LucidLink has raised a $75M Series C, including secondaries, to further cement its market leadership in creative collaboration.
Founded in 2016, LucidLink developed the world’s first storage collaboration platform designed to help teams of creative professionals gain immediate access to large files and secure real-time collaboration without the need to download or synchronize. Built specifically for the modern computing environment, LucidLink allows users to magically stream their data directly from the cloud as if it was local on their computers.
Our team first became familiar with LucidLink as early users. We experienced that magical moment of having a 1.1 petabyte drive (!) mounted on our Macbook Pro’s – seamlessly scrubbing through a 12GB video file that we never downloaded or synchronized. Before LucidLink, false promises of virtual storage had plagued the video collaboration market, dating all the way back to the so-called “web drives” in the mid-2000s.
Fast forward to 2020 - LucidLink offered an unparalleled ability to scrub through hundreds of gigabytes of files and videos on a seemingly local drive (well beyond what a laptop can store) and stream directly to a user in real-time. This, coupled with the surge in media consumption and production has created an increasing demand for LucidLink.
When we first met George Dochev and Peter Thompson, co-founders of LucidLink, they shared with us their vision of taking their technical achievement and consumerizing it for creatives everywhere: seamlessly available, instantaneous streaming, with no VPNs, and no associated IT overhead. LucidLink had our team hooked.
Since 2021, Headline has been privileged to observe LucidLink’s incredible growth and strong capital efficiency, serving as a motivation for us to lead both their Series A and Series B financing rounds, and triple down with an investment in their Series C today.
The company's momentum hasn’t gone unnoticed. Over the last two years, Peter and George have architected tremendous growth and performed as one of the most capital efficient companies in our portfolio. In that period, they’ve grown annual recurring revenue (ARR) by nearly 5x and the number of users on its platform by more than 4x to over 55,000, with net revenue retention (NRR) surpassing 141%. Their industry-leading technology and culture have also received numerous accolades, including National Association of Broadcasters Product of the Year in 2022 and 2023, and Inc. Magazine’s Best US Workplaces in 2023.
LucidLink’s ability to scale to marquee media and content businesses around the globe has proven the staying powers of its technology and on-premise performance in the cloud.
Customers include Adobe, A&E Networks, Whirlpool, Shopify, Buzzfeed, and Spotify, as well as Hollywood studios, major broadcasters, brands, digital ad agencies, architectural firms, and gaming and sports companies.
LucidLink was behind-the-scenes of some of our favorite television shows and movies this year. Emmy award nominee, The Bear, is produced using LucidLink, in addition to Oscar winner for Best Animated Short - The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse.
“Legacy collaboration and storage solutions are not designed for this new hybrid workplace reality and LucidLink is becoming the go-to solution for companies looking to future-proof their businesses. Our customers are reaching 5x in productivity gains on previously impossible workflows, and we are excited to see how they continue to unlock new possibilities as we help to accelerate the future of collaborative work.” - Peter Thompson, CEO and Co-Founder of LucidLink
As the LucidLink team embarks on its next chapter and path to $100M ARR, we are delighted to continue to support George and Peter, who remind us that an incredible product combined with engineering prowess can build outlier companies. Many congratulations to Peter, George, and the entire LucidLink team - onward and upward!