Founder and CEO at Kinema
Christie Marchese is the founder and CEO of Kinema, a global film distribution and exhibition platform leveraging community and social interaction to screen and stream films.
I'm the founder and CEO of Kinema. Kinema is my second company, first venture backed company. I'm previously the founder of Picture Motion, which is an impact agency in the entertainment space. And previously my career has been at the intersection of entertainment, typically film, engagement, sometimes impact, and digital or social. And so at Kinema, we built a streaming and screening platform for interesting people to find interesting films.
I've watched a fair amount of movies for work. So I get to see some great independent stuff that comes in. But I also have missed some classics that were around before I was born. So every once in a while, I'll try and watch a classic. And I actually watched Chinatown with Jack Nicholson. It was actually fantastic. The story of the coming of age of Los Angeles being a desert town and based on the true stories of the water wars. I love a story that's based in history and truth that has an impact element to it, but it's still extremely entertaining. So that one was just entertaining from a film standpoint. I saw a film called Quiz Lady recently, that actually had me crying and it's a comedy with Sandra Oh, but it had me crying because it reminded me of my sister.
It'd be like someone from Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Feyre from ACOTAR, Galadriel from Lord of the Rings. I could be switching with some sort of fantasy world cause it's so the complete opposite of what our reality is.
Kinema was born out of the work I did at my first company, Picture Motion. Picture Motion is a service company. We had clients, we worked with all the big streamers, and studios who are releasing films on any sort of social issue. We build impact campaigns and marketing campaigns. And one of the tactics we would use are screenings. So word of mouth screenings, premieres, basically gathering people in a physical space around the movie to promote the film. And so we built up this database of screening partners and locations. And we're like, wow, this is really interesting. And what if there's something we could do with this that's outside our business model? And second, we were looking at what was happening in the industry and just from a macro scale where there were less and less independent theaters and the big theater chains were not necessarily picking up the independent films or giving them a wide release. People outside of New York and LA like interesting films too, or want films that are not just Marvel films or from a range of creators. So the idea was, can we take this network of places that show movies in person and make it available to all filmmakers everywhere? Then we wanted to add tech to it. We found that traditional theaters use a complicated way to send film files in a very secure way, but most of our spaces wanted a link or DVD. What if we could build some smart tech to better securely send high res film files to these spaces so they can host screenings? So all those different things kind of came together while I was still running picture motion, started putting together this idea, we got some pre seed funding from a venture studio to build it out. We got to work with their team to put together the business model, start building initial MVP. And we were ready to launch and go in about March of 2020. And of course, March of 2020 was a terrible time to be telling people to get out of their home to go see movies. So we've evolved a lot since. Everybody here that's a founder knows, you have one idea and one vision, and once you put it into the market, it's going to change. And so we put it into the market at the time of the pandemic and it changed greatly. We've been having to change and adapt ever since and rolling with what's happening, pandemic, post pandemic, the strikes in Hollywood, the streamers competing, the rise of AVOD, all of that has been happening in the industry and how we respond and grow to it and carve a space out for ourselves.
We had our first film we were distributing with our distribution partner Magnolia. And so most immediately an obvious one was, well, people can't leave their homes, so we got to go online. And so we built a virtual streaming, basically an online version going to the movies online, but building a system that is part operating system and part marketplace. So any film creator could access the tech to have a screening and our audience to attend their screenings. But if you build in a pandemic time, that time's going to change. We knew this wasn't going to last forever. We had to be able to build both for the world in which people are at home and the future world where we could get back out. We had to make sure we stay true to our mission and keep asking ourselves, what problem are we solving in the industry and how we're going to solve it is going to shift a little bit, how we're solving it now is while people are stuck at home, how we're going to solve it in the future is by going to be giving a wider set of tools.
So functionally, we serve essentially three audiences. We have our filmmakers and film creators. These are independent filmmakers, directors, producers, and distributors who have a feature length film. And you make money off of film in a few different ways. You put it into theaters for ticket sales. You sell the rights to a streamer. You do educational rights. You sell it to schools. You have pop up events or non theatrical, like what we do. You have international sales, and then you have advertising base, getting advertising revenue through a bot and fast channels. So you have all those different ways to make money. But typically you would need an intermediary. You need a distributor to get you to those places. So you're the film creator and you want to get to an audience. You have to go through these platforms, but you've got to get a distributor to do it for you.
So part of what we're doing is helping be that self accessible distributor to get to those physical spaces for screenings, to get to those partners to have virtual events, to go straight to audience through our own transactional VOD platform.
