Zoom Interiors Shark Tank Update: The Rise, Fall, and Founders’ New Empires
Zoom Interiors stepped into the Shark Tank in Season 6 with a big idea: make professional interior design easy, online, and affordable for everyone.
Founded by Beatrice Fischel-Bock, Madeline Fraser, and Lizzie Grover, the company wanted to change how millennials decorated their apartments.
While they walked away with a deal on television, the real story of Zoom Interiors happened after the cameras stopped rolling.
The company went through massive changes, huge funding rounds, multiple name changes, and eventually closed its interior design doors. However, the story does not end in failure.
By 2026, all three founders have built incredible new businesses in the worlds of technology, fashion, and digital assets.
If you are wondering what happened to Zoom Interiors and where the founders are today, here is the complete 2026 update.
What Was Zoom Interiors?
Before the rise of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) design tools, hiring an interior designer was a luxury. Traditional designers often charged between $100 and $600 an hour just for their advice.
Beatrice, Madeline, and Lizzie met while studying interior design at George Washington University and realized their friends could not afford these high prices.
They created Zoom Interiors to fix this problem. The service operated entirely online. Clients filled out a simple questionnaire about their lifestyle, personal style, and budget.
In return, the Zoom Interiors team created a personalized design plan using 3D modeling. This plan included a floor layout and a shopping list of furniture.
The service was free or offered at a low flat rate. Zoom Interiors made its money on the back end by earning a commission when clients bought the recommended furniture through their platform.
It was a fresh, cost-effective approach to design that caught the attention of the producers at Shark Tank.
Zoom Interiors Shark Tank Pitch and Deal
In May 2015, the three young founders appeared on Season 6, Episode 28 of Shark Tank. They went into the tank asking for a $100,000 investment in exchange for 20% equity in their company. This request valued Zoom Interiors at $500,000.
During their pitch, they showed the Sharks impressive before-and-after photos of rooms they had designed. They explained their online business model and their goal to bring interior design to the masses.
The Sharks were interested, but they also saw some red flags. The biggest concern was how the company made money. The founders admitted that only about one out of every eight people who filled out a survey actually bought furniture.
Sharks like Kevin O’Leary wondered why they did not just charge a fee for the design service itself.
Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner also passed on the investment, feeling the business model would be too hard to scale.
However, real estate expert Barbara Corcoran saw the spark in the founders. She believed in their energy and the need for affordable design.
Corcoran offered them the $100,000 they asked for, but she wanted 33% of the company. There was one catch: they could not use the money to rebuild their website, which the founders had originally planned to do.
Excited to have a Shark on board, the Zoom Interiors team accepted the deal on national television.
Why the Barbara Corcoran Deal Fell Through
Like many deals made on Shark Tank, the agreement between Zoom Interiors and Barbara Corcoran never officially closed.
After the show, the two sides spent about five months in the due diligence phase. The founders were looking for a hands-on mentor who could guide their young business.
However, Corcoran is an incredibly busy investor with dozens of companies in her portfolio. The founders realized they would mostly be working with her staff rather than Corcoran herself.
Not wanting to give up a massive 33% chunk of their company without getting direct mentorship in return, the founders decided to walk away from the deal. It was a tough choice, but it quickly paid off.
The Tinder Connection: Rebranding to Homee and Hutch
The Shark Tank episode turned out to be a massive commercial for the brand. Shortly after it aired, Sean Rad, the famous co-founder of the dating app Tinder, watched the pitch and saw huge potential.
Rad reached out to CEO Beatrice Fischel-Bock through Facebook and offered his help.
With Rad’s guidance and connections, Zoom Interiors completely transformed. The company abandoned its old commission model and switched to a flat-fee structure. They also realized the future was in mobile apps, not just websites.
Under Rad’s mentorship, the company rebranded as “Homee” in 2016 and raised millions of dollars in venture capital. Homee was a mobile app that allowed users to text with an interior designer and visualize furniture in their space.
The company did not stop there. To make the app even more visual and engaging, they rebranded one more time to “Hutch”.
Hutch used augmented reality (AR) and 3D technology to let users upload a photo of their room and instantly see how new furniture would look. It was like a virtual dressing room for a house.
Investors loved the Hutch app. The company raised over $28.2 million in total funding from major players like Founders Fund and the real estate giant Zillow.
| Company Iteration | Year | Core Business Model | Major Milestone |
| Zoom Interiors | 2013-2015 | Web-based design, furniture commissions. | Appeared on Shark Tank. |
| Homee | 2016 | Chat-based mobile app for design advice. | Raised $7.2M with help from Sean Rad. |
| Hutch | 2017-2020 | AR/3D visualizer app for home decor. | Raised $10M Series A from Zillow. |
Why Did Hutch Shut Down the Interior Design App?
Despite raising nearly $30 million and building a highly popular app, the consumer interior design version of Hutch shut down in 2020.
The company faced a major problem that often plagues mobile retail apps: people loved playing with the app, but they did not want to buy things through it. CEO Beatrice Fischel-Bock noted that users found the app fun and therapeutic.
They would spend hours designing their dream rooms. But when it was time to buy the sofa or the rug, users would close the Hutch app and search for a cheaper version on Amazon.
Because the company still relied on selling furniture to make money, this lack of buying was a fatal flaw. In late 2019, the team tried to pivot Hutch into a mobile game called “Style Space,” where users could just play at decorating without the pressure to buy real furniture. However, the pivot was too late to save the core business.
