'We plan to spend a good chunk of this investment on distribution and marketing, which means more customers for our design community. We also plan to build out the platform with many of the features our customers and designers have been asking for to improve the overall experience. And finally, we will create new and exciting opportunities for designers to connect with clients, enhance their skills, and earn an income doing what they love.'
99designs chief executive Patrick Llewellyn also told TechCrunch that the company needed the funding partially because it found it hard to hire once it moved its sales division to Silicon Valley in the US. 'Any employee you look to hire here asks, 'Who funds you?'' Llewellyn he said. 'You realize there's a psyche that's very different from Australia. To go to the next level and bring on the talent we wanted was going to be hard being a bootstrapped company from Australia.'
The funding injection represents the third large investment by Accel Partners in an Australian company in the past year, with the venture capital firm pumping $60 million into local software as a service business Atlassian and a reported amount between $70 million and $100 million in online payments group OzForex last year.
Image credit: Svilen Milev (SXC.hu), royalty free
