In today’s business landscape, every department has its essential software infrastructure – Salesforce for sales teams, GitHub for engineers, HubSpot for marketers – but creative teams have been left without a true system of record for their work. The exponential growth of digital content creation, coupled with the complexities of modern creative workflows, has made managing creative operations a critical challenge for businesses of all sizes. Air, a Creative Ops platform founded in 2017, is pioneering the first comprehensive system of record built specifically for creative work, helping over 100,000 creatives across 2,100 businesses automate how they collect, approve, and share visual content. The platform, which already manages more than 120M assets, serves as both a sophisticated database for working files and final assets and an intelligent dashboard that provides real-time insights into content creation and performance. By automating the day-to-day logistics of creative work – from feedback collection to content distribution – Air is transforming how creative teams operate, giving them back time to focus on what they do best: creating impactful content.
AlleyWatch caught up with Air CEO and Cofounder Shane Hegde to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised a $35M Series B led by Avenir, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in New York City.
Tell us about the product or service that Air offers.
Air is a Creative Ops platform built to help businesses scale their creative work. Creatives teams use our product to automate how they collect, approve, and share visual content. Founded in 2017, our platform is utilized by over 100,000 creatives across over 2,100 businesses. Today, Air manages more than 120M assets across the platform.
What inspired the start of Air?
My cofounder, Tyler Strand, and I met in college and have been close friends for years. Prior to Air, we were both working at the intersection of media and technology and were similarly frustrated by the inability to work with our creative teams in the cloud at scale.
Today, there are countless channels, stakeholders, and tools that need creative support and a surge of new content is being created by generative AI. Organizations need software to automate how they store, organize, and analyze this content.
How is Air different?
Air integrates with every layer of the creative process: creative workflows and digital asset management. At Air, we know how much time is wasted trying to find assets, manage email threads, and hunt down feedback — we automate that work, giving time back to creative teams to do the work they love.
What market does Air target and how big is it?
Air targets mid-market creative teams. These are businesses with 50-1,000 employees where our tool serves the needs of brand designers, graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, videographers, social media managers, and more. From there, the product often scales up across marketing, sales, and product teams to become the system of record for all creative work inside an organization.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
Over the last two years as businesses across the globe have focused on efficiency and cutting spend, our growth rate has tripled. This is because Air is both an economically sound decision in our category and a place where you can center the work and consolidate spend. This gives us the opportunity to continue to scale aggressively even amidst uncertain macroeconomic conditions.
What was the funding process like?
For the last two years, we responded to a market environment that demanded efficiency while expecting triple-digit growth. It took us two years to optimize our business around those two things. When we raised money, we were sixty days away from profitability. This allowed us to run an efficient fundraising process over the course of a month where we were fortunate to receive multiple term sheets. We chose Avenir because we spent a lot of time with their partner, Jared Sleeper, and it instilled the confidence that he would be an incredible partner for our business.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The biggest challenge we faced is that we are building a new category.
We sell against traditional enterprise software products called Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems. These are products like Bynder, Canto, Brandfolder, and AEM. We believe these products attempt to solve the same problem, but the scope of what they can do is limited (and thereby not sufficient). DAMs are a pretty library in the cloud of final approved assets built for marketing teams. They do not address the root of the problem—the day to day burden of requests and logistics that creatives have to do to work with content.
Over the last seven years, we’ve built a new form of a solution that actually addresses the problem at hand. That opportunity is what we call Creative Ops – and it’s much more than digital asset management.
Speaking with investors who traditionally haven’t worked in marketing or creative work makes it hard sometimes to understand the nuances of what this new category is and what it can be. We navigated this space by talking about parallels we saw in different categories.
As an example, Air is building a system of record for creative teams in much the same way that SalesForce has built a system of record for sales teams. Once investors understood the market opportunity, it became easier; but getting them there was definitely a challenge.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
We’re talking about a business that was growing triple digits and was days away from profitability. When you don’t need money, you have optionality. It was one of the more freeing feelings that Tyler and I have ever had with this business.
If you peel that onion, the reason we were so close to profitably was that the unit economics in our business are world-class. This took years to refine. Our CAC payback and NDR were both below 12 months and above 120%. Strong indicators that suggest we’ve built a durable business that is ready to scale how we acquire, retain and expand customers.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
It’s pretty ambitious to build a system of record for creative work. In order to execute on that vision, we need to accelerate the growth of our team to execute on our product strategy. Over the next six months, you will see Air dramatically expand its home base in New York City. Returning to office will also play a critical role in getting us closer to realizing this vision.
It’s pretty ambitious to build a system of record for creative work. In order to execute on that vision, we need to accelerate the growth of our team to execute on our product strategy. Over the next six months, you will see Air dramatically expand its home base in New York City. Returning to office will also play a critical role in getting us closer to realizing this vision.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
It is difficult and deeply personal to make a dramatic change in your operating structure but in an environment like this the truth will set you free. What I mean by that is this: if you are able to put yourself on a path to profitability then raising money becomes one of many options that you have. If you’ve built a business that works you should be able to run that business in a way that is rational and makes sense. It’s often miserable making that transition (now speaking from experience).
As someone who has never worked in an economic environment like this (in the 2008 crisis, I was in high school…) I believe that lesson was hard-learned. In 2022, our business grew 240% but we cut 70% of the operating expenses of the business by Q4. It was a 50% headcut reduction and 90% cut to marketing spend. The next year in 2023 we had to wake up, dust ourselves off, and incrementally grow the business with a fixed amount of cost. It took us two years but we did it. Now that’s given us the opportunity to build the business we always wanted.
What’s your favorite winter destination in and around the city?
I have an annual tradition with friends for a gluttonous pre-Christmas meal at Mr Chow’s. We’ve done it every year for the last four years and I hope it continues. For the haters in the audience, I don’t think Mr Chow’s is the best restaurant in the world AND it is very overpriced, BUT knowing that every December I’ll have a cold winter night with an espresso martini, some duck buns, and a table filled with people I really care about truly means the world.