All product teams have experienced the frustration of not being able to build collaboratively in real-time with team members. Liveblocks is on a mission to solve this pain point. Remote collaboration is now table stakes for any productivity app, and Liveblocks makes that trivial to implement. We’re excited to announce our pre-seed investment in Liveblocks, alongside Boldstart and a great group of angel investors including Moritz Plassnig (Seedcamp Entrepreneur in Residence!).
Liveblocks’s vision stands in the belief that the next generation of SaaS products are all going to be collaborative in real-time, and their goal is to help companies make that transition more easily. Their first unique API offering that was released in July, is a live presence block API. Product builders can integrate the API into the product with just a few lines of code, and team members will be able to see when someone is on the same page or product, as well as everyone’s cursor position, or text and content selection. Other products in the pipeline include online forms, virtual office, video editing tools, as well as a wide range of features including UI tools, 3D Design tools and presentation tools.
We were super impressed with the team’s background and vision. Previously, Steven ran Easee, a web animation tool that was acquired by Invision. This led him to work on design systems and tooling at Facebook messenger, and he also runs Gifmock, a tool used by thousands of people and enterprises to create Gifs. Guillaume is also a UX enthusiast, and has previously worked as a developer at Landr audio, Breather and Invision. Steven and Guillaume started working on Liveblocks in March 2021 but the two have already been working together for several years on real-time creative-tools.
“When we met the Liveblocks team, it was love at first sight! At Seedcamp, we are big fans of API-first products and we’ve seen across our portfolio how painful it is for teams to build and maintain real time collaboration features in their product,” Seedcamp Partner Sia Houchangnia states, “We are also convinced that Steven and Guillaume are the right founders to go after this massive opportunity. They have unique first-hand experience of the problem and are among the most talented product builders we’ve ever had the chance to back. It is still early days for the company but early adopters of Liveblocks are raving about the product and we are hugely excited to support the team as they launch all the lego bricks for real time collaboration over the coming months!”
Steven and Guillaume’s long-time vision is to make all digital experiences collaborative. The funds will be used to grow the team and continue product development. Liveblocks’ next product is a conflict-free live data storage solution that allows people to view and edit the same data in real time, so watch their space! You can check out Liveblocks here and their introductory video here.
Building an API product that will disrupt the future of work and productivity? Apply for funding here.
