If something like MASV did not exist, it likely would have precluded a lot of smaller creators from participating. Because there’s just no other way that these small creators from across the world would have been able to submit their content to Troveo.
Sarah Barrick
Head of Growth, Troveo
Challenges:
⭕️ Providing an easy-to-use file uploader anyone can use from anywhere, without time-consuming configuration.
⭕️ Uploading and organizing of thousands of TBs of user-generated content through scalable, global file ingest.
⭕️ Ensuring uploaders aren’t alienated by asking them to babysit or redo file transfers.
⭕️ Getting footage into Troveo’s Amazon S3 bucket in a frictionless way, and simple onboarding for staff.
MASV Solutions:
✅ MASV Portals: A powerful, embeddable file uploader with a simple drag-and-drop interface.
✅ The MASV global, accelerated private network backed by AWS and user-based portals to keep footage organized.
✅ The MASV cloud relay delivery system and relentless retries ensure content owners just need to upload files once.
✅ No-code integrations with cloud storage platforms and simple backend interface.
Who Is Troveo?
Troveo is a video licensing platform helping creators monetize unused footage through AI licensing: Content owners such as creators, filmmakers, or anyone with a trove of old video can sign up to license their content libraries for AI training. The company ensures ethical sourcing of footage and provides a new revenue stream for creators, filmmakers, and other content owners, while enabling AI companies to develop high-quality, legally compliant content models.
Head of Growth Sarah Barrick was employee No. 4 – “Before Troveo was called Troveo,” she says with a laugh. She says the company was started by a group of like-minded individuals with a common mission.
“We’re founded by a team of people who have been in the creator economy for a very long time, helping creators of all kinds monetize,” she explains. “That’s what we’ve based our entire careers on – how to get creators paid for their work. We entered the market with the goal of making sure that creators don’t get left out in the age of AI.”
🏆 Troveo Highlights:
- Works with an army of 2,400-plus content licensors (including creators and filmmakers) who upload an average of 6,000 TBs of video every month.
- Content owners in its network have uploaded more than 350M video clips and received more than $5M in payouts.
- Founded in 2023 by former Vouch founder Marty Pesis; emerged from stealth in late 2024 and already has more than 20 employees.
- Raised $4.5M in seed funding in late 2024 from Seven Seven Six and angel investors.
Reducing Time to Market for AI Workflows With MASV
AI processing requires massive amounts of data. But getting all that data into the cloud can be a huge hurdle – unless you’ve got MASV by your side.
The Challenge: Ingesting Thousands of TBs Per Month for AI Processing
Troveo works with content licensors (such as creators and filmmakers) to acquire unused footage – from B-roll to home movies – to sell to technology companies to train AI models. It ingests a menagerie of content types, from 4K clips to celluloid reels from the late 1800s that need to be video upscaled into high-resolution footage.
Fittingly, Troveo is now the world’s largest video network for AI training. “We ingest the data and do processing on it to prepare it for AI training pipelines,” explains Head of Growth Sarah Barrick. “And then we deliver that to technology and AI companies.”
But as a technology startup, time is of the essence. And getting all that video from multiple content owners around the world, each with varying degrees of technical ability, into cloud storage in time to meet deal deadlines was a major challenge.
Challenge #1: Easy-to-use, global large file transfer
Working with content owners from around the world, in different languages, with varying degrees of technical expertise, meant Troveo’s video upload solution had to be easy and intuitive to use for anyone – even accounting for potential language barriers.
“The steps to upload content into the bucket had to be extremely minimal – particularly the steps for the end user, our licensors,” Barrick explains. “Trying to use a command line interface or something like that to transfer content was out of the question.”
The Troveo team didn’t have time to field hundreds of support questions from content owners having trouble navigating the upload. “We were a small team. We could not be going back and forth on email in various languages with people about content ingestion.”
Challenge #2: Fast, scalable file ingest and organization
The breakneck pace of Troveo’s scale-up with both licensors and AI partners meant it needed a lot of content uploaded to the cloud – fast – to meet deal deadlines.
“The number of TBs in our cloud bucket needed to go up as fast as possible,” she explains. “Our major challenge was getting it into the cloud as fast as possible.”
Troveo also needed transparency along the data upload pipeline for its users, and for all uploaded content to be organized by type once uploaded.
Challenge #3: Reliable file transfers
Troveo risks alienating licensors if they have a bad file upload experience by having to babysit transfers, retry failed transfers, or sit through poor customer service. The company needed a solution it could depend on to deliver a frictionless experience for end users.
“Many of these people had never had to do anything like this before in their life,” says Barrick. “It was asking them to do something completely new.”
Challenge #4: Simple integrations and onboarding
Finally, Troveo also needed a file transfer solution that could easily integrate with its Amazon S3 cloud storage bucket without requiring a heavy IT lift, so uploaded files would land in the right spot with minimal manual intervention.
It also needed to be a fast, simple experience for internal staff to get onboarded.
Accelerating Files for Client Delivery
Why Driving Plates – the top VFX plate provider for driving footage – trusts MASV to share time-critical footage with their clients.
