Launched in solely November final 12 months, the Craft Docs app — which was constructed from the bottom up as an iOS app for collaborative paperwork — has secured an $eight million Series A spherical led by Creandum. Also taking part was InReach Ventures, Gareth Williams (former CEO and co-founder of Skyscanner) and a variety of different tech entrepreneurs, lots of whom are ex-Skyscanner.
Currently accessible on iOS, iPadOS and MacOS, Craft now plans to launch APIs, prolonged integrations and a browser-based editor in 2021. It has aspirations to turn into a related product to Notion, and the founder and CEO Balint Grosz advised me over a Zoom name that “Notion is very much focused around writing and wikis and all that sort of stuff. We have a lot of users coming from Notion, but we believe we have a better solution for people, mainly for written content. Notion is very strong with its databases and structural content. People just happen to use it for other stuff. So we are viewed as a very strong competitor by our users, because of the similarities in the product. I don’t believe our markets overlap much, but right now from the outside people do switch from Notion to us, and they do perceive us as being competitors.”
He advised me this was much less right down to the app expertise than “the hierarchical content. We have this structure where you can create notes within notes, so with every chunk of text you add content and navigate style, and add inside of that — and Notion has that as well. And that is a feature which not many products have, so that is the primary reason why people tend to compare us.”
Craft says its fundamental benefits over Notion are UX; Data storage and privateness (Craft is offline first, with real-time sync and collaboration; you need to use third-party cloud providers (i.e. iCloud); and integrations with different instruments.
Orosz was beforehand accountable for Skyscanner’s cellular technique after the corporate acquired his earlier firm, Distinction.
Fredrik Cassel, common associate at Creandum, mentioned in a assertion: “Since our first discussions we’ve been impressed by both the amount of love users have for Craft, as well as the team’s unique ability to create a product that is beautiful and powerful at the same time. The upcoming features around connectivity and data accessibility truly set Craft apart from the competition.”
Craft iPad app. Image Credits: Craft
Roberto Bonanzinga, co-founder at InReach Ventures, added: “We invested in Craft on day zero because we were fascinated by the clarity and the boldness of Balint’s vision – to reinvent how millions of people can structure their thoughts and write them down in the most effective and beautiful way.”
The launch and funding of the Craft startup suggests there’s something of a “Skyscanner Mafia” rising, after its acquisition by Trip.com Group (previously Ctrip), the most important journey agency in China, $1.75 billion in 2016.
Other backers of the corporate embody Carlos Gonzalez (former CPO at Skyscanner, CTPO at GoCardless), Filip Filipov (former VP Strategy at Skyscanner), Ross McNairn (former CEO at Dorsai, CPO at TravelPerk), Stefan Lesser (former Technology and Partnership supervisor at Apple) and Akos Kapui (former head of Technology at Skyscanner, VP of Engineering at Shapr3D).
