Sketchfab raises $2M to make itself the 'YouTube for 3D design'

You may not have heard of Sketchfab, but “YouTube for 3D design” certainly has a nice ring to it.

Sketchfab, which lets designers share their 3D creations online via an in-browser viewer and online portfolios, has been on a tear since it launched a year and a half ago. Its userbase has climbed from 20,000 to 100,000, it’s graduated from TechStars, and now it’s taking on another $2 million in funding.

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Sketchfab CEO Alban Denoyel told VentureBeat the cash is all about scaling the company’s operations, including adding more staff to build out the next, more social version of the platform.

Amazon Prime Air Drone from Mestaty on Sketchfab.

Denoyel says his ultimate goal is to make Sketchfab a real online media form, not something limited to just geeks and designers. That means creating use cases that aren’t limited to just power users.

One of the most interesting of these comes via Kickstarter, where funding hopefuls have used Sketchfab to show how their devices look in three dimensions.

And those Kickstarter ventures using the site include some big names, such as the Structure Sensor and Lima, both of which have raised over a million dollars. Denoyel likes to think Sketchfab is at least partly responsible for that.