CEO: Rockwell Scharer COUNTRY: USA STARTED: 2018 DROPKEY
What’s your origin story? I’m Rock Scharer, CEO of DropKey. As a struggling recording artist in the nineties, I purchased hard-disk recording as soon as I could afford it. I was creating radio-quality songs, making mistakes in the privacy of my own home – without having to record in a £160-per-hour studio. This led me to invent DropKey, a pioneering social media infrastructure. DropKey enables the masses to make the level of broadcast-quality, professional videos necessary in today’s market. Its technology solves challenges with lighting, enabling live, real-time background replacement for the first time – something that’s only available elsewhere as an expensive tool used in Hollywood. Putting it in the hands of the masses and enabling location shooting on phones and tablets brings a host of opportunities to serve the exploding creator economy. Anyone with a smart device can location shoot – by leveraging the power of the super-computing TV camera in their pocket. The DropKey productivity platform was first built with live chroma-key background replacement in real time, pairing via Wi-Fi with a 3D structure that solves the light issue. Once we accomplished this, several more SaaS opportunities came to mind, so we began developing the features that content creators need – from market entrants to professionals. What is the company working on right now? Developing an AI-enabled camera app that allows users to shoot chroma- key background replacement in real time. This is a huge disruption in several vertical markets – including advertisement production. Our pop-up studios and SaaS ecosystem give content creators tools to make content in the metaverse and location shoot at home or on the road. DropKey’s camera app also has a ‘go live’ feature for livestreaming to social media or IPTV with a content delivery network (CDN). What is the next step? Once we raise this seed round, we will develop MediaBook into a mobile application, develop two Zoom apps and complete prototypes for the CamBot/DeskBot – completing around March 2023. After shipping our Kickstarter and pre-sale studios, the CamBot/DeskBot bundle will launch with an Indiegogo campaign for awareness in May 2023. What one thing does the business need most? We want to close our seed round so we can complete development of our SaaS features. Currently, we are working with MorphoMFG in China and Fotodiox in Chicago, de-risking our hardware business model.
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