We want filmmakers make money. People want to be entertained. Creators are always going to create. Entertainment has to be affordable in order for people to do it because there's so much that's free on the Internet right now. And we still have to make money as a business. So how do we kind of keep those truths in our head and keep forward on the mission of supporting great independent global stories and the filmmakers behind them? And enabling audiences to better find these stories?
Unfortunately we spend less on marketing and we do rely on word of mouth. We have a motto of just do a good job. At the end of the day, if we're actually delivering on great technology, that's driving revenue for our film creators, then that word of mouth is invaluable. There's no amount of billboards you could buy that's going to do better than that type of word of mouth of fulfilling our promises and getting people to films and having those films make money.
In terms of our actual system, we have like a three sided marketplace. The first part is the film creators. Those are the ones that have the assets to sell or the film. And then we have this exhibitor network. And those are places and organizations and influencers who have email lists and have followings or have community in some way. When that film is on the platform, let's say that there's one film and you have a hundred hosts and those hosts then promote that film to their network. That's the piece that we don't do. We don't do the audience marketing right now. Those exhibitors and hosts and partners, they market to their audiences, which brings in those audiences. And now we know what they watched and what they're interested in, how much time they've spent, and we can remarket to them other films.
Our primary marketing plan is do a good job to deliver for filmmakers. Build that exhibitor list, and then retarget films and similar content to new users and audiences.
It's called Where the Olive Trees Weep, and that one has about 200 live events happening right now. And it's really cool to see in real time globally where all those screenings are taking place and who's watching them. If you're in any of the cities, you can attend for the virtual events, which are scheduled synchronized co viewing. So that one's doing really, really well. There have been a few films that have crossed over the 150,000, 200,000, 250,000 mark in terms of revenue, which is really good considering we're dealing with just one particular licensing or revenue stream. Those films all three are documentaries. They all have very specific audiences and they know how to reach that audience and they know how to speak to them and engage them. They didn't have a traditional theatrical release. They didn't have a streaming deal. But they knew who their audience was and they knew how to reach them.
I can tell you I do. But in every case in which I've developed a co founder relationship, it hasn't necessarily been planned and it's not how we started. So to try and condense like multiple versions of this, I've had two companies.
One is a service based company that was entirely cash flow based. It was born out of consulting work. And I had a coworker that I loved at my company before that, she came on as a co founder, but like a year later, because she was currently at her job, she was working on longer story immigration status. I really wanted to work with her, but technically I'd started the company first by myself. And she came in maybe 10 months later, and we already knew we worked well together. We'd kind of been through hell together at that company.
You kind of need someone to complain to when things are hard personally. And then for this company, Kinema is kind of similar. I was building a relationship with another potential co founder in which she would run the business because I wasn't quite ready to leave my company yet. But we spend a lot of time getting to know each other. And I think it's like getting into marriage. You want to form a little prenup. We knew each other from the industry and we've been next to each other, but we've never really worked together. We went through a lot of questions and we spent like six months. Ultimately we just disagreed on a few crucial things. And so we broke up. And I'm glad we did because I think I love the company. Nothing against her. We didn't meet on certain things. And it was important that we had that conversation when we did.
With this company, we started building within a studio and 1 of the business analysts who was helping with our model was someone that was really helpful to building the company and really interested in what we were building. And he and I just hit it off. The idea was if we can raise the money and raise the seed round, he would come on as co founder and COO and he did. And he's awesome.
For the person I almost co founded Kinema with, it was really like have the hard conversations up front. It's nothing personal. Do you have the same vision for what you want to do? And that can shift over time, but how are you going to handle the hard things? It's impossible to predict the future, but just in asking ourselves questions, like, what would you do with an acquisition offer of this much? How much money do you want to raise? How long do you think you're going to be able to do this? What's your family life? Like some of these hard questions that are just real as a human being and as someone running a business. And if you're not on the same page with all of them, it's good to maybe reassess that at that time before you go too deep.
We were, what do you call it, lucky, fortunate, to right place, right time. Our founding CTO is an amazing guy named Tim Knight, and I'd known him for, at that point, 10 years. Met him because he actually used to work at a big corporate company with my husband. And then he started working at the studio. And he was like our Assigned engineer to help us build the prototype. And he loves movies and he's really, really talented. He's got both the left and the right brain. So he built the whole architecture of the site, the core product. So really strong start by having someone within a studio that I'd known for a long time and trusted and the perfect skillset.
