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Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists
410 points by JohnFriel on April 9, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 220 comments
Hi HN,

I’m John Friel, cofounder of Art in Res (https://artinres.com). Art in Res is an online marketplace where painters sell their art directly to buyers, instead of needing to work with an art gallery.

I studied art and moved to New York in 2008 dreaming of making it as an artist. It wasn’t easy. I lived in a maybe-legal warehouse space that doubled as a poorly-ventilated art studio. My first day job was stocking shelves at Trader Joe’s, which covered my rent and groceries but, at New York prices, not much else.

My best friend in NYC had a side hustle making artist websites by hacking them out on top of WordPress. He was great at it. Through that side-hustle, he got approached to make an online store for a small business. Shopify wasn’t wasn’t widely known back then and he needed help. So he proposed to me: “Hey John, I know you have a nerdy side. Do you think you could learn to program and we could make the website together?” I told him “No way! That’s crazy! It would take me years to learn to program!” But he said “Look, there’s this new thing called Ruby on Rails. At least just Google that before you say ‘no’”. So I did a Rails tutorial and thought “Hmm, maybe I _could_ do this.” We accepted the gig and I’ve been a happy coder ever since. (We did _not_ ship the site on time.)

I’m all in on coding now, but most of my artist friends are still making art, and still working day jobs. Their studios are full of amazing paintings that barely anyone gets to see. And for every one of my friends there are a thousand other artists out there, cranking out amazing work and not selling it because they don’t have galleries selling it for them.

A couple years ago, my cofounder John (we’re both named John) told me that he had bought a painting from an artist he’d met. He couldn’t believe how great the paintings were, how cool the artist was, how the artists’ studio was this cool warehouse space that was overflowing with unsold paintings. He knew me as a programmer – but wasn’t I a painter before that? He had the idea that we could put our experiences together and make a website where people could buy art from all the amazing but not-famous artists around them.

We started Art in Res as a nights-and-weekends project. We found lots of people who liked the idea of buying art – but we also realized that most people who aren’t hardcore art collectors think that paying over $100 for a painting is hard to swallow. The thing is though, that paintings are made by hand, often painstakingly over long periods of time, and so they don’t benefit from the economics of scale that create the prices that modern consumers expect.

We resolve that by having our buyers purchase art on _installment plans_, where each payment results in a payment to the artist. In normal circumstances, revenue for artists tends to be spiky and unpredictable. Once an artist on Art in Res gets a couple installment plans going, they have a nice, predictable revenue stream. And a buyer who is purchasing this way gets to live with a unique, hand-made painting for ~$30-60 per month. It works really well for both parties.

We’re working on Art in Res full-time now and our team has grown to 5 people (all creatives in some capacity or another.) We’re John, Dan, Noni, Emily and me. We think art should be affordable and artists should get paid. There’s so much amazing art out there, collecting dust in studios. It deserves to find loving homes. <3

Thanks so much, and we can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

–

PS - I’ve been lurking HN for close to a decade and this is thrilling for me!




Edit: huge props to the team for shipping a fix for this in minutes.

---

I want to love this idea, but I struggle to get past the lack of full price when browsing. It says "$48 • 24 months" and expects me to intuit that the product costs $1152.

Or rather, I worry that it expects me not to intuit that. Breaking the absolute price into a series of less frightening numbers to obscure the magnitude of a purchase feels slimy when cell phone carriers use it to trick people into buying new iPhones for "cheap". This seems like the same tactic. Especially since the payback periods vary between paintings, so you can't even compare apples to apples in terms of monthly dollar cost.

It's okay that paintings are expensive. It's less okay to undermine people's ability to reason about the cost of things.


Edit: Roger that, we're showing the full price now.

--

This is super helpful, thank you! The last thing we want to do is to deceive people.

There's a lot of information we want to convey in those little artwork thumbnails and we've been struggling with how to cram it all in. We thought that two prices in that small space would be confusing –– but I think you're right that it was a mistake and we need to find a way to work it in.


I'd take a cue from pretty much every other retail business who does financing. "Low-cost financing available" in some general place, then on each tile just have "(or as low as $X/mo)" or something like that. When I look at it now, it's apparent that the the totals are different between up-front and financed prices, which makes me think I need to break out a calculator, which tells me there's about a 10% finance charge, which then makes me second-thought the purchase in general. K.I.S.S.! ;)


Please add this to the search as well. Searching by monthly price is nearly useless. I want to search by price and then decide how I want to divide up my payments. Searching for say, under $50 is really frustrating because I see things priced $1000 and $100 mixed in together. Most people do have a budget.


Wow. Seriously impressive turnaround time, and thanks for listening!


Kudos to the quick switch! Can see full prices now


Not to mention the fact that I suspect most people interested in purchasing fine art aren't exactly the type who care to finance the purchase.


I think part of their idea is that the sometimes-alienating "fine art" distinction, and the expectations around pricing that go with it, is keeping available art from people who would get a lot of pleasure from living with it. I think there's a type who thinks fine art isn't for them but will be shocked and pleased to be able to get a real, individually made art work for such a low monthly cost.


I mean, anecdotal data ra ra ra, but this is super appealing to me, and I'll probably be making my first art purchase >$500 as a result.


Used to work in an art gallery. Lots of people finance art.


I dont fully agree with this statement, but perhaps the sentiment. I think there are those who are on the fence and doing it monthly can always help. However, I think the bigger struggle is that those interested but not major collectors still get sticker shock whether or not its monthly or not. This is the challenge with all rental models. They advertise "only $25/mo" however when that person says yes I like this, its still $2000 and they are like no thanks.


You could be right! But if AiR is right they might be able to prove that there is actually demand for financing in this context.


Perhaps, but the first (and only) original painting I ever purchased was on layaway.


I see this differently. Buyers are given a choice. Choose what works best for you. It's similar to buying an annual subscription vs. monthly installments. Overall, I like the product... much needed.


"I want to love this idea, but I struggle to get past the lack of full price when browsing. It says "$48 • 24 months" and expects me to intuit that the product costs $1152."

This seems like kind of a nitpick when lots of expensive things (not just cell phone plans) are priced this way. Apartment leases, car leases, internet/cable service, and insurance all come to mind. Saas subscriptions also commonly frame pricing in per month/per user terms (even for annual plans) and leave it to the buyer to figure out the total cost that entails. As long as it's clear that the price is a monthly installment and not a total, which does seem to be the case for Art in Res, I don't see a problem.


John, this is an industry with a huge graveyard of failed startups doing the same thing. And the only ones left - Artsy, just went through a huge firing and recapping and I wouldnt give them long. Leaf group is trying to get rid of Saatchi in a fire sale and ArtFinder is barely break even with a team less than a dozen and making money from charging artists.

So given this idea does not seem different than the many before (and far from the 10x YC talks about when the needed improvement of a product to win a space), what am I missing?

Is there an underlying technology, unique community angle, or do you believe the timing wasnt before from the time of Artix to 2019 but 2020 is the year.

I love artists and design, and am shocked this has not happened yet, so Im rooting for you.


Tagging onto this reply..

As someone with particular domain knowledge (I worked in the art world for years and have many professional artist and gallerist friends), I don't I've ever seen an online art sales platform that actually understand the purpose of an art gallery--for both collectors and artists.

Galleries are not simply point of sale vendors for art. They establish a scene, they contextualize the art and the artists, and they make strategic decisions in how to cultivate the careers of their stable of artists via a number of different tactics:

0) By organizing solo shows. It seems silly to say this, but actually putting on shows is a critical element that is missing from these online sales platforms. Shows allow the artist to present a body of work and establish a narrative around it via reviews and and social scenes.

1) Connecting the artist, through sales or even social means, with relevant collectors. Collectors have different status' in the art world, different connections to other art world players, and have particular themes to their collections. By placing art in the right collections, a gallerist can make a significant impact on the career of an artist.

2) By organizing group shows, or using their influence to get their artists into other's group shows, which will then associate their artists with a scene or an institution.

3) Funding! A lot of art is _expensive_ to make. I have friends who have literally calculated how much it costs them per square inch to make a painting and it can be shocking. It is not uncommon for a gallerist to front a large sum of money leading up to a solo show.

Not all galleries will do all--or even any--of these things. However, these are the actions that define a good gallery. A good gallery is invested in an artist, much like a good VC firm is invested in a startup.

If a startup wants to 'disrupt' the art world, I think the first step would be to figure out how you are going to make a business that cultivates an artist's career over the long term and which establishes a real art scene involving both artists and collectors.


