For local founder Rahmi Halaby, launching his company’s product to the public is the catalyst for its next phase of growth.
Halaby’s company, Ideate, officially launched its first product — a platform to help designers manage tasks like making presentations or understanding feedback — last week at a conference co-hosted with DesignPhiladelphia.
Building on that momentum, Ideate is planning to raise a $500,000 pre-seed round through the end of this year after many pitch competition wins to get it to where it is today, he told Technical.ly.
“We were able to, with where our product’s at now, make a good argument,” Halaby said. “We have a little bit of early revenue and a clear path to revenue in the next six months, but it took a little bit to get there.”
Ideate gained traction after being accepted into the 1Philadelphia Early Validation Academy in 2023, where it won its first $10,000. Earlier this year, the company also won best-in-show at the Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technology’s annual Phorum conference, securing a spot to pitch at the Mid-Atlantic Capital Conference this fall.
In 2024, Ideate also came in second at the Philly Startup World Cup pitch competition, securing an additional $5,000. At the time, these wins helped keep the lights on, Halaby said.
“A year ago at that pitch, I was dreaming about the day that somebody could go to our website and log in and use something,” he said. “I’m very excited that we have a thing.”
Previously, Halaby ran into hurdles securing institutional investment, he said, but finally feels like he’s in a place where he understands the process of reducing risk to become attractive to investors.
Ideate is hoping to get a significant chunk of its pre-seed round from an investment accelerator.
Meetup to market
A designer by trade, Halaby first came up with the idea for Ideate because he wanted to make more time for creative work. He also hosted a monthly meetup for designers, where he learned more about other people’s processes and how they manage their workflow.
Halaby talked to more than 1,000 designers about their challenges to come up with the startup’s first product.
Ideate’s initial launch focuses on two tools called Moodboard Studio, which turns reference images into presentations, and Feedback Copilot, which uses large language models to translate generic feedback like “make it pop” into specific tasks, like using more vibrant typography.
Halaby said that if it was up to him, the company would have taken another year to make the tools as perfect as possible before launch. However, everyone around him told him it was better to just put it out there and go from there, he said.
“It’s never as fast of a process as we all want it to be,” Halaby said. “I was really wanting to back it in research, and so we moved slower than a lot of other companies potentially would.”
Eventually, Halaby wants to build out more tools as part of a more robust Ideate workspace.
As Ideate continues to grow, Halaby is still focused on his original goal, which was to allow designers to have more time for creativity, he said.
“I’m really excited about how we were able to use our moment to really put people doing great creative work at the forefront,” Halaby said, “because that’s the goal of the tool.”
