We were scrolling through our Instagram feed one day and came across the visually stunning work of Offset. We reached out to see if they wanted to try Paperspace, and it turned out they were already using our service...from Singapore! (As many of you know, we only have datacenters in the U.S. and Europe at present.)
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m Clement Chia, a creative director based in Singapore. For 5 years, I've been running a leading motion design studio called Offset. Most recently, we've built Offeo - a cloud based video maker empowering small and midsize businesses around the world to easily create compelling marketing videos.
Offset & Offeo are currently 30 employees strong and based in Singapore - also home to many tech companies like Facebook and Google. We are a team of passionate creatives obsessed with video marketing, working with our clients to strategize and create compelling videos that sell. Over the years, the team has had the honor of working with clients like Facebook, Land Rover Jaguar, Citibank, Google, McDonalds etc.
How did you get started?
I was inspired by VFX in blockbuster movies like “Transformers” and dove into the industry to find out more myself. My background is actually in Computer Science. While this is a totally different industry, that has helped me analyze and learn really quickly. After working in advertising for a couple of years, I went to Gnomon in L.A. to further sharpen my skills, while working on various music video projects with Warner Brothers. I came back to Singapore to focus on motion design and started OFFSET with my co-founder, David Lee.
Can you tell us about Offeo?
Over the years, we’ve had the great privilege of working on exciting projects with many established brands. But startups and small companies who see our work come to us only to be disappointed by the high budget required to pursue a good marketing video. OFFEO is our answer. We are taking what we know best and formulating it into an online platform where businesses can choose the suitable template design, and then customize it to suit their marketing objectives.
Due to the nature of animated video renderings, we always need computers with powerful GPUs. While building OFFEO, we had the idea of building the servers in-house. We renovated the office and designed a server room and even started building out some of the racks. But before we got too far, we thankfully spoke to a friend who was an expert in backend development who recommended we gave Paperspace a try. When we compared it to other cloud providers, Paperspace was a lot less intimidating. What really caught our attention was the simplicity of getting started and managing the machines. It was as if Paperspace knew exactly the essential functions we needed so we didn’t have to spend half a day looking for them. Paperspace was able to provide exactly what we needed, and most importantly allowed us to scale as quickly as possible. The rest was history.
How has Paperspace simplified your workflow?
As a business owner of a new startup, we want to focus most of our time on product development rather than IT infrastructure problems. Paperspace’s platform has proven capable of helping us do just that. With Paperspace, we no longer need to worry about IT management and scalability issues. The team can manage dozens of computers on 1 screen. All this has helped us become a lot more productive and efficient. Now we can focus on what really matters the most - improving our online video maker platform.
Do you have any helpful hints or tricks for potential Paperspace users in your field?
Just look at Paperspace’s UI on the team management page. You will definitely love it! Using Paperspace’s platform has been life-changing for us. Treat Paperspace as long term partners instead of just another service provider. They'll be very responsive to your needs and are always taking our customer feedback seriously.
