A year ago, John Humphrey was an analyst at a venture capital firm. Now he’s founded a venture of his own. “I didn’t want to be in investing anymore. I wanted to build a team that would have an opportunity to do something impactful,” says the CEO of Greycork, a Boston-based startup launching on Oct. 13 with a tech-forward business plan, but a very tangible product: solid wood furniture crafted in Somerset, an hour south of the city.

After quitting his job in finance, Humphrey began searching for partners. He found them in two Rhode Island School of Design grads, furniture designer Bruce Kim and digital designer Alec Babala. At their first meeting—held via Google Hangout, naturally—the trio of 20-somethings started to conceptualize a brand for Ikea graduates, with high-quality furniture that wouldn’t require an engineering degree to assemble or a smallcountry’s GDP to afford.

With Humphrey’s experience in VC funding, Greycork raised just shy of $300,000 from angel investors to get sourcing and manufacturing underway. The result: “Brooks,” a debut collection with a bench, a coffee table and a dining  table, priced from $500 to $950 and available in solid walnut, ash or white oak, with steel legs in three different finishes. The trio hopes to open a Boston showroom by early 2015, but with designs that ship flat and snap together easily, the focus will always be on e-commerce, which Humphrey sees as an untapped market. “Under 4 percent of furniture sales—a $100 billion industry—are online, compared to apparel and footwear at 15 percent,” he explains. “We built our business so you can buy solid wood furniture online that is inexpensive to ship, sets up in seconds and has a flexible return policy.”

The plan is to release new collections three times a year, a pace made possible by close ties with their local manufacturer. “A lot of what we are able to do as a brand we do because we have these relationships,” Humphrey says. “We’re interacting with this rich heritage of woodworkers, and that emphasis on craftsmanship gets communicated through our digital presence.” Cue the teaser photos Greycork posted on social media in the weeks leading up to the launch, where the designs “show some leg,” peeking out from beneath the American flag in a nod to their made-in-the-USA pedigree. “People who crave knowledge will be more engaged,” says Humphrey, who hopes the teasers have left some potential customers on the edge of their seats.