The Australian venture capital firm Starfish Ventures has invested $3 million in DesignCrowd, according to a media release dispatched on Thursday.
The Australian start-up, a design crowdsourcing community with more than 40,000 registered graphic designers, plans to use the new investment to launch two new services in 2012 and to expand its client base outside Australia.
“Starfish’s investment is very exciting, it will help us grow from a bootstrapped Sydney start-up into a global company. We’ve done well in Australia, new we want to take on the world and Starfish is the perfect partner to help us succeed,” said Alec Lynch, DesignCrowd Founder and CEO.
While DesignCrowd already has users and clients in 159 countries (such as the Harvard Business School, which crowdsourced the logo for its Forum for Innovation and Growth, and Anthill, which crowdsourced the design of its Cool Company Awards logo), the start-up plans to use the money to further its overseas expansion, especially in the US.
According to Tony Glenning of Starfish Ventures, the venture capital firm believes in the crowdsourcing model.
“We are really attracted to the idea of crowdsourcing the solution, rather than simply providing a marketplace for outsourcing, which ends up as a race to the bottom and is neither beneficial to the customer nor the designer. Alec and his team have done a great job providing a unique offering that serves both,” said Glenning.
DesignCrowd was founded in 2008 by Alec Lynch and in 2009 received $0.3 million from angel investors. The business has grown more than 1,300% in the last two and a half years.
Photo by williamnyk
