# DrylabNews for investors & friends · May 2017 Welcome to our first newsletter of 2017! It'sbeen a while since the last one, and a lot hashappened. We promise to keep them comingevery two months hereafter, and permitourselves to make this one rather long. Thebig news is the beginnings of our launch inthe American market, but there are alsointeresting updates on sales, development,mentors and (of course) the investmentround that closed in January **New capital:** The investment round wassuccessful. We raised 2.13 MNOK to match Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences· Alesha & Jamie Metzger· Amazon · Apple· Caitlin Burns, PGA· Carlos Melcer· Chimney L.A.· Dado Valentic· **34** AWSDaveStump·DITWIT·ERANYC·Facebook·FancyFilm·FilmLight·GeoLabelle·meetings Google· IBM· Innovation Norway (NYC)· Innovation Norway (SF)· InternationalNY · SF Cinematographers Guild· NBC· Local 871· Netflix· Pomfort· Radiant Images·LA · LV Screening Room· Signiant· Moods of Norway· Tapad· Team Downey the 2.05 MNOK loan from InnovationNorway. Including the developmentagreement with Filmlance International, thetotal new capital is 5 MNOK, partly tied tothe successful completion of milestones. Allformalities associated with this process arenow finalized. **New owners:** We would especially like towarmly welcome our new owners to theDrylab family: Unni Jacobsen, Torstein JahrSuzanne Bolstad, Eivind Bergene, Turid Brun,Vigdis Trondsen, Lea Blindheim, Kristine --- Holmsen, Torstein Hansen, and JosteinAanensen. We look forward to working withyou! **Sales:** Return customer rate is now 80%,proving value and willingness to payFactory Montreal is our first customer inCanada. Lumiere Numeriques have startedusing us in France. We also have newcustomers in Norway, and high-profile userssuch as Gareth Unwin, producer of Oscar-[winningThe King's Speech. Revenue for the](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504320/)first four months is 200 kNOK, compared to339 kNOK for all of 2016. We are workingon a partnership to safeguard sales inNorway while beginning to focus more onthe US. **New team members:**organization with two permanent developersbased in Łódź, the film capital of Poland. Thighly skilled interns from the University ofOslo's Entrepreneurship Program, will beworking on market research until mid-June(starting in March), preparing for the USlaunch. Also, two computer science studentsare working as part-time interns duringspring, on machine learning and analysisresearch, as well as innovative architecturesbased on the Swift language. We hope ourinterns will consider sticking around! **New mentor:** We are honored to haveCaitlin Burns joining us as a mentor accomplished producer based in New York,an active member of the Producers Guild ofAmerica, and the collaboration has alreadyyielded good results, including valuablecontacts for our visit in Los Angeles. Oscar-. Film [winning VFX supervisorDave Stump joined](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003432/)us earlier **New York, St. Louis, San Francisco and****Los Angeles:** Pontus and Audun did a tourof the US in February and March, meetingusers, partners and potential customers. Thetrip was very successful, with several highpoints, including meetings with Netflix, theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts andSciences, the InternationalCinematographers Guild, Local 871 (thescript supervisors' union), one of the world'sleading DITs, and Apple. See the separateattachment for a more detailed summary **NAB:** Andreas and Audun travelled to theNational Association of Broadcastersconvention (NAB) in Las Vegas for threehectic days in April. NAB gathers 100,000participants from film and TV. It's a veryefficient way of meeting people in thebusiness, and getting an updated picture ofthe business landscape. The most exciting We've extended our meeting was with PIX System, one of ourmost important competitors. It was wo interesting to note that they regarded theindie market as bigger than their own. Andreas was able to secure us aninvitation to the DIT-WIT party, with some ofthe world's leading DITs in attendance. It wasa great place for informal feedback on DrylabViewer. The pattern was the same as forother users: Initial polite interest turns toreal enthusiasm the moment someone is ableto personally try Drylab Viewer! We alsomet with Pomfort and Apple about our on-going collaborations; ARRI and Teradek/. She's an --- Paralinx about camera integration; Amazon,Google and IBM about cloud computing. **WWDC and Silicon V**pleasantly surprised to be invited by Apple totheir World Wide Developers Conference inSan Jose in June, despite not having applied.It's a valuable chance to learn and make newconnections. We’re also setting aside time tomeet other potential partners. **Cine Gear:** We have decided not to attendthe Cine Gear expo in L.A. this yearfeedback from many users about the showwere mixed, and our planned beta version of3.0 is slightly delayed. **Development and launch:**is around one month behind our originalschedule. We expect the delay to decrease,with new developers on board. [[Drylab has kindly allowed this newsletter to be redone in HTML/CSS and converted to PDF](http://www.drylab.no/)[withPrince.Navngen helped anonymize names in the process.]](http://www.princexml.com/) **alley:** We were very , since Development The launch of Drylab 3.0 will take place atthe International Broadcasters Conventionin Amsterdam in September, and we areworking hard to get solid feedback from pilotusers before then. **Annual General Meeting:** Drylab's AGMwill be held on June 16th at 15:00. Aninvitation will be distributed to all ownerswell in advance. We hope to see you there! **As you can see it has been a hectic****spring that has given us a lot of****confirmation about our product. We****are now working eagerly and hard****towards the US launch with Drylab****3.0, while keeping momentum in****Europe with our existing system.**