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Autodesk adds indie design startup Creative Market to toolset

The entire Creative Market will be joining Autodesk, also based in the Bay Area, under the software company's Consumer Group umbrella.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor
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Autodesk is moving into a new realm of e-commerce (albeit slightly) with to the acquisition of design startup Creative Market.

Founded a decade ago and based in San Francisco, the private company powers an online marketplace for "mousemade" design content, such as fonts, icons, vector patterns, WordPress themes, and Photoshop brushes.

Digital designers can opt to list their "handcrafted" (again, with a computer mouse peripheral) products for free or sell them in the Etsy-like exchange.

The Creative Market team confirmed the news in a blog post on Wednesday morning.

Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. According to CrunchBase, Creative Market had raised approximately $2.3 million in venture capital funding as of 2012, the same year it made an acquisition of its own: developer community Forrst. It was jettisoned to product designer collective Zurb the following year.

Co-founder and CEO Darius Monsef asserted in the announcement that the Creative Market's balance sheet was more than financially sound.

After more than 12 straight months of month-over-month revenue growth, we had a lot of interest in our next fundraising round, and we also had interest from folks who wanted to acquire us.

We had our options, but our priority was finding the opportunity that would best allow us to continue working on our vision and give us the resources to make Creative Market really really big.

Self-described as just "Bubs," Monsef went on to describe why he went with Autodesk, highlighting the feats of AutoCAD, Maya and Autodesk's other professional design tools.

Monsef reassured that the entire Creative Market will be joining Autodesk, also based in the Bay Area, under the software company's Consumer Group umbrella.

He also pointed out that his co-founders, CTO Chris Williams and VP of product Aaron Epstein, will be moving into Autodesk's new "makerspace" at San Francisco's Pier 9, where Autodesk moved in last year.

Image via Creative Market

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