Amsterdam-based Hedge raises €2.52M; Steve Bayes, Estelle McGechie, and Robin Moran join as advisors

Amsterdam-based Hedge, a software solutions company that offers backup footage, on set and in post-production, announced that it has raised $3M (approx €2.52M) in its Seed round of funding. The round was led by Steve Bayes, with participation from other private media industry investors.

What does Hedge offer?

Founded in 2016, Hedge claims to simplify complex media workflows from acquisition and asset creation to post-production. The company’s software transfers valuable video content from cameras to multiple storage media, and allows video editors to collaborate across the cloud.

The company’s flagship application, Hedge, simplifies media backup, while Canister demystifies the previously arcane process of LTO archiving. LTO is a backup medium, designed to store large amounts of data securely for long periods.

In 2019, the company released Postlab, Hedge made remote collaboration affordable for every editor working from home, and in the studio. Currently, Hedge’s products are being used by over 30,000 customers globally, from Hollywood productions to wedding shoots, and more.

Use of the fresh capital

The proceeds from this round will help Hedge to grow its team, and expand its media technology portfolio and capabilities through the acquisition of Divergent Media assets and investment in Colourlab.

Co-founder and CEO of Hedge, Paul Matthijs, says, “Hedge has had five consecutive years of profitable growth. But, even with our success and rapid development schedule, there’s still so much more we can build to make life even better for our customers.”

Matthijs adds, “With this investment coming from industry leaders who understand the pain points we are trying to solve, we will grow our team and focus on optimising the workflow for customers rather than finances, bringing new features and entirely new products to market faster. And by investing back into the industry, we are also building a new era of video workflows that are open, reliable, and fast – and that will catapult video production into the modern age.”

Appoints strategic advisors

To help take the company through its next stage of growth, Hedge strengthened its leadership capabilities with the establishment of an industry advisory board with investor Steve Bayes, industry executive Estelle McGechie, and noted filmmaker Robin Moran. The newly appointed Hedge advisors will offer guidance on evolving market dynamics, product evolution, and customer experience.

Brief about the advisors:

Steve Bayes: retired from Apple in 2018 after more than 12 years as Product Manager for Professional Applications. Before joining Apple, he was Principal Product Designer at Avid for over 10 years. He’s also had success with technology developments with more than 30 years of expertise in post-production, product development and tech marketing.

Estelle McGechie: Chief Product Officer at Atomos, Estelle has experience working for some of the renowned companies including Apple, Disney, and Logitech. Her deep understanding of product development will serve as a huge asset to Hedge as they expand their offerings.

Robin Moran: Robin’s versatility as an award-winning filmmaker enables him to direct, produce and edit feature films, tv series, documentaries, music videos, and TV commercials all over the world. His creative experience and technical insight as a filmmaker will help Hedge continue to offer an outstanding user experience.

Divergent Media Asset Acquisition

Divergent Media tools help with DIT, editing, finishing, and transcoding. With access to these technologies, Hedge plans to consolidate and improve its products, without losing the essence of any of them. 

Paul Matthijs explains, “To remove even more workflow friction, we need to be able to do more with video itself. That’s why we’re acquiring Divergent Media’s apps. Customers will have a more complete and friction free workflow with experts they can tap into. We are moving quickly and our customers can expect exciting new products born from EditReady, Scopebox, and Hedge technologies.”

Investment in Colourlab

Earlier this year, Hedge led the Seed round investment in Colourlab. It’s an AI-driven color grading technology that enables users to match the color essence of a film clip and accurately apply it to a single clip or hundreds, automatically. With this investment, Hedge will help further commoditise workflows, enabling an even wider pool of users to participate in production and post-production.

Talking about the investment, Paul Matthijs, elaborates, “The final frontier is color. Within a few years, a non-destructive color workflow will become the most important cornerstone for any production. Colourlab is a great step forward towards enabling that and it’s the main reason why we are investing in their seed round. They are doing amazing things, and we see this as just the beginning of an amazing industry evolution and partner collaboration.”