Accel Invests $35M. in 99designs?After Years of Trying

Accel Partners has invested $35 million in the crowdsource design service 99designs-- a monster of a series A. Of course, 99designs is not your average early-stage startup. Born in Melbourne, Australia out of an older company called sitepoint.com, 99designs is bootstrapped, profitable and growing revenues at a rate of about 120% a year. A few strategic angel investors also participated including Michael Dearing, Stewart Butterfield, Dave Goldberg and Anthony Casalena. Accel's Andrew Braccia and Ryan Sweeney will join the board along with Dearing. The growth helps explain why Braccia has been courting this deal since 2009. And he wasn't alone. 99designs CEO Patrick Llewellyn says several VCs have been pinging the company, and until now, they've all been turned away. They all seem to find out about the company the same way: One of their portfolio companies uses the service to get a good, cheap logo.

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