We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gavin Buckland. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gavin below.

Alright, Gavin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

Creating Clipsense (an AI-powered software that eliminates the time-consuming process of manually sorting through hours of raw b-roll footage) started with first-hand frustration.

I’ve spent over a decade as a filmmaker editing videos for brands like Under Armour, Apple Music, and NBC. And like most filmmakers, I’ve wasted countless hours sorting through raw footage which is a slow, manual process that bottlenecks creativity, drains budgets, and makes scaling impossible.

In 2023, I was hired to cut a 2-minute highlight reel from over six hours of raw footage at a large conference in Vegas and had just 48 hours to do it. I spent most of that time watching through unusable clips, trying to find the few good shots before I could even begin editing and making something awesome. At 3am, alone in a hotel room and running on fumes, I remember thinking, “There has got to be a better way.”

There wasn’t.

So I decided to build it.

The only problem–I had no background in tech. No idea how to train AI models. No clue how to code. Just a very real pain point and a clear vision for what the solution should feel like.

That’s when a friend and mentor shared the idea of “Who Not How” based on the book by Dan Sullivan. If you’re in the solo-preneur space you’ve probably heard of it. It’s not about knowing how or figuring out how to do something—it’s about finding the right who to help make it real.

So instead of trying to become a machine learning engineer overnight, I started asking: “who could I collaborate with? Who had strengths where I had blind spots? Who else had felt this same friction in the editing process?”

I got connected to a community of like-minded AI entrepreneurs in Slack and pitched my idea. One guy named Gereon responded, “Hey, I think this is possible.” After meeting with him I learned he was an experienced cyberneticist with experience in autonomous driving and medical AI systems. But more importantly, I could sense his passion around pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. That’s when it clicked. This is my “who.”

After a few weeks, he and his small team ended up making a proof of concept which brought the idea to life and showed that it was possible to have AI find the good moments of footage based on technical parameters like shot stability, focus, and exposure and aesthetic parameters like composition and clarity of story conveyed in the shot.

Okay, cool. So now we had proof of concept. But how do we make this a usable product—something I and other editors could actually adopt in our everyday?

We needed funding. Around $50,000.

And again, I didn’t have vast resources. So instead of asking how I could come up with the money, I asked: who do I know that could help me bring this vision to life?

I reached out to a friend who had successfully raised money for his own startup. He introduced me to an investor. He also introduced me to a designer who helped me put together a pitch deck. It’s wild how, once you find the right who, they often unlock more who’s.

We pitched the investor and to my astonishment landed the $50k in pre-seed funding. Gereon and his team finally had the resources to take Clipsense from prototype to beta. Once we had something functional, I started sharing it with early adopters—mostly other editors who were just as fed up as I’d been in that hotel room at 3am. We’re still in the early stages but we’ve got around 500 people signed up to use it and their feedback is helping us shape the product as we continue to make it better.

So what’s the real difference between people who sit on ideas and people who execute? It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about building the right team of people who do.

That mindset shift was the unlock. As founders—especially creative ones—we often feel like we have to be the best at everything. The best editor. The best marketer. The best pitch person. But your real job isn’t to be the best at everything. It’s to be the best at finding who can help you get where you’re trying to go.

You need a network so deep, so curated, and so talented that when any new problem arises and you’re tempted to ask “How can I do this?”—you already have someone in mind to say, “I know who can.”

“Who not how” isn’t just a productivity mantra—it’s the reason Clipsense exists.

What started as a sleep-deprived moment of creative frustration turned into a real product not because I was the smartest person in the room—but because I was surrounded by smart people who believed in the same vision.

That’s how you move from idea to execution. Not alone. Together.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I grew up in rural Iowa (as if there’s any other kind), where the closest thing to a film scene was the DVD rack at Walmart. Eventually I made my way to Chicago to attend the Art Institute. I thought film school would be this hands-on, exciting dive into real-world production — but instead it felt wildly out of touch, especially with how fast the industry was evolving. It was expensive, outdated, and offered very little actual experience. So I bailed.

I ended up transferring to the college where my then-girlfriend was studying. We got married two years later — she’s now my wife of 10 years — and we planted roots in the suburbs of Chicago. I landed a job as a director and editor at a creative agency and stayed there for six years, grinding through the usual creative highs and lows. Eventually I hit a wall. Burnout, identity crisis, the whole deal.

That’s when I enrolled in a six-month program that blended career coaching with therapy. It helped me slow down, untangle a lot of the noise, and rediscover what actually lights me up: filmmaking. Specifically post-production — the part where everything comes together, where meaning gets shaped. I also realized I missed working with people. Like, really collaborating. Bringing people together and making stuff with the best talent possible — that’s my lane.

