In today's world, there are over 2 billion websites, millions of mobile applications, and an immense array of digital screens that cater to users and businesses alike. The challenge that arises from such a broad spectrum of content is finding ways to deliver messages without being bogged down by complex technical hurdles. This is where Sanity, a SaaS content platform designed to help businesses and developers effortlessly manage their digital content, enters the picture.
Sanity has already garnered the attention of 25,000 customers, ranging from reputable publishers like Conde Nast and National Geographic to other major brands such as Sonos, Brex, Figma, Cloudflare, Mux, Remarkable, Kleiner Perkins, Tablet Magazine, MIT, Universal Health Services, Eurostar, and Nike. Now, the company has announced the successful raising of $9.3 million in a Series A funding round to drive its future growth.
Threshold Ventures led the investment round, accompanied by an impressive lineup of participants, including Ev Williams (co-founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium); Adam Gross, former Heroku CEO; Guillermo Rauch, inventor of NextJS and CEO and co-founder of Vercel; Stephanie Friedman, formerly of Xamarin and Microsoft; and Monochrome Capital, established by Ben Metcalfe, co-founder of WP Engine. Previous investors, Heavybit and Alliance Venture, who contributed to Sanity's $2.4 million seed round last year, also took part in this round.
Magnus Hillestad, co-founder and CEO of Sanity, has spearheaded the creation of an array of tools that assist developers in shaping, inputting, and determining the presentation of content. Sanity’s target audience is any individual or organization looking to develop digital experiences with non-static, regularly updated content. Hillestad argues that looking at content as a dynamic component of digital experiences signals a paradigm shift, akin to Twilio's API-centered approach to communication and Figma's concept of collaboration.
While e-commerce has typically been the major beneficiary of such headless platforms, utilizing these services to establish front-end designs while relying on services like Shopify to manage the back-end, Sanity’s framework has been applied to a diverse range of use cases. These include e-commerce experiences as well as digital publishing services, interactive customer tools, and emergency medical training materials.
As the digital realm continues to evolve, the nature of content and publishing has changed significantly. The days of print-exclusive materials like books, magazines, and newspapers have long gone. Today, publishing encompasses a variety of digital content designed for web or other platforms that may be read, manipulated, or continuously altered by producers. Sanity offers creative and dynamic solutions to manage the complexity of digital content management.
Founded by an agency in Oslo, Norway, Sanity has its roots in developing a novel content management system (CMS) concept for a new website designed for OMA, the architecture firm co-founded by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. Sanity continued to build more websites using the CMS before eventually spinning off as an independent firm. Aiming to connect with the thriving tech ecosystem in the US, part of the team, including Hillestad, relocated to the Bay Area.
Over the past few years, Sanity has successfully leveraged the growing market for services that simplify digital experiences. As demand for such platforms increases, Sanity remains well-positioned to address the diverse content management needs of a broad spectrum of clients. This positions Sanity as a strong contender in the content management space, especially with companies like Commercetools, Commerce Layer, Strapi, Contentful, and ContentStack catering to this digital realm.
