Paris, June 2nd 2021 - <div>RIOTS, a startup created in late 2019 to empower front-end web development, announces a successful first financing round of $3M, led by XAnge, a top-tier European VC, renowned European Business Angels, and BPI France who also participated in the round with non-dilutive financing.

Simultaneously, <div>RIOTS inaugurates the public version of Backlight, its code-side Design System SaaS for front-end teams facilitating collaboration between designers and developers.

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“<div>RIOTS is thrilled to present a user-friendly and flexible platform bringing together designers and developers to build Design Systems.” Mentions Georges Gomes, CEO, and Co-Founder. “Frontend development has been undervalued for too long. It’s time to deliver innovation to this market, give superpowers to front-end teams, and help further the digital transformation of our clients .”

When <div>RIOTS’ co-founders were building financial software, they noticed that efficiency and consistency could arise from using code-side Design Systems. They seized the market opportunity after building their own, experiencing expensive and challenging in-house developments.

The capabilities of <div>RIOTS platform go far beyond design and development and dramatically facilitate versioning, documentation while being independent of web technologies. <div>RIOTS empowers front-end teams by enabling developers to focus on their core objectives solving complex technical challenges rather than laboriously concentrating their time and efforts to synchronize with designers.

“We’ve had the privilege to deep dive into <div>RIOTS’ Backlight in private beta for the past 6 months. Not only does the platform save our teams a crucial time in terms of Design System development, but this best-in-class solution enables designers and developers to smoothly collaborate. Collaboration in web design has been a pain point for many years and we are excited to see innovation in the space.” Adds Olivier Grandhomme from AOS.

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“After an exceptional experience as former CTO and co-founder of Ullink, from developing v1 solo to managing more than 250 tech talents over the world, Georges is back in startup mode with the ambition to tackle a huge opportunity to tool up front-end community with great solutions, as Figma and Sketch did over the past few years for designers.” Adds Guilhem de Vregille, Partner XAnge.

With this funding <div>RIOTS will accelerate the public launch of Backlight. The startup plans to quickly grow its team in order to support its ambitious tech roadmap and build <div>RIOTS’ brand reputation among the developer and designer communities.

Pricing and availability

Backlight is available as a freemium SaaS solution, with a free plan for up to 3 users. Paid plans start from $29 / month / user. A special offer with a free trial period for early adopters is live until September 2021.