Marvel, the fast-growing mobile and web prototyping platform, announced that it’s raised $820K in seed funding from Connect Ventures, ustwo and Roberto Bonanzinga, alongside the release of their new iPhone, iPad and Android apps.
Launched 12 months ago, London-based Marvel enables anyone to turn any image into a realistic mobile or web prototype without needing to code, and has quickly grown to over 60,000 users and over 2 million images uploaded, having grown through word of mouth alone. Thousands of designers, entrepreneurs, students and businesses are utilising the platform to bring their digital ideas to life, without having to spend time and money on development.
Marvel plans on using the latest round of investment to grow the development and design team in order to create innovative features and experiences, including a public API planned for 2015. On the release of brand new iOS and Android apps, Marvel is looking to further democratise the prototyping process by allowing any photograph of a sketch to be turned into an interactive app demo within minutes.
Users can also draw app designs directly on the screen using touch or stylus inputs. Any prototypes created on iOS or Android are synced to the users’ web account, where they can collaborate with colleagues or friends. Marvel is built on top of the Dropbox API and removes the pain of having to manually update projects every time there’s a change to the design. Everything syncs seamlessly with Dropbox, meaning prototypes are always up to date with the latest version.
Murat Mutlu, CEO and co-founder of Marvel said: “The Dropbox API has allowed us to harness the power, convenience and scale of Dropbox to provide a frictionless experience for our users. It meant we were able to bootstrap our side-project and stay lean while Dropbox did a lot of the heavy lifting, now that we have seed funding we’re really looking forward to taking it to the next level.”
He adds: “Prototyping is quickly becoming a core part of the creative process like Photoshop or pen and paper, our goal is to lower the barrier to this space and inspire the next generation of makers.”
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