MeltFlex was founded in 2023 by Matúš Koleják and Braňo Hrivňák, two founders based in Bratislava, Slovakia. Both run the company as Co-CEOs and both work on it full time. Matúš builds the engineering and AI side. Braňo came from eight years in London real estate and runs strategy and partnerships. This page exists so you can check who we are before you trust anything else we publish.
Who founded MeltFlex
Two people, no larger founding team, no agency behind it. We started with a 5,000 euro grant and the belief that turning a floor plan into a furnished 3D room was a solvable problem that nobody had solved well. Three years later it is used by more than 213,000 people, mostly in the United States.
Matúš Koleják, Co-CEO and technical lead
Matúš studied computer science at FIIT STU, the Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies at the Slovak University of Technology, where he was named Student of the Year for research and development work. Before MeltFlex he worked as a Java Spring developer at Henkel, contributing to Catena-X, the automotive industry data ecosystem, across backend services, APIs and DevOps. He has won eight first-place hackathons on problems ranging from smart cities to AI automation.
At MeltFlex he owns the parts that are hard to fake: the computer vision that reads walls, doors and windows out of a floor plan, the real-time 3D planner, and the generative rendering pipeline that turns a layout into a photorealistic image. If a render on this site looks wrong, it is his fault.
Braňo Hrivňák, Co-CEO and real estate strategy
Braňo, whose full name is Branislav Hrivňák, spent eight years working with property developers in London, covering the full sales process from off-plan marketing to how buyers actually decide. He holds an MSc in Real Estate Economics and Finance from the London School of Economics, a programme accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and ranked first worldwide in the Eduniversal Best Masters Ranking 2024.
That background is the reason MeltFlex is built around furniture you can actually buy rather than pretty pictures. Developers and agents do not need art. They need a room that a buyer believes, at a price the buyer can check. Braňo speaks Slovak, Czech and English fluently, with working German.
Credentials at a glance
How MeltFlex started
MeltFlex began in 2023 with a 5,000 euro grant from the Tatra banka Foundation. That is a small amount of money and it is worth being honest about what it bought: enough runway to build one working prototype and prove the floor plan conversion was possible at all. There was no seed round, no accelerator cheque and no agency work funding it on the side.
The prototype was shown at SlovakiaTech 2024, the largest technology expo in Slovakia, and at Inofest, an innovation event held at the Kia plant in Žilina. The work was featured on Slovak national television and covered by NexTech, the country’s largest technology magazine. Along the way the team picked up the BMW Innovation Award and the Technological Impact Award. Later MeltFlex represented Slovakia in the SOSA accelerator programme in New York.
The name is older than the product. Before the AI tool, MeltFlex was Matúš’s hardware project, a non-planar 3D printer built around a SCARA robotic arm, which won STU’s Startup Pitch 2025 and got him an interview in NexTech. Forbes Slovakia later counted three changes of direction: hardware, then 3D floor plans that solved layout but not design, then the current version, where you upload an ordinary photo. The lesson we took from that, quoted in Forbes, is blunt: a polished product with no revenue is a bad product.
Awards are the easy part. The harder and more interesting fact is that a product built by two people in Bratislava ended up with most of its users in American cities. We wrote about why that happened in two Slovaks built an AI interior design tool for America.
Press coverage
Everything above is our own account, so here is where you can check it against people who do not work for us. Each card is a screenshot of the article page and links to the original. Two of them are press releases we issued ourselves, republished by Yahoo Finance and Business Insider; they are labelled as such, because a press release is not journalism.
A few things those pieces add that we did not say above. Forbes reported that MeltFlex takes roughly 10 percent of each furniture sale made through a render, that a single generated image costs the company about seven cents, and that eight out of ten paying subscribers are in the United States. Startitup’s interview named CRESCO REAL ESTATE and HERRYS among the developer partners and covered why we fund the company from revenue instead of raising. The Slovak Spectator, Refresher and the TASR wire (carried by Startitup and oPeniazoch.sk) all report the same 200,000-plus user figure and the SOSA accelerator pitch at the Slovak Consulate General in New York.
Two earlier pieces predate the AI product and cover the 3D printing project that carried the same name: TASR on the STU Startup Pitch 2025 win (11 June 2025) and the NexTech interview with Matúš (7 February 2025).
Who uses MeltFlex
Roughly two audiences. Homeowners who want to see a room before spending money on it, and businesses that need the same thing at volume. On the business side that includes the furniture retailer Kondela and the property developers YIT Slovakia, HERRYS and VI GROUP, plus JTRE. Teams that want it inside their own software use the MeltFlex API.
If you want to judge the product rather than the founders, the honest starting point is our tested comparison of free AI interior design tools, which includes tools that beat us in places, or just upload a room photo and see what comes back.
MeltFlex Founders FAQ
Who founded MeltFlex?
MeltFlex was founded in 2023 by Matúš Koleják and Braňo Hrivňák, who run the company as Co-CEOs from Bratislava, Slovakia. Matúš leads engineering and the AI pipeline. Braňo leads real estate strategy and commercial partnerships after eight years working with property developers in London.
Is MeltFlex a real company or a side project?
It is a registered Slovak company and the full-time work of both founders. It has paying business customers including the furniture retailer Kondela and the property developers YIT Slovakia, JTRE and VI GROUP, and in 2026 it was covered independently by Forbes Slovakia, Startitup, Refresher, The Slovak Spectator, Parametric Architecture and the TASR news agency.
What are the founders qualified in?
Matúš studied computer science at FIIT STU in Bratislava, was named Student of the Year there, won eight first-place hackathons and worked as a Java Spring developer at Henkel on the Catena-X project. Braňo holds an MSc in Real Estate Economics and Finance from the London School of Economics, a RICS-accredited programme.
Where is MeltFlex based?
Bratislava, Slovakia. Both founders are based there and the product is built there, although the majority of MeltFlex users are in the United States. The company represented Slovakia in the SOSA accelerator programme in New York.
How was MeltFlex funded?
It started with a 5,000 euro grant from the Tatra banka Foundation in 2023, which paid for the first working version. Since then it has been funded by revenue from subscriptions and business customers rather than by venture capital.
How many people use MeltFlex?
More than 213,000 people worldwide as of summer 2026, a figure reported by Parametric Architecture, Startitup and Forbes Slovakia. Usage is concentrated in the United States: Forbes reported that eight out of ten paying subscribers are American, and The Slovak Spectator named Austin, Brooklyn and Phoenix among the cities where it is used.
