New types of design tools, such as Perpexity’s Visual Electric, Figma’s Weavy, Flora, and Krea, have grown in popularity in recent years thanks to AI. These tools are built on the promise that, with artificial intelligence, a product team of designers can iterate on variations quickly.
A new design startup, Desnnow backed by $6 million in funding, believes that design tools that don’t allow you to work directly in your codebase can limit you from being able to imagine new workflows and capabilities.
That’s why Dessn has developed technology that allows startups to run their codebases in the cloud with no setup costs. To do this, it removes the dependencies that make it necessary to run a codebase locally. Because Dessn works in a production environment, it’s easier for designers to hand off their work to developers, the startup says.
Current clients include teams at healthcare company Color, voice AI company Wispr and fintech Mercury.
Founded by Gabriella Hachem and Nim Cheema, the company announced today that its $6 million funding round was led by Connect Ventures, with participation from Betaworks and N49P.
“When we started the company two years ago, our whole thesis was [that] code is going to be commoditized – and in a world where code is insanely cheap, you just get a lot more software, and then design becomes a way to differentiate,” Cheema told TechCrunch after a call.
The design tool is not built for basic ideation like a Lovable or Vercel v0 where you can play with new ideas. Instead, Dessn says it’s only useful for teams that have an existing code base and want to iterate on it.
Cheema noted that the challenging part for Dessn was creating an infrastructure capable of running codebases with different backend architectures without requiring a developer to get started.
Due to the low cost of installation, companies that adopt Dessn do not need to immediately move away from their design tool.
“The one thing that’s great about Dessn is that we don’t create switching costs. It’s not like you have to throw away all of Figma now and you have to come to Dessn for everything. You can come and use it for one project and then for another. That’s kind of how we see it happening. And it’s so easy to share a Dessnau link, with which the Code is possible.
Dessn, like other AI tools, allows you to ask you to create new designs. However, some designers may like the old toolbars to move things around. But the startup doesn’t think that’s necessary.
Hachem said she and her co-founder are maximalists — people who would spend more chips to get to an outcome, even if it costs more — and would rather open a toolbar for a specific context than keep a static one.
In the age of artificial intelligence, tools often try to work together to easily move data from one place to another as part of task automation.
Dessn currently has no embeds. However, it plans to integrate tools like Slack, where you can call Dessn and ask the tool to create prototypes based on ongoing conversations. Another tool he thinks could be useful to incorporate is a meeting notebook like Granola, which can feed him discussions from a meeting to create plans. However, the company said one integration it doesn’t want to do is Figma, because it believes it will take teams away from production and goes against Dessn’s ethos.
Dessn lets you compile a repository for free and test five prompts a week to let customers get a taste of the tools. It then plans to start at $39 per user per month, which unlocks faster and tier-based limits, public links, and the ability to opt out of AI training.
Betaworks partner (and former TechCrunch editor) Jordan Crook said Dessn would be a tool Figma would build if the latter launched today.
“Dessn is the only product that has perfect fidelity to the codebase/generation, rather than trying to design and convert it to code or request it through the design system. Furthermore, Dessn is built to be a truly enjoyable and almost emotional experience for users, not just a utility,” Crook told TechCrunch via email.
The company currently has four people, and while it plans to stay small, it plans to add a few more people to the team.
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