InVision once sat at the center of the product design world. Founded in 2011 by Clark Valberg and Ben Nadel in New York, the platform let designers turn static mockups into clickable prototypes and share them with stakeholders for feedback. At its peak, InVision claimed over 7 million users and counted most Fortune 100 companies among its clients.
The company raised over $350 million in venture funding, reaching a valuation of nearly $2 billion. Its products included InVision Studio (a screen design tool), Craft (a Sketch plugin suite), Freehand (a collaborative whiteboard), and DSM (Design System Manager). InVision also created Design Better, a popular educational resource for the design community.
But InVision’s trajectory changed dramatically as Figma captured the market with its browser-first, real-time collaboration approach. InVision’s core prototyping product became less relevant as design tools built prototyping features natively. The company went through multiple rounds of layoffs starting in 2022.
In January 2024, InVision announced it was shutting down its design collaboration services entirely, giving users until the end of the year to export their work. It was a stark ending for a company that had once defined how designers collaborated. The Freehand whiteboard product was sold to Miro.
InVision’s legacy, though, is significant. It helped establish design as a collaborative discipline, popularized the concept of design systems at scale, and pushed the entire industry toward better prototyping and feedback workflows.
