Washington, D.C.-based startup Macaw was born as one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in the region, raising almost $300,000 in crowdfunding in 2013. Now, the "design for coding" software developer has been acquired by New York-based Invision for an undisclosed amount.
Macaw acts an image editor, translating what you do visually into HTML and CSS code. What made so many people eager to donate and make Macaw a reality is that the code is supposed to come out in a format that is actually useful for web designers. Visual editors often make for messy, complicated coding on the backend that can cause problems in actually running a website. Macaw's pitch was that you don't need to be a code expert to build a good-looking and cleanly coded website if you use its software.
InVision clearly sees potential in what Macaw has been working on. The startup's prototyping tool is used by some of the biggest Internet brands including Twitter and Uber and it has raised about $80 million since it was founded in 2011. Macaw, which has 125,000 active users, has been working with InVision on some products for a while. This is InVision's first acquisition, but Macaw has been talking for a while about joining a larger firm.
Macaw will still exist as a brand, and the software is still available for download and support, but won't be updated. The focus now will likely be on Macaw's real-time design software, Scarlet.
