Those people at Fly Labs have done it yet again! Their first four apps have each been featured as #1 on the App Store in Photo+Video category on launch, and Fly was one of Apple’s Best Apps of 2014.
Fly Labs creates apps for video editing and video creativity and Tempo is the newest app in their video editing arsenal – and a very cool tool to know about, allowing users to use fast and SloMo, and Time Lapse.
CEO Tim Novikoff is all about putting creative tools into the hands of users – and he shoots straight from the hip.
Tell us about the product.
Fly Labs creates apps for video creativity.
Our first app, Fly, launched last June and was one of Apple’s Best Apps of 2014. It has about 1,000,000 users so far, and it features patented gesture-based video editing.
In December we launched Clips, which is billed as the simplest video editor in the world. It’s at 250,000 users so far, and it enables users to string up to 100 clips together and add music, dissolve transitions, etc.
This week we’re launching Tempo, which enables video creativity by allowing users to combine timelapse and slowmo along with normal speed in a single video.
Tell us about how the experience at FlyLabs has shaped Tempo.
At Fly Labs, our motto is “Get creative with video.”To us, that is what we want our users to do– embrace video as a medium for creativity – but it’s also our own motto. We want to get creative in our approach to making video apps.
We are always playing around with the latest iPhone hardware. Every year around Christmas, we spend a week on experimental projects. This year, one member of our team wanted to play around with slow motion, since iPhones now record video at 240 frames per second. That project turned into Tempo.
It was originally just for slow motion, but when we saw how much fun it would be to add fast motion as well, we threw it in. That’s what we mean by “Get creative with video.” We experiment with new tools and follow our hearts to what works.
At Fly Labs, our medium for creativity is apps; we express ourselves through the apps that we create. As it happens, our apps are for people to express themselves through video.
How is it different?
Tempo is most readily compared to the native slow motion feature on the iPhone, and to Instagram’s app Hyperlapse.
Unlike with the native iPhone slow motion feature, with Tempo you can choose multiple parts of a video to slow down, and you can choose from multiple slow speeds. You can also combine slow motion with fast motion.
Unlike with Hyperlapse, with Tempo you can choose what parts to speed up. (In Hyperlapse, you only have the option of having an entire video be in fast motion.)
You can also import video in the app, rather than record it in the app itself. (In Hyperlapse, you have to record video in the app.) In addition, you can combine fast motion with slow motion in Tempo.
These are some things that differentiate Tempo from Hyperlapse and iPhone’s native slow motion feature.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
We see ourselves as creating the market for mobile video editing. We believe that the market for editing software alone will be a multi-billion dollar industry, and that owning mobile video creativity will give us an entrée into even larger markets.
What is the business model?
We are focused on gaining users right now, not revenue. All of our apps are free. You can pay a few bucks to remove the watermark from the exported videos.
What inspired the business?
When I was in grad school, I was in a band, and we wanted to make a multi-angle video of our performance. It all started with trying to make an app to enable multi-angle video making. You can still make multi-angle videos in Fly, our first app, but the vision became much broader than multi-angle videos over time.
What makes you passionate about video editing?
I’m passionate about creativity, and making tools for creativity is very energizing.
Literally, every morning I wake up and check the hashtags on Instagram: #MadeWithTempo, #MadeWithClips and #MadeWithFly. I watch dozens of videos created by our users every morning. They’re so creative. Seeing that every morning, how can you not be passionate?
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within six months?
We are in for the long haul, so we think in years, not in months.
Our goal is to make video creativity mainstream. In a few years, edited videos will not only be used for social media, but in the workplace as well, to replace reports and Powerpoint presentations, in many situations.
When it’s easy enough to get creative with video, and video editing, it will be a medium for creativity and communication accessible to everybody.When you’re trying to take something that almost nobody does – edit video – and make it something that almost everybody does, you have to think in years, and that’s how we think.
If you could be put in touch with one investor in the New York community who would it be and why?
For us, the perfect investor is one who thinks long term, who thinks big, and who understands video creativity. Most of those investors are in California, but I’d love to meet any investors in NYC who consider themselves long-term thinkers who understand video creativity.
Why did you launch in New York?
I’m from NYC, and most of my network is here. I think NYC is a good place for video creativity apps to launch. It’s no coincidence that Vine came out of NYC. It’s good for creativity apps in general, and it’s no coincidence that other great apps for creativity, such as Paper by FiftyThree, came out of NYC.
What’s is your favorite part about being here in NYC?
The energy, diversity and vibrancy of the city. California has a lot of upsides, but you can’t beat the energy of New York City.
