FiftyThree, the team behind the critically acclaimed Paper sketching app, has raised a $30 million Series B round led by Dayna Grayson of New
Georg Pettschnigg, FiftyThree's CEO and co-founder, says the new round of funding will help jump-start FiftyThree's move into the enterprise space, where he hopes the creative tools that made Paper popular can also revolutionize the kind of productivity typically done on the office whiteboard.
"We partnered with NEA because they're just the leading investors in enterprise, they just know the space so well," Pettschnigg told Business Insider. "Think Kit is the first step forward into that space."
Think Kit will be the first enterprise-focused app from FiftyThree, and it's designed to make whiteboards and post-it notes obsolete by making rapid brainstorming and chart-creation easier.
FiftyThree
"Today most tools are for getting things done, but we don't have great tools for thinking," Pettschnigg said.
Think Kit will also act as a sort of auto-correct for diagramming, enabling users to focus less on their artistic skills while still producing tidy whiteboard-like sketches. FiftyThree says its secret sauce is the "Intention Engine," an input technology that works with both touch and pen input to "speed up the creation process of diagrams, charts, and presentations sketches."
Think Kit will also work with FiftyThree's own stylus, called Pencil, which currently works with its Paper sketching app.
FiftyThree
"With this investment, we accept a challenge," he said. "A challenge to bring a new crop of creative tools to an area that needs them most."