Europe’s answer to Canva and Adobe, Kittl has just raised about €10.8 million for its design platform. The Berlin-based team is now planning to extend its offering and help more creatives create the designs they want effortlessly.
Founded in 2020 by Nicolas Heymann and Tobias Saul, Kittl’s design platform has been developed with creators in mind – enabling users to be as creative as they want without being hindered by tech complications.
The German startup, which began life as Heritage Type, has just raised new funding a year since launching its Kittl platform and is set to expand.
Funding details
- €10.8 million raised in a Series A round
- The round was led by Left Lane Capital with participation from Speedinvest
- Angel investors including Intercom Co-Founder Des Traynor, former Bebo CEO Shaan Puri, and product leaders from Calm, Amazon and Instagram also joined the round
Making stand-out designs and distinctive branding is imperative to all businesses. It’s all part of creating an identity, becoming familiar, and standing out from the crowd. While there are a number of design tools out there – Canva and Adobe being two major incumbents – the process isn’t always simple or accessible.
Nicolas Heymann, CEO and Co-Founder: “Creating advanced designs can be a long and painful process. With Kittl, we help you to design stunning graphics with magic tools that empower your creation process.”
Berlin-based Kittl aims to stand out from the crowd by making it easy for anyone to create complex commercial designs. The design platform offers web-based tools developed to make it as simple as possible to create distinctive logos; t-shirts; posters; labels, and cards. Users can begin by choosing from thousands of ready-made templates, before customizing them with powerful and easy-to-use tools to make something truly unique.
Magnus Karnehm, Principal at Left Lane Capital: “Kittl’s easy-to-use platform democratizes the creation of professional-grade graphic design. Designers, creators, and hobbyists alike have long searched for a solution that makes creating complex digital assets simple. Kittl has grown its user base and user engagement incredibly fast, and this is entirely thanks to their laser focus on creating a platform that spans ideation, creation, and ultimately monetization of graphic design. We were impressed to see that the majority of users are monetizing their Kittl designs.”
Since the 2022 launch of Kittl, users have created more than 1 million designs.
With these new funds, the young company plans to grow its team and develop tools that will help users turn their design dreams into reality. Developing these tools requires considerable talent, and the funding will go a long way in helping create the team that can create these creative capabilities. As explained by Heymann:
“This is a very tech-heavy development which requires strong engineering resources. In particular, we’ll be doubling down on existing A.I. and machine learning efforts to really empower users.”
Heymann added: “Kittl lets a user easily create products on a professional level without the need for complex tools that take a long time to learn. We’re going to be building new tools to unlock new possibilities and make Kittl even more powerful.”
One user, Julian Chavez, who sells via Etsy using Kittl design, commented: “I cannot say it enough. Kittl was by far the BEST thing I got involved with in 2022. Once I started publishing designs on Kittl, I started getting followers and seeing people use my design as a template. Kittl is the best.”