If a startup wants to 'disrupt' the art world, I think the first step would be to figure out how you are going to make a business that cultivates an artist's career over the long term and which establishes a real art scene involving both artists and collectors.

As an aside, this view of how to establish a startup and 'disrupt' an industry isn't a very positive one. I hope artinres aren't aiming to take over the existing art market, but instead they want to grow the whole market and bring together new buyers who haven't bought from galleries with artists who want to sell their work.

Whenever a startup's pitch deck includes something like "The global market for this is $X billion, and we want to get 5% of that.", I always wonder why they want to fight the established competition who won't give up their business easily. Competing is hard. If you can find a way to grow the market by 5% instead you'll get the same result for much less effort (still a massive amount of effort though, obviously).


This just seems like a justification of what the art gallery does for the art industry as it exists _now_, perhaps this isn't the best model anyway? I can totally see myself buying a painting from this site if it resonates with me, Im not particularly worried about how the single piece I buy forms a story with other pieces that I'm not going to buy, all I care is what it says in my room. In that regard the single biggest impediment is that I can see myself buying art I want in my home without ever seeing it in person!

Also nothing here says that I represent a viable customer segment either so there's that.


This is a description of what a gallery does now, not a justification for it.

Here is a justification:

I would say that generally selling art is not the goal of artists. Yes, they want to be able to support themselves through making their art, but generally speaking their goals are likely some kind of combination of obsession with their craft and a desire to make it into the art canon and attain mass exposure via museum exhibitions/acquisitions, inclusion in biennales, inclusion in art history/theory texts, etc. Working with a good gallery helps to promote the (artistic) career of the artist and establishes their art as culturally significant.


Ramraj, if you just want it to look good in your room, are you really going to pay several hundred dollars more over time for what you could get a beautiful poster from art.com? This is the challenge all online platforms (not so much galleries) face - people just want something to look good, and that can cost fully framed $120 from art.com. If you're going to spend $400, $1000, $1800, etc you have to care about the artist.


Another really important point I forgot to include is that not all artists are as financially viable as others, yet may still make really great art that is perceived as culturally significant.

Perhaps they make large scale installations that are difficult to sell, perhaps they are performance artists, or perhaps they are simply having a down period in the market.

A good gallery will leverage the sales of their more successful artists to support the production of work by their other artists


> I have friends who have literally calculated how much it costs them per square inch to make a painting and it can be shocking.

Any medium/cost data you can share?


No specific numbers, but I have friend who uses thick impasto style with oil paints. At one point he was trying out cheap and expensive oils and had a studio visit with the owner of a major gallery.

The first thing the gallerist did was point out every painting that used the cheap oil paint. Now he exclusively uses Old Holland brand oils. some of which list for 300-500 USD for 225ml.


MKL this is something as an artist or a platform I would make much clearer. You're right that if you look at materials alone its more than folks are willing to pay. Then there is artists time. You could show like based on materials plus time this artist would be getting paid $10/hr. this may help people to justify costs. However its not necessarily the best measurement (some artists are faster, more experienced are faster)


> I love artists and design, and am shocked this has not happened yet, so Im rooting for you.

I really appreciate it! And I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your questions.

One aspect is that we're not business people looking at this problem in a cold, analytic light: we care about the wellbeing of artists and the joy that people get from having art in their homes. I know from my experience as an artist that most artists are suspicious of new businesses – but we've found a way to work with artists where they really trust us. We do more for our artists than just provide a self-service tool for them to list commodities and get some sales – we coach them on selling; we help them build community with other artists; we're building new features to fit their workflows; and we'll even hop on the phone with them and let them vent to us about life as an artist, haha.

Artsy seems like a great platform, but we're mostly targeting a different type of buyer than they seem to be. We're also working with artists directly, rather than through their galleries. So, despite both being online art marketplaces, I think it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison between us and them.

Regarding the rest of the startup graveyard, when we talk to our users on the buyer side of our marketplace, they haven't heard of things like Saatchi, or even Artsy, in many cases. So I think that, to a significant degree, the mental category of "place to buy art online" is still open, at least for people who aren't already experienced art collectors.

So I think in our case the answer is timing + obsessive attention to our users.


My wife is a designer-turned-artist so I'm familiar with some of the comments above re: solo shows / the value of galleries. If you've read "The Case for the 12 Million Dollar Shark" then you must know that most people who buy art at high prices are wealthy, upper class folks who see art as much as a way to show off how cool / sophisticated they are and as an investment vehicle.

I've personally found the entire industry off putting at how much it's about prestige and how specific collectors see an artist or a piece.

But at the same time, I don't think normal people want to pay high prices for art. It just doesn't serve much value to them. If your users haven't heard of Saatchi or Artsy, what are they doing buying art and why do you think this is going to be a large market?

It seems like you'll end up with low priced artwork and artists who want to graduate to a "real gallery" when they get bigger, and so you really need volume to make to work. Respect the hustle from one YC founder to another but scratching my head on this one.


Well said Jason.


John, thanks for taking the time answer. I know artists are not suspicious but they will come around - thats not the hard part (tho it can feel harder than it should be).

Im not sure your argument that your buyers have not heard of Saatchi is a good thing (you're right artsy is different market). This means its going to take more education and cost for discovery. They should say I looked online and found these four places but dont like them because of X. Then you address X.


I can't help but acknowledge how accurate this comment is, this is a damn hard industry.

Here's all I'll add; you should really think about what problem you are solving and why. Is it true that artists don't sell art because buyers can't find it? Or is it rather that buyers are very specific about why, and from who, they buy art when they buy it?

One of the most important things successful artists do is market themselves well, even the "best" artist won't sell art without an audience and a brand, period. Perhaps instead of creating a marketplace you can create tools to help artists market themselves and build that audience, GL to you and the team.


I like the idea of making art more accessible by spacing out the payment. Congratulations on the launch!

I won't comment on the art for sale, because I think it is too much in the eye of the beholder but I will give some feedback on your website and concept.

- Why fixed installments? Why not say "this piece costs 300$ buy now, or pay 10 installments of 35$ or 20x20$" (forget the numbers, just an example).

- why are there so few pictures of the work? If I buy a piece of art I want to look at it from all angles, get up close, see the structure, see it from far, see the frame etc.

- since you got excited from seeing artists' workspace, why not show them to us? Why not show those cool warehouses/storage containers/houses where the art is piled floor to ceiling?

- When I click on an artist's bio, the last thing I want to see is a full-bleed picture of his face. I want to see where he works, how he is inspired or how this piece was formed.

- out of curiosity: how did you come up with the 30/70 split between fees/artist's check? How do the artists respond? Have you had anyone say the fees are too high?


> - Why fixed installments? Why not say "this piece costs 300$ buy now, or pay 10 installments of 35$ or 20x20$" (forget the numbers, just an example).

We're considering adding more options like that. The only reason we haven't so far is that we're weighing it against overwhelming people with too many options and also other features we want to implement.

> - why are there so few pictures of the work? If I buy a piece of art I want to look at it from all angles, get up close, see the structure, see it from far, see the frame etc.

I totally agree with you on this. This is actually one of the features we want to add before adding additional installment options.

> - since you got excited from seeing artists' workspace, why not show them to us? Why not show those cool warehouses/storage containers/houses where the art is piled floor to ceiling? > - When I click on an artist's bio, the last thing I want to see is a full-bleed picture of his face. I want to see where he works, how he is inspired or how this piece was formed.

Again, I couldn't agree more. For the time being, we've been getting our photos from the artists themselves and they tend to have better portraits of themselves than shots of them visible in their studios.

- out of curiosity: how did you come up with the 30/70 split between fees/artist's check? How do the artists respond? Have you had anyone say the fees are too high?

Traditional brick-and-mortar galleries take a 50% cut so we're taking significantly less than that. We also 'insure' the art ourselves: if someone stops paying and the artwork can't be reclaimed, we pay the artist their full cut anyway, even if it's a loss to us.


Thank you for the extensive reply :)


The cut is too high for the platform. I guess you take this number from Google/Apple store's commission.

The difference is software on Google's store has infinite leverage and takes almost 0 to scale sales. Every piece of art takes lots of work and cannot scale in the same way. Art works do not scale like software.

With this cut, I feel your platform is taking advantage of artists (they do not know where to sell) rather than helping them.

Even auction commission is only between 12 & 25%.


I worked in the art world for years. First as a studio assistant, then as an art prep for large galleries, then eventually I ran my own art fabrication business with a few employees.

