LOS ANGELES - Brothers Michael and Peter Cioni have officially announced Strada (strada.tech), a new startup that aims to drive creative professionals to work exclusively in the cloud. Following months of research, development and debate – all documented in their YouTube series “Starting a Startup” – the founders announced $1.9M in pre-seed funding, backed by several major Hollywood players, including filmmakers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Rabbit Hole;
This Is Us;
Crazy, Stupid, Love); Jason Fotter, co-founder and former CTO of FuseFX; Endcrawl; Goldieblox; and the principals of Ataboy Studios. Panavision is also supporting Strada as a strategic partner, with CEO Kim Snyder joining Strada’s advisory board.
Photo (L-R): Strada's Michael and Peter Cioni
“Innovative tools and technologies unlock so many opportunities, but are simultaneously difficult to integrate into legacy workflows,” explains company CEO, Michael Cioni. “Most people find themselves spending too much time preparing to be creative and not enough time actually being creative. Strada is completely re-thinking workflow, with the goal of giving time back to creative professionals so that they can focus on telling great stories.”
Strada is an AI-enabled cloud platform for content creators. The platform combines a cloud marketplace with an intelligent workflow builder to help creative professionals improve the quality of their content.
“Many developers of creative tools require their users to have a high degree of proficiency or specialization,” says Strada CFO, Peter Cioni. “We find creative teams of all sizes often don’t have the time to become experts in every tool, especially when they only need a handful of features. Strada is building for a future where high-quality features needed in a workflow become available a la carte through our purpose-built cloud marketplace. And once the entire pipeline lives in the cloud, creatives will spend more time creating and less time managing workflow.”
Earlier this year, Michael and Peter left their roles at Adobe and Netflix, respectively, to embark on their second joint business venture, following a hunch that the greatest opportunity for creative professionals brought by machine learning is not Generative AI, but intelligent workflow automation, which has the potential to reset workflow entirely.
The Cioni brothers are seasoned pioneers in the emerging entertainment technology space, being closely associated with some of the industry’s biggest tech transformations over the last two decades. They have launched post production companies, worked on some of the most cutting-edge feature films and television series, built content review platforms, spearheaded digital cinema camera development, and pioneered cloud acquisition technologies. With two decades spent on designing workflows, they are well positioned to reinvent workflow, which is only growing more complex with the explosion of AI and cloud-based solutions for the creative professional community.
“With the advent of new AI tools, diverse distribution channels and evolving consumer tastes, the industry is standing at the edge of a permanent transformation that impacts what we create and how we create it,” Michael Cioni summarizes. “Our early investors and advisors offer validation that what we are building at Strada is perfectly timed to capitalize on this transformation.”
While Strada is still being built, pros can sign up to get access to an upcoming public beta.