Poised by many as the one startup to break the dominance of Adobe in the world of design software, Figma has encountered a new group of backers in its $25 Million Series B funding round, with Kleiner Perkins leading a pack in which previous investors Greylock and Index also participated.
“In many respects, Figma’s traction and potential remind me of Slack at this stage,” said Mamoon Hamid, General Partner and Managing Director at Kleiner Perkins, who will be joining Figma’s board of directors.
Figma is a cloud-based tool for design, prototyping, and collaboration first launched in 2016. Its main goal is to simplify the collaboration across the design process for companies and users including designers, developers, product managers, marketers and anyone involved in the launching of new products.
“Figma makes the design process more open and collaborative, so teams can develop and bring new products to market faster,” said Mr. Hamid to PR Newswire. “We’re only at the beginning of our journey, and I can’t imagine a better partner than Kleiner Perkins and Mamoon,” said Dylan Field, Figma’s CEO.
This investment of Kleiner Perkins in Figma is an example of a growing market for SaaS, which is seems willing to break the Adobe dominance of design tools. Competing with Figma are others like InVisionApp, Bohemian BV’s Sketch, Zeplin, and Bootstrap. It is also a trend in tech companies, as Facebook, Amazon and Google have grown their art and design personnel by 65% last year, according to Bloomberg. Figma, founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, currently has among its clients companies like Microsoft, Slack, and Uber.
