Welcome to the new SyncOnset.com! This week we launched an updated marketing website. With this new website, we hope to share the broader vision of SyncOnSet’s products and why, six years into our story, we are so passionate about growing SyncOnSet.
In 2012, we stumbled upon a major challenge on film sets. Costume departments needed better software to organize their work. At the time, smartphones and tablets were pervasive, but costume departments were still dependent on handwritten notes and three-ring binders for managing extremely important information and complicated workflows. We were struck by the sheer lack of investment in software and tools for physical production (and the greater industry!). So we quit our jobs and started coding.
Our initial product was very scrappy (and embarrassing to say the least!), but the enthusiasm and support from crew kept us going.
Early mockups and mobile app – Yikes!
After years of iterating, we expanded the core solution to include additional departments (makeup, hair, props, set dec, locations) and workflows (budgeting, expense tracking, and asset management).
We’ve learned a lot over the years about what we’re good at, what we’re not (not all of our products have been successful!), and there are three main points we’d like to have our customers know about who we are and where we’re going:
We build tools.
We love solving real problems that professionals in the industry face everyday. Mapping the complex, fluid, creative workflow of film production, and making it work seamlessly in software, is not an easy task by any means. But it’s what excites us. And we especially like to tackle very difficult problems.
We listen to our customers.
There’s often a culture in startups and software companies to assume they know better than the customer. As founders coming from outside the industry, we had no choice but to listen. We aim to balance humility with confidence. Software is very expensive to build. It takes time, but we take all feedback seriously and greatly appreciate it.
We’re just getting started.
One of the most common questions we get from the crew and professionals for whom we don’t currently offer solutions is, “Why don’t we have as good of software as SyncOnSet for ourselves?”. We’ve heard it so many times that our product roadmap will never end! Here is our latest thinking of what will come next (with a very big caveat that plans change):
- Modular, flexible Crew Tools: We’re in the process of a very big revamp to our production management solutions so that we can address existing feedback and create a strong foundation for the future. One of the biggest changes will be to make our application more flexible across departments and to be organized by workflow modules instead of strictly departments. This will address much of the feedback we’ve collected over the last few years. We look forward to sharing more in 2019. Thank you to all of our customers who have been giving us feedback over the years and being patient! We promise not to disappoint.
- Robust, customizable Studio Tools: Asset Hub has been a huge success since its launch in late 2017. We plan to build off of that success and go deeper into the lifecycle of physical assets (asset approvals, rentals, etc). Asset Hub is also the first tool we’ve developed specifically for studio professionals. In the same fashion as our Crew Tools, we are getting many requests to solve challenges for other workflows and divisions at the studio.
Digitizing production opens up business opportunities for studios, gives new insights to crew, and helps everyone collaborate better to ultimately produce their best content.
We’re a friendly bunch so please reach out to us with questions, feedback, or just to say hello!
