Test City, USA

Tim Fulton 0:13Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. This week, I spoke with Columbus creator Jay Clouse about his documentary film, Test City USA, which paints a portrait of the Columbus startup scene and the funding that supports it. In addition to the film, the inspiration for it, and how it was made, we talk about how the startup realm led him to create his own path to follow, the point of time that Columbus is in, the importance of diversity, the importance of coaching, and the blank slate that is Columbus. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Also, the Confluence Cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website, theconfluencecast.com, or at patreon.com/confluence. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Jay Clouse, among other things, the producer of the film Test City USA, now available online and, uh, lots of places, right, Jay?

Jay Clouse 1:29Yeah, mostly online, though. Online is everywhere.

Tim Fulton 1:31Okay.

Jay Clouse 1:31Online is all places.

Tim Fulton 1:33Right. Indeed. Jay, how are you?

Jay Clouse 1:35I'm great. I'm great. How are you, Tim?

Tim Fulton 1:37I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Uh, full disclosure at the beginning of this, Jay and I have known each other for a couple of years, sit together on the Create Columbus Commission, and have explored other endeavors together as well. The occasion for this, though, is talking about the film Test City USA. Um, before we get into the film, Jay, give us your, your elevator pitch for who you are.

Jay Clouse 2:00I am an independent creator, and most of what I do can be put under the umbrella of helping creatives become more successful, confident business owners. And that looks like writing, it looks like podcasting, it looks like online courses, mostly working with freelancers and online creators. And before I was really that elegant and eloquent at putting that pitch together-

Tim Fulton 2:22Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 2:22... I was much more involved in the startup world and the startup scene, and that was the beginning of our first podcast called Upside, which is a collaboration between myself and Eric Hornung. And Upside was studying startup ecosystems across the country, and even a little bit in other countries, but startup ecosystems that are not Silicon Valley, to show the opportunities that are there that we think are underrepresented and don't get a lot of media attention.

Tim Fulton 2:50Okay. And then you also do Unreal Collective. That... Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jay Clouse 2:55Unreal Collective I think of now as a community, but the beginning of that community is a flagship product, which is a 12-week online accelerator program. Uh, and that's worked with founders, freelancers, creators, anybody who is basically making their own path and wanted to, uh, have some group accountability and help for accelerating that path.

Tim Fulton 3:19Gotcha. And then what's your, what's your background that sort of brought you to the, the content creation and the helping other folks out?

Jay Clouse 3:27Like I said, I started in the startup realm more, uh, than anything else, and came at it from the standpoint of just being really curious about creating my own path. And-

Tim Fulton 3:38Okay

Jay Clouse 3:39... that led me through, um, the entrepreneurship organization at Ohio State when I went to undergrad, led me into my first startup company where I was hired as the first employee, essentially co-founder of a digital ticketing marketplace called Tixers.

Tim Fulton 3:53Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 3:53Uh, we ran that company for a couple years, raised a little bit of seed funding. Uh, sold it pretty quickly in 2015-

Tim Fulton 4:02Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 4:03... and worked for that company for a year. Didn't like that experience. Uh, took a job at CrossChecks, now Olive Town, uh, one of Drive's first venture investments here in Columbus, Ohio. Uh, worked there as a product manager for a year. Got a lot better at, like, the ins and outs of actual product management and what it meant to lead product at a technology organization, and then just hated having a boss. So I left-

Tim Fulton 4:28Okay

Jay Clouse 4:29... to go back out on my own, and I didn't really know what that looked like, and sort of by accident and necessity began freelancing, and that lel- led me down the rabbit hole of everything that was possible in terms of creating content and products online, which has been what I've been spending most of my time doing for the last three years.

Tim Fulton 4:50Gotcha. And you're... Throughout this conversation, I'm sure we're gonna do a certain amount of name-dropping. Uh, you know, you mentioned Drive Capital, which is a venture capital investment firm here in Columbus, and s- at some points I'll stop you and say like, "Let's talk about that," and, "What is that?" But for everything else, there's a link in the show notes for more information on those folks. Just sort of a this is a nuts and bolts question. How are you getting paid? I know that the folks who participated in Unreal Collective, they were paying a fee in order to participate in that accelerator program. How are you paying the bills?

