Cinnamon
Cinnamon — An AI-based video platform with a detailed toolkit for content creators, native cross-app sharing and fair monetization.
Long story short
As the video platform’s tech partner from the start, STRV helped turn big ideas into a tangible product. In just 4 months, we delivered 2 custom AI/ML solutions and the iOS and Android MVPs, building a scalable service comparable to TikTok.
Cinnamon Highlights
— Scored a $2.5 million seed round from Coil
— Teamed up with Coil, Interledger and Ripple
— More about the STRV-made AI and our partnership
— See Cinnamon’s Clutch review of STRV (★5.0)
Services / Deliverables
— Data Science
— Android Engineering
— iOS Engineering
— QA
About Cinnamon
How do you maximize the opportunities of today’s community-driven content creation? By targeting content creators and their fans.
Cinnamon is a multi-level engagement video platform allowing users to view and create videos, and to enjoy the freedom of native cross-app sharing and ad-free monetization. While other platforms utilize user data to offer tailored content suggestions, Cinnamon does this with no data needed — thanks to advanced machine learning/AI that lets users easily watch and find personalized content that surpasses that of Instagram or TikTok.
Challenge
The Cinnamon team had a clear vision. They set a deadline of just four months. But a clear gameplan was yet to be determined.
Cinnamon needed a tech partner that could substantiate every idea, translate it into a sensible product and help the startup team incorporate processes that would ensure a release. The designs were ready. What hung in the air was how to offer a sophisticated video recommendation system based on more than just text descriptions, how to translate this complexity into a comprehensive iOS and Android app experience, and how exactly machine learning (ML) would come into play.
Solution
In just four months, STRV delivered two complex ML solutions and the full iOS and Android MVPs, helping build a highly scalable service comparable to Instagram or TikTok in record time.
The video recommendation engine became STRV’s biggest ML project to date. With no data available, we created a custom dataset and built an AI solution that relies solely on a highly advanced algorithm. We then adapted the AI to allow searching for videos by passing full-text queries.
Before Cinnamon approached STRV, the company had also acquired an ML solution for emotion recognition. Although the team decided to omit using it due to privacy concerns, we suggested that — with the right improvements — Cinnamon could offer the solution as a standalone B2B product.
STRV recognized that the ML model’s size would require very expensive infrastructure, and efficiency was lacking. We built an entirely new embedded AI that runs on clients’ devices, which saves on infrastructure costs, scales naturally and is remarkably privacy-conscious. Our solution ended up being 99% more efficient and 40% more accurate than the initial one — making it valuable to content creators such as Hollywood film studios.
The scope of their abilities is exceptional. They know exactly what clients need and can adjust anything to adapt to those needs. The team moves companies from point A to point B.
