After four years of bootstrapping, Denver-based Whimsical announced Tuesday that it has raised $30 million in its first fundraising round.
The Series A funding was led by Accel, with participation from Basis Set Ventures. Whimsical also received angel investments from GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, GitHub COO Erica Brescia, Stripe Chief Product Officer Will Gaybrick and others.
Whimsical is an app that integrates documents, flowcharts, wireframes, mind maps and sticky notes into one interconnected platform that does not require the user to open a new tab or sign into another platform.
In a blog post, Whimsical CEO and co-founder Kaspars Dancis said the company was founded in 2017 with a desire to bring remote workforces together – a concept that became all the more important during the pandemic.
“The current tools people use to get their jobs done—documents, spreadsheets, slide decks—don’t align with the way people work today. They are medium-oriented rather than job-oriented,” Dancis wrote. “Modern teams are collaborative, distributed and speedy. We wanted to build a platform for capturing, shaping and sharing ideas for the new workforce. It should feel like you’re in the same room with your team, working toward a shared outcome, even when everyone is spread out across the globe.”
In a blog post, Accel Partner Daniel Levine said he has been talking to Dancis about potentially investing in the company since January 2020.
Whimsical has generated millions in revenue over the last four years, so it had no need to raise funds, Dancis wrote. After tripling its revenue in the past year, Dancis wrote that the company has “reached an inflection point in our business and growth.”
“The funding will allow us to invest more in product so we can bring our vision to reality sooner,” he wrote. “It will also help us build a go-to-market team to reach more businesses and provide the support they need.”
