So they kind of wanted a brand redesign an interior redesign for their brand. And then okay, cool that you can do all of this new interior design and branding. But then how do you actually roll it out amongst your franchisees? Right? Is it just some booklet with an order form that they have to kind of somehow piece together? So there’s no real tool that can help with that? Right.
So in that real kind of procurement world, especially with franchises, you’ll see the same thing in hotels, right, so you’ll have kind of the HQ in the central headquarters of that hotel chain, or have that franchise, really making all of the design decisions, but no way to properly disseminate that, across their franchisees, there are other sorts of e-procurement tools, but they’re not really designed forward. So they don’t actually help you visualize exactly what you’re buying and eating. So yeah, so that was kind of where they came to us, and they were like, well, this is great, you have won the full-service design agency, and then a place where people can actually purchase this stuff and check out. So it just became a really easy rollout tool for their new chapter of their business.
Jeremy Weisz 37:37
Yes, on that side, like a lot of b2b can be a franchise, I know, they’re short-term, rental hotels and other channels there. And when you were exploring, who would be the best customers for the actual self-service tool? I know we talked about interior design and property management firms, how do property management firms use it?
Andria Santos 38:04
So similarly, right, so property management firms also come to onboard owners, who have properties who need or have furniture, and will always be redesigning at some point in that lifecycle. So having a place where they can see all of the very many properties that they have, what they’ve ordered and purchased, and also to know what needs replacement, because you do need to know if that nightstand is broken? Or if that lamp is broken, what room is it in? And what does that room look like? Right? And if I’m replacing that it has to match the other one, or it has to look a certain way, and it has to overall keep it together, versus just letting the time of procurement chip away at something.
And it’s such a big investment, right? What these hospitality brands do spend on this cost, right of furnishing is huge. And it’s the one thing that really determines where they stand in that ranking of quality. So is it low-end? Is it mid or is it high? It’s largely dependent on good design. So the question is, how do we make it more attainable for some of the mid-tier folks?
Jeremy Weisz 39:16
Andria first of all, thanks for sharing the journey from a garage until now AI SaaS tool. Probably at that time, you weren’t thinking we’re gonna have an AI SaaS tool someday helping large organizations in hotels and franchises. But my last question, and people can check it out all their what they have going on at fulhaus.com It’s fulhaus.com to learn more. My last question is, through this journey, we all have mentors, and some of the lessons that we learned from our mentor so I love to hear a few of those. I know you come from a family of entrepreneurs, so maybe a lesson you learn from sounds like your dad had some patents and a business as well. So maybe start with him and any other mentors that have helped you along the way in a lesson you learned?
Andria Santos 40:10
Yeah, I think, you know, my mentors are very personal to people I know, personally, right? So I find it really hard to kind of hold people too highly if you don’t personally know them. You know, there’s a lot of other things going on behind the scenes, and it’s never a full story, right? So yeah, to that point, my dad is a huge inspiration for me, I saw him build his business from our basement and into multiple offices around multiple countries. And it was very inspiring to me at the time when I saw the ups and downs of that side of things, right of being an entrepreneur. So, it’s huge to be able to see it live and be a part of it. And like, the conversations around the dinner table are so interesting from a young age, right, when you’re talking about shipping and cargo and international and an iron ore going from South America to China and why and what are they building? Why do they need so much cement and you really understand the global economics of the world? Right, and why things are happening? Crazy inspirational. Right, so definitely one of the ones I hold highest. But another one.
Jeremy Weisz 41:23
Do you think, Andria, before you get to the next one, obviously, you’re around it. Did you always have that inkling that you were going to be an entrepreneur or like you said, you saw the ups and the downs. So that could be like, yeah, I’m going to definitely do this, or there’s no way I’m ever going to do this. What was your thought when you were growing up? Did you have any thoughts, no, there’s no way this is to up and down, or no, this is for me.
Andria Santos 41:55
I mean, it was so exciting to see, seeing it all kind of happen in front of you, and really going from nothing, like I tell you, my parents build their own house, their first house with their own hands, right? So but turning that into multinational, it’s super exciting to see and you really understand life at a different scale. And understanding the value of freedom, also, and not being tied to that desk job, right. And like, I was going down the path of being a lawyer. So that was a very, very serious desk job. Not something that I could really, it wasn’t a pill, I could swallow very easily. And then, when I was in real estate, and I had a $10 million check that I was bringing to a notary in my hands. And I was like, I will never have my name on this if I keep working this desk job. So that was it. For me, I was like, something’s gonna give and gave. And here we are.
Jeremy Weisz 43:08
So your dad was a big inspiration. You were gonna mention someone else who’s a mentor.
Andria Santos 43:13
Yeah, so the person whose name was on that check was the person which was my boss at the time later became an investor as well. Real Estate, second generation, real estate owner and developer and it was, were these were similar in age. So it was also interesting to see him take over his father’s business and really become that, and take it to new levels as well. So also to become his own CEO and business owner and get a lot of inspiration of the right and wrong thing to do from that angle.
Jeremy Weisz 43:58
Any specific lessons from them that you took either observing or through conversation?
Andria Santos 44:07
I feel like there’s so many. There are so many. Oh, man. There’s one that I always say that my dad would tell me as a kid, and this is gonna sound horrible, but it really added value to my life. And I tell you why. When I used to say I want something and he would be like, ask me if I care. And it was such a harsh reality to look to that person and look at your dad be like, do you care? And he’d be like, no. And that was the end of the conversation. There was really nothing more to be said.
Jeremy Weisz 44:50
So is he saying go after and get it yourself?
Andria Santos 44:52
Yeah, he’s like, you’re gonna have to find another way around this. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 44:59
Love it. Andria, I just want to be the first one to thank you, everyone could check out fulhaus.com more episodes of the podcast and everyone, we’ll see you next time. Thanks Andria.
Andria Santos 45:07
Hey, thanks so much Jeremy. Take care.
