↵

Abstract raises $30M

4 years ago from Dragos Gavrila, Graphic Designer. Logos, icons and typography. Available for remote freelance projects.

  • Jasim A Basheer, 4 years ago

    Here's my wild guess: they raised that money so they can do more ambitious things other than just version control, and not worry every few months about meeting payroll. I'm biased because I'm a participant in the design tooling ecosystem, and I think there is tons more to be done to improve the day-to-day life of designers before we'll run out of low hanging fruits. From the announcement post it seems Abstract intends to be a sort of a clearing center for all your design assets - for example someone can design a profile card in Sketch and someone else can assemble it inside a Profile page designed in XD.

    However it is going to be challenging for them to remain completely out of creating their own design tool - it is a recurring itch that bothers people who've tried building even the humblest design-related tool, because you often have to work around limitations and quirks and wouldn't be able to help dream of a bluer sky.

    They also might expand their enterprise sales team - expanding security and access controls was hinted at in the TechCrunch article - and that can only mean an enterprise play.

    All I can say is, what a time to be around to witness the emergence of a new industry category! :)

    4 points
    • Ravi Shanker, 4 years ago

      I love the Enterprise bit. I've worked in a Medium-Large Enterprise before and the best they've gotten at versioning design files is using Dropbox. Design was at its nascent stages inside the org itself but it was important to establish the processes right away so that as the team gets bigger, they are better equipped at handling changes and don't have to point fingers.

      Also, given that we were handling NDA'd projects across multiple enterprise clients, having to pay for multiple services (Dropbox/Box/Google Drive etc) depending on the project was getting increasingly difficult. With Abstract and Plant, it was easier for the design team to track and update changes in a single place as they moved teams.

      They've mentioned in the article that they're looking at introducing light-weight editing in the future. With a product so heavily reliant on Sketch, I'd love to see them work closely with other tools and incorporate their features.

      2 points
    • Andrew C, 4 years ago

      Honestly at this point it’d be a little ridiculous for every design tools company to make a design editor. Invision got completely owned by their marketing around Studio and haven’t recovered to this day due to an overhyped launch. I honestly truly believe most designers are resistant to one company doing it all.

      The asset management piece is a more interesting play.

      1 point