REHAM FAGIRI OF APTDECO

“Women always want to be perfect, but it’s important to be confident. You deserve to be in these rooms. Just do it, and it’s okay, even if it doesn’t work out. You’re still going to learn so much. The time is now”. - Reham Fagiri

Reham Fagiri is the co-founder and CEO of AptDeco, a leading online marketplace for buying and selling furniture. Since launching the company in 2014, she has focused on streamlining the resale process by offering secure transactions, professional delivery, and partnerships with major brands like West Elm and IKEA. Under her leadership, AptDeco has expanded nationally, served hundreds of thousands of users, and played a key role in promoting sustainability by keeping millions of pounds of furniture out of landfills.

Entrepreneurship and moving to New York away from home, Khartoum, is a big step – what motivated your decision?

I moved from Sudan to the U.S. for college—first for undergrad at Maryland, then graduate school at Penn. My goal was to pursue education, not necessarily to start a business right away. But I always knew I wanted to start something. Even in my business school application, I wrote about launching a social enterprise, but I didn't realize I was going to start it just a few years after business school. Business school opened my eyes through seeing people with very little formal qualifications starting companies—and succeeding. That was eye-opening. It challenged the mindset I think a lot of women have: that we need to be overqualified before we're “ready.” Business school gave me the confidence to believe I could start something sooner rather than later. I didn’t know it would be AptDeco specifically, but I knew I would build something. That drive also comes from growing up in Sudan, where the economy is almost entirely made up of small businesses—there are no large corporations. Most of my family are entrepreneurs in some form, whether running architecture firms or other ventures.

You started your professional career as an executive at Goldman Sachs. What inspired you to move away from the corporate world and start your own business?

After Goldman Sachs, I went to business school, where I was in a period of exploration. I thought I wanted to leave the tech world entirely—I thought I was going to go into retail. Business school was really a great opportunity for me to explore different paths. I was ready to make a career change, but I wasn’t quite sure what that would look like. Maybe I’d start my own business (I actually wrote my essays around that idea), or maybe I’d join another company. At some point, I was introduced to startups. I applied to a few and actually received a couple of job offers from startups as I was finishing up business school. The reason I started AptDeco, specifically, was because I was trying to sell my furniture on Craigslist at the time—this was before Facebook Marketplace—and I had some really bad experiences. So I decided to do something about it. It was a very personal problem that I wanted to solve. I’m both an engineer and a businessperson, so I felt like I was the right person to take it on.

AptDeco aims to reshape how furniture is bought and sold, notably with a focus on environmental impact and sustainability. Can you share when you first became interested in environmental sustainability?

I've always been interested in environmental sustainability. When we started AptDeco, it wasn’t initially for environmental reasons—it was more about making it easier, better, and more convenient for people to buy and sell furniture. But we quickly realized there was also an environmental impact. We wanted to stay authentic and started learning from our customers. They’d give us feedback like, “This was a great experience, and I’m also helping the environment.” That really opened our eyes. Then we started to learn more and realized that 12 million tons of furniture end up in landfills every year. And part of the problem is that circularity in furniture is incredibly difficult because of the logistics—how do you move just one piece of furniture from one place to another? That’s what we set out to solve. We built something rooted in utility: it’s simple to use, convenient, and offers great products at great prices. We're automatically helping to offset more products from going to landfills, and the goal is to increase that as much as possible.

What are some of the biggest challenges you have encountered while founding AptDeco? How does AptDeco continue to innovate and improve in a competitive market like furniture resale?

Starting a business comes with a lot of challenges. In our case, it ranged from figuring out logistics—initially outsourcing them—to eventually bringing them in-house and doing it ourselves. Eventually, we decided on a mix of the two approaches, because we’d grown enough to 1) control the customer experience and 2) address the challenges unique to marketplaces. With marketplaces, there’s this inherent chicken-and-egg problem: you need supply—products in the marketplace—and you also need buyers. Finding that balance was definitely a challenge. There is also the challenge of being a first-time founder and figuring things out on the fly. And then there are challenges you can’t control—like being a minority and a woman founder. I focused on solving the problem, building something people love, and surrounding myself with peers who were also building businesses. That helped me learn, grow, and stay grounded.

Have you received any advice from mentors or role models that has stayed with you or influenced the way you approach your work?

One of the best decisions we made early on was applying to Y Combinator. Imagine being surrounded by hundreds of people who are also building companies—many first-time founders, some second- or third-time entrepreneurs—all learning from mentors who’ve successfully built and exited businesses. It was an incredible place to grow. We were able to learn from people with far more experience than we had. One of the things that Y Combinator harps on is building something people love. The importance of focusing on your customers — really talking to them — resonated with me. To this day, what we focus on is building a credible customer experience. Y Combinator also pushed us to think differently about what it means to build from zero to one. Both my co-founder and I came from corporate backgrounds — we were used to managing big budgets—but starting from scratch was a completely different challenge. Thinking about scalability: I was passing out flyers. It helps ground us — figuring out how to get in front of your customers: passing out flyers, delivering stuff yourself, doing your own customer service. “Roll up your sleeves and do everything” — that’s the advice that I tell everyone, and to this day, we apply it where it makes sense.

How is AptDeco leveraging AI and the rapidly changing tech landscape?

I think AI is great. As a startup, we’re always looking for efficiencies, so our engineering team is now using it for a lot, from code development to reviews. It’s making us more efficient: we don’t need to hire that many more people to achieve similar results. Even now, we’re applying AI to customer-facing products and tools as well, so it’ll be much easier soon enough for people to like furniture without having to do much. Right now, it takes around two minutes; our goal is to get it to two seconds. So, really leveraging technology to help enhance the user experience.

What are your goals for 2025? How do you see yourself expanding and innovating?

We've recently launched nationally, and so it’s a big focus to become a national brand and have a national presence. While we’re doing that and scaling that, we’re making sure we still have an incredible customer experience. By no means are we perfect; sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we fall short, but it’s all about how we recover from that and how we enhance the customer experience.

Many of the young women in CWBS aspire to be entrepreneurs and start their own businesses one day. Do you have any piece of advice for women who are just starting out in the world of entrepreneurship and business?

Absolutely. You can do it. If you're planning to start a business, go for it, and be confident. Don't second-guess yourself: I think that’s the big difference between men and women. When I think about my past self and career, I’d be in rooms and I’d wonder, “Oh, should I say this?” Women always want to be perfect, but it’s important to be confident. You deserve to be in these rooms. Just do it, and it’s okay even if it doesn’t work out. You’re still going to learn so much. The time is now.