The Solution: A Flexible, Powerful, Easy-to-Use Transfer Solution With Global Reach
After testing several file transfer solutions, Barrick says it soon became obvious that MASV was the missing piece. “When we found MASV, we knew it was something creators could use,” she says, adding that she and Troveo adviser and creator Peter Hollens initially helped research various file transfer tools. “It was a no-brainer.”
But ease of use wasn’t everything: Troveo ingests an average of 6,000 TB of footage each month. Content licensors typically upload file packages in the 300 to 500 gigabyte range, but sometimes more than a terabyte in one shot.
All this content needed to be ingested quickly, reliably, and securely, so the company could meet its deal deadlines with AI firms.
Easy-to-use file transfer that moves mountains… from anywhere
Troveo now generates a private, secure MASV Portal for each content owner following contract signing; uploaders simply drag-and-drop their files into the Portal.
“The ultimate factor was the usability,” says Barrick. “It was just so easy for users – they didn’t even have to download a desktop client. They didn’t need any technical expertise, and could use a private, secure portal to begin uploading right away. ”
Troveo embedded browser-based Portal functionality into its proprietary user interface, ensuring a seamless upload experience:
- Users don’t need to learn technical language, execute code, or even sit through tutorials.
- Users anywhere in the world – even those with a significant language barrier – can leverage MASV’s simple user interface and start uploading right away.
- Troveo ingests from users from South Africa, Jamaica, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Namibia, Algiers, Tunisia, Egypt, and more, including countries that only have power for a limited number of hours each day.
But MASV doesn’t just make file upload easy for uploaders. It also cuts down on overhead at Troveo: Staff don’t have to go back and forth with content owners to field support questions, or spend time developing ingestion features for users.
“We were able to just use MASV out of the box and get the job done,” she explains. “Our licensors don’t need to download or install software or plugins. They simply log into their Troveo portal, then upload content.”
A fast, scalable way to receive and organize files
MASV is fast – in speed tests, faster than Aspera, WeTransfer, Dropbox, and other platforms thanks in part to our accelerated network built on AWS infrastructure. To make good on the Troveo promise – meeting deal deadlines, and a fast turnaround on payouts – speed is crucial. “That was a big part of it: The speed,” she says. “Our licensors could be sending packages constantly.”
Because Troveo generates one MASV Portal per uploader – Portals are unlimited and free to spin up – the company can automatically categorize content based on a user’s contract.
“Their portal link is already associated with their record as having cinematic footage or consumer-grade footage,” adds Barrick. “So it’s easy for us to quickly identify: ‘OK, this is a YouTuber with lifestyle content. Or this is a film production house with cinematic footage.’”
It all adds up to well-organized footage and a transparent experience for uploaders and Troveo alike – a must when ingesting content from thousands of different creators.
“It’s very important to have that accountability, and MASV is extremely transparent. We always know which package came in, what size, and other details. That makes it easy for us to report back to licensors and confirm we received their package.”
Reliability to eliminate file transfer babysitting
Reliability is monumentally important when working with individual creators who – just like freelance videographers – don’t want to waste time ensuring their file transfers actually made it.
Barrick says MASV has been an invaluable tool in this respect:
- MASV employs a cloud buffer between sender and recipient (with no impact on performance or speed), so even if there’s a problem on the recipient side, the transfer won’t fail.
- If there is an interruption, MASV’s relentless retries and checkpoint restart ensure the transfer is always completed without starting over.
Despite fielding far fewer support calls to help licensors get content uploaded, the MASV customer service team was always on top of the small number of issues that did crop up.
“If a licensor was having a particular issue, MASV was super responsive on addressing that. But that doesn’t happen very often.”
No-code integrations and simple onboarding
Barrick says integrating MASV with Troveo’s S3 cloud storage bucket was incredibly easy. Now, all content ingested via a MASV Portal lands in an S3 cloud storage bucket – a huge help in terms of scalability.
“MASV is a really simple integration,” she says, adding that it takes roughly 30 seconds to onboard staff and get them using MASV.
The Result: Massively Fast Content Ingestion and Creators Getting Paid
MASV immediately helped Troveo solve its primary problem: Ingesting boatloads of video content, from disparate users from across the world, quickly and reliably to meet strict deadlines.
“If something like MASV did not exist it likely would have precluded a lot of smaller creators from participating. Because there’s just no other way that these small creators from across the world would have been able to submit their content to Troveo.”
But MASV helps with much more than that:
- As an easy-to-use yet powerful file transfer solution that works in a browser, MASV enables content ingestion from anyone and easy staff onboarding.
- MASV’s accelerated, private network of global servers facilitates fast and reliable transfer from practically anywhere in the world.
- Unlimited, free-to-spin-up Portals and file transfer visibility enables Troveo to categorize and stay on top of thousands of TBs of uploads per month.
- A no-code integration with Amazon S3 removes friction when transferring files to storage.
As for the creators themselves? Some of them have already pulled down five-figure incomes from working with Troveo.
“We’ve had creators and filmmakers reach out and tell us that this changed their life – that they can now pay for their daughter’s college education, and that this allows them to pursue their dreams.”
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