Marvel, an online design and prototyping platform, has announced that it has raised £4 million in its Series A funding round from a group of marquee European investors, led by BGF Ventures.
While BGF Ventures, UK’s largest venture capital fund, is leading the latest funding round, previous investors in Marvel will also participate. These investors include Index Ventures, Connect Ventures, Inreach Ventures, Andy McLoughlin and Richard Fearn.
The funding raised in this round will be used to build sales and customer success teams within Marvel. It will also spend money to expand into new markets and ramp up product development and marketing.
The startup was founded in 2013 by Murat Mutlu, Brendan Moore and Jonathan Siao. The platform, which now has over 1 million registered users, claims that it has sees around 35,000 new users signing up each month. The application is fast becoming the go-to prototyping tool in tech and other industries.
The company believes that it is also changing the way teams deliver their work to clients and stakeholders by making Powerpoint presentations or emails redundant for showcasing designs.
Marvel is an all-in-one design platform that makes design and prototyping simple for everyone. As per the company, individuals and teams use Marvel to scale creativity throughout their workflow and organisation, from wire framing to user testing. It also provides the tools companies need to create and collaborate.
Last month, Marvel acquired POP, a Taiwanese prototyping competitor, which significantly expanded the company’s international user base. Many POP users were in the large enterprise and education sectors.
The company’s co-founder Murat Mutlu says:
Marvel is democratising design and empowering everyone to be involved in the process. We are lowering the barrier to getting started in design and making it much easier for people to work collaboratively.Marvel is no longer just about designers and we’re already seeing that everyone from marketing to success is using Marvel to create and collaborating on ideas.
Rory Stirling, partner at BGF Ventures, also shares his views on Marvel and the fundraising round. He says,
We’ve watched Murat, Brendan and Jonathan build this business over the last few years and are extremely proud to be joining them on the Marvel journey. We love their obsession with product and their affinity for users. Amazing things happen when technology is used to simplify creative processes and we believe Marvel has the ability to transform the way individuals and teams create great products on a global basis. This is exactly the type of ambition we like to back at BGF Ventures and we look forward to helping the team scale up a business that already has an impressive and loyal user base.
The company is expecting design to become even more critical in app and web development in the next few years and is investing heavily in design tools for the future. While the basic app and access to community features is free, designers and enterprises can pay increased subscriptions for additional functionality.
