Supernova, a Y Combinator graduate whose product design documentation software incorporates integrated design tokens and collaborative features, yesterday announced a $4.8 million seed raise that featured the Palo Alto VC Wing Venture Capital.
The Prague-based startup's product offer revolves around managing itemised breakdowns of individual decisions made throughout the design process.
In software, product design decisions are recorded as "design tokens" which integrate into an atomised workflow showing how design projects are structured; covering everything from object styles to RGB colour codes, typography and animations.
Supernova's provided estimates show the design market is now sized at $162 billion, with collaboration and "digital experience" cited as emerging priorities.
With its design documentation product, Supernova aims to allow teams to turn design tokens into the "single source of truth" for their projects, helping them succinctly document disparate elements of product design, while always keeping the end-game (their customers) in mind.
And Supernova has notched up an impressive client roster, managing campaigns at the global media group Hearst, the latest fridges and tumble dryers from Swedish home appliances firm Electrolux, and joined up design thinking for real estate brands owned by News Corp subsidiary Move.com.
At the latter, the head of designs systems for Move.com subsidiary Realtor.com argues the Supernova product manages to democratise top-tier design documenting tools, usually made available only to "design-forward" large enterprises.
"A design system functions as a shared language between design and developers that evolves to incorporate all the standards and workflows that can exist within large enterprises with complex needs," says Realtor.com designs systems lead Bethany Schwanke.
"With Supernova, any company can easily connect the work and tell design and engineering’s paired story using the tools already in use within design and engineering teams."
The documentation software has no-code editing and overlaps with existing design platforms like the popular collaborative design software Figma, online code repositories Gitlab and Github, or custom-made workflows.
Supernova's $4.8 million seed round will help tailor its platform to increase the number of large enterprises using the software, while also paving the way for it to join the US market.
Wing Venture Capital led the round, with further participation from European VCs EQT Ventures, Kaya VC and angel syndicate Expedite Ventures. In addition, the round included lone angel investors such as Sara Varni (leads marketing at text message marketing platform Attentive, previously CMO at Twilio).
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