A good gallery--emphasis on good--does a lot more then simply sell art to the highest bidder. They strategically place artists into 'important' collections, work with museum curators to bring the artists into a more critical narrative, get the artist into group shows and fairs internationally to contextualize the artist in a current scene or trend, collude with art critiques and magazines, and generally help to promote the artist's career over the long term.

All of this sounds somewhat silly outside the art world, but you have to remember that this is a very particular industry based around historicizing high-brow cultural production. When a good collector buys a painting, they are doing more then just buying a physical object they like. They are throwing their own clout behind the artist and saying "I think what this person is doing is important and I stand behind it."

All of this is done with the intention of increasing the profile of the artist which benefits--each in their own way--gallery, the artist, and the collector over the long term.

As far as the sales split between gallery and artist, standard split is roughly 50% with some variance around material expenses and whatnot.

Note, everything I am saying is the sort of ideal story and there are a lot of bad actors in the business. In reality I find the art world rather gross and the premises it is built upon to be deeply flawed.


I don't see the relevance of app stores to the sale of artworks...?

Auctions take a small cut because they are resellers of art. The artist doesn't get paid when a work sells at auction, the previous owner does.

Art is usually sold by galleries, and the standard cut there is 50%. On top of that, artist and gallery often share discounts, so a work that is sold for a 20% discount means the artist will only see 40% of the total price. For artists, this will be a pleasant surprise rather than a steep expense.


We spent a considerable amount of time deciding this split, and consulted with many of our artists on what they felt was fair.

While the customer facing portion of the website appears like a more traditional marketplace, our artist facing website contains tools for artists, and we do more than just list their art, we help them get better at selling, help them promote and market their art, and we provide support wherever needed.

We are artist centric first and foremost, and always heavily consider and consult our artists point of view.


I live in a village in NM filled with artists. I continue to be surprised to hear the stories of how their galleries take 40% or more. I'm even more suprised that they are happy with this, but the general rule seems to be that they are happy because the gallery they use now increased their annual revenue by more than 100%.


Early on, when Art in Res was just an idea, we played with a model where we took zero commission and monetized other ways. But, when we talked to our artists about it, they were skeptical and would ask "but how will you make money?"

I hear you that, when looked at in a certain light, it might seems high – but we work closely with our artists and they seem to all like that our incentives are aligned. Plus, we do our best to use that 30% in ways that benefit them, e.g. by guaranteeing that they get paid if someone absconds with their work without paying it all the way off.


The relevant comparator is SaatchiArt online, which takes a 35% cut.


>> Why not show those cool warehouses/storage containers/houses where the art is piled floor to ceiling?

This feels right. The site name seems to promise something it doesn't deliver: the process of production as education / entertainment. This could be a major differentiator vs bricks and mortar galleries. Lots of streams of the work in development.


I really am not a fan of showing a price and then only finding out after clicking into a piece of work that that price is not the price of the art but of some monthly payment. On top of that not showing the ∆ between the monthly payment price and the all at once price clearly is really maddening. Overall I'm ok with the site and the idea but the pricing structure and display seems to be designed to trick people.


One quick way to clean up the whole site is to have a toggle to show prices as upfront or in installments. This way you remove the noise and cater to your target demographic. UI becomes cleaner and both demographics feels like the experience is adjusted for them.


I love that idea!


Oh wow, thank you, this is really, really helpful to know!

We're so used to the paying-in-installments piece that we must have gotten blind to the fact that people seeing it for the first time would think it's the total price.

Same thing with the delta – it's always 1 / 24 of the final price (you pay the artwork off over two years), with a minimum monthly price of $30 (for the artist's sake.) Put differently,

  if ( fullPrice / 24 ) > 30
    monthlyPrice = fullPrice / 24
  else
    monthlyPrice = 30
  end
(edited for line breaks)


Right on the main page under each piece it says "$XX - X months"... I feel like that's pretty up front.


The meaning of this wasn’t immediately clear to me. The listing is months old? The artwork room thet many months to make? It’s only available for that long? Using “for” rather than a dash would be more clear.


Through friends, I've become a little acquainted with the art industry and how collections happen and get shown in the most general terms.

I feel like Etsy used to be a place where individual creators created things… and now it's mostly used by industry professionals with a specific vibe or aesthetic feel.

Is the thing that distinguishes Art in Res from something like Artsy that you're buying directly from the artist? How do you all plan to deal with, for example, galleries that might want to use or abuse this platform?


Etsy used to be full of actual creators, now it is full of drop-shippers who sell premade junk.

There are outliers, but it's not unusual to see art being churned out by factories, or shops full of stuff from AliExpress.


I love what you are trying to do. My family has a few artists in it (none full-time enough to pay the rent) so I have a visceral understanding of the passion that drives your idea.

After looking at several paintings, I found it difficult to get excited about any of them. Not because I didn't like them, but the web site just doesn't give the art presence. I mainly looked at oils and acrylics, and I could not get any idea of the brushwork, the texture. I just could not connect with any of them across the intertubes.

So I love the idea, but to me it seems the challenge you face is how to present the art. Sorry I don't really have any great suggestions -- more views of each piece that allow for examining the technique? More careful lighting of the photos in a way the best complements the art? It is a big challenge and I don't have any great ideas.

But there is something about being there -- we have all seen Munch's "The Scream" or Van Gogh's "Starry Night" a zillion times on the internet, on mouse pads, in cartoon parodies -- but actually standing in front of those paintings is an experience from another world. I want to get as close to that experience as I can when I look at your artist's works.

I think you need to up the curation somehow -- maybe some comments from the artist about the piece, or some very close images of exciting details.

Very sincerely best of luck, I hope you succeed for your artists.


> So I love the idea, but to me it seems the challenge you face is how to present the art. Sorry I don't really have any great suggestions -- more views of each piece that allow for examining the technique? More careful lighting of the photos in a way the best complements the art? It is a big challenge and I don't have any great ideas.

I agree with you on this! We're planning to roll out detail shots and installation shots soon, and I think those will go a long way to helping viewers get a sense for the IRL presence of certain works.

Also, while we don't have a concrete plan for it yet, it's clear that some artists need help photographing their work.

> Very sincerely best of luck, I hope you succeed for your artists.

Thank you!


John,

I think this is a great idea! This is probably not a core competency in your platform, but I can imagine a lot of artists don’t have a resource to get decent photos taken ( not good camera, or understanding of composition, etc). Would there be some way to partner with local photographers to have them come out using your platform to either connect or maybe even pay for it? For example, $50 for the trip out and to set up if within 30 miles, and then $20 per piece to digitize it with multiple angles and staging?

Either way, good luck with the platform and I’ve passed it along to my wife, who is an artist.


I used to photograph large-pieces for a local gallery. I wouldn't even attempt such a job for $50 + $20/piece.

Photographing large canvasses, color-balancing, processing, & etc. Is not a quick process and requires both patience, experience, and a decent camera/lens/lighting setup.

I've seen artists list their canvasses on websites using iphone photos, and that does nothing to advertise their work.


I would really hope that any artist remotely close to pro has some understanding of composition!


> Also, while we don't have a concrete plan for it yet, it's clear that some artists need help photographing their work.

Absolutely. Photography is it's own media, with it's own techniques to master. I doubt many painters are going to have the necessary lighting equipment and the know-how to use it. Not that they couldn't -- it's just not their media. Some assistance from a specialist would help a great deal.


That reminds me of how the biggest thing that Airbnb did for growth in the early days was offer to send hosts a professional photographer to make their flat look more appealing. I bet you could do something similar.


I also agree that the images matter a lot. All the photographs of paintings are taken against the same coloured wall. I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the background of the website too. I think it would make it look like there’s more space between the paintings.

I think if I were choosing something I liked, I’d want to just look at the pictures first (a gallery I suppose) without much distraction. On my screen there’s a load of search controls taking up a third of my screen (but maybe other people have a better idea of what they’re looking for).

It’s probably also worthwhile trying to make the images work with the wide gamut displays that are starting to become more common (mainly on various apple products) as they will magically just look a bit better/more colourful.


This looks really great, I hope you are psyched this post hit the first page. Everyone is fixated on pricing, I think the pricing is fine. Here are my notes:

Vectorizing - I don't see anyway to share these creations with the world. Why not have a Pinterest share button? The looky-loos who will never buy anything can share these creations for you and generate free traffic for you. Put them to work. Also, encourage artists to put their store URL as their Instagram bio link.

Authority - You kind of have a Kickstarter problem. They launched with thoughtful projects to fund so half the two sided marketplace was done. What happens when you get a few customers who then want to become sellers? When Aunt Marie wants to put her crappy poodle paintings on your site? How do you let her down gracefully? If you don't, why would I as a customer stay on site and sift through garbage?