Between 2018 and early 2020, all three original founders stepped away from the interior design application.
Where Are the Founders Now in 2026?
The closure of the Hutch interior design app was not the end of the road for these three entrepreneurs.
In fact, the lessons they learned from building virtual tech and running a massive startup helped them launch incredibly successful new ventures. Here is what they are doing in 2026.
Madeline Fraser: Modernizing the Jewelry Industry with Gemist
Madeline Fraser took her knowledge of 3D visualization and applied it to a completely different market: fine jewelry.
In 2018, Fraser was frustrated by how hard it was to design a custom engagement ring online. She realized the jewelry industry was stuck in the past.
She founded Gemist, a technology company that lets users design and visualize custom jewelry. Originally, Gemist started as a direct-to-consumer brand.
However, Fraser recently made a brilliant business move. By 2026, Gemist operates as a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) platform for other jewelry brands.
Instead of selling rings directly, Gemist licenses its 3D rendering technology to established jewelers. This allows jewelry stores to let their customers design rings online in real-time without the store needing to hold thousands of expensive rings in their inventory.
In 2025, Gemist raised a massive $6 million seed round to expand this technology, bringing its total funding to $12 million. Thanks to Fraser’s leadership, jewelers using Gemist report a 300% increase in average order values.
Lizzie Grover Rad: Mixing Fashion, Art, and Politics
Lizzie Grover Rad took a completely different path. After leaving the tech world behind, she wanted to create something physical and meaningful. In 2021, she launched her own luxury fashion brand called Grover Rad.
Grover Rad does not just make standard clothing; the brand uses fashion as a form of social and political commentary. Lizzie’s collections are known for printing historical texts, bold artwork, and political statements onto high-end tailored suits, silk dresses, and denim.
Her debut collection tackled reproductive rights, featuring art from famous comic artists Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Sophie Crumb. Subsequent collections, like “Billionaires In Space” and “Nip Tuck,” explore modern culture and the pressures women face.
Designed and manufactured entirely in Los Angeles, Grover Rad pieces sell for premium prices ranging from $165 to almost $3,000. Today, she continues to run the brand, proving that clothing can be just as thought-provoking as fine art.
Beatrice Fischel-Bock: The Hutch Domain Broker Pivot
The most surprising twist in the Zoom Interiors story belongs to Beatrice Fischel-Bock. While the Hutch interior design app shut down, the actual “Hutch” corporate company did not die. Instead, Beatrice completely changed what the business does.
In 2026, Beatrice Fischel-Bock is still the CEO of Hutch, but it is now an expert domain name brokerage firm. Hutch helps major businesses buy, sell, and secure premium website names.
This was a highly strategic move. Selling physical furniture is expensive because of shipping, warehousing, and returns. Selling premium digital real estate (like expensive website URLs) has zero shipping costs and massive profit margins.
Today, Hutch helps companies protect their brand DNA online and provides daily podcasts and articles about domain marketing strategies. Beatrice is also a sought-after advisor for other startups, including women’s networking platforms and mobile gaming companies.
| Founder | 2026 Business Venture | Industry | What The Company Does in 2026 |
| Madeline Fraser | Gemist | Jewelry Tech (SaaS) | Sells 3D visualization software to major jewelry brands. |
| Lizzie Grover Rad | Grover Rad | Luxury Fashion | Designs high-end, politically focused women’s clothing. |
| Beatrice Fischel-Bock | Hutch | Digital Assets | Buys and sells premium internet domain names for businesses. |
How AI Changed Virtual Interior Design by 2026
When Zoom Interiors pitched on Shark Tank in 2015, the idea of designing a room online was incredibly fresh. The founders had to manually match furniture, build digital mood boards, and talk to clients.
By 2026, the world they tried to build has been taken over by Artificial Intelligence. The global interior design market is now worth an astonishing $153.85 billion, and technology is driving that growth. Tasks that used to take the Zoom Interiors team days to complete can now be done by AI in seconds.
Today, anyone can use AI platforms like Planner 5D, REimagineHome, or RoomGPT to decorate their house. You simply snap a photo of your messy living room with your smartphone.
The AI instantly removes your old furniture, analyzes the exact dimensions of your room, and fills it with perfectly scaled, modern furniture.
These 2026 AI tools even feature “Structural Lock” technology. This means the AI knows exactly where your real walls and windows are, so it will not suggest a design that is physically impossible to build.
Furthermore, these apps provide direct shopping links to buy the exact items shown in the AI photo, finally solving the e-commerce conversion problem that caused Hutch to shut down.
The founders of Zoom Interiors were simply ahead of their time. They saw the future of digital living long before the technology was cheap and smart enough to make it work perfectly.
Final Thoughts and Zoom Interiors Net Worth
Because Zoom Interiors (and its later version, Hutch) closed its consumer interior design operations, the net worth of the original Shark Tank business is technically $0 today.
However, looking at the company as a failure would be a mistake. The founders used their Shark Tank exposure to raise nearly $30 million in venture capital, pushed the boundaries of augmented reality, and learned how to scale major tech platforms.
Beatrice Fischel-Bock, Madeline Fraser, and Lizzie Grover Rad took those lessons and built incredible independent careers.
Whether it is revolutionizing how we buy diamond rings, creating luxury fashion that sparks political debate, or brokering high-value digital real estate, the Zoom Interiors founders proved that a true entrepreneur never stops building.
