We caught up with the CEO of Clipchamp, a unique technology stack for fast and easy video sharing, to get a glimpse into his startup that is connecting people all over the world through online videos.
Exclusive interview with Alexander Dreiling, CEO of video sharing platform Clipchamp
How does Clipchamp serve the social side of tech?
We run a free video recording and upload service for Youtubers, students, or anyone wanting to share video online. We also have a business product that offers the same capability to any website that wants videos from their users.
Alexander Dreiling, CEO of Clipchamp
How our product helps serve the social side of technology greatly differs depending upon the specific clients utilizing our product. Some examples are anyone wanting to share videos online, education sites offering their students the opportunity to upload video assignments or questions to engage with teachers, recruitment and casting agencies offering applicants the chance to record video resumes and upload them, news and media agencies offering the general public the ability upload newsworthy footage, and others. It’s all about using and sharing videos to connect people.
Does your professional background as CEO qualify you as a leader in your industry? How?
Our four founders have been working together at SAP in the past and built, evangelized and sold products before. They realized that they can work together well, and after a few other roles outside SAP came together as a team to create Clipchamp. Becoming a leader in any industry means you have to listen to customers, be able to translate friction into opportunity and execute accordingly. And that is precisely what this team has been doing. Clipchamp’s founders deal with media problems from their tech background perspective and therefore introduce a new dimension. It led to a worldwide unique set of technologies that is particularly attractive for businesses that want their users to upload videos to them from a variety of different devices. And a unique set of technologies is certainly a basis for any company to become a leader in an industry.
What motivates you to produce high quality video sharing for your customers and what has been their feedback towards your company or towards you as CEO?
We are excited and motivated by the mind-blowing amount of video sharing that gets transmitted everyday. Add to that the latest generation of mobile phone cameras, action cameras, drone cameras or single lens cameras that record amazing but huge videos and the societal trend to share amazing experiences with friends and the world and the entire growing industry surrounding video sharing (often restricted by file sizes) and you’ve got our motivation.
People earn money in ways that were unimaginable ten years ago with video and the number of business models around video is exploding. The opportunities for Clipchamp are boundless. We see so many websites that have video upload facilities or that would benefit from video upload facilities. Overall, we’re motivated by hundreds of thousands of businesses; recruitment agencies, schools, real estate agencies, health organisations, and others who already allow or would like to allow video recording and upload, but are constrained by outdated technology.
One client told us that protecting their users’ privacy was critical to them. They wanted a solution that didn’t involve sending their sensitive data such as video files to a third party for processing. They said our Clipchamp API and its direct upload with no files sent through the Clipchamp server fit the bill perfectly.
Does Clipchamp fit in to an overall trend? How?
Snapchat and Facebook now serve more than 20 billion videos per day. Youtube and Vimeo serve hundreds of millions of hours of video sharing every day. Countless other platforms serve billions of more videos. The number of business models around video is exploding. More and more people make money from videos through advertising, selling footage, providing educational videos and more. More and more videos are being produced by ordinary people on cameras that produce astonishing high quality clips. And people want to share video for a variety of reasons, not only commercial reasons. There is a clear trend that started with social media to share video and we’re really only seeing the beginning.
We love this since we’re solving the “first-mile-problem” that is constrained upload bandwidth and rapidly increasing video file sizes. 4k can today be recorded on mobile phones, drones and many consumer-grade cameras. File sizes have increased times four compared to 1080p, but upload bandwidth by and large still has not. That’s our sweet spot. We give a voice through video to people that aren’t video technology experts.
Can you discuss what sets Clipchamp apart from your competitors and what is the overall goal?
What sets us apart from our competitors is that we have developed the first smart video uploader and recorder in the digital video industry. We offer web-based video uploads up to 20 times faster than traditional uploads by compressing videos in the browser before they get uploaded. The technology is pure HTML5, no Flash; the user doesn’t have to install anything. What also sets us apart is our commitment to our customers’ privacy (whether they are using our free product or our paid API). We don’t see the videos our users put on Youtube or any other platform. And neither do we see the videos the users of our customers upload to them. We guarantee privacy by design.