Elitism - You are disrupting the gallery system but you are also accidentally creating a gallery. How do you reconcile that contradiction? Galleries don't make their money on selling out stock from the current show (this sometimes happens), they make money from generating press, becoming authoritative, and the wealthy go to the back room, where the great stuff is. Sometimes the gallerist will say, no, a museum is considering buying this. Are you going to do that? Say no to make more money later?

Lastly, you couldn't have picked a better time to launch. I would have to imagine the gallery system is getting flattened right now.


This is a great comment but I need to reply to one mistaken assumption:

> I hope you are psyched this post hit the first page

It didn't hit the front page organically; we place Launch HNs for YC startups on HN's front page. This is one of three formal things that HN does to give something back to YC in exchange for funding it. The other two are job ads and displaying YC founder names in orange to other YC founders.

I'm sorry this wasn't clear. More explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I'd like to open this feature to non-YC-startups in some way. It's not clear yet how to do that. Also, it would be hard to scale: we do a lot of editing to help founders write about their startup in a way that we think the community will find interesting. That's time consuming and we don't have a lot of spare resources.

That said, if anyone is planning to make a post like that which you would like some feedback about, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and ask. Just please understand that we can't reply right away—the inbox is constantly piling up (and a bit higher each time it does).


dang, thanks for clarifying. I had a friend with a bed company years back with no affiliation do a Show HN and it must have organically trended. I didn't know you guys did that, and it makes sense that you do. I have no idea how you would open it up because then it would be like Product Hunt on steroids with 1,000+ inbound requests a day.


Just to be clear: there's a big difference between "Show HN" and "Launch HN". Show HNs organically trend. Launch HNs are for YC companies only and we place them on the front page.


Hitting the back button after initial visit gives me a login prompt. That's pretty annoying...

https://imgur.com/605DZMN


At least on the front page, the site does a self-reload which breaks the back button. This isn't merely annoying, or a dark pattern...it's just plain obnoxious and something I thought was left back in the "stickiness" 2000s.

That a login page is tacked onto this is a new twist though, I'll hand them that.


Thanks for bringing this bug to our attention. I'll make sure this is added to the top of our bug-fix queue.

Were you a guest user or logged in when this happened?


Guest -- just a first arrival from HN.


Just shipped a fix for this. Sorry for the frustration in the meantime. Again, thanks so much for highlighting the bug.


Confirmed fixed. Thanks!


thumbsup!


100% agree this is annoying. We're working on a fix.


The selection of work seems pretty high quality, but I'm curious - how does the artist/art selection process work?

I come from a fine arts background and have always had issues with the contemporary art scene for it's artist to curator/gallery process. In general, social status and popularity seem to be the main currency for getting great art visible to the public.

I would love to see a service like this that enables more "undiscovered" high quality work to be shown, and for more unrecognized artists to get paid for what they love, but at the same time opening it up too all work could lower the overall quality of the available work.

Curation is hard - what system do you have in place for it?


Very good question. A quite tough challenge but probably not impossible.

IMO, bad curation is something that is very apparent on sites like Etsy and Redbubble. So I do believe it’s worth it to try to find a good system for it.


Congrats on your launch! The site looks great—and it strikes a chord with me, because I'm working on an art marketplace as well (albeit for prints, not originals). Given we have adjacent, not competitive platforms, let me know if you'd ever like to do some co-marketing! Our product is www.vsual.co

A few things I noticed when looking at your site: - I like the detail views you have on your pieces, but a the higher resolution, you may want to consider a watermark—and it's possible it will help with artist trust, as well. - The "Apply as an Artist" link is kind of buried. It took me a while to find it. Might be worth moving that up, if getting more artists on board is a primary goal? - As a buyer, I'm still interested in the total price, and it's a little hard to comparison shop when both the base price and period for works are different - I actually really like the "message artist" functionality. That's a great touch! I'm sure artists appreciate it too


Checked out the site - looks awesome! Is there any way to filter? It's cool at first glance looking through the whole selection on the site but could see it getting tedious the 2nd time+.


Thanks Changdizzle! There are a few ways to filter—you can filter by medium by clicking the "Photography" "3D" or "Illustration" boxes, or you can filter by artist by going to the Shops page in the top nav. Or, you can search prints for tags. Did you have something else in mind?


I'm thinking more orientation / ratio - for example, right now the wall behind my couch in the living room is bare and I would love a landscape print for it. On VSUAL I have to manually scroll through to see the ones that have that orientation. This is something that Art in Res has on their search function.


I love this idea and I'm sure you'll figure out the pricing stuff eventually. I have to admit the whole focus on price kind of throws me off a bit. Whenever I go looking for pretty things, be it art or furniture or decorative objects I rarely start by looking at the price – I look at the thing itself and if it strikes a nerve then I figure out things like "can I afford this?"

To that end, I'd like a view where the focus is the art itself. Not who made it, not what it costs, not even the name of the piece. Let me discover that as I go, show me full screen pictures I can swipe through on my screen, and tap or click to learn more about the piece. Make the art the focus and put everything else in the background, Not even showing it till I'm interested in learning more. That's what I love about going to galleries – the art takes center stage and if you want to learn more there's a tiny sign next to it, and if you want more still you talk to whoever works there but the art comes first. I feel like your site is trying a bit too hard to make a sale. I absolutely agree that artists should be paid for their art, and I'm happy to pay for art that I care for, but ultimately I just want pretty things. Show me the pretty things first, then let's talk business when I find something I like. I'm sorry if this comes off as too callous!

Also – and this is probably a really difficult problem to solve – I don't really know what I'm looking for in art. I just know some things I like, but probably not all. I love Monet and other impressionist painters, but I also love old Japanese woodblock prints like the great wave. I'm also a huge fan of cubism and I can't get enough of art nouveau. I'm not a huge fan of abstract art, but I like some. I love evocative photography, especially in black and white. I feel like maybe my taste profile fits a multi-spoke radar chart, where each data point is a relative preference rather than a binary I like this or that type tick box filter. I'm not exactly sure what I mean by all this, just that your search does nothing to help me, and I'm probably not gonna spend too much time looking at page after page of stuff that may or may not be interesting to me. I would 100% subscribe to a feed that fits my profile though, and especially so if it's smart enough to also understand other types of art I don't know about, but perhaps might fit my profile anyway. I guess what I'm saying is, if your site could be my personalized art dealer, there's a good chance I'll spend more money then I probably should.


> To that end, I'd like a view where the focus is the art itself.

This is something we've been trying to figure out! If you have an account, you can view this: https://artinres.com/recommendations -- you're randomly shown one work at a time and you can like, dislike or skip. We use the data to recommend you additional artworks, and soon we're going to roll out a digest / news feed of new recommendations for users.

> I don't really know what I'm looking for in art. I just know some things I like, but probably not all. I love Monet and other impressionist painters, but I also love old Japanese woodblock prints like the great wave. I'm also a huge fan of cubism and I can't get enough of art nouveau. I'm not a huge fan of abstract art, but I like some. I love evocative photography, especially in black and white. I feel like maybe my taste profile fits a multi-spoke radar chart, where each data point is a relative preference rather than a binary I like this or that type tick box filter.

I'm very much with you on this. In my experience, taste has less to do with discrete, obviously-nameable qualities like a certain color or subject matter, and much more to do with the way the parts fit together to make a cohesive yet surprising whole. That said, we had to start somewhere -- and the filters have been pretty useful to a portion of our users.

Like you mentioned, as more people use the site, we're building up the ability to recommend art to people and we anticipate that being a rewarding way to discover new art.


I like it, and will definitely come back to see new works over time. I occassionally buy art and enjoy browsing the well-known auction sites for thrills (you never know if the next lot is a masterpiece or overpriced trash).

A few suggestions:

1) Structured artist bios. Right now it's all over the place: some of your artists have a single paragraph, some a wall of text listing everything they ever did and attended.

As a buyer, I'm looking for the usual reassuring signals: this artist went to school X, exhibited at gallery Y that I've heard about, and their work was purchased for collection Z that sounds fancy... Maybe make it easier for artists to highlight those and even search by those criteria?

2) Generated preview images showing size of the work next to a human. I think Sotheby's uses these on their site. It's super helpful to be able to see the work on a simulated gallery wall next to a person.

If you need a beta tester, I'd be happy to help. My email is in the profile.


I like to go to the local art institute's sale for students.

