5th Kind, Collaborative Media Solutions, Announces Investment Round with HCAP

Los Angeles-based 5th Kind, Inc., creator of collaborative media solutions and digital toolsets for Hollywood’s top studios, announced its first funding round. The investing partnership provided by HCAP Partners will help accelerate the company’s growth to support increasing demand for its highly secure digital asset and workflow management platform. Tim Bubnack, HCAP Managing Partner with more than 25 years investing in growth-stage startups and small businesses, is joining 5th Kind’s Board of Directors.

5th Kind’s technology platform CORE supports the world’s most sophisticated content creators and has become the workflow backbone for more than 100+ blockbuster productions across Hollywood’s major studios and gaming companies.

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“HCAP is providing capital and resources to help further the rapid growth and expansion of the company’s customer base as well as to support its new relationship with Box,” commented Bubnack. “We are excited to work with the 5th Kind team to develop opportunities to provide its software to the world’s most recognizable consumer brands and businesses, all of whom are in need of a scalable and secure platform to create, collaborate, launch, and manage their growing number of digital assets.”

Founded in 2007 by technologist and media specialist, Steve Cronan, 5th Kind was created to help streamline and secure the digital collaboration process. Having a background in software engineering and Hollywood productions, Steve set out on a mission to create a product that makes people’s lives easier and reduces the amount of repetition and data loss that happens across many organizations.

In 2021, CORE by 5th Kind has evolved into a real-time collaboration and workflow orchestration hub. The platform helps productions, studios, and enterprises alike to secure, streamline, and simplify the creative process. Described as the connective tissue between workflows and tools, CORE brings together asset storage, review, approvals, distribution and live meetings in one space.

Earlier this year, 5th Kind announced technology partnerships with Box and AWS. HCAP’s timely support is an extension of 5th Kind’s effort to build and adapt quickly to meet the demands of its customers, enabling them to focus on great storytelling and creating great content.

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Using CORE for an innumerable combination of use cases including remote production, production asset management, creative development, brand management, and marketing, to name a few, 5th Kind’s customers save up to 34% on average. With HCAP’s financial injection, 5th Kind plans to expand this value by making key product improvements in the next two years to optimize the overall frontend user experience, build out its CORE Live toolset, and integrate with a broader range of complementary, high-demand tools to better support client pipelines.

“Since 2007, 5th Kind has been working hard to understand how information flows around an organization and the ripple effects of decision making. CORE delivers significant ROI to our clients. For instance, some of our studio clients save up to $1.5 million per production with a large portion of that due to the ability to find and reuse assets. We’ve seen an increase in value delivered as work from home and remote production needs increased this past year,” says Steve Cronan, CEO and Founder. “HCAP’s commitment to 5th Kind allows us to invest in all areas of the business to deliver great tools that support our clients, whilst continuing to innovate and be a significant player in the future of work.”