Today we announced that InVision closed $100 million in Series E funding. At this point, some CEO-founders would talk about the how this is a major validation of our business. We think it’s a validation of something bigger and much more important: you.
It’s a recognition by the investment community that the work you do in digital product design is influencing all areas of business, and has become a core driver of the strategic discussions happening inside every organization in the world. The most significant of those discussions revolves around how to become more customer centric.
Few people know the importance of prioritizing customers as well as Jeff Bezos. Here’s how he once described Amazon’s mission: “The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.”
While this might have seemed revelatory a decade or so ago, it’s become a universal truth to which all companies are slowly awakening. The good ones have realized that the path to being customer centric lies in becoming product centric, and the best ones have realized that the way to becoming product centric is through design.
When we started InVision in 2011, our goal was to help advance this trend and to give product designers and their teams everything they need to create incredible customer experiences. We’ve dedicated ourselves to closing the gap between the tools available to designers and the work they are tasked with doing. Today, I’m proud to say that InVision has evolved into a platform that has the ability to power every stage of the digital product design process and to help you engage your entire organization in conversations about the business, product and customer.
Moving forward, we’ll be putting this investment to work to evolve our platform—further serving you and your colleagues. In just the last few weeks, you’ve probably heard of two new products that I believe will change the game for designers and their teams. The first, Studio, is the world’s most powerful screen design tool. Studio was more than two years in the making and is the most significant product effort in InVision’s history. The second, Design System Manager, is a platform to scale your design practice as a team that stays creative, consistent and constantly evolves.
It isn’t just about technology. We’re investing further in design education—taking what we’ve learned from studying the best design teams in the world and turning it into actionable techniques. We’ve recruited some of the best designers in the world solely for the purposes of creating content and workshops, and spreading best practices. Our goal is to help designers take their craft to new heights, help design teams work better and more efficiently, and help companies harness the power of design as the most powerful differentiator in the most important place in the world… the screen.
From the beginning, our mantra has always been to stay as close as possible to the design community, to listen to you, to understand your frustrations and to champion your success. Our success as a company is tied to the conversations you’ve had with us, the access you’ve granted us and most importantly, the feedback you’ve given us. So in many ways, this news isn’t about InVision, it’s about you — our users, customers and community. You are the center of everything we do and the reason we come to work every day. Taking on this investment is a renewal of our commitment to supporting you in the important work that you do.
Let’s design the future, together.
– Clark
Clark, also known as “Clark from InVision,” is the CEO and Co-founder of InVision. He’s based in Brooklyn, NY.
