Looking back at 2022 and Sneak Preview

As 2022 is coming to a close, this is the perfect time to reflect. There have been numerous challenges and roadblocks, but we have risen to those and we turned some of them into amazing opportunities. Without patting ourselves on the back too much: talent may win the game, but it takes teamwork to win the championship, as Michael Jordan once said.

Looking back

Back in January 2020, we predicted landslide changes in the media industry. We would be forced to walk beside the beaten track. There would be casualties – no pun intended, but we would discover new creative opportunities. At that point, we didn’t know yet a real war was in the making, with global energy, food and financial crisis in its slipstream. In the meantime, inflation skyrocketed. In countries like Belgium, wages are automatically increased against the index, causing an unprecedented burden on enterprises. In other countries, people pay the bill.

In the same piece, we predicted that Limecraft would be one of those companies that stood up and walked through the storm, which is exactly what happened. With a retention rate of 99%, our customers bring a huge testimonial that we have been on the right track. Software is dying, the world needs a better service. Customers increasingly dislike one-off big bang projects. They prefer a try-and-buy approach, and the ability to easily spin up and wind down complementary services according to their day-to-day requirements. Supplying services is a “tag-along game”, more like a partnership, as rightly suggested by Margaret Craig in her excellent essay bundle ‘The SaaS Manifesto’.

The key to Success

The key to the success of our customers is that we help them overcome the hassle of integrating a hodgepodge of software and SaaS point solutions. Thanks to the cloud, it has become easier than ever to access scalable storage and easy-to-use AI services. On the flip side, producers try to beat vendor lock-in with a multi-cloud strategy, whereby the recurring cost becomes increasingly prohibitive. Security is hampered because several copies of the media are scattered all over the cloud. Creative professionals find themselves excessively copying and pasting data from one app to another, a cumbersome process and a major source of errors.

That is why Limecraft invented the Workspace for Video Teams. Launched at IBC 2022, it is an online collaboration platform for all sorts of content including fiction, documentary, as well as news and sports. It seamlessly connects on-premise storage devices or cloud-based storage services, allowing you to fine-tune the balance between cost and performance. It is turn-key integrated with a wide range of AI services, bringing automated transcription, subtitling and AI shot listing to your fingertips. With a single sign-on, you get instant access to thousands of hours of material and ancillary services, without compromising a bit on security or quality.

This is why another 10.000 active users started using Limecraft last year, and why all key performance indicators of the company are roughly doubling every 8 months, despite an impressive perfume of crisis.

One Eye on the Future

We’ve got big plans for 2023. Recently, we announced our partnership with Ooona and currently we are bringing an Adobe Panel to life, a testimonial to our solid belief that the supplier community has a moral obligation to sort out technical complexities. As a result of these and similar integrations, we have emancipated thousands of hours of manual work, which journalists and editors can now use to create better stories. It illustrates our mission to create software that allows people to do a better job, not to make them redundant, to bring value added to another level. The impact it has on our user’s productivity will be well worth looking at early next year.

One of our first jobs for the new year will be establishing a marketplace of 3rd party services that can be accessed through or in combination with Limecraft, together with the release of a no-code workflow solution in the first half of 2023. It will massively improve the overall functionality of your workspace of choice, whether you opt for Limecraft, Avid, Adobe, Ooona, or anything alike.

We’d love to hear where you think the media industry – and the use of artificial intelligence in particular – is heading. Your suggestions will not only tell us what you’re thinking, they’ll also guide us on our journey to a better future. Feel free to drop us a note, or to contact us otherwise.

Finally, on behalf of the entire team at Limecraft, I’d love to say a great big thank you to our growing community of customers and partners, for your trust, your loyalty, and for your many invaluable suggestions that enabled us to create an even better product. Also, I would like to personally thank every single person on our team, as they did an amazing job and achieved incredible results.

From all at Limecraft, we wish you a happy and restful festive season!