42floors, the startup that launched in March out of Y Combinator’s Winter 2012 class, is still only providing its commercial real estate search product in the San Francisco Bay Area. 42Floors says more regions are on the way, but in the meantime, the company has found another way to go national: The debut today of “Showroom,” a marketplace that provides all the stuff businesses need to move into a new office after they sign the lease on the space.
With Showroom, 42Floors has assembled a curated collection of things such as office furniture, decor items, kitchen accessories, and services such as interior designers and wellness program providers. For now, Showroom links to places where those things can be bought and collects an affiliate fee — but 42Floors CEO Jason Freedman tells me that eventually it will actually be a full e-commerce marketplace.
“With hiring in tech absolutely crazy right now, it’s nearly impossible to find people. So as a startup your offices have to be cool,” Freedman said. “Big companies hire full-time product managers to do stuff like this, but our core user is a startup CEO and his or her office manager. They have full-time jobs already, and moving can be a full-time job. We want to help with every aspect of that.”
To assemble Showroom, Freedman says 42Floors visited dozens of the “coolest startup offices around” and catalogued the products and services they were using. The site also has an inspiration tab, which showcases offices with especially interesting decor, Apartment Therapy style.
In addition to the instant nationwide expansion angle, Showroom is is a smart move because it means that 42Floors can now be a relevant place for businesses to go year-round — not just the one or two times that they make a big move.
Meanwhile, 42Floors is in the process of closing what I’m hearing is a very buzzed-about round of funding from some of the startup scene’s biggest name investors (which seems to show a pattern emerging with Y Combinator’s latest batch of companies.) Freedman was mum on that process for now, but he did say that his six-person team has been working overtime since officially launching at Y Combinator demo day in late March — which is partially why they’re making their aggressive hiring process so entertainingly public. The Showroom launch is just the latest example of how 42Floors is emerging rapidly as a key Silicon Valley startup to watch.