I've found some amazing things there for ~$50 to $100.

Personally I would find it hard to spend a great deal more than that based on a web view. The difference between 'meh' for me and 'amazing' is very subtle / really shines when you see it in person.

Still a great idea.


We agree, displaying art on a website is very different to seeing it in-person.

It's hard to replace seeing something in-person but we would love to bring some of that experience to our site. We are currently working on ways to display this better and give more context for the art.


Wow, as an artist and founder of a similar initiative [0], I have to admit you've absolutely nailed it with Art in Res. Have you got any job openings? :)

[0] https://binnedart.com


This is so cool – and so flattering!

Hard to say when we'll be hiring next, but let's talk: jf@artinres.com


I couldn't find a search anywhere, wanted to see if I could find some fanart for some of my favorite horror games like Bloodborne or Dark Souls. I hope you add it soon, I've been looking for a place to buy stuff like this.


I'd be surprised to see video game stuff pop up here, but you may want to check out Fangamer.com and iam8bit.com .


I would personally love to see more video game inspired art, there are so many great styles we're yet to have applications for as we're still a relatively new site. We carefully consider all styles of art when artists apply.

If you are interested we have an artist on the site currently that is influenced by video games: https://artinres.com/artists/lee-mora


This is a neat idea -- getting financing for art would feel really strange for a lot of people visiting an art gallery. Your site makes the idea more approachable!

Personally, I'd prefer to see a "total cost" comparison of the purchase price vs financing rather than calculate it in my head anyways, but I'm not sure if that would discourage sales at all for other people.

Quick semi-thought-out idea: you could have a "buy it now" price that is higher than the financing price, and indicate that customers will save 5% by financing, for example. This would add some more transparency, and maybe even make people feel psychologically more into the idea of the payment plan. You said one of your goals included creating a revenue stream for artists to normalize their income a bit, so I thought this might help incentivize that even more, while still giving the option to purchase outright (some people will never want to finance). Personally, I try to never finance anything. Probably still wouldn't for 10% off. But for 20% off I would be much more tempted to finance rather than buy outright


I'm fine buying prints or other similar things online but with original art, you need to see it in context and detail. I would love some sort of pseudo-VR style experience to actually get a sense for texture and depth. For example, this one taken at random* is almost $5k and on my 4k laptop screen the zoomed in version isn't particularly crisp and I only have the one fixed zoom level. I can imagine paying in that ballpark for art but not under these circumstances. I can appreciate that there might be issues with having too high res an image available, etc., but still... Maybe you could mitigate this with similar return policies to the online mattress places. As is, the risk of spending a lot and ending up with something that isn't quite what you expect is just too high for the big ticket items.

* https://artinres.com/artworks/rebecca-kaufman-pre-experience


Overall, I like the selection and I hope it goes well. It is genuinely hard to find something good that won't break your budget anywhere else. I am not sure if it was intended by filters on left side are grayed out for me ( took a while before I realized I could change them anyway ). Good luck!

edit: side note/question. Any plans for including sculptures?


Thank you! This is great feedback. The filters are lower contrast because we want the attention to stay on the art. But they might be too low-contrast and introduce usability problems.

We love sculpture and we're really excited to have it on the site. Sculpture is tricky, though, because shipping is usually more expensive and it's trickier to pack sculptures in a way that keeps them safe. That said, we're gradually rolling it out. We have a tiny number of sculptures on the site right now and we're going to add more as we get more confident in shipping them.


Oooh, I just assumed one of my plugins had broken it and didn't even care to try.


I really enjoyed making combinations on the filters to see what (I thought) unlikely combinations existed, and I was happy with what I found (e.g. minimal organic, architecture face). Does the artist apply the labels? Or is classification part of your curation? In any case, nice work. I hope your market finds you!


I'm happy you liked combining the filters, I'm always pleasantly surprised what I discover when I use them. Currently we process and tag all of the artworks as part of our curation.

Curation is a very important aspect of helping people find things that resonate. We have more things in our roadmap to keep improving this for people, and for artists to provide more details about their work.


One thing I've always been curious about with art in this price range ($500-5000) is the resale value. Say your tastes change and you'd like to get rid of one of these after a few years, how painful is it to sell? What are your chances of getting 50% of the purchase price? 90%? 150%?


I had taken a look at the affordable art market about a decade ago. What I found out was that “art as an investment” is either

1. About art normal people can’t afford

2. A full time speculation job

Unfortunately neither of those worked for me. I don’t know if things have changed in the last years, it seems that there are a couple more platforms around nowadays. I can go into detail about all that stuff but my personal takeaway was to completely ignore investment value in art until the price tags get close to seven figures. And yes, I still am a couple orders of magnitude away from that last price tag. I also don’t care, whatever art I own I am happy with and if I fall out of love with one piece I usually just gift it somewhere. On that last part, there are also usually some good opportunities to give art away for a good cause. Such auctions happen from time to time. I can imagine though that other people have had considerably different experiences with affordable art than mine :-)

Note: art in the above is meant to be paintings and sculptures, never bought anything else.


A rent the runway for art would be an amazing idea. It would require a large deposit to cover the initial art piece but provide customers with a dynamic art collection almost similar to how museums have visiting exhibits. I'd be happy to work with someone on this.


Decodova Museum loans art to its corporate members.

https://decordova.org/join-give/corporate-membership

They rotate the art through the year. Its DeCordova so the quality is highly variable, but its kind or decent. The artists don't get a lot out of it, membership and publicity...

https://decordova.org/join-give/corporate-art-loan


The Seattle Art Museum does this. There's an attached/affiliated gallery that sells art, and also provides rentals, as long as you're also a member of SAM. It's 10% of the price to rent for 3 months, renewable once, and if you decide to purchase, half the rental amount goes towards the purchase price. I used it quite a bit when I first began collecting art.


I read Liz Phair's book earlier this year, and Oberlin does (or perhaps did) do that for students, for something like 20 bucks a year in the 80s for UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS, crazy.


What would be neat for this kind of service is a way to sell the piece back, either to the artist or to the service. If they knew you bought it from the site they'd know it was authentic.

Is a Gazelle-style site for art a thing, that's not eBay? I don't know that you'd want to get rid of art you bought very often, but if you move and it doesn't fit with the new aesthetic, you might want to swap it for something more on point.


John, I'm hearing a lot of great feedback re startups who have tried and failed at this. That does not mean you won't be the ones who succeed. There is no clear winner in this space. You could be the founders who figure it out. There are so many obstacles to entering the art market. It's unnecessarily complicated to start collecting and supporting artists. For instance, I would pay to "virtually" attend the Venice / Whitney Biennele. The Headlands Center for the Arts has a great auction that only a handful of people know about. Same for Creativity Explored - an amazing way to build an art collection if you are new to collecting. There are a million possible ways to disrupt this industry. I am cheering you guys on.


Thanks for sharing.

I'm interested to see how your pricing hypothesis plays out. I say this as someone who enjoys art and owns a couple of pieces.

how the artists’ studio was this cool warehouse space that was overflowing with unsold paintings

There’s so much amazing art out there, collecting dust in studios.

It could be that people want payment plans, or that artists need better marketing tools.

My hypothesis is that a lot of art is priced significantly above what the market considers acceptable. The alternative to buying one-off art from an artist is Pier1, Target or posters.com not an art gallery. How does the typical consumer justify a X00% markup?

If artists priced their goods at a price-point that drove sales, would there be an increase in renown that would allow them to sell at higher prices later?


Congratulations, John! What a great initiative. I am in the artistic community (classical music) as well, so it's very inspiring to see you launching a project for the community.

I have a suggestion and a question.

Suggestion: your site does not have an About page of some sort to talk about the story behind the creation of the company and the experience of the co-founders. You have truly remarkable story, as I read in this post. So please include it to your site!

Question: I am curious about how COVID-19 has impacted the art community? My classical musician friends are certainly suffering financially and mentally because all of the concerts are suspended. I wonder how are artists doing in the pandemic.

Thank you and keep up with the great work!! Wishing you all the success.


Nice concept. I definitely feel tempted--I otherwise only buy art at the local street fairs.

FYI filters don't seem to to do anything for me (Brave, desktop)


same for me on firefox. filters reload the page but nothing changes


To be fair, the art market is just as flooded as the apps market these days. Moreover, art as a social endeavor still works as a ladder, so that you need to build credibility and authority day after day, before getting any pricetag on your works. The problem is not works collecting dust in studios, it is serious artists not being recognized because of the great great number of more vocal, self-aware and extrovert amateurs making all the noise. So my question is: are you just offering just another platform to everybody or are you aiming at a novel social discourse or movement while promoting your own artists in a coherent manner?


