Although Canva is worth around $26 billion, it seems that startups believe there’s still a lot to tap into in this “easy-to-use design platform” arena. Admittedly, professional Adobe tools are still tedious for most people. Perhaps this is why the Berlin startup

Kittl has now raised €10.8 million ($11.6 million) Series A for its design platform which it says enables people to “easily turn ideas into graphic products”.

The latest funding round was led by Left Lane Capital. European company Speedinvest and a number of angel investors, including Intercom co-founder Des Traynor, former Bebo CEO Shaan Puri and product managers from Calm, Amazon and Instagram, also participated.

Left Lane Capital is a New York-based VC best known for investing in GoStudent, Wayflyer, and Masterworks, among others.

Co-founded by Nicolas Heymann and Tobias Saul, Kittl offers browser-based graphic design tools for creating logos, labels, postcards and more.

Over email, Heymann, co-founder and CEO, told me, “With Kittl, we’re making it quick and easy for users to create professional-looking designs by removing the barrier of a steep learning curve. Our features are designed to make complex design processes simple and accessible with a few clicks.Our competitors either focus on basic tools that only allow a small margin of creative freedom, or they require a lot of training and practice to become good.

Kittl started out as Heritage Type, founded by Heymann and Tobias Saul in 2020, but later changed its name after raising a €1.6m funding round in October 2021.

Notably, since AI is likely to replace many of these tools soon enough, Heymann says they plan to “double down on existing AI and machine learning efforts.”

“Kittl’s easy-to-use platform democratizes the creation of professional-quality graphic design,” Magnus Karnehm, principal of Left Lane Capital, said in a statement. “Kittl has grown its user base and user engagement at incredible speed, and it’s all due to their laser focus on building a platform that spans ideation, creation, and ultimately , the monetization of graphic design.”