Each month NEXLabs gives one local company the opportunity to showcase their business plan and receive feedback from panelists and attendees. This month’s company is Jump!, an app for finding, approving, ordering, payments, and delivery of items used in on-location film production. Their goal is to organize, aggregate, account for, and connect the community of users and stakeholders in each production via an online system and mobile app.
The Event Details: February 4 at 6:30PM at General Assembly (650 North Ave NE)
Register to attend, and in the meantime learn more about Jump! from cofounder Jonathan Beltran
Jump! solves the difficulties film crews have of quickly finding appropriate local items to use as they prepare for and begin filming on-location. Most film crews are new to an area and they don’t know the suppliers. This means that they have to spend additional resources setting up business terms and understanding a vendor’s tax status. Failures can be disastrous to schedules and budgets. Jump! has created an organized place that crews can go to securely communicate, find what they need, and do business with the local suppliers.
In 2012, I partnered with local Atlanta artist, Mark Leibert, and Jeremy Dost, founder of SharpDot, a boutique web dev house in Grant Park, to develop and release a simple art discovery app called ‘skovr’ to help folks find art nearby. While people loved the idea, we weren’t able to prove the market.When local film industry art director, Cameron Beasley, approached me with the idea of how a version of our app could solve his problem of finding legally acceptable art for on-camera use, the idea for Jump! was born. He and I went about detailing out the market opportunity and business concept in 2014. After looking at all things used on location, not just art, we decided to expand it to equipment and props.
Our competitors are ad-hoc google searches for local suppliers, eBay, Craigslist, and even simple word-of-mouth. Hollywood is also our competitor. For some productions, crews may just ship things all the way from Hollywood: sometimes because of existing relationships, but also because it takes more time to find the right local supplier.Our service will aggregate and organize local suppliers, and streamline the business transaction from shopping to delivery. One thing I want to also make clear is who our competitors are not: we don’t compete with small local equipment or rental shops locally. On the contrary, along with larger local supply houses, we want these small local outfits to join our service as suppliers. We’ll make it easier for them to connect and do business with the film crews, and give broader visibility to their merchandise.
Atlanta is clearly on the move on two key fronts for Jump!. One is the pockets of startup innovation that are going on under the national radar. I’m confident the business support is here, the developer supply is here, and the local and state government folks are always close at hand to help too.Second, and even more important, clearly Atlanta, and Georgia in general, has “arrived” in terms of being a film industry production hub. In the last few years, major film studios, like Pinewood have sunk roots near here and have made large long-term bets on the future of the local film industry. And the momentum continues to build. Much of it is due to the tax incentives offered by the State of Georgia. That’s why we want to make it easier for a buyer to know if something qualifies for those incentives or not.
Crowdfunding is not our expertise area, we need help filling out, validating, and calibrating our campaign plan so that we are to sure reach our funding goal.
