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Wrapbook, a startup that simplifies the payroll process for commercial, film and television productions, has raised $ 25 million in Series A funding from notable names from both the tech and entertainment worlds.
The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Equal Ventures and Uncork Capital, as well as WndrCo (the investment and holding company led by DreamWorks and Quibi founder / co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg) and CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz.
“It is time for us to bring production financial services into the 21st century,” Katzenberg said in a statement. “We need a technology solution that addresses the growing complexities of onboarding cast and crew production, pay and underwriting, only exacerbated by COVID-19, and I think Wrapbook delivers.”
Wrapbook co-founder and CEO Ali Javid explained that entertainment payroll has largely remained an old paper-based process, which is particularly difficult to track as the cast and crew move from a project. to another, up to 30 times in a single year. Wrapbook digitizes and simplifies the process: electronically collects all the necessary forms and signatures at the beginning of production, handles the payroll itself, creates a dashboard to track payments, and also makes it easy to obtain the necessary insurance.
Wrapbook founders Cameron Woodward, Ali Javid, Hesham El-Nahhas and Naysawn Naji
Although the startup was founded in 2018, Javid told me that demand has increased dramatically as production resumed during the pandemic, with COVID-19 “totally” changing the culture of the industry and prompting production companies to say : “Hey, if there is an easier, faster way to do this from my home, then yeah, let’s look at it.”
Javid also described the Wrapbook platform as “a vertical fintech solution that is growing very fast in an industry that we understand very well and that not many others have thought of.” In fact, he said the company’s revenue increased sevenfold in 2020.
And while Wrapbook’s direct clients are production companies, co-founder and chief marketing officer Cameron Woodward (who previously worked in film insurance and commercial production) said the team has also focused on creating a good experience for the cast and crew. the team who are paid via platform: a growing number of them (12% so far) have used their Wrapbook profiles to receive payments on multiple productions.
Image credits: Wrapbook
The startup previously raised $ 6.3 million in seed funding. Looking ahead, Javid and Woodward said that the Wrapbook solution could eventually be adopted in other project-based industries. But for now, they see plenty of opportunities to keep growing in entertainment alone: They estimated that the industry currently sees $ 200 billion in annual payments.
“We’re going to double down on what’s working and build on what customers have asked for within entertainment,” said Javid. “To that end, we are working to hire 100 people in the next 12 months.”
