Benchmark x Sketch

Trying to reverse engineer why Sketch is a great venture bet in 2019

I am going to try to reverse engineer why Benchmark invested twenty million dollars in the European company Sketch that was founded in 2010 and share why I think it is a very counterintuitive bet. This was a very interesting investment given the current state of design tools landscape with both late stage, well capitalized, popular startups and a savvy incumbent led by one of most seasoned and well known operators and one of the most effective turnaround public company CEOs.

Figma’s $40 million in Series C funding led by Sequoia was announced earlier this year. Figma has captured a vast majority of tech twitter’s mindshare. Almost every designer I know uses it. Everyone online in my bubble raves about it. Companies like Square, Twitter and Uber use Figma. Top tier investors like Greylock, Index Ventures and KPCB have led its prior financing rounds. KPCB’s Mamoon Hamid who led the Figma investment has a stellar track record (Slack, Box, Intercom, Rippling, Front) in enterprise SaaS tools.

Here’s Index’s Danny Rimir on why he led the investment in Figma in 2015 :

“The visionary team at Figma has not only recognized that design (and designers) are going to be paramount to the future of the creative economy, but they have…