Startup Spotlight: EditMate
Startup Spotlight: EditMate
Meet Rachel King – Creative Director and Founder of EditMate, a new school platform for all your video marketing needs!
GH: What is Own The EditMate?
EditMate is a new school platform for modern video marketing. We give businesses of all sizes the technology and system to create videos at scale.
Our tools enable businesses to create engaging video content by collecting mobile footage from their real community. Projects are managed on our Dashboard and we have a global network of professional video editors available turn that raw footage into an authentic, on-brand video.
GH: What was your Eureka moment: how did EditMate get started?
My partner Scott Stratford and I met working at video startup in New Zealand.We kept seeing our clients struggle to produce video content at the volume and price point they needed. And with the advances in technology, it seemed crazy that this was an issue when everyone is walking around with an HD video camera in their pocket.
We started by creating simple system for businesses to easily upload footage and connect with a video editor. As we grew, we built additional products and are now a full, end to end SaaS solution for modern video marketing.
GH: How did you build your team?
We’re super lean with only 2 people on our core team. We have 3 contractors and a network of 30 video editors that we work with on a project basis that we’ve grown using our existing professional network.
We’re always on a lookout for more talented, creative and experienced video editors. As we grow over the next 12 months, we’re planning to expand and hire a Sales Team, a Content Creator and a Full Stack Developer.
GH: What is your company philosophy driving your company culture?
We really value human creativity and collaboration. I come from an advertising and television production background and the thing I always loved about my job was how collaborative it was. Everyone brings their specific skill set to create something together. And at the end of it, no matter how big or small your role, everyone involved really feels a real sense of ownership over the final product and it’s a fun process to be a part of.
We want to make sure that with EditMate, even though it’s a software, working with it still feels like you’re part of a fun, creative project. This drives the type of resources and content we create for our customers and the quality of the relationships we have with our global team of video editors
GH: The startup life is full of failures and ‘make it work’ moments – can you identify how you bounced back from one of yours?
Since we bootstrapped the building of our software, we missed many (self-imposed) deadlines and the entire process took way longer than planned. It was frustrating, but we took that extended time period to continue working closely with new and existing customers and get even more feedback on what they really needed from a modern video marketing software.
Charging through that and “making it work” has enabled us to build a portfolio of over 400 videos and relationships with over 80 brands. Now we have an even larger audience to launch our new software to and they know we’ve listened to them to build it.
Rachel King, Founder and Creative Director of EditMate
GH: What did you learn from your first customers?
Customers don’t care about your platform and what you’re trying to build. They care about the service you can provide for them and how you can make their jobs/lives easier. We learned to focus on the service/solution we provided our customers and grew our software platform around that.
GH: What has the Boston ecosystem provided you?
The Capital Network’s events have been integral to getting EditMate on the radar of investors and expanding our network
Stuart from PitchDNA was extremely useful in helping us craft our pitch.
Overall, we’ve found the folks we’ve met in the ecosystem so far to be very helpful and generous with their time.
GH: What was the best thing that happened to you last year?
In 2017 we officially moved from New Zealand to the USA in order to focus on growing EditMate here in America. It’s a challenge entering a new market but we’ve secured partnerships with major brands like HubWeek, TechStars Chicago and AmericanInno and that’s helped to spread the word about us.
We’ll be the video partner for AmericanInno’s events across 6 cities so major brands in each city using our platform to create videos. Coming from a smaller New Zealand market, we’re very excited to get that kind of exposure at this early stage in our business.
GH: What does the future hold for EditMate?
We’re launching our new software in September so we’re excited to introduce EditMate as a modern alternative to the traditional video production process. According to Cisco, video will account for 79% of global internet traffic by 2020 so it’s going to be the dominant medium across every channel: social media, internal communications, training, recruiting — everywhere.
And that’s why we created EditMate, so businesses can keep up with that demand and create authentic video at scale. We’re thrilled with how creative brands have gotten using EditMate and we hope to continue to grow organically here in the USA to help great brands create cool videos.
Learn more about EditMate!