When it comes to the so-called &consumerization of the enterprise,& a workplace tool that looks an awful lot like Pinterest seems like it would be the trend final form.
Brooklyn-based Air is building a digital asset manager for communications teams that aren&t satisfied with more general cloud storage options and want something that can show off visual files with a bit more pizzazz.The startup tells TechCrunch that they have closed $6 million in funding led by Lerer Hippeau .
RedSea Ventures, Advancit Capital and WndrCo also participated.General-purpose cloud storage options from Google or Dropbox don&t always handle digital assets well — especially when it comes to previewing items, and Air more focused digital asset management competitors often require dedicated managers inside the org, the company says.
Air has a pretty straightforward interface that looks more like a desktop site from Facebook or Pinterest, with a focus on thumbnails and video previews that simple and sleek.Air is trying to capitalize on the trend toward greater à la carte software spend for teams looking to phase in products with very specific toolsets.
The team is generally charging $10 per user per month, with 100GB of storage included.&Adobe is an amazing suite of products, but with the idea that companies are mandating the tools that their employees use versus letting their employees choose — it makes a lot of sense that teams are going to ultimately end up having more autonomy and creating better work when they&re using tools that they care about,& Lerer Hippeau managing partner Ben Lerer tells TechCrunch.Air lets customers migrate files from Dropbox or Google Drive to its AWS-hosted storage platform, which displays files like photos, videos, PDFs, fonts and other visual assets as Pinterest-esque boards.
The app is a way to view and store files, but Air platform play focuses pretty heavily on giving co-workers the ability to comment and tag assets.
Collaborating around files is a pretty easy sell; a couple of users discussing which photo they like best for a particular marketing campaign doesn&t require too much imagination.The team has been focusing largely on attracting users in roles like brand marketing managers, content coordinators and social media managers as a way of infiltrating and scaling vertically inside marketing departments.&What Airtable did to spreadsheets and what Notion did to docs, we&re doing for visual work,& CEO Shane Hegde told TechCrunch in an interview.
&As we think about how we differentiate, it really that we&re a workspace collaboration tool, we&re not just cloud storage or digital asset management…&