We've entertained it. Our core talent has been so good. I think it's worth the budget, the expense for at least for what our company does. We've had different dev shops come in for different pieces and in a consulting capacity, but the core team have been employees. That seems to work for us, and to be frank, I actually don't have anything else to compare it to, in terms of outsourcing devs, so this works for us.
Fundraising is hard. Everyone says that some people have a natural talent for it. It's not a natural talent for me. We had a few core institutionals that were really, really helpful in making connections and also being those larger investors to anchor that raise. Part of it came from having some relationship ahead of time or just knowing who each other were, so it wasn't starting fresh. So they knew my history, they knew my background, they knew how I worked, so that made it at least the first few rounds of fundraising a little bit easier. Because it wasn't just a cold intro.
We also focus more on the industry. So who are people in the industry who understand the difficulties of our industry? If you're going to mostly tech investors, they're not going to fully understand the space of licensing content or the cost of production. So much of our raise actually came from people working in film or formerly working in film. And that was also helpful because they're like, great, I get what you're doing makes complete sense. We need to innovate in this stage, here's five more people to meet. So that helped the raise a lot.
The new challenge is the competition up against AI in the entertainment space. AI actually really will impact the entertainment industry in major ways from making it easier for people to do animated films, to doing voiceovers, to doing lip syncing. Where does AI fit in with us? We already have algorithms and language learning models to provide predictions or recommendations of what people watch. So we don't see right now how to tap into that or compete with that. So that's the challenge that we have right now when it comes to fundraising.
Our investor pool has been fantastic. I say the worst is people ghost you or don't get back to you when you're asking for help or support. Some of the smaller angel investors have been so helpful. They'll get on the phone for anything. They'll look over an email. They'll give ideas. We had one of our angels who helped us with hiring.
Your investors are not just putting in money. They're also helping you and they're invested in building your business. So utilize it. Some of them have just truly gone above and beyond. And now they felt the business.
I think the advice would be, for any of the investors who are putting in the larger checks or taking up a larger amount of the equity, be thoughtful about who they are. I look at the ones that are more active in the VC world, and I wish they would be a little bit more supportive and making introductions, and I didn't think I know to interview for that at the time.
How are you really going to help us moving forward? What happens if we're having trouble making, raising money? What would we do if we have competition for the round? How would you behave? I wish I'd kind of interviewed some of our bigger investors a little more, so I could do a better job of having a relationship with them and managing that relationship moving forward.
So when we look at our numbers, we're looking at our revenue, how fast that's increasing, how fast that's growing our audience members, how fast that's growing month over month. And our films, how fast that's growing month after month and are the quality of the films improving? And are they coming to us faster than we're going to them? So we look at these metrics. That's the time to do it. We would have loved to do a series A like a year and a half ago and our numbers were looking good, but they weren't great. And the industry and the pandemic hit, we hit some bumps in 2022 and then fundraising got really bad in 2022. And so we weren't in a position to be able to do a series A then. So that's why we'll do the seed plus now we're in a really good position. Our numbers are fantastic. We have a little bit of runway. And so now seems like the time to do it and you also don't feel crunched or pushed to just take any sort of deal or offer.
We want to be one of the top like distribution companies and entertainment studios, falling somewhere between the pure professional content as well as more kind of user generated creator content.
I think we're seeing a lot more interesting and professional and very cool work coming out of the creator economy from the artists who are focused on doing videos every day. Realizing there's a lot of burnout from that, but there's incredible talent and storytelling and comedy and horror and all the different genres coming out of the creator economy.
And so we want to create a platform that is not just YouTube or TikTok that allows more long form story, and space for these creators to tell those long form stories. We're an app on your TV that is up there with your Netflix, your Hulu, your YouTube, but you're going to find a mix of creative content that's coming from creators that are film and serial that's independent coming from creators, as well as some of the like leading independent film distributors, like Magnolia, Greenwich, Neon. We see ourselves being that more independent creator space.
If I knew anything, I wouldn't do it. Audacity and naivete. I have those two things. Otherwise, if you know too much, you won't do it because it'll be too hard. I think the thing that I was most afraid of though, are the things I ended up learning by having great people to work with.
I was afraid of some of the fundraising stuff. It's a language I didn't know. I have an amazing partner and my co founder, Rich, that helps navigate that. We did not intend to build a streaming site, but a pandemic shifted that. An amazing founding CTO and Tim and now lead engineer and Michael, like they are incredibly talented at what they do. I'm really happy. I work with great people.
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