Abstract, a San Francisco-based design workflow platform company that supports thousands of modern product teams, has raised $30 million in Series C funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led this round of funding. Existing investors Scale Venture Partners, Amplify Partners, and Cowboy Ventures also participated in this round. Including this round, Abstract has raised $54.2 million in total funding. In conjunction with this round, Lightspeed partner Nakul Mandan is joining the company’s board of directors.
“With this additional investment, Abstract can continue to build out a flexible design workflow platform, where designers, developers, and stakeholders from across the company can participate in the design process,” said Abstract co-founder and CEO Josh Brewer in a statement. “As Abstract looks to continue to serve more design teams, Lightspeed’s experience in helping SaaS companies accelerate sales and marketing was attractive to help the company manage rapid growth.”
Using Abstract, design teams have end-to-end connectivity such as storing, managing, and versioning design files to design system distribution. This makes it easier to streamline reviews, present work, gather feedback, and pass design files off to development.
There are more than 5,000 design teams around the world that have adopted Abstract like Cisco, Shopify, Intuit, Salesforce, and OpenTable.
“Abstract has streamlined our design process so much that our team has saved hundreds of hours in work,” added OpenTable design systems lead Kellen Mannion. “We now have a centralized hub for all product design communication channels, visual language, and contributions. We’ve eliminated the scramble of figuring out where things live, and our leadership team and stakeholders always know where they can find the latest designs for review and where to leave feedback.”
Abstract will be releasing several new features and product enhancements. The developer features like Inspect and Assets also give customers the ability to view all design specifications and export the assets needed for implementation without having to reference an outdated design spec. Plus several enterprise admin features such as team management, account provisioning, SAML 2.0 and pre-built Okta integrations will give organizations more flexibility and security as it scales.
“As design becomes an increasingly significant competitive advantage, the tools designers use have to become more sophisticated, collaborative, and transparent to the broader organization. At Lightspeed, we invest in the sort of exceptional teams that are poised to transform a market,” explained Mandan. “Josh, Kevin, and the rest of the Abstract team have reimagined a design workflow that is quickly becoming the professional standard for how growing design teams work together and with functional stakeholders. We are excited to partner with Abstract to help the company continue its explosive growth.”
