Founders Everywhere: Matthew Brimer
Matthew Brimer is Chairman & Co-Founder of ZZ Driggs, a Certified B Corp providing turnkey design, furnishing, install, and financing solutions for real estate, hospitality, and commercial properties.
Welcome to Founders Everywhere, where we highlight incredible founders from the Everywhere Ventures community, a global network of 500+ founders and operators building the next generation of startups.
ZZ Driggs streamlines the entire process of designing and furnishing real estate across the US at scale through a comprehensive turnkey solution, integrating design, procurement, logistics, installation, and financing.
Operating successfully across hospitality, commercial, and residential sectors, ZZ empowers institutional building operators, multifamily developers, hotel operators, real estate brokerages, family offices, and corporate clients to outfit and launch properties efficiently with cost-efficiency, rapid timelines, and superior design quality. By tailoring solutions to each project’s specific needs and serving as a single accountable partner throughout the entire process, ZZ lets clients focus on their core business while all the details are professionally managed and executed.
Building on years of work across hospitality, commercial, and multi-family projects, the company recently launched an exciting new vertical: ZZ Office. It’s a tech-enabled, full-service turnkey solution for high-growth startups and tech companies who are busy growing their business and need to expand into a new office. Rather than just fulfilling just one piece of the puzzle, they combine all the benefits of a design firm, procurement agency, furniture dealer, warehousing/logistics provider, project manager, and financing provider all under one roof. By reducing costs and hassle while delivering exceptional design, ZZ helps fast-growing teams create intentional and inspiring workplaces as they grow, return to the office, or rethink how they work.
Co-Founder & Chairman Matthew Brimer is a serial entrepreneur, designer, investor, real estate developer, and community builder with a personal mission to build companies and communities that support people and the planet and move the world forward in a meaningful way. He’s best known for co‑founding several influential ventures across education, culture, wellness, real estate, and technology. Before founding ZZ Driggs, he co-founded General Assembly), where he led the charge on its global community, enterprise partnerships, and social impact initiatives. He also co-founded Daybreaker, the global music and wellness phenomenon; Flying Colors, an organic bird seed and garden brand; and Everywhere Ventures (that’s us 😁). Brimer has also developed boutique hospitality properties in upstate New York and the island of Jamaica, and he has served as an advisor, board member, and angel investor to myriad mission-driven startups and nonprofits. He has been recognized by The New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, Fast Company, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and others for his contributions to entrepreneurship, design, and culture.
What’s the inspiration behind ZZ Driggs?
I’ve always been a designer, tinkerer, and maker. My mom was a graphic designer, and I fell in love with visual design at a young age. At General Assembly (GA), I was deeply involved in the experiential and community design of our campuses. After GA, I started investing in historic properties in the Hudson Valley and Jamaica, getting very hands-on in the planning, research, renovation, and construction process from beginning to end. I’ve also always admired exceptional hospitality destinations, the creation of which is in many ways an exercise in multi-sensory experiential design. As a designer, helping to craft spaces and bring real estate to life in ways that feel truly human was a natural next step. ZZ Driggs blends my passion for design and startups with a long-term, craft-driven approach to furnishings and interiors, impacting people’s lives and work for the better, and creating elevated spaces through a more thoughtful, sustainable, and human-centric model for how we create the places where we live, work, and play.
What’s ZZ Driggs’ North Star?
Our North Star is to become the most trusted go‑to design and furnishing provider for the most forward‑thinking real estate projects across the U.S. We want developers, owners, operators, and employers who truly care about design, sustainability, and experience to instinctively think of ZZ Driggs when they need spaces conceived, furnished, and brought to life.
Tell us about some recent milestones that ZZ Driggs crushed.
Over ZZ Driggs’ lifetime, we’ve furnished more than a million square feet of properties around the country and installed over 1.5 million pounds of furniture. Those numbers capture the scale of spaces we’ve helped design and deliver, and we have a long way to go from here.
How does ZZ Driggs inspire “customer love”?
So often, real estate development, architecture, and construction can feel transactional and impersonal, or at the very least enormously complex and filled with hassles, delays, and disappointments. At ZZ Driggs, we take a very human, thoughtful, hands‑on approach to client service by acting as a true accountable partner and extension of their team throughout the entire process. At the end of the day, we’re creative problem solvers at our core, and our clients recognize and benefit from that. We’ve got their back. We go above and beyond. We’re honest, and we actually care about the details. Sounds simple, but the result is thoughtfully designed properties that nail quality, budget, and timeline goals, and ultimately leads to clients actually enjoying and appreciating their collaboration with us from start to finish.
How has your background shaped you as a founder?
I grew up in the Midwest with two creative parents who each ran their own small businesses. They were both makers who loved getting hands-on, who weren’t afraid to make some mistakes along the way, who valued learning and growth for themselves and our family. I admire them so much! Witnessing and learning from Mom and Dad throughout my childhood, entrepreneurship felt like a natural path and instilled in me an incessantly curious maker’s mindset, a love of creative problem solving, and a strong work ethic. I started my first company freshman year at Yale (ironically, in furniture) buying antique card catalogs that were getting removed from libraries around campus and reselling them online. I then moved on to co-founding a social gaming startup that created massively multiplayer online tournaments for college students that ultimately failed during the recession… a difficult experience, but a crash course in real life entrepreneurship that taught me resilience, leadership, and the realities of building a company. Moving to NYC after college and immersing myself in New York’s burgeoning startup ecosystem, hosting events and building community all along the way, eventually led me to start General Assembly, Daybreaker, Everywhere Ventures, and ultimately ZZ Driggs.
Fun Fact:
I love most things hands-on, whether making art, trying my hand at some new craft, refinishing an antique piece of furniture, installing some house project, or planting in my garden. In an age where most of our work happens on screens, there’s something deeply satisfying about shutting the laptop and using my hands to create something tangible that I can see, touch, and enjoy. I’ve also really been enjoying my hobby of DJing the last several years, which has been an amazing passion project and creative outlet for me in crafting musical journeys and performing at all sorts of interesting places and gatherings domestically and abroad.
Follow Matthew Brimer at:
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/mobrimer
Instagram: https://instagram.com/brimer
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/brimer
ZZ Driggs: https://zzdriggs.com
From the archives: Listen to Helle Jeppsson with Matthew Brimer on the Venture Everywhere podcast: The Great SCAPE. Now on Apple & Spotify. Check out all our past episodes here!
