Fernish — a Los Angeles, California-based proptech company which is disrupting the furniture industry by letting people rent single and full-room furnishings for however long you want from brands like Crate & Barrel, CB2, and more — recently raised $15 million for its Series A round of funding.
As people have spent more time at home, the company witnessed a significant spike in demand for various items that help make the home an inviting space.
The round was led by Khosla Ventures, and participants included Techstars Investments, Scott Cook (co-founder of Intuit), Jared Simon (co-founder of HotelTonight), RET Ventures, Jeff Wilke (Amazon’s CEO of Worldwide Consumer), Spencer Rascoff (co-founder of Zillow), Fred Tuomi (the former CEO of Invitation Homes), Eytan Elbaz (co-founder of Scopely and founding team member of Applied Semantics, now Google AdSense), and a wide group of current and former Amazon executives through Tapas Capital.
“In 2017, Lucas and I set out to build a furniture company that adapts to meet our ever-evolving lives, offers us the freedom to change, and gives us the ability to express where and who we are. The goal was to fuse service into how we define our homes. Three years later, we’ve grown that idea into Fernish and elevated that goal into our mission of making it effortless to create your home. And this mission could not be more important right now,” Michael Barlow, Fernish, co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
“It’s because of our team’s dedication that I am so excited to announce our $15 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures closed earlier this month. David Weiden, Vinod Khosla, and the wider KV team have backed some of the most transformative companies over the past decade, from Square to DoorDash, and Fernish is privileged to join that group. Joining Khosla in this round are a number of world-class operators such as Scott Cook (founder of Intuit), Jeff Wilke (Amazon’s CEO of Worldwide Consumer), and a wide group of current and former Amazon executives through Tapas Capital. We are fortunate to have the continued backing of investors from the real estate community like John Helm with Real Estate Technology Ventures and Fred Tuomi, the former CEO of Invitation Homes. And as a company proudly based in Los Angeles (#longLA), we are grateful for the support of our hometown community from our earliest backers, PLG Ventures and Techstars Los Angeles, to some highly-respected local entrepreneurs like Spencer Rascoff (co-founder of Zillow and dot.LA) and Eytan Elbaz (co-founder of Scopely, Social Native, and founding team member of Applied Semantics, now Google AdSense).
“Raising capital in the current climate is a testament to our team’s unwavering focus on fundamental business economics and providing an amazing customer experience. Strong business economics are a prerequisite to building and scaling a start-up in 2020. And for a tech-enabled physical asset business like Fernish, executing against those economics gets more complex as we grow. This team’s discipline in radically improving our underlying business economics while growing our revenue by 10-times over 2019 speaks to this team’s caliber as operators.”
