#51: Working in Tech vs Movie Business

To stay up to date checkout ⁠thestartupproject.io⁠ & follow Nataraj on twitter: @natarajsindam In this episode Nataraj spoke to Marius Ciocirlan who co-founded ShareGrid, a marketplace for filmmakers and photographers to rent and sell their equipment. It was ⁠acquired⁠ by Backstage and is now Managing Director of Techstars Seattle. Techstars expanded to Seattle in 2010, and since then more than 130 companies have gone through the program & collectively gone on to raise more than $2.5 billion in capital.  Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] So I was like, you know, working on Samsung, making videos and then also like working on sets, like reality TV shows and stuff like that, while at the same time doing a startup and. Uh, learning UX design. So I had to make a decision. I couldn't do both. And the reason I decided to go into tech, I remember having this kind of conversation with my significant other, is that in film it's a very traditional career path, meaning, In order to become a cinematographer or a director or a producer, you have to pay your dues.

[00:00:35] Like there is very strict rules about what certain people could do on a set and what they can't do, like. I've been told in my position as a production assistant was like, you are not allowed to move that equipment. You're not allowed to move that chair because the union, you don't belong to that union.

[00:00:53] So it's actually like a safety regulation or. It was a very traditional kind of [00:01:00] career path, and I realized that like I was not going to reach my dream of becoming a cinematographer or director well into my forties, probably fifties, and it was gonna take a long time where in tech it was actually the complete opposite.

[00:01:18] The younger you were, the more respect you got and almost the more opportunities you received. So my goal was always like, I really enjoyed. and it seems like doors are just really opening, people are just much more supportive. If you have big ambitions, you don't have to like, wait in line and wait your turn.

[00:01:38] You could just act on those ambitions. Uh, so it just felt like a much friendlier community and just more embracing. So, um, it went towards tech and I, I always planned like at some point in my career, I'll make it in tech and then I'll come back at an older age and a film and I'll be a producer and I'll fund my own films or uh, [00:02:00] documentaries or whatever, whatever that might be.