Hometalk, the NYC-based startup that helps you DIY your dream home, raised $15m to expand its online community, TechCrunch reports.
The Hometalk platform is basically a dream(board)y meeting of Pinterest plus Houzz, with a bit of UpWork and a dash of those online health forums where doctors respond to questions.
Do it yourself… but with friends
Founded in 2011, “the world’s leading DIY Home & Garden knowledge hub” now brags 140k tutorials, 17m members (who are NOT referred to as “homies” but def should be), and 2.5B vid views last year.
Hometalk’s community-driven, visually pleasing platform facilitates collab-ing and resource-sharing among DIYers and design pros to help members pull off all kinds of adorbs home and garden projects (Easter’s comin’ up, yall — hippity hop to it).
The tutorials, guides and advice are contributed by both regular users and experienced designers — who then get to reap the promo benefits of the site’s inherent social-sharing nature.
In this age, personalization is the name of the game
Which means DIY has a growing place in the market (and our closets).
The DIY trend is particularly popular thanks to boundless access to new resources and ease of community engagement (if you don’t share photos then literally, why even?). As Hometalk puts it, “Doing it yourself doesn’t mean doing it alone.”
According to TechCrunch, Hometalk’s $15m boost will allow the company, which has depended mainly on programmatic ads, to build itself new revenue streams such as subscriptions and branded content.