How do marketers get inspiration? Browsing the Web is a good start, but with so much irrelevant content, it can be tough to zero in on a good idea. Enter: Crayon, a new search engine that’s focused entirely on helping users to discover different types of marketing design.
Founded by former HubSpot VP Jonah Lopin (who was employee No. 6 at HubSpot) and ex-Admob product manager John Osborne—both MIT Sloan alums—the startup currently contains more than 12 million marketing designs. The goal, according to the company, is to reach 100 million designs by the end of 2015.
Now, the HubSpot Mafia startup is in the process of raising a seed round of funding. A tweet from Techstars Boston Director Ty Danco revealed that he—along with Adelphic Mobile co-founder Jennifer Lum—have committed to invest in the round.
@JonahLopin Congrats on being the first investment in @lum‘s syndicate. I’m delighted to be riding her coattails.
— Ty Danco (@tydanco) February 11, 2015
The founders are keeping further details of the deal under wraps until the round is closed, but BostInno will report on that information when it’s out.
“As soon as I saw the website, I knew I had to be in,” Danco wrote in the comments on Crayon’s AngelList page. “Once you check out the investors (a who’s who of inbound marketing), you’ll know that this is the next big thing for marketing.”
The AngelList page also reveals that Mike Volpe, HubSpot’s CMO, is acting as an advisor for the company.
Marketers and agencies can use Crayon to browse a wealth of designs, create shareable collections, generate ideas for digital projects, follow industry trends, collaborate with colleagues and customers, and also track competitors as they redesign key website pages and launch new landing pages. Already, the site has thousands of users, according to the company.
On Product Hunt, a user asked about plans for monetization.
“As hard as business models are to figure out, we feel like it’s even harder to just make something people find valuable,” Lopin responded. “So we’re going to kick the can on monetization for a quarter or two and make the product better.”
Right now, collections are public, meaning users can simply grab a link and share it. Down the road, though, Lopin noted that Crayon will allow users the option to make collections private, or shared only with specific people. There will also be a commenting and conversation option to go along with that as well (right now it’s only possible to comment on your own collections).
Featured image of crayons via Shutterstock.
