SketchDeck offers an on-demand design service that matches customers with freelance designers for work ranging from slide decks to full company rebrands. The company coordinates roughly 100 freelance designers and manages projects through machine-learning-powered assignment and workflow. It is an eight-person, Sunnyvale, CA–based startup that passed through Y Combinator in winter 2014. SketchDeck serves over 600 customers, charges about $600 per project on average, and is pushing customers toward monthly subscriptions. About 35% of the company’s revenue now comes from customers who migrated from individual projects to subscriptions; subscription tiers start at $2,500 per month and the company expects to charge larger clients up to $20,000 per month in 2016. Leadership says design will be the focus for the next two years while long-term plans include applying their machine-learning platform to other types of virtual work. SketchDeck offers a full graphic-design on-demand service that transforms client slides, marketing collateral, infographics, white papers, e-books, posters, and web/app designs. The company has completed nearly 2,000 projects for over 400 clients, with eight clients using SketchDeck as their full-time outsourced design team. It operates with four full-time employees and about 50 contracted freelance designers paid hourly. Pricing examples in the article include pay-as-you-go presentation slides starting as low as $5 per slide for basic designs and a typical project size around $400–$500. SketchDeck shifted away from low-cost designers in India to U.S. and other freelancers, which raised its pricing somewhat. The team emphasizes speed and convenience (24–48 hour turnarounds for many items) and has implemented features like A/B testing on client websites.

Total raised

$2M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Dec 2015