Congrats on the launch!

Interestingly, me and my team developed and launched a very similar service early last year - https://goldcanvas.com/artworks

One of our core ideas is that if the artwork gets flipped by collectors and it changes hands multiple times, the artist gets a royalty (which is often not the case in the offline world).

I like your concept of monthly payments.

From the research that we did, it was surprising to us how much the artwork marketplace works offline and how opaque this entire world of Collectors and Curators is. There's definitely space to disrupt here.


I like the site. I've been helping with Somerville Open Studios and we struggle to make a nice browser art listing for our 350 member artists. We came up with "Itineraries" of studios to visit. (Or struggle to get some of our artists in larger studio buildings to upload there art).

We have canceled our open studios event for May. We're always looking for ways to help our Artist's sell (being a non-profit we don't have the resources to broker the transactions.)

If you don't mind I have questions: Do the artists have their own portal? Is the art Currated? Are you handling delivery and payments?


I really love the idea. I'd use it if this included artists from Europe (purely due to shipping costs that is, not that I have anything against US artists of course).

Maybe in the future, you could expand into the EU market..?


We see a lot of great artists from the EU, and other parts of the world (I'm from Europe!) As soon as we figure out international shipping and taxes we're excited to start onboarding artists in those regions.


Congrats on the launch, folks! It looks really nice and I loved the idea! The first thing I thought was "hey, maybe NOW this is an incentive to put my paintings somewhere trustworthy and see if it's commercially viable" regarding the stuff I do with acrylic and spatulas but then the whole artist application page felt... very unwelcoming... is it only for "real" artists with detailed portfolios and studio addresses? I didn't want to leave the application page feeling I'll be only allowed in Etsy-like places and be happy about it.


I've had the pleasure of purchasing a work via Art in Res and seeing the platform develop, and I can't wait to watch it continue to grow. Both sides of this market place—artists with serious art practices but no commercial gallery representation, people who love art but can't afford to buy from galleries—will get so much out of being connected to each other.

If you haven't ever lived with art made by people who care deeply about making it, I suggest you set down $30 and try it! You'll be surprised how much it can enrich your life.


This is a good idea - not 100% original, but the installments is a new spin, so I wish you well on the effort.

But - let us suppose this does take off and you end up with a large community of artists and buyers. How do you plan on letting artists get seen in what is now a crowded space? Many of your competitors frustrate artists because it becomes about marketing just to get visibility on the sites. Or it turns into a curated site, which puts the artists right back where they are with the galleries.

Any plans for how to scale this while avoiding such problems?


Hi John. I don't buy or sell art, but I am a book collector, so this touches me tangential because I participate in a lot of auctions (auction houses, often, they sell all tpyes of art in the same auction, including books).

I loved your website, and I would find myself using it or sharing it with friends if I would be in the US. By the way, I will check your job openings from time to time because this is one of the startups that I would be passionate to work on! Kudos and best of luck!


Looks great, what's the advantage over SaatchiArt? Is it just a competing service?

Couple things that I'd like to have:

1. Filter by full pricing

2. Filter by canvas / wood / etc.

3. Filter by oil / acrylic / etc.


Probably a noob question - but how do I know that I'm not being overcharged? As a matter of fact, how do I even know what's the right price for a piece of artwork?

May be a long term thing, but I also think you should focus on expanding and growing your market size. Create blog posts, and videos on art, artists, art appreciation and advertize them. Educate audiance and get more people interested in it. That might percolate to making your business bigger.


Not a noob question! It's a deep and interesting question. :)

Pricing art is harder than pricing most other things since artworks are, by definition, non-fungible / unique. This makes it hard for there to be a "correct" price. For the most part, we address this by letting our artists set their own prices (they have more information than we do.) Other factors that play in are the cost of materials and labor (often hundreds of dollars per painting) and the potential for the artwork to go up in price some day, like a stock.


> - May be a long term thing, but I also think you should focus on expanding and growing your market size. Create blog posts, and videos on art, artists, art appreciation and advertize them. Educate audiance and get more people interested in it. That might percolate to making your business bigger.

I love all of these suggestions! We're currently working on a content strategy that will cover a lot of the topics you mentioned. I agree there's a piece of education that is needed, especially in understanding the process of artists, why things cost what they do, we plan on doing more in-depth interviews, and hopefully videos that can convey a lot more information.


I don’t see eBay or Amazon educating anyone about fakes on their platform.


Nice launch! Here's some feedback:

At first I found it hard to find the "next" arrow at the bottom. After scrolling through the first page, I gave up trying to find the next arrow and moved on to looking at the filters. Because all the text was greyed out, at first I thought they were unavailable, like perhaps you have to first sign up for an account before you can use the filters.

I would have liked the "size" filters to be multiple-selection; I wanted to see all medium and large art, but couldn't select both.

One suggestion: add the ability for some people to create curations. I know I'm not going to like a majority of the art that's listed, so being able to find a couple people with similar taste and browsing their selections would make it more likely I'd stay more engaged with the platform.

But perhaps I'm just not the target audience, too. I'm an art collector with a couple dozen pieces, in the $X00 to $X000 range. I prefer galleries to online marketplaces, because the curation provides real value to me; I consistently patronize the couple of galleries that match my preferences, and the limited selection in each exhibition reduces decision fatigue while providing reasons to come back consistently over time.

Good luck!


> At first I found it hard to find the "next" arrow at the bottom. After scrolling through the first page, I gave up trying to find the next arrow and moved on to looking at the filters. Because all the text was greyed out, at first I thought they were unavailable, like perhaps you have to first sign up for an account before you can use the filters. > I would have liked the "size" filters to be multiple-selection; I wanted to see all medium and large art, but couldn't select both.

Thank you, this is super helpful! We'll find a way to make it more clear that those UI components are there and should be used.

> One suggestion: add the ability for some people to create curations. I know I'm not going to like a majority of the art that's listed, so being able to find a couple people with similar taste and browsing their selections would make it more likely I'd stay more engaged with the platform.

This is in the works!

> But perhaps I'm just not the target audience, too. I'm an art collector with a couple dozen pieces, in the $X00 to $X000 range. I prefer galleries to online marketplaces, because the curation provides real value to me; I consistently patronize the couple of galleries that match my preferences, and the limited selection in each exhibition reduces decision fatigue while providing reasons to come back consistently over time.

You seem like the target audience to me! This is insightful and helpful feedback and I'd love to talk more if you want: jf@artinres.com


Great idea and execution. I love art and I buy once in a while from galleries, but I'm often turned down by the steep prices. Any plan to expand to Europe?


I really like the idea and your implementation. One request: I wish I could search for art by artists who are women or underrepresented minorities.


Oh wow!

I can't thank you enough for this - as an artist it's something I personally want and I know many of my friends need - would love it if you'd put the artist application button somewhere more visible, people are gonna look for it.

This makes me jittery, I hope I fell ready to submit an application soon.

Any chance you expand beyond paintings?

Thank you and keep up the great work!


We'll take a look at making the link more visible, agree it's a little less prominent right now.

We're excited to move into more types of art other than paintings. We currently have a small number of sculptures on the site, and have been taking baby steps towards other types such as limited prints.

Whenever you're ready to submit an application we would love to read it!


Someone in YC made Artix! (I kid)


What's that?


The failed startup Paul Graham did before the one that took off. It was putting art galleries online. Obviously you’re different, but it was close enough to make me laugh. Someone replied to me with the story.


Looks like you've made the first Artix reference on HN in 7 years:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

(The name has since been used for a Linux distro and a FPGA board, but HN Search supports omitting terms.)

A revived link to the site made pg go "Holy shit." in 2007. That doesn't happen often either:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46411

Whilst searching, I ran across another Artix ("In 2002 I created the original AdventureQuest"). Also cool!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21245308


That’s nuts. I would have taken 50 to 1 odds that it wasn’t that long.

To me, this proves that HN isn’t really full of pg fanboys. It’s like knowing the flop album an artist released before their first hit.


Short enough to copy and paste. Here it is, from http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html

# The Artix Phase

We should have expected this. It's very common for a group of founders to go through one lame idea before realizing that a startup has to make something people will pay for. In fact, we ourselves did.

