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Crowdsourcing marketplace had obtained USD3 million from its institutional investors in a funding round. Led by Starfish Ventures, the Sydney, Australia-based startup had raised a total of USD6.3 million for its platform for freelance designers. DesignCrowd would reportedly use part of the funding to open an office in the US and expand in the European, South American and Asian markets. DesignCrowd also had plans to scale its marketing in international markets.

DesignCrowd CEO Alec Lynch told TechCrunch that the startup's model was more fair and transparent than other competing sites like 99designs, oDesk and Fiverr.

Lynch said, "DesignCrowd's crowdsourcing model is faster, cheaper and better than our competitors," he adds. "The biggest opportunity for DesignCrowd is to take a larger share of the $44 billion traditional design industry and this is our focus."

Aside from competing with about 40 online design marketplaces, Lynch said his startup would be adding more staff and would differentiate its existing model by adding a participation payout feature. This would qualified participants who had provided or submitted work would get a form of compensation between USD20 to USD50 per participant. According to TechCrunch, DesignCrowd made more than USD1 million in combined participation payments. Moreover, participants who didn't win in projects on DesignCrowd would be able to sell their work on BrandCrowd. BrandCrowd is an dedicated buy-and-sell platform for logos and brands. The report noted that BrandCrowd was acquired by DesignCrowd two years ago.

DesignCrowd has more than 250,000 registered users from 197 countries, of which 100,000 of the designers had hit design projects amounting to USD12 million. The project figure, said TechCrunch, was projected to increase to USD20 million next year. The Australian startup earns via a 15% commission from winning designers and design project client fees. Client budgets average at USD350 per project, which could go high up to USD100,000 and low as USD100.