Zillow made their first financial “investment”. $10 million in Hutch.

It’s clear Zillow is a just a tad interested in the home improvement space. It seems they feel the need to make another bet other than Zillow Digs (which I’ve long been a fan of) against Houzz (and others).

I played with the app a bit today, and like what I see. As a buyer/renter — the concept of visualizing rooms in the design style you like makes a ton of sense, and the actual technology seems to work fairly well from what I can tell. One downside I found is that after taking a photo of my living room, 15 minutes later, it’s still telling me it as an hour left to process the image prior to allowing me to apply filters. Unfortunately, in the instant gratification era, that’s too long. I’m sure that wait time will decrease over time.

PS: For those interested, here’s their Shark tank pitch from a few years ago when they were operating as ZOOM interiors. 

It seems I’m not the only one who believes some missions are worth taking a 2nd shot at.