Jay Clouse 5:27Yeah. It started with Unreal Collective being my main economic engine-

Tim Fulton 5:31Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 5:31... which I ran three cohorts per year, and so a 12-week cohort three times per year, it takes up most of the year if you're doing it-

Tim Fulton 5:38Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 5:39... on that pace. Um, but that, like, at a baseline was able to cover my needs, but, uh, that's never been my sole income. What I've added on top of that, I, uh, create courses for LinkedIn Learning-

Tim Fulton 5:53Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 5:53... which is a publishing agreement, and I've created seven courses for them at this point. I do some freelance work from time to time. I've worked with Atlassian, and most recently Pat Flynn and the Smart Passive Income team. Um, I sell courses on my own independently. And now with two podcasts that both bring in sponsorship, we have that income stream plus some miscellaneous affiliate income that comes from my writing and things like that. I think that covers the majority of where money comes from. None of them are huge streams, but, you know-

Tim Fulton 6:25Cool, and I'm, and I apologize for the, for the question. I just, uh, I, I think it's important for folks to sort of see that it is possible to create a different couple of different baskets and get eggs out of them.

Jay Clouse 6:38Totally. And it's... In the beginning, again, it was kind of necessity because no one thing that I was doing was super profitable.

Tim Fulton 6:47Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 6:48And so you add little bits on top of that, and eventually if you get all those things working in concert, they start feeding one another and, uh, any one of them can take off, or multiple of them can take off, and it's, it's really, um, a pretty powerful model. But it takes some real time and investment of your own energy to get to that point.

Tim Fulton 7:07Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I would encourage anybody who is... I, I, I'm going to try to not use words like side hustle and gig economy. Uh-

Jay Clouse 7:18Gig is the one I don't like.

Tim Fulton 7:19Yeah. If there are folks who are listening to this who are freelancers and are interested in sort of stepping up, buzzword just coming to my head, step up their game in terms of how they approach their business and approach specifically finding new clients and executing on those clients, Jay has, uh, a couple of great email, I'll just call them drip campaigns 'cause that's what they are. He has great information that he distributes through email and also on his website about, like, here's an actionable step that you can take right now. Here's how I did it. I'm sure that there's some amount of sort of upsell on the back end, uh, on your side if, you know-

Jay Clouse 8:02Oh, yeah

Tim Fulton 8:02... folks n- need one-on-one consultation or whatever. But I, I see a lot of value just in that sort of free content that you put out there. So that's my, that's my hat tip to you.

Jay Clouse 8:15Thank you.

Tim Fulton 8:16Let's get into Test City USA. It's a film, again, available online about the startup ecosystem, buzzword. Uh, the startup ecosystem of Columbus. And first of all, w- why did you do the film, and is that a correct description of it?

Jay Clouse 8:37100%. Um, it's a full-length, 94-minute, you know, feature documentary film. And we did it because in the beginning with Upside, Eric and I, we were just interested in seeing, like, okay, what else is going, what's going on? Like, what do other cities look like? He was in New York when we started. He moved to Cincinnati since. I'm sitting here in Columbus. He's familiar with Columbus 'cause we met in undergrad at Ohio State.

Tim Fulton 9:02Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 9:02But we, we, we didn't know much about other cities across the country other than, like, occasional conversations. We'd start hearing some of the same cities like Kansas City and Indianapolis and Detroit, but we didn't know anything about what was going on there.

Tim Fulton 9:15Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 9:15So, so we started talking to founders at first. At first, the show's sole format was a three-part episode interviewing founders as if we were angel investors to learn about their business model and see what kind of opportunity it was.

Tim Fulton 9:29Okay.

Jay Clouse 9:29So then we-

Tim Fulton 9:29This is the podcast again.

Jay Clouse 9:31This is the podcast.

Tim Fulton 9:32Okay. Got it.

Jay Clouse 9:32This is the podcast Upside. And then we started talking with community builders and venture investors in those cities as well. And after a few months of doing this, we realized, okay, we've actually gotten a couple of different touchpoints in a couple of different cities. Instead of trying to tell a city's story from one or two perspectives, it'd be really great to create an episode of the podcast at this point of multiple people within a city talking to us about that city.

