Lucihub, a Las Vegas-based video production platform and mobile app powered by artificial intelligence, was founded with one goal: deliver high-quality, full-scale, professionally edited videos within hours to consumers, who may typically pay tens of thousands of dollars for video production that often takes so long to turn around that its content becomes irrelevant.
The 18-month-old company now has just over 20 employees worldwide, and was recently accepted into nonprofit business incubator StartUpNV’s accelerator program, allowing Lucihub to access a wealth of resources and finances to push its product forward.
“We’re just getting started,” said Amer Tadayon, CEO of Lucihub. “What I’d love is for our platform to be the de facto standard for filming and turning around professional phone content. That’s where I want to go with this, and so I’d like to think the sky’s the limit.”
Lucihub, Tadayon said, is all about quick-turn video production: A customer can film content, perhaps even on a smartphone, then submit it to Lucihub for a professionally edited final product in up to 24 hours, and often faster.
Social media has created a huge market for video content, Tadayon said, while also reducing its shelf life. Meaning, a time- and money-consuming commercial that previously may have been around for nearly a year now loses relevance in days.
“We said, look, is there a way we can help democratize professional video production so that any brand team could do it themselves?” he said. “And that’s really the idea behind Lucihub.”
The company, which started in the wedding video industry and has since expanded to corporate communications and other enterprises, is a global business, Tadayon said, with many of its employees working remotely not just outside of Nevada but outside of North America.
Additionally, Lucihub has AI “woven in our DNA,” Tadayon said. The platform’s AI-powered assistant creative director, Butterfly, can help consumers create scripts, storyboards, press releases, blog posts and more.
Butterfly is an assistant, he emphasized, meaning the tool requires human input and intelligence to get to the finish line, but can help users get their work done more efficiently and accelerate their business overall.
A core value at Lucihub is “AI for good,” Tadayon said, and it’s so far proven to always take the company from “nothing to something” quickly.
Now, Lucihub will grow with the help of FundNV—StartUpNV’s pre-seed venture capital fund—and a capital match from Nevada’s State Small Business Credit Initiative, which offers startups an investment match of up to $500,000, according to a news release.
Jeff Saling, co-founder and executive director of StartUpNV, said the organization looks to support Nevada-based companies like Lucihub that are working on solving problems for a significant market.
“We thought it was a really interesting, scalable idea, and a very large market with founders who have a passion for it and have ... a vision for it,” Saling said.
Local support is “critical” to creating an ecosystem of startups in Las Vegas, Saling said. And like many startup hubs around the country, Las Vegas has an air of creativity to it that fosters entrepreneurship.
“If you think about an entrepreneur that’s creating a business, it’s just like any artist—you’re creating something from nothing,” he said. “You have an idea and you’re creating something, whether that’s a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music, or a startup. So that’s a very consistent type of behavior. And we have that in spades here in Las Vegas.”
Tadayon said he previously would have had to search outside Nevada for resources and capital to build Lucihub. But because of opportunities like those provided by StartUpNV, he doesn’t have to.
The city also has an appealing lifestyle for entrepreneurs, Saling added, pointing to easy commutes, affordable living and a growing venture capital community. It’s an attractive option compared with other, possibly more established technology hubs such as Silicon Valley in California or Austin, Texas.
“We have the start of something great,” Saling said. “We have everything it takes. It’s not quite as mature as any of those places—it’s not the same and we don’t want it to be the same. We want it to be our version of it. ... We don’t need to copy what somebody else has done.”
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