Viaweb wasn't the first startup Robert Morris and I started. In January 1995, we and a couple friends started a company called Artix. The plan was to put art galleries on the Web. In retrospect, I wonder how we could have wasted our time on anything so stupid. Galleries are not especially excited about being on the Web even now, ten years later. They don't want to have their stock visible to any random visitor, like an antique store. [2]

Besides which, art dealers are the most technophobic people on earth. They didn't become art dealers after a difficult choice between that and a career in the hard sciences. Most of them had never seen the Web before we came to tell them why they should be on it. Some didn't even have computers. It doesn't do justice to the situation to describe it as a hard sell; we soon sank to building sites for free, and it was hard to convince galleries even to do that.

Gradually it dawned on us that instead of trying to make Web sites for people who didn't want them, we could make sites for people who did. In fact, software that would let people who wanted sites make their own. So we ditched Artix and started a new company, Viaweb, to make software for building online stores. That one succeeded.

We're in good company here. Microsoft was not the first company Paul Allen and Bill Gates started either. The first was called Traf-o-data. It does not seem to have done as well as Micro-soft.

In Robert's defense, he was skeptical about Artix. I dragged him into it. [3] But there were moments when he was optimistic. And if we, who were 29 and 30 at the time, could get excited about such a thoroughly boneheaded idea, we should not be surprised that hackers aged 21 or 22 are pitching us ideas with little hope of making money.


Wow, this blew my mind! I read all the pg essays when I first started programming so I must have read this at some point!


I like the concept. It looks like, though, your business is not art but financing. Very interesting twist.

Do you charge a fixed fee or a %?


Art has a long history of patronage, e.g. from da vinci to Jasper Johns. So it didn't come as a surprise to me


We take a percentage. For a given sale, 70% goes to the artist and 30% goes to the platform.


That's a pretty large cut. What stops a user from just messaging the artist directly and buying the work from them directly for a lower price?


This is a pretty common pushback on marketplaces in general, but in my experience working on several, this only happens in specific situations. I doubt it would be much of a problem for Art in Res, namely because:

1. With higher price points, the security and financial services of the platform become more valuable. Installment payments, for instance, would likely be beyond the abilities of many artists to orchestrate. The platform also likely provides some guarantee on the buyer side that all that money won't go missing and that the product will be delivered as expected.

2. The platform will usually have some language in their agreement that makes off-platform contracts with people you discovered in-platform punishable. If you've ever used a hiring platform like Hired or A-List, you'll know that these fees are persuasive.

With cheaper platforms like UpWork, I'm sure this kind of thing is common, but on more expensive market places it isn't as pervasive as one might think.


Love the idea! Just some small feedback on your website: When I try to go back from your website, it keeps asking me to login. It's probably due to the fact that it automatically sends me to the /artworks page and when I try to go back it sends me to the / one, triggering the login popup. Anyway, good luck!


Thanks for letting us know about this bug. We just shipped a fix for it. Hopefully you won't be interrupted while browsing now :)


- I don't really care much about the Covid-19 relief. If you are donating then good for you and for helping the community. But I do actually avoid websites/services that try to advertise donations as a selling point. I can donate myself if I want to.

- Also, do not penalize artists who do not want to donate to Covid-19. That's their business. They might be giving more, through other ways, to the community. They might be tight with money. Whatever. But the way the website is presenting it is that these guys are the generous guys.

- I don't know how New York is but this photo is NSFW and probably not so for families: https://artinres.com/artworks/marika-wagle-day-13-2020 You might want to have a filter for that.


> - I don't really care much about the Covid-19 relief. If you are donating then good for you and for helping the community. But I do actually avoid websites/services that try to advertise donations as a selling point. I can donate myself if I want to. > - Also, do not penalize artists who do not want to donate to Covid-19. That's their business. They might be giving more, through other ways, to the community. They might be tight with money. Whatever. But the way the website is presenting it is that these guys are the generous guys.

More than anything else, we rolled out the 'COVID-19 support' features because of what our artists were telling us. We got flooded by artists telling us that they wanted to use their art sales to raise money for COVID-19 relief. But we also knew that many artists are tight on cash, so we said "instead of sacrificing your cut, let us give our cut, and you can keep yours during this insane time." The last thing we wanted was to penalize anyone.

> - I don't know how New York is but this photo is NSFW and probably not so for families: https://artinres.com/artworks/marika-wagle-day-13-2020 You might want to have a filter for that.

You're right! It's time for us to implement filtering based on sensitive content.


In addition to being NSFW, it's also a print, and I would be annoyed if I got it and didn't realize that. I think it's very easy to skip the line that says "limited edition print" especially given the material description being the original materials.


This is a great catch! Thank you for pointing that out.


Very cool project — the site is gorgeous. I've long thought there should be a way to expand artists' reach outside the expensive, laborious, and dated gallery system, while preserving the dignity, quality, and price of the work.

I'd love to understand the differences between Art in Res and Saatchi Art.


Tech stack question -

Incredible website that is both feature rich and succinct to the content. As far as marketplaces go, there are some known platforms (e.g. ShareTribe) and payment options (e.g. Stripe Connect) - did you all "build" from the ground up or "buy" in putting this together?


Thank you! We're makers, so we built it.

Here's the stack:

- React & redux on the front end

- Rails on the back end

- Postgres & redis for persistence

- Stripe (including Connect) for payments

(edited for line breaks)


The bespoke nature shines through in all the best ways. Thanks!


I’m struggling between considering these home decor or investment pieces. It doesn’t seem like any (that I’ve checked) are coming up on artnet, so when you say unknown do you mean like even to the art world? Also when filtering for large items in getting things as small as 6x8”.


That is an interesting question. I would like to buy a nice painting or a sculpture but how can I distinguish a piece that is worth considering.


Do you have any interest in brokering digital art, as well? (Great idea and well executed, by the way.)


Congrats on a very cool idea that seems well executed. I rarely buy anything on an installment plan (never done it for a phone, etc) but for art it's for some reason very appealing to me. I think I will buy something from here.

If I am paying $XXXX for my apartment each month, $XXXX + $50 to have a beatiful piece of art in it seems like a good idea.

I bought my first piece of real art last year from a gallery and it was a good and bad experience. Good because I was able to see the art in person next to other pieces and actually meet the artist. Bad because the gallery owner was somewhat rushing me and even when I pulled the trigger I didn't get the piece until a few weeks later when the show ended.


My main qualm is the hijacking of the browser back button. I despise when sites do this, and I know I'm not alone.

Other than that the design is excellent. I like that you list SKUs on the main page and that there isn't a lot of cruft or excessive negative space.


Totally with you on this. It's super annoying! We're working on a fix.


We have shipped a fix for this now. Apologies for the frustration it caused.


How do you make sure the buyers will keep paying even after receiving the artwork? You don't keep the money in escrow or anything like that, do you?

Is there a way, as a buyer, to figure out how much shipping would cost?


If someone stops paying, they're required to return their artwork (we even used to frame the relationship as a "rental"). In the case of a truly bad actor that stops paying and goes MIA, we make sure the artist gets paid, even if it's a loss for us.

For now, we charge a flat price for domestic shipping (with two tiers based on parcel size.) A near/medium-term goal is to integrate with shipping APIs for more nuanced shipping prices.


Be careful with insurance as they may consider this voluntary parting as opposed to theft if someone refuses to pay and refuses to return the painting


I hope the won’t-pay-$100-for-a-painting (or $100 per installment) crowd is large enough to make your business worthwhile. It’d be amazing to simultaneously fund new artists, bring regular Joes/Janes into the art world, and have a sustainable business at the same time.

But that little MBA demon on my shoulder is whispering that targeting low willingness-to-spend consumers will result in, at best, strongly limiting growth and, at worst, a perpetually money losing business. I’m just speculating since I don’t know your financials, so if you’re already in the black, my apologies. If you’re both in the black and don’t care about growth, apologies again.

But assuming you want to grow and/or aspire to be profitable, you’ll either need to grow the size of the art market (hard) or sell to wealthier (or at least, people who spend more of their money on art) consumers (less hard). Social proof is a huge factor for buyers of substantial art, to the point that a handful of people/galleries/etc get to define what constitutes great - and therefore very expensive - art (there was a great Adam Ruins Everything episode on this https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dw5kme5Q_Yo). My mom is very involved with the main art museum in my city, going on trips with other benefactors to buy art for the museum. She also buys art herself - not crazy expensive super known pieces like Damien Hurst’s shark, but still high-end pieces from up-and-coming artists (to put it another way, she buys pieces that aren’t in the $1 million+ range). She uses her own sensibilities primarily, but to find the art itself and ensure the price she’s paying isn’t for a dumpster, she relies on people in the art world.

