Ceros
Auto Added by WPeMatico
Ceros launches MarkUp, a design collaboration tool for live websites
When designers need to collaborate with other teams, they can currently turn to products like InVision and Zeplin. But Ceros creative director Jack Dixon said there’s a “pretty interesting gap in the market” — once you move beyond prototypes and start working with websites that are either live or in staging, the process starts to become fragmented, relying on screenshots and email/phone/Google Docs.
That’s why the company (which focuses on powering interactive content “experiences”) is launching a new product called MarkUp. The product was created by a team led by Greg DiNardo and Alex Bullington, who joined Ceros last August through the acquisition of their polling and market research startup Arbit.
Dixon, DiNardo and Bullington gave me a quick demo, showing off how users can mark areas of interest on a website, leave comments and tasks, then mark revisions as completed.
It all looked pretty simple and straightforward, but DiNardo suggested that it’s a real technical challenge — even more than he and Bullington had expected — to provide those kinds of features on top of a live site.
He added that the product’s simplicity was very much by design: “I don’t think we’re going to add a million features … The goal is honestly simplicity, something that graphic designers can kind of live in.”
Eventually, MarkUp could be used not just to solicit design feedback across teams, but also from the public at-large.
Ceros says MarkUp is free to everyone and will function separately from the core Ceros Studio platform. In fact, it’s already being used by designers at the Huffington Post, Cushman & Wakefield and Informa.
“As of today we want to remove any friction or barrier to entry, so it’s 100 percent free to [everyone],” Dixon said. “Getting the involvement of the broadest community and user base is going to be critical for this. What we’re learning is that some of the enterprise clients might pay for bigger, more grown-up features [like white labeling]. We can figure out how to monetize later.”
Update: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that MarkUp would only be free to Ceros customers.
Powered by WPeMatico
Ceros raises $14M for its interactive content platform
Ceros allows marketers to create animated, interactive content — but don’t call it a content marketing company.
“We think content is just a dry, bland, over-leveraged, oversaturated space,” said founder and CEO Simon Berg. “The goal is not to hack the system, the goal is to make a great experience for your customers.”
That’s why he describes Ceros as a platform for creating experiences. The company is focused on powering beautiful, well-designed graphics and web pages, instead of blog posts or white papers that mostly exist to snare search traffic.
Ceros is announcing today that it has raised $14 million in Series C funding.
Ceros previously raised $19.5 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. The new round was led by Greenspring Associates, with participation from Grotech Ventures, CNF Investments, Sigma Prime Ventures, StarVest Partners, Greycroft and Silicon Valley Bank.
“Ceros is well known for empowering marketers to think creatively, but we have also come to know Ceros as a highly capital efficient business, which is a refreshing change in the burn-rate happy world of digital,” said Greenspring’s John Avirett, general partner, in a statement. “We’re confident that this investment will catalyze Ceros’ continued growth while enabling their team to opportunistically pursue acquisitions that enhance the core product and further penetration of key markets.”
For examples of the difference between Ceros “experiences” and run-of-the-mill content marketing, check out Ceros/Inspire, where some of the most-viewed projects include a comic book-style blockchain explainer from Ozy and a “friend versus pro” created to promote H&R Block.
“What we’ve continued to work on over the last seven years is to comply with laws of physics that are laws of internet, whilst giving as much creative freedom as possible,” Berg said. “We want to put the creative and the design piece first.”
The company says it’s now working with more than 400 customers, including well-known brands like United Airlines and Red Bull, as well as publishers including Condé Nast and Vice, plus sports teams like the Baltimore Ravens and Detroit Lions.
“Both in terms of the revenues that we’ve reached and the clients that we’ve worked with … you never really ‘arrive,’ but I feel like we’ve reached a critical milestone,” Berg said.
Powered by WPeMatico