Rampersand investment notes: JigSpace Ramps up with a new round of funding
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As exciting as it is when we find a new gem of a company to invest in, one of my favourite things is leading a follow on round into a company that is doing incredible things. JigSpace’s Series A is a huge validation of one of Australia’s most ambitious companies that is gaining global attention from the likes of Apple and Snapchat. We couldn’t be more pleased for Zac, Numa and the entire team on their latest milestone.
You can read more about our investment in the news here:
TechCrunch — Apple and Snap partner JigSpace, the ‘Canva for 3D,’ raises a $4.7M Series A
Financial Review — JigSpace scores $6m from Rampersand, Investible
Why are we so excited to lead this round?
👬 Founders: Zac and Numa are deeply experienced developers who we’ve seen grow into capable executives — and they keep following through on what they say they’ll do!
🥇 Recognition: Featured by Apple (twice) and chosen by Snap goes a long way to being stamped as the leader in the space
💪 Ambition: Humans learn better in 3D, yet our knowledge and information sharing is stuck in 2D powerpoints and videos — we’re energised by the founders’ vision of a future world where the world’s knowledge is 3D
⚙️ Product: 4M+ users, a 4.8 worldwide App Store rating, 50,000+ global users every month, and 40% MoM user growth of Jig (without any marketing spend) are all signs of a winning product as JigSpace becomes the Canva for 3D presentations
What did we like about Jig in the first place?
Rampersand first invested in JigSpace in 2018, after the team met Zac and Numa a year earlier, and went on to lead its seed round in 2020, . I hadn’t yet joined Rampersand, but I first met them during the Mel18 Startmate cohort (around the same time) and quickly understood these were founders with unique insight, insatiable curiosity and deep experience in game development and scientific visualisation — coupled with a genuine passion for bringing the world’s information to life in 3D.
Jig is also an intensely product centric and customer focused organisation. We watched as they released product upgrades one after the other — each one more elegant than the last, obfuscating the deeply technical back end. And how the team meticulously gathered feedback and iterated to meet customer needs.
Watching the seeds take root
The JigSpace product became a pleasure to use. By the time of Rampersand’s first investment team had built an intuitive, fun product that did what it said on the box: allowed humans to learn in 3D, immediately. We weren’t the only ones to agree. JigSpace had 800k downloads and 40k monthly active users at the time.
With the release of Jig Pro last year, they now have some of the highest B2B engagement rates I’ve ever seen, closer to a social media platform than B2B SaaS: a 40% month-on-month growth rate and count some of the world’s largest and most innovative companies as customers.
We take customer engagement very seriously and believe it’s a leading metric of a useful product, whereas we see revenue as a lagging indicator. Don’t get me wrong, revenue is awesome, but we can see customer engagement a lot earlier!
Recognition from Apple followed shortly after when in 2020, Zac and Numa were asked to collaborate on the Apple keynote event demonstrating a new method of real-time 3D collaboration in manufacturing using the iPhone 12. US telco giant Verizon followed next, asking to feature Jig as a showcase in its 5G campaign. Then came Snapchat with JigSpace joining the Snap Lens Network — opening the opportunity for hundreds of millions of Snapchatters to easily create delightful 3D experiences with its ‘How to Jig’ Lens. Then came Apple (again) when JigSpace was featured as part of the global iPad Pro launch in 2021 — one of only three companies featured.
The founders’ ambition only grew, and also narrowed as the early adopters were identified and onboarded with great success. With that identified, the goal now is that no product should launch without a Jig. It’s a big goal but it’s also specific and relates directly to their target customers.
Importantly, a few things haven’t changed. The founders are still doing what they say they will do. When Zac and Numa run into problems (like all founders do), what sets them apart is that they are exceptionally good at learning quickly and finding solutions that still achieve their goals. We’ve consistently seen this over time which gives us confidence that they’ll continue to overcome challenges well into the future, whatever they may be.
And users still love the product! JigSpace has acquired 4M+ users (and growing) with an unbelievable average rating of 4.8 in the App Store.
Where to from here?
It’s still very early days for JigSpace. With this round of funding the company will continue to expand its global team and extend the platform — bringing us one step closer to having the world’s knowledge come to life in 3D.
JigSpace will be hiring across engineering, product, sales and marketing, so if you’re interested in joining a truly pioneering Australian startup, hit them up here.
Most of all, we’re delighted to be on the journey with a couple of the most interesting, ambitious and down to earth founders in Australia.
