San Francisco – 99designs, the developer of an online
marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design, said on Thursday it has raised $35
million in its first round of funding, led by Accel Partners.
Angel investors
Michael Dearing (eBay, Harrison Metal), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey), Stewart
Butterfield (Flickr, Tiny Speck) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace) also
participated.
San Francisco-based 99designs was founded in Australia in 2008,
when co-founders Mark Harbottle and Matt Mickiewicz — the entrepreneurs behind
sitepoint.com, Flippa.com and Learnable.com — spun it out of the
SitePointForums.
The company, which has 26 employees, said it will use the
capital for international expansion, platform development, community
initiatives like design scholarships and aggressive hiring in both San
Francisco and Melbourne.
"Most importantly, this investment goes a long
way towards guaranteeing that we will be around long term," wrote
Harbottle in the company’s blog.
99designs said it currently has over 100,000
designers in 192 countries, and has paid out over $19 million to designers to
date.
Related Links:
http://blog.99designs.com/2011/04/28/99designs-funding
