This startup is raising $10 million to solve one of video production's most vexing problems

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Frame.io founders

Frame.io

Frame.io cofounder and CTO John Traver, left, and cofounder and CEO Emery Wells.

With the rise of video on sites like Facebook and Snapchat, and more and more media companies realizing its importance, there comes a new set of problems: How can everyone from producers to executives work together on a video project?

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That's where Frame.io comes in.

The video review and collaboration platform launched in April 2015 after founder Emery Wells had experienced that problem while running his own video production company. Wells was creating Super Bowl commercials and digital shorts for "Saturday Night Live," but was having challenges collaborating with everyone involved in the process.

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"We were using this mishmash of different services at my post-production company and it was just such a crappy experience," Wells told Business Insider. "We started looking for other solutions, but everything we found was either really bad, really expensive, or both. So we decided to spend a few months and build a simple solution for ourselves, but as we started building it, we realized we weren't the only ones who felt this way."

With Frame.io - which has both a web application and an iPhone app, which won an Apple Design Award last June - users can create a project, upload all the materials, and share it with all the participants in the project. Users can leave time-stamped comments on the video, add annotation, and even draw directly on the video frame.

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Frame.io UI

Frame.io

Soon after its launch, Wells says Frame.io quickly took off in the video production world, and the company raised a $2.2 million seed round last October. Now, the company has clients ranging from Tesla to Yale University to NASA, and is closing a $10 million Series A round. The round is led by Accel Partners with participation from SignalFire, FirstMark Capital, and Shasta Ventures.

The company is also adding strategic investors from the production industry. Actor Jared Leto is returning as an investor and joining Frame.io's advisory board, and iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman, Warner Bros. President Greg Silverman, and actor Kevin Spacey are also investors.

"The battle for attention on the internet and mobile is going to include some form of video moving forward, and that's just created this necessity for all kinds of new companies to have the capability of creating video in house," Wells said. "Frame.io is built for all the participants in the process, not just the video editors. The tool is really built for the business of creating video."

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