Clipchamp: how an attempted supercomputer became a global content creator

Clipchamp offers a comprehensive video editing, recording, compression and conversion platform, with rapid global growth of 11 million users and counting. We sat down with Clipchamp's co-founder, Tobias Raub and financial controller, Tristan Cheal to find out more.

Clipchamp provides video creators with a seamless production process

In 2014, Clipchamp founders Alex Dreiling, Soeren Balko, David Hewitt and Tobias Raub had a goal: to build the world’s largest distributed supercomputer. 

They soon realised that their goal was, somewhat, unattainable, but in the process found another use case: digital video processing technology. They wanted to develop technology that provided a streamlined user creation experience.

The founders saw an opportunity to create the world’s first in-browser video editing platform. “They come to Clipchamp with the goal to build a video, and we give them the tools to do that,” said Tobias.

Explosive growth within the last year

Clipchamp’s accessible and simple tool has launched them to become one of the world’s fastest-growing video creation tools. Globally popular for the creation of social media, educational content, onboarding and more, Clipchamp had an eye for going global from the beginning.

“Going global happened quite early on with our product. Since it was digital and online, it lends itself to new markets easily. We would have missed a giant opportunity had we not expanded as early on as possible, especially since the Australian market is relatively small compared to other countries.” said Tobias

Localising a global digital product

Clipchamp has enjoyed explosive growth in the last year and has seen their staff triple in size to keep up with their 11 million registered users. This global expansion required the team to craft a seamless, local user experience beyond just their Western markets.

“Our roadmap is to localise the experience - not just language, but also localising the payment experience and video templates we offer. This is different from market to market.”

A global business account that could scale with the team

Alongside Clipchamp’s growth in revenues and teams, they needed a better way to manage payments, thus turning to Airwallex. Clipchamp found that the financial accessibility of Airwallex’s platform made them more flexible than traditional providers.

“With our old provider, banking access was limited to the CEO. With Airwallex, however, I could easily create multi-user access. I could set up roles and add users, as well as the bank accounts and debit cards.” said Tristan

In addition, 95% of Clipchamp’s revenue is in USD, being the currency charged to all customers outside of Australia. Clipchamp wanted to collect this revenue and pay subscriptions and other expenses seamlessly, without the fees that major banks charge. Airwallex’s US global accounts and multi-currency cards made this possible. 

“Being able to set up a domestic account from anywhere is awesome, as well as being insured and having the same protection a US bank account would have. It gave me great confidence to know that accounts are held in trust in our name.”

Going global, however, is not without its challenges. International markets contain their own tax and privacy regulations that the team needed to get right for successful expansion.

The US market remains the hotbed for technology partnerships, talent and funding

Clipchamp understood that to compete on a global scale, they needed to build a strong US presence, especially when investors, technology partners and quality talent remain important accelerants for a SaaS business.

“While other regions have caught up in recent years, the US is still light years ahead for venture capital and seed funding. If you want to do a serious round and compete globally, you need to be able to compete in this market,” said Tobias

Clipchamp knew having the right partnerships with other leading SaaS platforms could ‘make or break’ their product. In 2019, they joined the epicentre of innovation and began building their US presence.

“Since we established our US presence, we have had household names who have reached out and want to partner with us. Having the right integrations could totally change the trajectory of a technology business. So you need to be where the people you integrate with are.”

What’s in store for Clipchamp?

“We’re working on a number of exciting additions to our video creation platform and are building additional features to cater to international markets. A recent product launch we’re excited for is an AI voice-over generator for English. We’re working to make this available in other languages and bring it to our whole customer base,” said Tobias.

One of the founders’ more difficult challenges right now lies in managing a growing, global team. “We have more people starting in different locations as the team size increases. This means that many haven’t met their workmates in person yet, and it’s important to have that personal touch.”

With so much excitement surrounding Clipchamp, we can’t wait to see Australia’s next unicorn.

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