Roboflow, a Des Moines-based startup that empowers developers to build their own computer vision applications, has raised a $2.1 million seed round co-led by Lachy Groom and Craft Ventures.
Additional investors in the round include Next Level Ventures, Segment co-founder Calvin French-Owen, Lob CEO Leore Avidar, Firebase co-founder James Tamplin and early Dropbox engineer Aston Motes.
This summer, the company was accepted into Y Combinator’s 2020 Summer Batch. “YC’s Demo Day is how we ended up connecting with Craft. And then Lachy is someone who I asked via the YC network for an introduction to them,” said Joseph Nelson, co-founder and CEO of Roboflow.
Roboflow plans to use the new funding to expand its team. The company is actively hiring and currently has positions for Growth Analyst and Full Stack Engineer listed on its careers page.
“We still have quite a bit to figure out in a fun way,” said Nelson. “One big thing is hiring. The second is that, while we have a product that thousands of developers have used, there’s still a lot more to build.”
Since Roboflow launched in January 2020, more than 20,000 developers have used Roboflow’s platform, Nelson told Clay & Milk.
“Once you start to have users and customers, they have wants and needs, and kind of point you in the right direction of what it is you should be building,” said Nelson. “It’s basically a question of prioritizing that feedback and having a really good view of who you’re building for.”
The company also shared that it raised a previously-unannounced $500k angel round earlier this summer.
Previous coverage
Roboflow accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 Batch -Aug. 25, 2020
Roboflow is streamlining the development of computer vision apps -Jan. 23, 2020