We were lucky to catch up with Paul Jun recently and have shared our conversation below.

Paul, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

While brands and IP have been driving huge box office gains ever since the dawn of the first franchise, the power balance between creatives in the film industry and the executives has shifted much too far in favor of the corporations. In doing so, they’re continuously losing the essence of what made the industry successful–creativity. As an example, when Disney purchased Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilms, they purchased them primarily with the intent of exploiting the properties with much less intent on developing the IP. And while you can do that for a decade or shorter, eventually you dilute the brand that was so well developed in the first place to warrant purchasing it. It’s the creative first approach that will allow brands to continue thriving in economic uncertainty and now that we’re entering that phase of the economic cycle, they should no longer be cashing out as much as they’ve done over the past few years.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a serial entrepreneur that is always interested in building things. Not physical things but ideas and concepts that can turn into businesses. For example one of my first businesses was a website to rate military officers, a bit like ratemyprofessor.com. Obviously that wasn’t good for my military career because my commanders thought I built it to spite them, however that was the start of my entrepreneurial journey. I also developed a reusable bag business in Orange County, a go-karting business in Los Angeles, and now I’m the founder of a film festival streaming platform.

I’m most proud of the startup I operate currently, which is called Filmocracy, because it’s an effort to rebalance the scales of Hollywood. The film industry is one full of dreamers and exploiters, and we’re seeing now what happens when talent gets exploited too much. The strikes are a reflection of an unhealthy industry and we hope to balance the power scales and allow creatives more control over how their work is distributed, produced, and financed.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

The entertainment industry is a difficult place to build a reputation because of the amount of predatory people and organizations who operate within it. Because of this, many people have been burned and scammed out of money from people promising to make their dreams come true. Then here comes Filmocracy with much more tempered offers and the initial response is to not trust. So really it has just taken time and continued acts of good faith. Helping people without asking for anything back. Building products that people need but perhaps can’t afford. Our reputation is built on us helping and is solidified over time. There’s no shortcut.

Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?

We as a startup were supposed to be acquired by a publicly traded company in 2021. We went through more than a year of negotiations and finally the acquisition contract was ready to be signed, but then that company’s stock price crashed and the deal was nixed. That was a huge blow to us because we had already made a lot of plans for our growth using the acquisition funds.

Fortunately that’s not the type of thing that can keep me from moving forward. Despite the loss of the deal, we re-evaluated our model to become more lean and have been able to continue operations without the need for that cash injection. At the end of the day, business is more about resilience than it is about brilliance.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.filmocracy.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/myfilmocracy
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/filmocracy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/filmocracy/?viewAsMember=true
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/filmocracy2
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9nUyJkAGqDXfShgjbErYqg