San Francisco, California-based marketplace for visual content Visually said it was able to secure $8.1 million to close its Series A funding round. Through its cloud-based collaboration tools, the platform enables designers, analysts, journalists, developers and animators to connect with their clients. Visually's operational efficiencies enable the company to provide high quality content at a fast speed and unprecedented scale. There are around 100,000 creatives using the platform and boasts of hundreds of projects each month.

The funding was led by Crosslink Ventures and participated in by Correlation Ventures, SoftTechVC, 500 Startups, Giza Ventures, Quest Ventures and Kapor Capital (Mitch Kapor). In a statement, Visually said the proceeds from the Series A round will change the visual content creation landscape, allowing creatives around the world to work with each other and with their clients much easily. The funding will touch on all aspects of visual content creation, starting from ideation and data analysis to final deliverable and distribution. Proceeds will also be used for the company to expand to new markets and add to its worldwide talent supply.

In the same way that websites like Airbnb, Uber and oDesk have changed how people commute, travel and make software, Visually is upsetting the traditional agency model of creating content by utilizing innovative technology. Its marketplace dynamics allow projects to be finished in around a third of the time and at less than half the cost, with most of the revenues given to the creative talent.

As part of the deal, Eric Chin of Crosslink Ventures will be joining the board of Visually together with Stew Langille, Dave McClure of 500 Startups and Jeff Clavier of SoftTechVC.

Visually Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Stew Langille said in the statement, "Visually's marketplace is a game-changer, a whole new way to deliver content that takes advantage of the cloud. This new funding allows us to continue building towards our vision of becoming the global hub for visual content of all kinds and to continue investing in the expansion of our unique product."