I vividly remember the first time I played with an image editor. I was only thirteen at the time, but the ability to create something new, to have an idea and bring it to life, had a profound effect on me. It’s what I’ve been pursuing as a product leader ever since.
But in today’s graphic design products, it’s hard to find that joy. Tools have become utilitarian. Workflows are bogged down with mundane and tedious tasks, sharing and collaborating is full of friction and frustration, and experimenting with and iterating on your design is slow and laborious. All of this takes time that creatives should spend creating, exploring, and playing – not wrangling software.
We built Modyfi to make design fun again: an AI-native, browser-based, collaborative design platform and image editor that helps creatives do what they do best. After developing the product for 18 months, we introduced Modyfi as a private beta in June. Since then, we’ve gotten tons of great feedback, released new features every week, and have been blown away by what beta users have created.
Now, it's time for the next step. I’m happy to announce the launch of Modyfi’s public beta, which grants free access to thousands of designers, creatives, art directors, marketing professionals, artists, agency teams and content creators (and maybe some thirteen year olds).
To take Modyfi to the next stage of growth, we’ve raised a seed round of $7M, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), along with General Catalyst, Craft, Habitat Partners (Red Antler), Cursor Capital and an incredible lineup of angel investors and advisors.
Design: It’s everywhere you look
Since launching Modyfi, we’ve been delighted to see adoption from designers at hundreds of companies, including Nvidia, Stripe, Calm, Red Antler, Pixar and Spotify. But we know there are millions more creatives to reach, because designers are everywhere you look – across industries and organizations, new and old, there are designers bringing ideas to life, and making our world more beautiful, understandable, and useful.
But creatives aren’t just individuals working alone at a computer. Having worked with large cross-functional teams at Amazon and Snap, I’ve seen first-hand the pain involved in creative collaboration, from brainstorming new concepts to distributing assets to collecting feedback. We know design is a discipline that touches every team, from marketing to advertising to social media management and more. We want to help all of those teams be more creative – and have more fun doing it.
What’s next: Building the tool designers deserve
We’re grateful to the team at NEA for believing in what we are building. “Since launching only a few weeks ago, Modyfi is already seeing really encouraging early adoption, but it is the enthusiasm and can't-work-without-it usage that early adopters have been exhibiting, that gets us really excited,” said Luke Pappas, Partner, NEA. “Historically, this type of designer and design tool affinity is quite rare, and so we cannot wait to see how creators will continue to push the limits of Modyfi in the months to come.”
Many thanks to Modyfi’s investors WndrCo, Form Capital, Gaingels, and to our amazing angel investors including Sabrina Hahn, Thomas Conrad, Taylor Barada, Ben Lang, and Mike Krieger, to name a few.
With our seed funding, we’re able to further invest in our product and grow our hyper-talented team of engineers, ML experts, and graphics specialists. We’ll continue to take feedback from beta users to make Modyfi more powerful and useful in your everyday life. We’ll be rolling out some exciting new features this year, and can’t wait to share them with you.
In the meantime, we’d love for you to play with Modyfi. You can sign up here.
Have fun. We can’t wait to see what you create.