Hedge Secures Seed Funding, Invests In New Era of Video Workflows

Hedge, the creator of modern, intelligent software solutions for video professionals, has closed a $3 million round of seed funding led by Steve Bayes in participation with other private media industry investors. Hedge will use the investment to grow its team, and expand its media technology portfolio and capabilities through the acquisition of Divergent Media assets and investment in Colourlab. The financial transactions coincide with three strategic advisor appointments to help take the company through its next stage of growth: investor Steve Bayes, industry executive Estelle McGechie, and filmmaker Robin Moran.

“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,” said Paul Matthijs, co-founder and CEO of Hedge. “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 optimizing 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.”

Hedge’s software transfers valuable video content from cameras to multiple storage media, and allows video editors to collaborate across the cloud. The company said its recent seed funding, and its investments and acquisitions, “will allow Hedge to maintain and grow its position at the center of modern creative production and remove all friction from workflows from camera right through to edit.”

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. Matthijs said: “To remove even more workflow friction, we need to be able 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.”

Investing In The Next Frontier Of Color
Hedge is also the lead investor in Colourlab’s seed round, which was completed earlier this year. It’s AI-driven color grading technology les users match the color essence of a film clip and accurately apply it to a single clip or hundreds, automatically.

Consistent with Hedge’s overriding ethos of efficiency and time-savings, Hedge’s investment into the color-focused technology company will help further commoditize workflows, enabling an even wider pool of users to participate in production and post-production. Matthijs elaborates on the strategy behind the investment: “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.”