BOSTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / How do you raise funds for a cutting-edge innovative tool that saves 30% of video editing time? Well, timing is key. Pre-2016, your fundraising opportunity would have been limited to just 2% of the American populace - to just venture capitalists and accredited investors. Fast-forward to 2020, and the same opportunity expands by almost 98%. Thanks to the Regulation Crowdfunding Act (aka Reg.CF), startup founders can now raise funds from family, friends, acquaintances, social media followers, and even internet stalkers.
The Reg.CF act, passed in 2016 and amended earlier this year, allows private companies to raise funds of up to $5m (up from $1.07m in 2016) from pretty much anyone, much to the benefit of people like Sam Bogoch, co-founder of Axle.ai.
Having built the company over the years by bootstrapping and growing by re-investing revenue, and encouraged by early investor Jason Calacanis, Sam and his co-founders decided in 2020 to raise $107,000 to boost the development and marketing of Axle.ai - a clever browser-based tool that helps video editors remotely find and manage their media content. With video consumption increasing by 96% in 2020, and recent acquisitions of 13 companies in the space (including Adobe buying Frame.io last month in a $1.3bn deal), there was little doubt that their team could pull off a successful fundraising campaign without losing chunks of equity to venture capitalists.
The bet paid off with an oversubscribed crowdfunding campaign where Axle.ai exceeded its $107,000 target and had to turn away potential investors. In fact, the fundraising campaign was such a hit that the founders were approached with a generous acquisition offer (which was politely declined).
Axle.ai is once again driving a second fundraising round with another crowdfunding campaign that has already successfully surpassed its minimum target. This time, the goal is for $428,000 to help to further develop and market their innovative media management platform. The company is working with Republic, one of the leaders in providing a curated marketplace for Reg. CF and other equity offerings.
Riding on Success
Since its inception in 2012, Axle.ai has grown to become the go-to search engine for internal media files used by professional media teams of all sizes. Before Axle.ai arrived on the scene, video editors spent 40% of their time hunting for relevant media files. Axle.ai solves this problem by using artificial intelligence to store and categorize media files of any type in an easily accessed front end for remote team collaboration; a further benefit is that the system facilitates remote work, a huge benefit given COVID's impact.
And if social proof from existing users is anything to go by, then Axle.ai's many high-profile users can vouch for how much more efficient they've become leveraging this platform. Hundreds of sites including professional sports teams, venues, brands, broadcasters and music festivals are using the technology to better manage their ballooning stores of video.
The Birth of Axle.ai
Considering the roaring success of its crowdfunding efforts, the birth of Axle.ai can be at least described as an opportunity-in-waiting. The idea for the product came to Sam while he worked for Avid, one of the larger, early innovators of modern-day video editing software. While Avid's initial Interplay workgroup product was a brilliant concept geared towards major broadcast production networks, it didn't fully address customers' needs. The team brought Sam on board in a consulting capacity to help fix the problems with the 1.0 product. Sam ended up staying, and his contributions helped to take the division from $17m in revenue to $55m four years later.
The new product and strategy was a resounding success, yet a smaller, growing portion of the market remained underserved as the product was tailored for large broadcasters. This revealed a need for a similar media asset management product for smaller, professional teams - however, Avid understandably was unwilling to take on a new product as their existing product was so profitable. Sam took on the entrepreneurial challenge, and Axle.ai was born.
The Crowdfunding Opportunity
Today, the advent of crowdfunding has created more opportunities for investment in the success of innovative companies like Axle.ai. With these developments, startup founders can raise significant sums to create solutions for persistent problems. Individuals on the other hand can invest as little as $150 (in the case of Axle.ai) in exchange for Crowd SAFE securities, which can convert to equity upon certain future events. If you want to be part of an innovative drive in one of the fastest-growing markets accelerated by the pandemic, join Axle.ai's backers while the opportunity is still available.
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SOURCE: Axle.ai