FilmChain 🎬

Setting the Scene

• Profits from a movie don’t always end up in the right pockets. 🤔

• Here’s the payment flow:

  • Cinemas and streaming platforms claim 40-50% of revenue.

  • Distributors earn a commission for marketing the film.

  • Sales agents make a cut for pitching to festivals and distributors.

  • Private investors take their share.

  • Finally, producers pay actors, directors, screenwriters, and the crew with the rest of the funds.

• This process often occurs manually, which causes payment delays, underreporting, and mismatched revenue.

• This week’s company provides a platform that centralizes payment and royalty distributions for films and TV shows.

In a Sentence

FilmChain is a payments platform that collects, distributes, and analyzes profits for films and TV shows.

• Platform: Leverages blockchain technology to ensure transactions are automated, traceable, and visible to stakeholders.

• Collects, distributes, and analyzes: Records transactions, distributes funds, manages royalties, displays ownership, illustrates financial data, and predicts film performance.

• Films and TV shows: Customers range from indie filmmakers and producers to enterprise-level movie studios and streaming platforms.

The Basics

• Industry: Film & Media, Blockchain, Fintech

• Headquarters: London, UK

• Year founded: 2018

• Employee count: 9

• Investors: RocaX, Hearst Lab, SFC Capital, Christoph Lange, Taavi Tamkivi, Christian Wittmer, Simona Popa

• Amount raised: £1.7m & £377k in grants

• Currently raising: £2m seed round

• Business model: Onboarding fees and transaction fees

• Initial target market: Independent filmmakers and producers

• Early traction: 100 independent titles, £1M+ in assets managed over the last 4 months, 2 enterprise pilots with 750+ titles

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

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Due Diligence

WHAT WE LIKE

• 🎥 The cinema scene: Box office revenue is expected to reach $30b this year, yet filmmakers and studios face a complicated payment process with frequent delays, a lack of transparency, and underpayment.

• ⚙️ Film flywheel: By engaging various stakeholders across the payment process, FilmChain will build key relationships, drive repeat usage, and acquire new customers.

• 👀 Sequel end markets: FilmChain has the potential to serve the music, gaming, and other industries to improve the payment flow and royalty management.

POTENTIAL RISKS

• 👥 The onboarding process: Producers must convince the entire chain of stakeholders to join and accept payments on the platform, which may lead to longer sales cycles.

• 😳 Customized deals: FilmChain negotiates each deal with the customer, which takes time, may hinder scalability, and causes difficulty in standardizing pricing structures.

• ✍️ Writers’ strike: Customers may be reluctant to adopt a new platform due to the strained relationships and industry slowdown caused by the writers’ strike.

Founder Profile

• Maria Tanjala: Previously worked as a film and content producer.

• Irina Albita: Member of EU Commission Blockchain, previously started a university accelerator, and founded two startups.

Comps

• Breaker: Raised through equity crowdfunding.

• FilmTrack: Acquired by City National Bank.

• Rightsline: Acquired by Klass Capital.

• Cinelytic: Backed by T&B Media Global.

📌 Bulletin Board

• 🏡 Amazon Bets Big on Smart Homes, You Can Too: Ring — Amazon acquired for $1.2B. iRobot — Amazon acquired for $1.7B.

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Last Week Today

• The results are in: Subscribers voted in favor of Luca, a bookkeeping platform for small businesses in Africa.

• Subscriber feedback: “Potential is large even if they only get a piece of the market.”

✍️ Written by Brett and Sam

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