Redefining content collaboration with $9.3M in new funding

Written by Magnus Hillestad

Since launch in November 2017, we have seen inspiring growth in the use of Sanity to power digital experiences. With a community of over 50k content creators and a platform that handles more than 3 billion API calls per month, and accelerating, more and more people and organizations are along for the ride.

Our vision is clear: we want to redefine how people and organizations collaborate on content. You should expect more than what incumbent content management systems are delivering. We believe in a world where content creation is collaborative, and content is treated as data. We are seeing early signs of a transformation in how organizations work with content, where marketing and digital products converge. The most innovative organizations are already executing on their plans, and thousands of organizations will follow over the years to come.

To support our further growth, we are proud to announce that we have raised $9.3m in our Series A, led by Threshold Ventures, with angels including Ev Williams (Blogger/Twitter/Medium), Ben Metcalfe (WP Engine), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Stephanie Friedman (Xamarin) and Adam Gross (Heroku), and continued support from our seed investors at Heavybit and Alliance Venture.

With additional funding, we are doubling down on our most important resource: our team. The people whose passion and abilities will bring this dream into reality.

The ultimate content platform

We care about content, a lot. We built Sanity to solve the problems and limitations resulting from how most platforms think (or don’t think) about content.

The goal of Sanity is to approach content velocity—the sweet spot in between creativity and creation, where whole teams work together on what matters, adapt to emerging realities, and maximize their efforts.

The core of content velocity is content integrity: recognizing that content is data, and treating it as such so you can endlessly use and reuse your content in any application from a single source of truth.

We believe developers, designers, content creators, and product managers should expect more. Expect that your content is data and can be served from a single source of truth. Expect that your software is programmable and shapes experiences for your team that are intuitive. Expect that your content and workflows empower you to move quickly, whether iterating or creating completely new ways of interacting with your customers and other stakeholders.

Sanity is a developer tool, and we strive to build and nurture a rich developer community. We believe that developers are the cornerstone of teams who are striving to create the best digital experiences. Where content needs to be data, and systems need to be adaptable, you need to be able to access the core of the system, in a programmable fashion, to look at your content from a machine point of view, as data. Developers do that.

Why does the world need this? Why now?

Digitalization is driving a paradigm shift in how people and organizations need to work with content. Content and CMSs are no longer confined to Web content and “pages;” we are seeing a transformation in usage, expectations, and possibilities.

Modern web frameworks like React and Vue, Next, Nuxt, and Gatsby are what forward-thinking developers are now using to build more performant experiences that deliver more: better customer experiences, faster time to market for innovative communication efforts, and transformative iteration on existing customer flows.

At the same time, the development of APIs not only enables the decoupling of software services but is creating a condition where data can be interconnected to a single source of truth, enabling integrity and velocity to reach this exciting potential.

Exceptional experiences are happening now

Startups like Figma, Brex, Mambu, and Chief are examples of successful companies that need programmable software to drive their communication. They all use Sanity for shaping fast and innovative web experiences.

E-commerce players like AJ Madison and Tommy John, also thrive with flexibility and customization that shortens their time to market and drives better customer experience to boost their growth.

Large companies need to balance the imperative to innovate at an incredibly fast pace with the complexity of their content, data, and requirements. Sanity is the only content platform that can sustainably support this process given the rapidly changing demands around content. Companies like Sonos, MJH Life Sciences, National Geographic, Flex, Eurostar, and Universal Health Services are all adapting their business to the requirements of 2020 and beyond by using Sanity.

Why are we raising money?

At Sanity, we are very ambitious. We believe that a completely different approach to content is inevitable. In order to stay at the forefront of shaping a new reality, we need resources. The most important one is of course people. We have increased the team to 35 members, and are hiring more.

With additional funding, we will continue to invest in product development and community engagement, while further developing our go-to-market approach to be a strong business partner for our larger customers.

Why our investors matter

Money is a commodity. A dollar is a dollar. But when we invite investors on our journey, it’s about much more than that. We are looking for partners who genuinely believe in our vision, think big, and are able to bring highly specialized experience.

Josh Stein and the team at Threshold have impressed us with their approach, their insights, and their experiences. An early investor in the likes of Twilio, LaunchDarkly, Box, and Front, Josh has in-depth experiences around building businesses like ours, and importantly – he gets us and what we want to do.

People like Matt Biilmann and Chris Bach from Netlify and Guillermo Rauch from Vercel have an incredibly nuanced and thoughtful understanding of where the web is heading and how companies are adapting to digitalization. Stephanie Friedman brings deep knowledge from Xamarin and Microsoft on how we build sales approaches for developer-centric software. Adam Gross has a unique experience from his time as CEO of Heroku on how to build an intentional bottom-up go-to-market strategy. Ben Metcalfe, with invaluable experience as co-founder of WP Engine, brings keen insights into how we transform content operations. Ev Williams has spent his life building companies focused on communication with Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, and we are excited that he believes in our approach to content.

The fact that these and other exceptional people believe in and support Sanity is humbling, and something in which we take great pride.

What you can expect going forward

We’ll double down on what brought us to this stage while continuing to push the boundaries of how content should work inside organizations.

• We stay true to our dev-centric approach, putting our developer community first, making the Sanity community the forefront of creating a new content paradigm.
• You can expect more. Product managers, content strategists, and anyone concerned with the digitalization of old and new products and customer journeys will continue to have their work amplified by Sanity.
• Sanity is a trusted partner to larger organizations and Enterprises. We will continue to develop our technology and our processes and help you to the tough problems on the way to reaching your digital potential.
• We will strive to be responsible and thoughtful in the communities that surround us, as well as the ecosystems we are part of. We earlier asked you to hold us accountable, and we continue the work in building a great workplace and an equitable product and community, and to nurture great relationships with those that we meet on our way.

Sanity is a team of dreamers. The journey to this point has been a dream for us, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank our community, our customers, and our partners for all your support, your positive and constructive feedback, and your invaluable insights. Our platform would not have been anything close to what it is today without the support from you all. We're honored to be a part of this journey with you and can't wait to see what the future holds.