home-renovation
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The Countertop Shop That Waits to Get Paid
In a trade haunted by deposits, delays and irreversible cuts, a Michigan stone shop has built its pitch around one disarming promise: inspect the installation before the bill comes due.
Metrie Built a 100-Year Business by Cutting the Paint Job in Half
The family-owned millwork company survived a century by turning trim from an afterthought into a system. Its most useful lesson for builders is simple: sell fewer decisions, fewer job-site steps and fewer reasons for a callback.
Houzz
Houzz is an online platform for home remodeling and design that connects homeowners with millions of design photos, products, and vetted professionals - and sells business-management software (Houzz Pro) to the contractors, architects and designers on the other side of the marketplace. Founded in 2009 by Adi Tatarko and Alon Cohen after their own frustrating remodel, it grew into a two-sided business spanning inspiration, e-commerce, and AI-powered tools for running a renovation business.
Collov AI
Collov AI (Collov Labs) is a Redwood City visual-AI company that turns a single phone photo of a room into a fully furnished, photorealistic redesign in seconds. Founded by Stanford PhD Xiao Zhang, it started as an AI interior-design and virtual-staging tool for homeowners, designers and real-estate agents, and is now expanding into broader 'agentic visual intelligence' - systems that read camera input and act on it. The company reports more than 6 million users across 200+ countries and 300+ business customers, and raised a $23M Series A in April 2026 to launch a dedicated research lab.