Startup Idea: The Best Way to Buy Furniture – Would You Use This?

The problem is its the old farts who think $2095 coffee tables are awesome, in comparison, for the kids at hot topic that might exceed 10% of their annual income so what they think is cool is not relevant.

If you're going to go class warfare and ageism, at least do it right.

No, I would not.

It looks great, I might need something like this soon, and I can grit my teeth and carry on past the word "baller".

But I''m in the UK not USA.

"It may require a $10k deposit on a $40 chair, and require me to devote 6 hours of my labor"

You might enjoy fine woodworking as a hobby.

I don't have the woodturning and wood carving gear to be able to spend 6 hours on a chair.

A large amount of time is spent in tool setup / teardown so I have built 3 bookcases in only about 10% more time than 1. This has some interesting implications for your dining room chair example, where it might be 6 hours to make one chair, but only 8 hours to make six chairs. Bolt together particle board kits usually scale much more linearly.

Extensive product evaluation leads me to estimate if you buy raw stock and cut it yourself you can upgrade about 1 to 2 levels of luxury. So buy a kit of particle board, or buy boards of solid clear oak, for the same cost. This is an issue for your proposed kit idea.

Mint - offers a personal finance app for budgeting, planning, etc. -- and perhaps monetizes with affiliate links.

Hipmunk - meta searches multiple travel sites, provides ratings and reviews, assigns an overall experience metric, and supplies other actionable info for travelers.

Pinterest - allows discovery and sharing of content and other interaction (BTW, unless they recently restarted their affiliate-monetization scheme, they no longer are "just an affiliate". I have no idea though).

I'll grant you that at some level anything is "just" an x. I'll also grant you that the determination of value is frequently subjective (for instance, I never got the fanaticism around Pinterest).

But, there is some point at which the added functionality/feature set of a given thing is so thin that it is very difficult to see where any significant value is being added or that there is any uniqueness. Aggregating products from different retailers? That's been done in spades.

The other element, I think, is that HN has a different standard. Because its readership is very highly tech and startup oriented, people who show here generally have something that is at least somewhat more unique. So, I don't think it's overly harsh for a reader to comment that he/she doesn't see anything unique or particularly valuable in this offering. In fact, that's pretty good feedback. The affiliate world is brutal and if this is all they are bringing, then they are likely to find it extremely tough going.

Organization (by rooms, for example) and collaboration would be very useful features. Also a way to match things that go well together (maybe from other buyer's lists), and a way to add items you already have and maybe photos/videos of the rooms. But if you don't have a way to automate/make the buy easier, I still don't guarantee that I will order through you (especially if I choose 10 items from 4 sellers, I would loathe to then go to each seller's website and create an account there, place the order, add the delivery address and so on). And make sure you order exactly what you show on the website, as furniture is not as easy to return as a laptop - even if the seller's very helpful with the return, you'll probably take all the blame.

Your problem is, I only need to buy furniture once every few years, and even then only a few items - refurnishing a whole room or a house happens maybe once a decade.