We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sharif Bennett. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sharif below.
Sharif, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
My co-founders and I had all individually attempted to break into the entertainment business. Prince Ace, CEO, as a film producer, Julian Haffner, CLO, as an attorney and myself as an actor/standup/writer. While we had moderate success in our own ways, we all felt somewhat discouraged by the various barriers to entry (cost, networking etc). It was while working as a producer on Malibu Road that Prince approached Julian and myself with an idea to fractionalize film financing by leveraging existing technology and opening up the possibility for anyone to become a film investor. What really piqued my interest was that for the first time, everyday regular people had the opportunity to invest in art. Up until now, to be in film finance, you generally had to be an accredited investor (large net worth) which meant that most people never even heard of or had the opportunity to participate. What most people do not understand is that art investment is one of the main drivers of generational wealth and it has been limited to such few people. I think of it in a fashion similar to feudal Europe where only a small percentage of people could own land. If you approached someone who worked on the land and asked them their thoughts on ownership, they would look at you crazy because the system was not to work in that fashion. It wasn’t until capitalism came about the ownership trickled down to the masses. We think art investment will transform in a similar fashion. The technology (Blockchain) will allow for fractionalized investment and open the door for the masses.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Sharif Bennett and I am the Chief Evangelist Officer for CineBlock. Initially, a “C-suite” role was never in my vision as I purusued more artistic endeavors such as stand up comedy, script writing and improvisational acting. After repeated failures of breaking into the industry I found myself in sales where I was able to build upon many of the existing skill sets I had developed during my creative years. When my co-founders and I decided to start CineBlock, it was only natural that I take on a similar role in which I get to engage clients and potential clients about our offering.
Cineblock is an ecosystem that allows for a content creator’s work to be tokenized into a digital asset and distributed on the blockchain to facilitate the ability for anyone to purchase a stake in their project at any stage of production. The platform offers monetization opportunities through our proprietary NFT marketplace, e-commerce store, and equity tokenization model. The investor or stakeholder will be able to monitor and track all transactions as they relate to the project and will receive their share of revenue directly to their accounts in real time
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
Myself, Julian Haffner and Prince Ace are all graduates of Swarthmore College. Prince served as the liason of the group as Julian and I did not overlap during our time there. Actually, Julian served as Prince’s mentor when he arrived on campus and Prince served as mine when I arrived. One of the things that Swarthmore taught us was the value of critical thinking and bridging idealism with real world practicality.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
The initial capital used to fund CineBlock came from our friends and family. None of the three of us had parents who could loan us $500K so we quickly determined that the funds would come from people that knew us, respected us and most importantly believed that we could pull this off. These were family members, friends from college/graduate school and professional colleagues.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://cineblock.info/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cineblockfilms/
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/people/CineBlock-Films/100069149075534/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cineblock/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/cineblockfilms?lang=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CineBlockFilms