from Hacker News

Sketch raises $20M in Series A funding

by 3stripe on 3/17/19, 10:23 AM with 129 comments

  • by rsweeney21 on 3/17/19, 2:55 PM

    I'm a developer and I remember the first time I tried to do some design work. My design friends told me to use Photoshop and I just couldn't figure it out. The learning curve was so steep I gave up on my ambitions to learn UX design. Plus it seemed weird to be using a photo editing tool to design software.

    A few years later Sketch came along and it was so easy and intuitive to use that I was able to pick it up immediately. I've been able to get pretty good at UX design now because the barrier to entry on the tools side got so much lower.

    I wonder if there's a way to lower the barrier to entry for coding in the same way. I mean, when you think about it, we're still using text editors to build software. Seems odd.

    Anyway, Sketch is awesome and the first of this new wave of design tools. I use Figma now. It has most of the benefits of sketch and it supports Mac, Windows and in browser. I fear this funding may have come too late.

  • by pavlov on 3/17/19, 4:09 PM

    This means Sketch is now tied to VC’s revenue growth demands. Framer went down the same path of VC megabuck-driven development and a vocal part of the community seems unhappy with the outcome.

    A few years back, the Sketch founder made a convincing case in interviews for why the product is better off when they’re bootstrapped... This turn of events suggests they might be feeling the heat from well-funded competitors like Figma and Invision.

  • by filleokus on 3/17/19, 2:22 PM

    I haven't really used Sketch that much, but I always liked the native feel of it on the Mac. In the world of Slack-esque memory gobbling monstrosities it was just nice to use a piece of software made for the Mac, similar to the Omni Group applications.

    I'm for sure hoping that the web move isn't a step in ditching the Mac app. But perhaps the actual users of Sketch don't care, Figma is mostly a web app right?

  • by redindian75 on 3/17/19, 4:35 PM

    I agree with other commenters here. Its too late for Sketch. Sketch has promised to go Browser by the year end. Figma was already there 2 years back.

    Figma is eating their lunch. It does what Sketch does & much much more - in the browser.

    I moved from Sketch to Adobe XD to Figma. Not going back.

  • by yodon on 3/17/19, 5:55 PM

    In case anyone's worried about Figma not getting any love, they pulled in $40m from Sequoia last month.[0]

    [0] https://www.figma.com/blog/figma-series-c/

  • by Ecco on 3/17/19, 7:33 PM

    I quite don’t get the math behind this. That’s a 50 person company with 100M of revenues. Their yearly operating costs are probably around 5M. Even if said revenues spanned 10 years they would still be making 5M in profit each year. Since they most likely have some amount of growth, last year’s profit has to be much higher than that.

    Then why bother raising $20M? Isn't that amount a bit small compared to what they already made in yearly profit?

  • by social_quotient on 3/17/19, 9:58 PM

    I really hope they put some of those dollars towards Windows development. I find it odd that sketch is so awesome yet only works on 13% of the market machines. I’ve wanted my company to look at adopting sketch but it’s weird to have a file not everyone can open, edit, extend.

    Philosophically I find it odd to use a closed system which only runs on Mac to build experiences for web. Something about it rubs me wrong.

    Mac market share https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-qua...

  • by 3stripe on 3/17/19, 11:08 AM

    A browser-based version of Sketch would be huge - this is Figma's killer USP at the moment

  • by yazr on 3/17/19, 2:38 PM

    Can anyone estimate how much revenue/users Sketch has?

    A great sustainable comfortable product company. But its a developer tool, so of course we will get endless competitors products. So we need capital. So VC are now in a position to offer offers. And we get a bloodbath ?

  • by usaphp on 3/17/19, 7:26 PM

    Sketch to me is like Sublime Text, every time I try a new shiny toy (figma, adobe xd, framer/vscode, atom) I keep coming back to Sketch/Sublime Text. I really like their latest big update, it made the UI so much cleaner and easier to use.

  • by skilled on 3/17/19, 12:10 PM

    Surprised by this. I thought Sketch was doing well for itself.

  • by lostgame on 3/18/19, 1:48 PM

    All the people clamouring for Windows support clearly do not understand the philosophy behind how Sketch is made.

    It’s a MacOS app because it takes advantage of specific MacOS frameworks that allow it to feel like a quality and ‘native’ piece of software.

    We have different operating systems for different purposes. Many designers like to use a Mac anyway. They decided to fill that niche.

    Ports would mean massive, fundamental rewrites of huge chunks of the application’s infrastructure.

  • by MrTrvp on 3/17/19, 11:40 PM

    https://icons8.com/lunacy

    Lunacy is a good windows alternative to Sketch!

  • by huffmsa on 3/17/19, 4:13 PM

    Good now please support other OSes

  • by pcurve on 3/17/19, 1:14 PM

    If this helps them innovate and roll out features faster, it is all good. Competition is catching up quickly.

    I just hope they don’t go to mandatory annual fee model.

  • by sixdimensional on 3/17/19, 3:44 PM

    I still miss Adobe Fireworks.

  • by k__ on 3/17/19, 4:29 PM

    At the moment I mostly use Gravit Designer.

  • by owenwil on 3/17/19, 6:54 PM

    I honestly don't understand this in the context of Figma, and especially considering how coy they're being about what this means. I have heard from my own network that the 'web version' of Sketch is not designed to subsume the macOS version, which seems...misguided.

  • by rman666 on 3/17/19, 10:50 AM

    Clearly they deserve it. At least half the designers on the Internet use Sketch!

  • by coldtea on 3/17/19, 6:28 PM

    >and that one million people have already paid $99 for a perpetual license (with one year of free updates).

    $100 per year no matter what! That's mind boggling! Congrats to the team for making a useful app.

  • by 5_minutes on 3/17/19, 4:00 PM

    Let’s just hope Adobe doesn’t buy it as they did and ruined Macromedia

  • by xivzgrev on 3/17/19, 5:08 PM

    I’m amazed this is their first outside round. From what I hear it’s already kind of the standard tool for designers.

  • by aiisahik on 3/17/19, 6:58 PM

    Sketch is suffering from the result its own breath-taking success.

    As a result of its incredible popularity, too many other companies with larger war chests have started to compete against it head to head - Adobe XD - Invision Studio - Figma Every single one of them allows you to import sketch files.

    Bohemian has made a lot of money for its founders already. Now it needs to stay in the game.

  • by pier25 on 3/18/19, 1:29 AM

    I've never loved using Sketch. Granted it has some cool features, but I've found the performance and workflow to be poor.

    Personally I wish Adobe released a new version of Fireworks or a version of Illustrator with less illustration features. I tried XD and didn't love it either.

  • by sirwanqutbi on 3/17/19, 8:17 PM

    Will they develop a Windows version with this funding? Sorry tldr;

  • by sonnyblarney on 3/17/19, 11:48 PM

    Sorry but Sketch still feels like an upstart.

    So many little things - selection into layers, resizing groups, etc. etc. - all of it feels 'off'.

    Illustrator, I think is plain superior it's just considerably more expensive.

    Given that Sketch has not changed that much in the last few years, I can't fathom what's going on.

    And the lack of Windows support ...