5 minute read
A new era for EditShare
EditShare enters a new era. It's a big move for the company that owns and develops Lightworks
A long time ago, in a trade show far, far away, a hopeful startup called EditShare displayed its wares on an unsuitable-looking table. But what the fledgling company showed at NAB in 2004 was remarkable. It was an affordable way for editors to share precious storage. It was a win all ways round. Central administration over an expensive resource, and the ability to share media and projects between NLE users.
I remember it clearly, because I was there.
Fast forward fifteen years and EditShare is at the centre of most of the important trends in the industry. With the new investment, it's a new era for the Boston, Mass company.
There are all kinds of investment deals, but it seems this one was for the best of reasons: EditShare had reached a stage where it was approaching the limits of what a founder-owned company could do. It needed resources to grow. It wanted to do this so that it could move forwards at a pace demanded by the industry. And with a strong range of products, there's nothing to hold it back now.
Origin story
We have to declare a connection here. RedShark wouldn't exist without the clever and forward-thinking founders of EditShare. Some of you know the story, but here it is in a very concise form.
When Editshare launched the software-only version of Lightworks, it took off like a rocket. Thousands were downloading it every day. (After all, it's not every day you can get hold of a previously $40K Hollywood-Strength NLE for nothing!). The interest in Lightworks was so strong that our initial thoughts were to launch a newsletter for the software itself.
This was a great idea, and we seriously considered it. But then, as the numbers grew, it occurred to us that it might make more sense to launch a publication for the whole industry. After all: why restrict it to Lightworks?
And that's how RedShark was born.
What's in a name?
But what about the name "RedShark"? Well, it could have been "PinkElephant", but Lightworks' logo was a red shark, called Lucy. Anyone working in the industry in the '90s might remember editors walking around trade shows carrying an inflatable red shark. The name seemed random enough for our nascent online publication, and suitably connected for an online publication whose origin story stems from the legendary NLE.
An awful lot has happened since then. RedShark's a very widely read publication for the entire Moving Image Industry. Meanwhile, EditsShare is moving into a new era.
RedShark has been a separate company and legal entity for a long time now. Our coverage has always been objective to the point where we actually gave EditShare less coverage that its competitors. We remain friends and will continue to have a close relationship with the Boston company, in the same way that we strive to do with all significant players in the industry.
We wish EditShare well on this new stage of its journey.
EDITSHARE TAKES ON MAJORITY INVESTMENT FROM PARKERGALE CAPITAL
Investment will fuel product innovation and growth across the media & entertainment sector
Boston, MA, USA — May 20, 2019 — EditShare®, a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, Automated Quality Control (AQC), editing and media management solutions, today announced it has taken on a majority investment from private equity firm ParkerGale Capital (ParkerGale). Focused on profitable founder-owned technology companies, ParkerGale’s carefully curated portfolio is a mix of software-oriented businesses that are supported by the firm’s financial investment and in-house operating team whose mission is to help portfolio businesses rapidly scale and bring to market new innovative products and services. EditShare founders, Andy Liebman and Tara Montford, will continue to lead EditShare innovation and customer success and remain the company’s largest individual shareholders. Industry veteran, Conrad Clemson, will join the leadership team as EditShare CEO.
“We have created a company that not only delivers products and solutions that appeal to the media production market, as shown by our returning customers, but also to a company such as ParkerGale, which has had the insight to see how valuable EditShare has become. ParkerGale’s deep-seated history of helping profitable companies like ours achieve their next stage growth goals will enable our team to expand and develop the EditShare product range into even better solutions for our customers in the future,” comments Tara Montford, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President Business Development, EditShare. “EditShare has always been extremely customer-focused and without our customers’ engagement, we would not be where we are today. Riding the momentum of double-digit growth over the last three years combined with the investment by ParkerGale, we will have the resources at hand to accelerate all our plans and deliver on our innovative roadmap while retaining that personal touchpoint with our customers.”
Deployed at thousands of facilities around the world, EditShare solutions are used to power the creation of many of today’s blockbuster feature films, captivating TV series, documentaries, sports programs, live events, educational programs, corporate communications and more. Its ultra-scalable distributed media management platform enables businesses of all sizes to drive media production workflows with greater ease. EditShare’s secure collaboration environment connects users to content and production tools, allowing businesses to hire the talent they require, anywhere in the world.
“We are proud to offer industry-leading solutions that enable our customers to respond to market demands with greater efficiency and ultimately take advantage of new opportunities to grow their businesses,” comments Andy Liebman, EditShare Co-Founder and newly appointed Chief Strategy Officer. “Our incredibly talented team is dialed into our customers’ needs and next steps. They are developing and delivering innovative solutions that facilitate collaboration and efficiency such as the EditShare Flow hybrid media management platform that can cut production time by as much as 50% and EFS Shared Storage Auditing, an important content security capability that helps mitigate content theft. Our innovations span all aspects of media production from an individual storyteller who is using the Emmy-award winning Lightworks to enterprise broadcasters automating productions with EditShare’s metadata-driven workflow solutions. With ParkerGale’s infusion of capital, EditShare will be able to execute much faster on the many more incredible product and workflow ideas we have for all of our customers.”
Leading the company through this next stage of growth is EditShare’s new CEO, Conrad Clemson, who recently led Cisco’s Video, Mobility, and Cloud organizations. “Andy founded EditShare in 2003 when he needed a more flexible and affordable solution for media sharing. His invention of high-performance Network Attached Storage for editing transformed the industry in a way others weren’t imagining at that time," comments Clemson. "EditShare’s history of leading the industry with groundbreaking innovations and solving customer problems before they even recognize them goes deep, and with this investment, the EditShare team will be even better positioned to continue to deliver transformative solutions to an industry that is in greater demand for it now more than ever.”
Devin Mathews, Founding Partner at ParkerGale concludes on the new partnership and expanded resources, “We couldn’t be more excited to embark on this partnership with the EditShare team. In our research, we were particularly impressed by just how much customers love the EditShare suite of products - a testament to the tremendous foundation this company has built.”
To learn more about the expanded EditShare leadership team and its solutions for media & entertainment production, please visit https://www.editshare.com/management
About EditShare
EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV and film industries. Our groundbreaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance EFS central shared storage, AQC, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first three-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.
©2019 EditShare LLC. All rights reserved. EditShare® is a registered trademark of EditShare.
Tags: Business
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