A few weeks ago, an architect in Brazil signed up for Maquete on the free tier. She did five renders, liked the results, and upgraded to Pro. Then she showed it to her colleagues.
Within a week, two other architects in the office were using it on real client projects. Then they asked about team pricing.
That firm is Krepischi Lar e Construção, and they recently became our first firm on an annual Business plan. Three architects, one shared account, rendering daily.
It started with one person solving one problem
The first architect at Krepischi needed renders for a client presentation. She had a SketchUp model, a deadline, and no time to set up a traditional rendering pipeline. She uploaded a screenshot to Maquete, chose her lighting conditions, and had a photorealistic render in about 30 seconds.
That render got shown to the rest of the office the same afternoon.
This confirmed something we suspected but hadn't seen play out until now: architecture firms don't adopt tools through top-down procurement. One person tries it because they need something for a Friday meeting. If it works, they tell the person at the next desk. If that person tries it and it works again, the firm adopts it before anyone makes a formal purchasing decision.
What the architects said
We asked the team at Krepischi for honest feedback.
Adriana Carmonatti, Architect at Krepischi Lar e Construção:
"I found the render fantastic, very realistic and very easy to use. It will really help with sales."
Leila Brina, Architect at Krepischi Lar e Construção:
"I'm using it and found it very practical to use. The image quality is excellent, and it's really fast."
Two things stand out. Neither of them mentioned AI, prompts, or technical workflow. They talked about output quality and speed. That tells us the tool is invisible in the right way. Architects don't want to learn new software. They want renders that look real, and they want them quickly.
The other thing worth noting: Adriana specifically mentioned sales. She's not using renders for design exploration or internal review. She's using them to close projects with clients. That changes how we think about the product. If the render is a sales tool, consistency across angles matters even more than any individual image. Every render of the same project needs to feel like it came from the same photoshoot.
Three things we learned about firm adoption
Firms buy time, not features. Nobody at Krepischi asked about our lighting presets or material specification system before signing up. They cared that the render looked real and took 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes. Features matter for comparison shopping. Time savings are what get the commitment.
Team demand validates the product. When multiple architects at the same firm want access, that's the strongest signal you can get. One person trying a tool is curiosity. Three people at the same firm needing it is a workflow change. The right response was to build team pricing.
Annual commitment means integration. Krepischi didn't go month-to-month. They committed to a full year. That tells us they've already built Maquete into their daily workflow. They're not evaluating it. They're relying on it.
What we're building next
We're developing team features based directly on what Krepischi and other active firms need. Shared project folders. Team credit pools. Seat management for firm owners.
We're also speaking with every active user to understand how they're using the tool and what's missing. The gap between what we've built and what architects need in practice is where the next version of Maquete lives.
If you're an architect and you want to try it, the free tier gives you 5 renders with no card required. Upload a SketchUp screenshot and see what comes back. Try it: maquete.ai.
Further reading: What is AI architectural rendering? — the primer on what firms are actually buying when they adopt AI rendering.