Marketplace for video makers MotionElements lands pre-series A funding

MotionElements, a marketplace for stock video, animations, and after effects, today announced it raised an undisclosed amount in pre-series A funding. The round is led by KK Fund and joined by Incubate Fund and 500 Startups.

“Our vision is to go beyond being just a marketplace for video creators, but to build a place where creators in the world can connect, create, earn, and learn,” explains Mark Sun, co-founder and CEO/CTO of MotionElements.

Specifically, the team aims to improve the user experience by “launching a series of features and tools for video makers that allow them to find their stock elements faster, and collaborate better.” Sun gives an example:

“One of our product lines is music. We have developed an easy, visual way for users to search for videos. However, the visual approach doesn’t work with music. So we are developing a unique music-matching engine to help users easily find similar music just by dragging and dropping.”

A “microstock” media company, MotionElements differs from traditional ones in that they source their images almost exclusively from the internet, and do so through individual creatives rather than agencies. As such, MotionElements’ focus on enabling its community makes perfect sense.

So far, MotionElements has been “well-received in countries like Japan, Germany, and the US,” according to Sun. Now, they’re looking to move in Thailand, Russia, Spain, and other Spanish-speaking countries. He explains why:

Thailand’s media industry is among the most advanced in Asia, and Russia promises a huge untapped market. To expand to these countries, language is perhaps just one relatively easy aspect. In each new market, the company will offer local language support, language-optimized search, and customer support.

Asia-focused

The royalty-free marketplace was founded back in 2010, when Sun and co-founder Joanne Chua were both running a video production business. Facing clients who demanded more interesting content with lower budget and shorter time frame, they realized there was no decent marketplace to purchase stock videos, and more specifically, “video footage with Asian people, layered video elements and video templates.”

When they found out other video makers also had similar problems, they decided to plug this market gap and disrupt the video production process. “Also, we found that Asia has tremendous talent in video creation,” Sun recalls.

“Unfortunately, these creators have limited exposure and we felt it was a huge waste. Hence, we created a platform for video creators to connect, create, and earn.”

Business plan in hand, the duo landed a small sum of seed funding from Singapore government agency MDA’s iJAM program. Since then, they’ve been careful with their spending, and have bootstrapped till today.

“We felt strongly for the business, and were confident that we could prove the business model before going to the market to raise funds, of course at valuations that will not dilute our shareholding too much,” explains Sun. He adds: