Canva and Atlassian alumni raise $3.5 million Seed round for their product management startup

A B2B product management startup cofounded by Canva and Atlassian alumni, and developed in the Y Combinator accelerator program, has raised $3.5 million in Seed funding.

The round for Sydney startup Index was led by Blackbird and Bain Capital Ventures. Mary Meeker’s California VC Bond also chipped in along with Y Combinator, Linktree cofounder Alex Zaccaria, Superpower founder Max Marchione and Raycast’s Thomas Paul Mann.

The raise values the startup at $30 million.

Index was cofounded in late 2023 by Simon Kubica, who spent five years at Atlassian and Christian Iacullo, who spent similar time at Canva. Inspired by Atlassian’s focus, they set out to build “the next generation of collaboration software” and developed real-time collaboration tools to help tech companies strategise big-picture goals in product management. They were part of Y Combinator’s W23 program.

“At Atlassian, I spent five years in product, building for millions of users at thousands of companies. Ultimately, the line between success and failure came down to choosing the right projects, and setting the right direction,” Kubica said launching Index’s product before Christmas.

“But I didn’t have the tools – I was stuck in issue trackers, or juggling spreadsheets and whiteboards. That’s why we built Index, the new standard for product management.”

Kubica, the CEO, said “the response has blown us away” in the two months since Index’s public launch, with thousands of companies on the pre-order list.

“It’s just the beginning for our journey to transform product planning. With this new funding, we’ll be doubling down on our vision, bringing exciting new features to our customers, and broadening our integrations,” he said.

“Finally, product teams can feel confident they’re setting the right direction, with a powerful planning tool for managing feature requests, connecting opportunities to revenue, and connecting natively to Linear for engineering execution.”