Discovering founder kaupapa outside the valley
***This article first appeared on www.ehf.org***
Outside the Valley is coming to Arrowtown on May 27 at Dorothy Brown - get your tickets here
“We know that founders around the world are on a path to find their tribe. And we’re making a bet that media will inform and inspire them,” says Cohort 7 Fellow and Churro Media co-founder, Ryan Williams.
“We’re thinking about pre-founders, too,” adds co-founder and Fellow, Hunter Weeks. “We’re targeting people who have the potential to come up with an idea to change the world; enabling them and exciting them in such a way to realise that there is a path for them, even in parts of the world that you wouldn’t expect.”
“In the Bay Area, you could have 100 networking events every day of the week. You can find your tribe there really easily,” says Ryan. “But what about the founders and potential founders who are in an ecosystem that has maybe only 10 start-ups in it? It can be very hard to find each other, even though it’s so small. These communities exist everywhere. And there’s a huge opportunity in encouraging people to look up and realise that economic stability for their region can come from them starting companies locally. Our role is to make media which inspires them to do it.”
Ryan and Hunter first met in college in St Louis; from there Hunter made his way to the tech zenith of dot-com era Silicon Valley while Ryan sought the relative security of a teaching job. “Knowing you want to be a founder is not at all the same as knowing how to get there. Immediately after college, I was mostly worried about getting a job by spring break so I could start repayments on my student loans,” he laughs.
In the years that followed, Ryan has made a name for himself as an executive coach and globally recognised keynote speaker while Hunter forged a path as a storyteller and outdoor adventure film-maker. “I made my first film in 2004,” Hunter says, “and it really set a tone for the journey of my life. Part of that journey had always been Ryan and I intersecting every once in a while. I was watching what he was doing and where he was travelling and it piqued my curiosity seeing that he’d had these opportunities to speak with founders all over the world.”
The two eventually circled back to each other to collaborate on a development shoot with start-up founders in Mexico, the US and Ireland. “We saw how differently they experienced many of the same challenges and successes. That’s when we knew there was a bigger story to tell,” says Ryan. “From that realisation came the articulation of our core value: to inspire founders to realise, through storytelling, that they really don’t need Silicon Valley.”
Not long after the development shoot, Ryan came to New Zealand to speak to Kiwi Landing Pad and realised just how developed the ecosystem was here, inspiring the pair to shoot more founder footage in New Zealand and apply to EHF. They were able to capture some uniquely Aotearoa stories, like then 12 year old founder, Georgia Tiatia Fa’atoese Latu, whose Dunedin-based business Pōtiki Poi makes eco-friendly traditional poi products.
“There’s a feeling out there that only certain people with certain things and certain access can be founders,” says Hunter. “If you’re an outsider looking at a company, you’re taught to believe that they really made it when they got x funding round or some high-profile award,” Ryan adds, “but the more start-ups you talk to, the more you realise that the thing that really changed for them was a month or two or even a year before that. They were at a fork in the road and they decided to do it.”
Through their shared passion, what began as a short promo video evolved into the recently completed feature-length documentary, Outside the Valley. Their company, Churro Media, has formed around the film and been developed into an online platform of resources which the co-founders liken to the special features once found on DVDs.
Media is tough and the storytelling field is both noisy and crowded, they admit. Which is why, they say, they’re aiming to create a new category by bringing adventure into the stories of business and focussing on founders. “We think that there are episodic stories that are really cool and really inspiring. Telling them in a movie format means that we can get someone to give us their undivided, meditative attention for 87 minutes and challenge them to think about where they are in their own life,” Ryan says.
They’re now looking ahead to their next film, Kaupapa, which will focus on a handful of inspiring global founders through the lens of the lessons the co-founders are learning from Aotearoa. “The next film is a big deal,” says Hunter. “We want to film it in New Zealand and through the global connections in the EHF network. There’s a big story there about collective purpose which we know will resonate.”
The pandemic has been tough, with live film audiences a non-starter for much of the world and their pathways to New Zealand considerably less certain. But they’re adapting quickly and making plans for the world premiere of Outside the Valley to be held in Wellington next month. “Of course we wish would could be there for our premiere,” Ryan says. “But, really, we want to get to there to tell the next chapter of the New Zealand story: what we’re learning from the Māori community and our fellow Fellows.”
“And we don’t want to just make stories,” Hunter adds. “Churro is ultimately a business that’s there to make people believe in themselves and encourage them to go bigger and better. The stories are only the very beginning.”
The world premiere of Outside the Valley will be screened at The Roxy cinema in Wellington at 8pm on the 25th of March, with a range of regional screenings and virtual events to follow. Checkout the Outside the Valley trailer and stay up-to-date on future projects and events from the Churro team.
