Wrapbook is a company that simplifies the payroll process for film and TV commercial productions and has received $27 million in Series A funding from notable names in the entertainment and tech worlds.
The round was managed by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation by Equal Ventures and Uncork Capital and also from WndrCo (the holding and investment company headed by DreamWorks and Quibi co-founder and founder Jeffrey Katzenberg) and from CAA co-founder Michael Olvitz.
“It’s time to introduce production finance services into the 21st century,” Katzenberg said. “We require a solution using technology to address the growing complexity of onboarding production and pay and insurance for crew and cast. This is only amplified by COVID-19. I am convinced that Wrapbook can provide.”
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Payroll startup for entertainment Wrapbook raises $27 million in A16z funding
Wrapbook’s co-founder and CEO Ali Javid explained that entertainment payroll is still largely a paper-based, old-fashioned process which is particularly difficult to track as the cast and crew members move from one project to the next, as much as 30 times in one year. Wrapbook streamlines and digitizes the process of gathering all documents and signatures required to begin production, handling the payroll itself and creating a dashboard to keep track of payments, and making it simple to get the insurance needed.
While the company was first founded in 2018, Javid said that the demand has risen dramatically since production resumed following the outbreak of COVID-19, “totally” altering the way that production companies operate and causing producers to ask, “Hey, if there’s an easier and faster method to manage this at my home Let’s take a examine it.”
Javid also explained Wrapbook’s Wrapbook platform as “a vertical fintech service that is growing quickly in a field that we know very well and that not many other companies have considered.” Javid claimed that Wrapbook’s revenue was up seven times by 2020.
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While Wrapbook’s primary customers are production companies as well as the co-founder and chief marketing officer Cameron Woodward (who previously worked in the fields of filmmaking insurance and commercial production) explained that the team had been focused on creating a great experience for the actors and crew that are paid through the platform increasing numbers of them (12 per cent to date) have utilized Wrapbook profiles. Wrapbook profiles to be paid for many productions.
The company had previously had $3.6 million of seed money. In the future, Javid and Woodward said that Wrapbook’s technology could be used in other industries that depend on projects. However, for the moment, they see an opportunity to keep growing in entertainment only -they estimated that the industry has a potential of 200 billion dollars in annual paid-out payments.
“We’re planning to improve on what’s working and then build the products according to our customer’s requests in terms of entertainment,” Javid said. “To this end, we’re looking to hire 100 employees over the next twelve months.”
