InVision, valued at $1.9B, picks up $115M Series F • Hacker News Board

Re: InVision, valued at $1.9B, picks up $115M Series F

#81

Post by cercatrova » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:44 PM UTC

nf__85 wrote: post #72

dharma1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a pretty good product, and has grown fast (hence the valuation) but they really need to improve the core product. It's got too many bugs and feels like it's had zero effort in the past 1-2 years. Sketch and Figma now have very similar clickthrough prototyping tools built in, and it's probably a question of time until they catch up.

Agree about the sketch and Figma click through stuff. One of the only things I see holding all of the competitors back from eating InVisions lunch right is that it's easier to share and collaborate (internally and externally) with InVision. Being able to login, comment, and share a URL seems to be a big part of it. I would also say the inspect feature is a big plus, but that doesn't even play nicely with some sketch…

You can share a link, comment and even collaborate in real time (with 2 cursors, each person working on a separate part of the file) with Figma.

Re: InVision, valued at $1.9B, picks up $115M Series F

#82

Post by cercatrova » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

zackmorris wrote: post #56

Can someone please create Series as a Service (SaaS) to facilitate connecting startups with funding? InVision is cool and everything, but these funding rounds are on the order of 1000 times larger than what a couple of indie devs need to create similar functionality. I would like to live on a beach, or in a cabin in the woods (preferably both, seasonally) and create software remotely. I also need to be left alone for…

There are a few VCs that handle indie businesses, such as www.indie.vc, www.earnestcapital.com, etc.

Re: InVision, valued at $1.9B, picks up $115M Series F

#83

Post by cercatrova » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

jdhn wrote: post #26

If I were Invision, I would either invest in or buy out Figma, and have it replace Invision Studio. Figma is on the up and up, and from what I heard Invision Studio looked good, but the execution was poor.

Oh God no, I don't want a slow entity like InVision hampering the progress of one of the best design tools on the market, Figma.

Re: InVision, valued at $1.9B, picks up $115M Series F

#84

Post by cercatrova » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

anongraddebt wrote: post #51

warent wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely worth highlighting. Why so many businesses are still deluding themselves into thinking that work is better done when cramming people into an office is beyond me. Remote work is still the minority. My hypothesis is that it's actually just covert ego/power/distrust at play because founders and executives like to be able to say they have an office, and they like to see their employees "working." This…

Is there a company, equivalent (or larger) in size to InVision, that is an example of a remote work org.? $100M ARR isn't anything to scoff at, but I'm not sure InVision's success (so far) puts the nail in the coffin to the idea of a non-remote work org. I'm young and still find it invaluable to be able to walk over to Jane in engineering or Bob in marketing to hash things out in-person.

GitLab is also a fully remote company.

Re: InVision, valued at $1.9B, picks up $115M Series F

#85

Post by daleco » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

jbob2000 wrote: post #71

daleco wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From UX perspective, it's one of the best tools for managing the design process. 1-click to update / push mockups from Sketch. Ability to do light interactive mockups, commenting, and CSS specs. We've been testing most of the tools on the market (Zeplin, UX Pin, Avocode...). InvisionApp beat all of them.

I am happy that you found some use for it. Have you asked your devs how they use it? I do understand that mockups aren't just for developers, but you might be going to all that expense and effort for nothing. When I joined my team, after 6 months the designers asked me for some feedback on how I was using invision and I said it's just a screenshot host and they were shocked. But all the design specs are in there! . Y…

The basic rules should be documented in the style guide, design system, and/or libraries. What would be interesting is to bridge the gap between the Invision Specs and what you expect.

Indeed, I ran a survey on 8 devs, and I've been monitoring how they typically use it over the years (Invision, Zeplin, basic screenshot hosting...). Some Devs won't use the specs at all, sometimes delivering something off. Others, love it since it will reduce the back and forth during audits.

You're right, specs will only be usefull to provide the dimensions and colors. However, this part is automated on the UX side, it prevents us from writing it down, which would be a waste of time: Mockups always change, we'd have to manually update the said specs so many times... This wouldn't scale well.

Re: InVision, valued at $1.9B, picks up $115M Series F

#86

Post by dsumenkovic » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #84

anongraddebt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a company, equivalent (or larger) in size to InVision, that is an example of a remote work org.? $100M ARR isn't anything to scoff at, but I'm not sure InVision's success (so far) puts the nail in the coffin to the idea of a non-remote work org. I'm young and still find it invaluable to be able to walk over to Jane in engineering or Bob in marketing to hash things out in-person.

GitLab is also a fully remote company.

That's right. You can read more about it at https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/. There you'll find how remote work is changing the workforce, how it changes the organization, advantages for employees and organizations and what did we learn about remote working.

Re: InVision, valued at $1.9B, picks up $115M Series F

#87

Post by AndrewConn » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

nf__85 wrote: post #43

As someone who uses InVision daily, I have become more and more frustrated with the experience. Building a large project feels like building a house of cards. I often run into small but infuriating UX issues inside their app. One example of this is uploading artboards from Sketch using the InVision Craft plugin. Uploading a new artboard that has the same name as a previously uploaded artboard overwrites the original…

I echo the sentiment. I’ll add my experience... Using InVision at a large company is a nightmare. It’s slow, buggy. You can’t trust it. It’s failed on me so many times I can’t count anymore.