So, I’m just suggesting you consider two characters of art consumers: (1) social proof drives their decisions and (2) there are often wealthier. Your creative juices might find something really innovative for the social proof component; I don’t have any specific suggestions at the moment. But on (2), consider targeting people in between Steven A Cohen (bought Hurst’s shark for $8-$12 million) and the <$100 art buyer. Given the success (until recently) of Restoration Hardware, I believe you could find people willing to pay $1,000-$10,000 for art. People pay thousands of dollars for a sofa, why not the art that’s on display in their homes? You could imagine quite a few professional, internet savvy DINCs (dual income no children) in their 30s or 40s being interested in having a substantial art piece. They may be intimidated by galleries and not know what to select. Just something to think about to boost your margins.


As an artist on the site, I think it is fantastic. It is different from Artsy and other Sites because of their personal attention and commitment to their artists and customers. Linda


Why is there an application process for artists? I have some art but I doubt I would be accepted because there are loads of more famous and highly credentialed artists in my area.


Great question. We have an application process for a few reasons:

1. Because curation is important to us

2. So we can learn about the artist and how best to help them

3. So we can take time to help onboard artists and show them how best to make use of Art in Res

We built Art in Res so that anyone can apply, and we take our time to consider every application.


Very cool, but I'd like to see the difference between the monthly and one-time total payments. The scale of the art is also difficult to perceive. Everything looks the same size and you have to look at the numbers on the bottom to see the size, but it's still hard to capture at a glance. I know there's probably some strategy to get highly normalized images of the art, but it's not very immersive.

Otherwise, good luck with the project; I love the concept!


This is cool! One small UI recommendation would be to make the pagination (1 of 92) in the bottom right bigger and more prominent. I almost couldn't find it.


Thanks for the suggestion. We'll definitely add it to our considerations. Just curious, were you on computer or mobile device?


I was on a laptop/desktop.


I get paying artists in monthly installments, but I have zero interest in doing that as a consumer. Art is a luxury good and those that can afford it are trained to avoid financing things they don't need. I would charge the users the full upfront cost and pay artists in monthly installments. Maybe instead of taking a cut off the profits you can invest the money that hasn't been distributed to the artist yet like RobinHood.


When I look for art I almost exclusively look for watercolor (or a specific style of realistic western oil). Some more filters based on medium would be useful.


Congrats on the launch! Beautiful site. I'd like more info about how you ship the art before buying. I found your FAQ after a little digging, but it didn't really give me comfort that you ship using a method that is particularly suited to fine art. Also, I noticed a few listings say that they come framed. For these I'd want to see the frame, they vary so much in style and size.


Can you elaborate on what 'take' and 'total payout' are, and how they relate to each other and the total price of an artwork?


Looks fantastic and I hope this does well. Congratulations. And thank you.

Suggestion: Maybe move the pricing filters on the left side to the bottom of the filtering choices, just as a way to emphasize the works over the dollars.

Bug?: No matter which filters I select, or how many (even none), I'm shown there are 92 pages of results.

Best wishes with this.


The "Tap below to copy your invite link:" on your invite page does not appear to work? (Google Chrome on macOS)


Cool idea. I wish if I send links to friends (via iMessages, Whatsapp, FB) that the link preview populates with the images of the page in question and not a general image. For the artist page, I would like it to show an image from the artist and for the link of an individual painting I would like it to show the painting in question


This could work well for companies that could lease art for exhibiting it in their offices. The artist gains recognition and a steady income, the company raises their prestige and can change artwork every couple of years, and everyone is happy. It has been tried before and failed, I hope you guys make it.


I like this idea! Any plans to expand to types of art which are not paintings? e.g. I love colorful geometric glass art, and to the extent I collect art [I have definitely noticed the "I should buy some art" urge growing as my age and salary grow], that's where I expect to spend my dollars.


This is amazing!

Have you thought about adding details about what materials the artists used besides noting the basic supplies like “canvas” and “oil stick”?

As a buyer, some may be interested specifically on what colour name / brand of materials the artists used. And if ambitious, why they used those items over others?


This is a great idea. It's definitely something we will look into. I love the idea of being able to explore more of these details in detail.


Thanks for the update. Might be an interesting differentiating factor - always wondered why galleries like White Cube to auction sites like Christie’s lacked that granularity.


At this stage of the Art Market evolution, I applaud anything, that's not churning out pretty pictures from "art" farms in the third world (no offence here, pure economics, someone's just using low quality of life in these countries).


Are you interested in resellers? Like, retail chains?

Also, no contact information on your site. Boo.


Is this US only? Didn't find any mention on this in the FAQ or signup page.


It's US only for now, but once we figure out shipping and taxes we're excited to open up internationally.


Spectacular! Well done on shipping a product/service which I've wanted for a long time. In particular the financing option will enable me to take the leap into the world of fine art for the first time.


I have painter friends. They do not want to sell me their art an any price. They would rather pay to have it in the right gallery show.

In other words, artists who are trying to build their career are demand, not supply.


Your filters are broken. No matter what I pick I get the same paintints


Very cool. I'd love to see this extended to photography. good luck!


The price filter does not seem to work (maybe the minimalist one neither, but not totally sure). I selected <1200$, saved it, the page says <1200$ but I see 7000$+ paintings.


Since we're all commenting on the price display, I'd be really curious about my own behavior if it was not visible on the gallery view.

(I really want to find a less expensive one that I like)


Question for founder: who takes on credit risk, the artist or Art in Res? Who does buyer credit check and determines interest rate? What does "responsible for damages" mean?


This is a great idea! I've browsed for quite a bit now. My only suggestion is that the thumbnails are a bit small, so it's hard to see the image without clicking on it.


The site looks great, love the scale feature! What's your target demographic? I could see interior designers/companies who stage houses being a huge market for you.


How do you guys ensure that the art is not a copy of another popular art work? Could customers flag an artwork saying it is pirated with information about original?


Love the site, and honestly not unreasonable prices compared to galleries in my area (Chicago). Love the banana for scale feature!


Really nice website, best of luck in the launch!


Thank you!


Would you consider working with visual artists other than painters (I have a good friend who is a textile/fabric artist)?


Cool but have to do math in my head while reading the page initially, can you add total price.

Idea: sell some AI generated art for charity.


What happens if a customer stops making monthly payments?

Does the financing model work by offloading all risk to the artist?

Are there some protections?


We take on the risk (it's one of the main reasons for our commission). If someone stops paying, either they send their artwork back to the artist or, in the worst case scenario, we pay the artist their full cut at a loss to us.


I love when you press the 'Show Size' button it puts a picture of a banana on the painting for comparison.


We love it too. We hope to have some more ways for you to visualize the art in the near future that provide more context.


Inability to hit back button is a killer to me. Instantly got into panic mode and scared to visit again :(


Thanks for highlighting this bug. Sorry it made you panic! We're adding it to our bug-fix queue as high priority.


We've shipped a fix for this bug now. Thanks again for letting us know about it. Hopefully you can continue browsing un-hindered!


Is this open for Canada based artists?


Heads up, with adblockers turned on in iOS Safari, every product image on your site is missing.


whats your business model? margins are slim and one would assume repeat purchases will be few?


Is there somewhere on the website to express interest in becoming a featured artist?


This is really awesome! Love browsing the artists and seeing their different styles.


I really like it! I am a millennial with a lot of disposal income because of SWE and companies like FAANG. I've been to art galleries and openings but never purchased, and always feel like there's some low grade grift going on. I don't know.

This is the first Show HN I've sent the link to friends! Found several things already, like it.

One word of caution, we launched things years ago with a Show HN and took all the suggestions into account and total failure. HN isn't the average crowd and their preferences aren't the usual preferences. It's like how the whole internet seemed to support Bernie Sanders but he ended up flopping bad (not getting political, just am observation). HN, Reddit, Twitter aren't the real world, take all advice and popularity from said sources with a grain of salt.

That said, my partner and I are looking at art on your site now and will likely be spending thousands this week via the site. Love it!


a lil bit of website feedback: on route change, please scroll the page to the top.

if i scroll to the end of the home page, then go to "how it works", i'd expect not to be at the end of that page.

love it, though!


Great find. I'm adding it to our bug-queue now. Thanks so much, I'm glad you like it despite our glitches!


Isn't this literally Paul Graham's first startup?


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22824654


The lead is

> Art should be affordable, and artists should get paid.

Why is this?


Hi John, any plans to expand outside the USA?


Awesome idea and execution. Congrats :)


Very cool, but too expensive for me.


Awesome


_wow_ those paintings are bland


This is


etsy but expensive




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