Robin Ashford

Background

About Robin Ashford

Work-in-progress human. • One of VOD Professional’s Top 50 most influential people working in the UK’s OTT industry. Robin is a highly accomplished entrepreneur with over twenty years of experience working in the design, film and software industries. At school, he taught himself Adobe InDesign, mostly for the purpose of making fake IDs for him and his peers. Whilst the school was not wholly supportive of this early initiative, it did result in a job at a nearby agency as a graphic designer. This gave him the experience and confidence that he needed to move to London and join the design team at Apple, a position he held for eight years. Robin then transitioned into the film industry, spending 2 years as a special effects technician on productions like The Phantom Menace, Spy Game and Coronation Street. It was here that Robin fell in love with the industry, and taught himself AVID and Final Cut Pro, skills he then used to become an online editor. He soon started his own production company and created content for clients like Red Bull, Nike, BBC, and Sky Sports. It was then that he grew frustrated with legacy delivery processes and created a software application to deliver finished content to his clients over the internet, which enabled him to spin out into his first software startup, Quixel. Through Quixel he delivered content for F1, the Olympics, and the UEFA Champions League, and was awarded three patents at the core of his software for video delivery acceleration. Quixel partnered with Google to make a YouTube Upload Accelerator. Robin led the sales process of his startup to YouTube, and afterward spent two years doing supply chain consulting for film studios and broadcasters, including Warner Bros, BBC, Sky and Fox. Identifying a gap in the market, Robin created Fabric to solve growing problems in the sector of metadata management. Over the last few years, he has overseen Fabric's impressive growth, increasing from two employees and one client to fifty-two people and over fifty industry-leading clients including Warner Bros. Discovery, MGM, Amazon Studios, FOX, Paramount, Lionsgate, AMC, Pokemon and more. Throughout his career, Robin has shown remarkable creativity and ingenuity in providing industry-leading solutions. He continues to stay at the forefront of the technology field and looks to be a key figure in space for years to come.