So I teamed up with my best friend — a brilliant 3D/VFX specialist — and we launched Voke Studios, a post-production house built to be lean, scrappy, and ridiculously good at what we do. We handle editorial, sound, color, motion, and VFX for brands, agencies, and filmmakers who want their work to move people and look good doing it. Our clients range from Under Armour to Apple Music, but the goal’s always the same: make people feel something.

Somewhere along the way, I got tired of wasting hours digging through footage to find a few usable shots — especially when I knew AI could help. That’s when Clipsense was born. It’s an AI-powered editing tool that pulls selects automatically based on both technical parameters (stability, focus, exposure) and aesthetic ones (composition, clarity of story). The idea is simple: let AI do the button pushing so creatives can focus on being directors and storytellers. That’s the future of filmmaking — and we’re building it.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Curiosity. I love to ask questions.
“Does it have to be this way?”
“What if we dreamt bigger?”

The question why is the precursor to innovation. The thing that gets me most excited about living — and the feedback I get consistently — is that I like to make ideas bigger and bolder. That’s our responsibility as creatives. When we’re hired for a project, we’re not just there to execute — we’re there to make it better. And the only way to make something better is to get curious.

“What else could I add to this?”
“What could I take away from this?”

Curiosity leads to expansion — expansion of ideas, talent, impact. And expansion isn’t just about adding things; sometimes it’s about removing things to expand the clarity of the theme, idea, message, or emotion you’re trying to evoke from the audience.

Curiosity also helps us go deeper with our clients, even after a project is finished. One of the greatest things we’ve done to strengthen our client relationships — which has directly led to repeat work and higher revenue — is the post-mortem call we schedule after every project, whether it went well or not. We all get together and ask:

“What went well?”
“What went wrong?”
“What were we confused about?”
“What was missing in the project or in our collaboration?”

This single meeting often gets emotional in all the right ways. It’s where honest conversations are met with radical ownership, apology, forgiveness, and learnings for next time that deepen trust on both sides. 99% of the time, the client ends up going directly into the next project they want us to work on — during that same call. Who knew that being curious and reflective about the wins and mistakes on both sides could lead to more work?

But curiosity goes beyond just client work. I try to keep it as a foundation in my life to help discover purpose. And I don’t do it perfectly. I’ve recently had a few people say to me in a few different circumstances “you’re not dreaming big enough.” Oof. That hurts. But a good hurt. It reminds me that curiosity is the one thing I can’t afford to lose as I realign and refine who I’m becoming. Some of the questions I ask myself:

“Why are you here?”
“How can you help people? Help the world?”
“What makes you angriest about the state of things?”
“What are you most afraid of for the next generation?”
“What makes you happiest? How can you help others feel the same?”
“What are you good at? What could you be the best at?”
“What makes you feel accomplished?”
“What are you most proud of accomplishing? Can you repeat or develop it further?”
“What do you enjoy sharing with people?”

Curiosity is the throughline. It’s what keeps the work fresh. It’s what makes our relationships stronger. And it’s what helps me grow — as a creative, as a leader, and as a person.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As a visionary, I like to dream. I’ve got lots of ideas. I love starting things — the beginning stage of a new venture is the most exciting part. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Whether it’s launching a new business idea or writing a new film, I see so much potential. The possibilities feel endless.

But then reality hits. Other priorities get in the way. The responsibilities of the other projects I’ve already started come knocking. And I get stuck in this belief that just having a great idea is enough for success. Like, if I just start something, success will magically show up.

And when it doesn’t? I’m tempted to give up. To quit.

There are plenty of projects I’ve left unfinished — a sci-fi period piece short film, a fledgling podcast focused on post-production. My greatest challenge (and maybe also my greatest opportunity) lies in learning to take consistent daily action to create the future I envision.

I’ve had to unlearn the “start–stop–give up” cycle. And instead, I’ve learned to find and invite an executer into the room — at Voke that’s my co-founder Dustin and our producer, Bram. Together they take my crazy ideas and help me make more progress on it than I could alone. The key for visionaries is to find someone who can help take a consistent, grounded, rational, and steady approach to creative work.

My ability to dream and start new things is a gift. It should be honored — but also honed. And what’s made the biggest difference in my life — in my businesses, my health, my relationships, and my overall sense of success — is consistency. And consistency is impossible without the right people to help keep me accountable.

You know what? Maybe I should create a new video course that teaches people how to be more consistent? I’m sure I have time to start another new thing…

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vokestudios.com
• Instagram: gavin_buckland
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gmb1994
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavin-buckland-8b5133114/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOaIpqNzmlYrfwKV6Bg3j2w

Image Credits

Photo by Matt Treager, Danielle Celaya, and Mason Runkel.