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DesignCrowd has raised $6 million in a Series B funding round led by a new Australian VC firm

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Design crowdsourcing platform DesignCrowd recently announced that it has closed a new $6 million Series B capital raising.

The round has been led by new Australian venture capital firm AirTree Ventures, founded by Daniel Petre and Craig Blair.

A new Aussie VC firm is great news in itself!

Existing investor Starfish Ventures — which previously invested $6 million into DesignCrowd — is also participating. The new round brings DesignCrowd’s total capital raised to date to over $12 million.

As part of the capital raising, AirTree Ventures partner Craig Blair will now join Anthony Glenning (Starfish Ventures), Garry Visontay (Chairman) and Alec Lynch (founder and CEO) on the DesignCrowd board. 

More fuel for the DesignCrowd vision

Blair said AirTree Ventures is excited to be able to lead this round and that they are looking forward to being part of the DesignCrowd growth story.

“Crowdsourcing is still only a fraction of the $44 billion design industry and the DesignCrowd team has managed to take market share from incumbents by obsessively focussing on product to deliver the best design outcomes for customers.”

Alec Lynch (pictured above) said this latest round of capital raising would help his company pursue its vision even harder.

“Our goal is to pioneer design crowdsourcing, to perfect the design crowdsourcing process and to take crowdsourcing to every corner of the world,” said Lynch.

“We aim to have the number one design crowdsourcing service in the world — and this capital will help us do that.”

What exactly will DesignCrowd use this $6 million for?

Lynch revealed that this latest funding round would be used to continue to expand internationally and innovate by improving its crowdsourcing platform.

“We will use the new capital to invest in three things: sales and marketing; product and innovation; and customer service,” he said.

“We plan on scaling sales and marketing globally, that is, outside of Australia and especially in the US. Already 75 per cent of our revenues come from outside of Australia, but we believe there’s huge room for further growth.”

Lynch added that they will also be investing heavily in product and customer service, and plan on doubling the size of their engineering and customer service teams in 2015.

“Crowdsourcing and DesignCrowd will continue to disrupt the $44 billion traditional design industry and the opportunity for DesignCrowd remains huge.”

“Last year, we reached $20 million in total designer projects and we’re aiming to double that and hit $40 million in 2015,” Lynch declared.

This latest funding round comes off the back of DesignCrowd’s 2014 acquisition of creative contest platform Worth1000, the opening of offices in San Francisco and Manila, and reaching the milestone of $20 million in payments to designers.

They also recently ran a really cool competition in which designers on the platform were invited to submit “hipsterized” versions of some of the world’s biggest brands’ logos.