DesignBay Raises Capital, Acquires DesignCrowd

DesignBay, an online graphic design crowdsourcing company based in Australia, has acquired and merged with US freelance design website DesignCrowd .

DesignBay has been growing at an average of 21% month on month for the last year, and the new entity now boasts over 12,000 graphic designers and studios from around the world.

The combined company will be known as DesignCrowd and will allow people to ‘crowdsource’ a range of creative services from logo design and web design to t-shirt and poster design.

The acquisition was funded by with a “significant” private investment by a group of investors. We’re talking about early stage investing here, so significant likely means low hundred thousands at best, particularly considering the fact that the sell price for DesignCrowd, based on traffic alone, would not have been massive.

Then again, Alec Lynch, managing director of the combined entity, says the investment has equipped the combined entity for “even further significant growth”, so their strategy for that growth, whether organic or through further acquisition, will ultimately determine just how big the investment really was.

Lynch added “crowdsourcing is essentially outsourcing on steroids” and DesignCrowd will offer “more powerful, higher quality and sustainable crowdsourcing by harnessing higher quality designers and offering thousands of participation payments each month to better organise and reward the crowd”.