Celtx CEO Mark Kennedy in the company's offices in St John's, N.L.Greg Locke/Photo by Greg Locke / Globe and
When Mark Kennedy started telling people about his new St. John’s-based software-as-a-service company in 2000, they told him he had lost his mind.
The lawyer turned entrepreneur and his Celtx Inc. co-founder, Chad House, saw an opportunity to improve the early stages of the media production process, meaning creating and developing story ideas, scriptwriting and preproduction. They knew they had to find a difficult problem and offer a stellar solution, Mr. Kennedy said, or they wouldn’t be able to generate much global business from a base in St. John’s, N.L.
“So we just kept our heads down and ignored the naysayers and the people that were questioning our sanity,” said Mr. Kennedy, the chief executive officer. “And you know, revenge is best served cold, as they say.”
Celtx is a cloud-based software that lets production teams digitally collaborate on nearly every step of the preproduction process, and it now has active subscribers in 167 countries.
The company has 68 employees throughout Canada who serve clients in myriad industries, with testimonials from users such as Télévision française de l’Ontario and Lockheed Martin on Celtx’s website. Mr. Kennedy and his team found it wasn’t only traditional filmmakers who were interested in the platform, it also fit the needs of corporate in-house video production teams. And the company is not finished growing.
Celtx was recently acquired by Backlight, a Boston-based media technology company that launched on April 12 with a US$200-million investment from PSG Equity, an American growth equity fund. Backlight announced it had also acquired four other media software businesses: ftrack, iconik, Wildmoka and Zype.
Mr. Kennedy believes Celtx’s growth and recent sale could help other technology companies in Newfoundland and Labrador looking to attract investment.
“I’d like to think that we have shown a path for other technology companies, for sure, to be successful,” he said.
When Celtx began, Mr. Kennedy said it may have been the first software-as-a-service venture in the province. But since then, the tech sector there has grown, especially in the past five or six years, he said.
“There’s a really nice ecosystem that’s being established here in Newfoundland, with some really successful technology companies,” Mr. Kennedy said. This has attracted more capital to the area, in turn facilitating the creation of more startups.
Celtx really hit its stride in 2012, when it launched the product that now makes it so valuable. The company had previously created desktop software for preproduction that validated the market opportunity for this kind of technology.
“So it was at that point we decided to really go for it and build this cloud-based solution, which was always the concept,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Executives began by targeting schools around the globe, as they figured students would be more open-minded to an innovative approach at preproduction. Many schools use Celtx in their media programs, for video projects and assignments, he said. Lots of students also use the software for their own passion projects, he said, writing screenplays and stage plays with a small team.
Celtx found success with educational institutions in North America, Europe and Asia, which helped the company to improve the product. Executives stopped counting when they hit 30,000 high schools and 3,500 universities, Mr. Kennedy said. They developed a brigade of student volunteers who helped translate Celtx into more than 40 languages.
“With that, we naturally moved our way up the value chain,” Mr. Kennedy said. The customer base went from students to small businesses, “and then larger businesses, and then studios.”
Ben Kaplan, Backlight’s CEO, met with Mr. Kennedy before Backlight’s investment thesis was developed. Once Backlight decided to focus on optimizing media creation, from ideation through to monetization, Mr. Kaplan realized Celtx could be a key part of his company’s approach.
“This is what we had also been looking at for quite a number of years,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Despite the acquisition, Mr. Kennedy and the current Celtx team are staying in place. “There’s a great market, they’ve got an amazing product, but without Mark and his entire team, it would not be something we wanted to do,” Mr. Kaplan said.
Now, backed by Backlight, Celtx has the deep pockets and expertise to grow while also being a part of a company that provides solutions for the entire media lifecycle. Celtx plans to use the new support to augment its team, hiring mostly in Canada.
“So instead of continuing to be sort of wandering the woods or banging our shins on tables, not knowing where they were in the dark,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Here was PSG to shine a light and help us achieve this sort of massive goal, which we all share inside the Backlight portfolio.”
Your time is valuable. Have the Top Business Headlines newsletter conveniently delivered to your inbox in the morning or evening. Sign up today.