Mattoboard

Mattoboard is a web-based platform that lets interior designers and architects assemble 3D mood boards and material boards using digital material samples, which the company calls VSamples. Users drag and drop materials, paints, accessories and reference images onto a board, rotate and rescale them in three dimensions, adjust lighting temperature, intensity and position, and view the composition in perspective rather than only flat overhead layout. Stacked objects cast shadows on one another, a behavior the founders describe as a "gravity field," intended to reproduce the experience of arranging physical samples on a studio table.

The product includes a library of materials and paint colors (over 1,600 paint colors as of early 2024, and more than 2,000 materials at launch), more than 100 board templates, designer-curated starter boards, and a "Mattoshift" feature for uploading and editing custom materials from photographs or website imagery. Paid features include Deep Render, a ray-traced photorealistic render of a board; background removal; PDF material spec sheets with product weblinks; transparent-background downloads; screen recording of boards with moving light for video content; project folders; and team functions such as shared libraries, collections and projects, SSO and floating-seat licenses. More recently the site markets DesignStream for generating AI interior concept images and FF&E schedule creation from curated boards.

Founding story

Guy Ailion, an architect and partner at KSR Architects & Interior Designers in London, observed that designers in his office under 40 skipped the physical material library, instead researching products across dozens of browser tabs and assembling comparisons in Photoshop, then repeating the process whenever the brief changed. He met George Hart, an engineer with a 3D compositing specialization who had co-founded two prior startups, through Y Combinator, and the two combined interior design and 3D software expertise to make realistic 3D concept boards accessible to designers. Hart built the initial product over roughly six months.

Business model

Mattoboard operates a freemium software-as-a-service model with two revenue sides. Designers use a free tier with limited AI credits, material uploads and renders, and can upgrade to Individual or Team plans for unlimited boards, AI generation, downloads, collaboration and administrative features. Separately, product brands pay to have their materials and products represented in the platform's virtual library, gaining content creation capability, specification exposure and data on how designers combine their products with others.

Subscription fees from designers (a pro tier reported at $20 per month as of March 2025) plus recurring brand partnership tiers reported at $500 to $2,500 per month.

Traction

As of March 2025 the company reported 200,000 sign-ups and 20,000 active users, most on free accounts, with roughly 50 brands featured on the platform and just under 20 of them paying partners. At the time of the seed round the company planned to add 10,000 more SKUs within two months. Testimonials on the site come from studio principals in New York and London.

Latest developments

In March 2025 Mattoboard announced a $2 million seed round led by Acrobator Ventures, with Home Depot and Masco participating, to be used for a technical push adding 10,000 SKUs within two months and for AI features to help designers find materials. Current site messaging centers on DesignStream AI interior concept generation, AI image editing credits, team collaboration tiers and FF&E schedule generation from curated boards.