Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of teaching at world-class universities, working in leading design studios, and bringing architectural projects to life through both design and visualization. Visualization is a hugely important part of architectural practice: designers communicate through rendered perspective images because words are too often not enough to communicate a vision.
I, and I think all other designers, have felt frustrated by the slow and often painstaking process of producing renderings and visualizations. It can take weeks to produce a final image, incurring huge costs and taking precious time and attention away from actually designing.
With the advent of generative AI, my co-founder and I wanted to develop a professional AI platform tailored specifically to the needs of architects and designers. Our platform enables architects to generate visualizations quickly with absolute precision and control in a matter of minutes.
Tell us about the business – what it is, what it aims to achieve, who you work with, how you reach customers and so on?
Gendo is a browser-based AI platform designed to enable architects and designers to turn their ideas into realistic visualizations in a fraction of the time currently taken by rendering.
Using a combination of generative AI models and machine learning techniques, designers can use Gendo to generate visualizations in seconds by uploading their 2D drawings and sketches, and 3D uploads will be available soon. They can then easily add and edit specific details – such as materiality and lighting – while maintaining an accurate representation of their design.
Our goal is to streamline the visualization process, reducing the time and cost associated with rendering, allowing architects to produce these assets themselves in a fraction of the time, allowing them to focus on creative design work.
Our platform has been thoroughly tested by leading global architecture practices such as Zaha Hadid Architects, KPF, David Chipperfield Architects and Benoy. We came out of beta and released v1 of the product in early July 2024.
How has the company evolved since launch?
We launched at the beginning of July and before that we were tested in beta by a number of leading names in the architecture industry. Getting so many big names on board so early in our journey was a huge privilege and a testament to the strength of our technology and the size of the problem we are solving for the industry.
Now that we’re live, we want to expand the platform’s capabilities to become the best AI copilot for architects and design teams. In the first week of launch, the platform already had over 1000 users signed up and counting.
Tell us about the work culture at Gendo
The team is all design-oriented, which hopefully is evident not only in all parts of the product, but also in all our processes and documentation. We build a product for designers and are product obsessed, so we want to make sure it’s as beautiful and functional as the images themselves.
We have also tried to instill the critical and honest conversations typically found in design offices in Gendo. We review the work regularly and discuss it empathetically but critically to ensure we get the most out of our team and their collective expertise.
How are you financed?
We raised $1.1M. in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round in mid-2023. The investment was led by Concept Ventures and joined by Ascension Ventures, Carles Reina’s Baobab Ventures and various angel investors from the AI and architecture sectors, including the former Global Head of Design Studios at WeWork.
What has been your biggest challenge so far and how have you overcome it?
Hiring has been one of the most time-consuming and impactful challenges we’ve had so far. As a small startup, each person has a huge impact on the company in all sorts of ways. So we were extremely selective about who we hired and what we looked for in each person.
Technical skills were important, but the truly essential qualities are found in their enthusiasm for the mission. We are building something complicated and completely new, so we need people who are excited about the prospect of it and who would like to contribute positively to the company in all aspects.
Indexing for those kinds of people made the pool of candidates smaller, but made the individual conversations much more enjoyable as we could push the conversation beyond just the technical much faster.
How does Gendo respond to an unmet need?
Gendo addresses the unmet need for an efficient, accurate and reliable way to produce visualizations in architecture and design. Traditional methods are time-consuming and expensive. Gendo transforms this process by allowing architects and designers to generate and edit high-quality visualizations in seconds, significantly reducing the time and effort required and freeing up valuable resources for creative teams.
This process has also been so prohibitively expensive and time consuming that many smaller studios have simply not been able to produce these visualizations. It is already clear from our launch and from user feedback that this is no longer the case. Gendo democratizes image production and makes smaller companies much more competitive in the process.
What is in store for the future?
We will be introducing new features and tools to the platform this year, tailored specifically to the needs of architects and designers. The beta period has validated our roadmap so that the next 18 months are crystal clear in terms of product development. We also plan to scale our London-based team and delve deeper into custom AI models to extend Gendo’s core models and feature set.
What advice would you give to other founders or future founders?
Have strong opinions, weakly held! You need to be decisive and sure about what it is you want to build and why, but keep testing your thesis from all angles, take critical feedback and adjust accordingly. Anything else will slow you down.
The only other thing I would add is find an area you are really passionate about. If you find something serious, it will quickly become all-consuming, so it helps if you’re deeply invested in whatever it is you’re building.
And finally, a more personal question! What is your daily routine and the rules you currently live by?
We have been very ambitious lately. Between product launches, PR efforts and increasing investor interest, we haven’t had much time for anything else. So I’ve been trying to make sure I get away from my desk, unplug and spend even a small amount of time somewhere green! I have also tried (and often failed) to maintain relationships with friends and family, so I will have to redouble my efforts here to make it up to the very patient and forgiving people for whom I am very grateful.
George Proud is the co-founder and CEO of Gendo.