Playbook, which aims at being the Dropbox for designers raises $4M in a round led by Founders Fund
Jessica Ko, then head of design at Google, and later Opendoor, realized that her teams spent approximately 90% of their time looking for assets in Dropbox.
They would often find older versions. They couldn't find the information they needed. They might have even accidentally selected the wrong asset.
Ko recalls that it was a chaotic and confusing process. Anybody could enter and modify things or change folder structures. It was chaotic and could not be fixed.
She said that Opendoor's growth made the problem even more complex.
Ko recalls that designers quit because it caused them anxiety. It wasn't yet solved by Dropbox. Google Drive wasn't a viable alternative. Designers are the ones who deal most with files and exchanging files all the time.
Ko. says that aside from the stress and frustration caused by file storage and sharing, the inability to find the right assets led to many errors which, in turn, led to a lot of money being lost.
She said that we spent a lot on photo shoots as we couldn't find new items or people would have the need to remake designs.
She added that designers were not the only ones who required access to the assets. They were needed by finance teams for tasks such as creating pitch decks.
Ko quit Opendoor in 2018 to solve the problem by creating file storage that can be used for modern design workflows. She wanted to create a new type of cloud storage, one that was not like Dropbox or Google Drive, but would be used by creatives.
Ko (CEO), teamed up Alex Zirbel, (CTO), to launch Playbook in San Francisco, which she described as "the Dropbox for designers". Today, the startup announced that it had raised $4 million in a seed round of funding led by Founders Fund. This was at a valuation of $20 million.
Abstract, Inovia and Maple are also investors in this round. Wilson Sonsini is also a part of the round.
Playbook claims that it can import, tag, categorize and categorize an entire media library of organizations in just minutes.
Playbook started out with the goal of trying to change the way folders are used for assets. Then, Playbook added subfolders. The company then set out to change how people share files.
TechCrunch's Ko explained that version control is even more complicated because so much of it can be done via email and Slack. Playbook has created a storage system that is accessible by everyone, rather than just sending files through different channels.
These assets were stored in what Ko described as a file cabinet for years. These days sharing assets is more collaborative, and there are different types of parties involved like contractors and freelancers. This makes it difficult to control the versions and who manages them.
Ko claims that Playbook offers 4TB free storage. This is 266x the amount of Google Storage, and 2,000x that of Dropbox. This encourages users to use the platform as a creative hub and not worry about running out. It scans, organizes, tags and tags files automatically and makes it easy to visually browse files and folders.
Playbook launched a beta version in March to the design community. It received about 1,000 users within two months. The beta was still being used by people, and Playbook had to close it at one point to ensure that it could handle all of the new users.
It currently has around 10,000 beta users. Individual freelancers and design teams from companies such as Fast, Folx, and Literati are some of the early users.
Ko stated that the seven-person company will be focusing on getting the product right, before trying to monetize it and launch to enterprises (which is likely to happen next year).
Playbook is currently focusing on freelancers. Playbook believes that cloud storage must be more intelligent due to the rapid growth of freelancers following the pandemic.
Ko explained to TechCrunch that we want to first solve this use case and then unlock the problem from below.
Another strategy is to have Playbook introduced by freelancers to their companies or enterprises. This allows for marketing to be integrated into the product.
She said that they can transfer files and assets through Playbook to clients who are more inclined to adopt.
Playbook currently manages over 2,000,000 assets. It also claims that it receives hundreds of waitlist signups each month.
Zirbel stated that the startup plans to expand into image scanning, similarity and content detection. Zirbel also mentioned that they are interested in previewing, long-term cloud storage, and tons of other integrations.
He said that there are many interesting technological challenges when you concentrate on the creative side cloud storage.
John Luttig, founders Funds, said that when he first met Ko Zirbel and Zirbel last January, it was evident that their firm had never seen such a deep understanding and thoughtfulness about file management. He also believes that there has been very little innovation since the launch of Dropbox in 2007.
He wrote via email that the product uses modern design principles, collaboration principles and artificial intelligence to simplify file management. Their design-centric backgrounds make them well-suited to redesign the user experience for file system users.
He said that Playbook can leverage the latest advances in computer vision and design to create a better product for managing and sharing files.
