Staircase Ventures Announces Investment in KINO

We’re proud to announce that Staircase Ventures led a $4 million financing round for KINO, which unifies and secures fragmented TV and Film production workflows and gives studios, production companies, and their partners one platform to review, comment, approve, protect, and share premium content from set to screen.

Producing and releasing premium content requires close collaboration between hundreds of specialists across studios, production companies, post-production teams, distributors, agencies, and partners. Yet the underlying technology remains deeply fragmented. Dailies, editorial review, photo approvals, screeners, feedback, and delivery are often managed through separate systems, creating duplicated work, limited visibility, higher costs, and unnecessary security risks.

KINO’s flagship platform, ScreenKey, brings these workflows together into one secure platform. From set through release, teams can review, comment, approve, protect, and share premium content securely, efficiently and easily rather than relying on a patchwork of disconnected tools. In addition, the platform has strong inherent network effects; the company is already seeing the flywheel of growth accelerate as teams discover ScreenKey while working on one project, and quickly endorse it for other projects they are working on. Today, KINO works with leading studios and production companies across the United States and Canada, supporting content distributed on Netflix, Apple TV+, Prime Video, HBO Max, Hulu, Crave, and other major platforms. 

We first met the KINO team at a C100 event over a year ago. Since then, we have watched the team evolve their product, refine their target customer profile, and accelerate their sales growth. We also came to know the founders personally and were continually impressed with their energy, hustle, grit and ambition. We are honoured to be partnering with them. 

The team brings a strong combination of industry knowledge and networks, technical depth, leadership and marketing. CEO Daril Fannin has created and produced film and television alongside A-list talent, including Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel, on projects for companies such as Netflix and ABC/Disney. CMO Brit MacRae is an executive producer (A24, HBO) and marketing executive who has led campaigns and strategy for global brands including Lenovo, Bosch, and De’Longhi. CTO David Fannin has more than 15 years of engineering experience and helped build biometric and security enrollment technology used by the U.S. government, most notably TSA PreCheck.

KINO has built a strong product, significant customer traction, and is quickly becoming the core infrastructure that is used to produce film and television content. We are excited and proud to be partnering with the KINO team! 

Founders: Daril Fannin, David Fannin and Brit MacRae.