DrylabNews for investors & friends · May 2017
Welcome to our first newsletter of 2017! It's the 2.05 MNOK loan from Innovation
been a while since the last one, and a lot has Norway. Including the development
happened. We promise to keep them coming agreement with Filmlance International, the
every two months hereafter, and permit total new capital is 5 MNOK, partly tied to
ourselves to make this one rather long. The the successful completion of milestones. All
big news is the beginnings of our launch in formalities associated with this process are
the American market, but there are also now finalized.
interesting updates on sales, development,
New owners: We would especially like to
mentors and (of course) the investment
warmly welcome our new owners to the
round that closed in January.
Drylab family: Unni Jacobsen, Torstein Jahr,
New capital: The investment round was Suzanne Bolstad, Eivind Bergene, Turid Brun,
successful. We raised 2.13 MNOK to match Vigdis Trondsen, Lea Blindheim, Kristine
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Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences · Alesha & Jamie Metzger · Amazon
AWS · Apple · Caitlin Burns, PGA · Carlos Melcer · Chimney L.A. · Dado Valentic ·
Dave Stump · DIT WIT · ERA NYC · Facebook · Fancy Film · FilmLight · Geo Labelle ·
meetings Google · IBM · Innovation Norway (NYC) · Innovation Norway (SF) · International
NY · SF Cinematographers Guild · NBC · Local 871 · Netflix · Pomfort · Radiant Images ·
LA · LLV
V Screening Room · Signiant · Moods of Norway · Tapad · Team Downey
Holmsen, Torstein Hansen, and Jostein accomplished producer based in New York,
Aanensen. We look forward to working with an active member of the Producers Guild of
you! America, and the collaboration has already
yielded good results, including valuable
Sales: Return customer rate is now 80%,
contacts for our visit in Los Angeles. Oscar-
proving value and willingness to pay. Film
winning VFX supervisor Dave Stump joined
Factory Montreal is our first customer in
us earlier.
Canada. Lumiere Numeriques have started
using us in France. We also have new New York, St. Louis, San Francisco and
customers in Norway, and high-profile users Los Angeles: Pontus and Audun did a tour
such as Gareth Unwin, producer of Oscar- of the US in February and March, meeting
winning The King's Speech. Revenue for the users, partners and potential customers. The
first four months is 200 kNOK, compared to trip was very successful, with several high
339 kNOK for all of 2016. We are working points, including meetings with Netflix, the
on a partnership to safeguard sales in Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Norway while beginning to focus more on Sciences, the International
the US. Cinematographers Guild, Local 871 (the
script supervisors' union), one of the world's
leading DITs, and Apple. See the separate
attachment for a more detailed summary.
NAB: Andreas and Audun travelled to the
National Association of Broadcasters
convention (NAB) in Las Vegas for three
hectic days in April. NAB gathers 100,000
participants from film and TV. It's a very
efficient way of meeting people in the
business, and getting an updated picture of
New team members: We've extended our the business landscape. The most exciting
organization with two permanent developers meeting was with PIX System, one of our
based in Łódź, the film capital of Poland. Two most important competitors. It was
highly skilled interns from the University of interesting to note that they regarded the
Oslo's Entrepreneurship Program, will be indie market as bigger than their own.
working on market research until mid-June Andreas was able to secure us an
(starting in March), preparing for the US invitation to the DIT-WIT party, with some of
launch. Also, two computer science students the world's leading DITs in attendance. It was
are working as part-time interns during a great place for informal feedback on Drylab
spring, on machine learning and analysis Viewer. The pattern was the same as for
research, as well as innovative architectures other users: Initial polite interest turns to
based on the Swift language. We hope our real enthusiasm the moment someone is able
interns will consider sticking around! to personally try Drylab Viewer! We also
met with Pomfort and Apple about our on-
New mentor: We are honored to have going collaborations; ARRI and Teradek/
Caitlin Burns joining us as a mentor. She's an
Paralinx about camera integration; Amazon, The launch of Drylab 3.0 will take place at
Google and IBM about cloud computing. the International Broadcasters Convention
in Amsterdam in September, and we are
WWDC and Silicon Valley: We were very
working hard to get solid feedback from pilot
pleasantly surprised to be invited by Apple to
users before then.
their World Wide Developers Conference in
San Jose in June, despite not having applied. Annual General Meeting: Drylab's AGM
It's a valuable chance to learn and make new will be held on June 16th at 15:00. An
connections. We’re also setting aside time to invitation will be distributed to all owners
meet other potential partners. well in advance. We hope to see you there!
Cine Gear: We have decided not to attend As you can see it has been a hectic
the Cine Gear expo in L.A. this year, since spring that has given us a lot of
feedback from many users about the show confirmation about our product. We
were mixed, and our planned beta version of are now working eagerly and hard
3.0 is slightly delayed. towards the US launch with Drylab
3.0, while keeping momentum in
Development and launch: Development
Europe with our existing system.
is around one month behind our original
schedule. We expect the delay to decrease,
with new developers on board.
[Drylab has kindly allowed this newsletter to be redone in HTML/CSS and converted to PDF
with Prince. Navngen helped anonymize names in the process.]