Tim Fulton 9:58Okay.

Jay Clouse 9:59And, and we realized that would probably be a difficult to produce piece of audio, and even at worst, like a miserable piece of audio to try to listen to because it, it'd just be really hard to keep people straight.

Tim Fulton 10:10Okay.

Jay Clouse 10:11And so we just tabled it because we realized, okay, that should probably actually be a film if we ever wanted to do that. And-

Tim Fulton 10:16Right

Jay Clouse 10:16... neither, neither Eric or I had equipment or money or ambition to do that.

Tim Fulton 10:22Right. I'm just thinking through, like, the best example is, like, a true crime podcast where there's multiple characters going on, and every three minutes you have to hear, "By the way, this is that person again."

Jay Clouse 10:35Exactly. You'd have to-

Tim Fulton 10:36Yeah

Jay Clouse 10:36... introduce all these people. "This is Tim Fulton." You know, like-

Tim Fulton 10:39Right.

Jay Clouse 10:40It, it would be really difficult. You could do it. It could be done. But it would be-

Tim Fulton 10:43Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 10:43... high production and-

Tim Fulton 10:45Yes

Jay Clouse 10:45... just difficult.

Tim Fulton 10:47Yeah.

Jay Clouse 10:48We thought it'd be easier with video, but we didn't have that skill, so we tabled it. Fast-forward about a year, and we're taking part in a program called Huntington Bucks Go Pro, I think 2.0. It's a program from Ohio State University that matches up Ohio State student athletes with companies to give them, uh, real job and career experience leading up to graduation.

Tim Fulton 11:12Okay.

Jay Clouse 11:13And we put a couple of job descriptions together, one of which was, like, a media intern. We didn't expect we'd actually get somebody for this position, to be honest.

Tim Fulton 11:21Okay.

Jay Clouse 11:22And, and we had a kid apply who was, um, in his last year at Ohio State on the volleyball team, and he wanted to be a filmmaker.

Tim Fulton 11:29Okay.

Jay Clouse 11:30And so we looked at his, his stuff, and it was better than anything Eric and I can do, and we said, "Cool. Let's, let's put this kid to work and see if he can get us like a 20-minute prototype of what one of these films could look like-"

Tim Fulton 11:44Okay

Jay Clouse 11:44"... so that maybe we could go and get some, like, financial backing to actually invest and create a full film."

Tim Fulton 11:50Okay.

Jay Clouse 11:51What we didn't know was, um, people would be really open to being interviewed, and Kyle had gotten so much better than what his portfolio had shown us, and he had better equipment than what we saw through his portfolio. And so just a couple of weeks into booking interviews and starting to shoot this 20-minute prototype-

Tim Fulton 12:11Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 12:11... we realized we're going to have a ton of great content That why not just make a full-length movie out of this and try that?

Tim Fulton 12:19Right.

Jay Clouse 12:19And it just kind of kept escalating from there, where it became more and more real and viable until the point where we said, "You know, the internship's ending. Let's get an initial cut of this together and do a public screening of this at one of the local theaters."

Tim Fulton 12:34Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 12:35And when we went to the Gateway Film Center, like this local, you know, uh, theater here in town, the, the president there said, "Yeah, of course you can do this. This is something that we make possible for local filmmakers all the time."

Tim Fulton 12:48Right.

Jay Clouse 12:48And, and then he said, "But are you guys considering festivals?" And we said, "No. Like, should we be?"

Tim Fulton 12:54That's not what this... What, like, yeah. How does that happen?

Jay Clouse 12:58And he said, "Well, the problem with festivals is you won't really be considered for film festivals if you've already theatrically aired the film."

Tim Fulton 13:08Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 13:08So he said, "If you have any ambitions for film festivals, you should try to do that before you publicly screen the film." And then he said-

Tim Fulton 13:15Yeah, and the reasoning there is, like, they just want first, they want first airing to be there.

Jay Clouse 13:22Yeah. It drives-

Tim Fulton 13:23Yeah

Jay Clouse 13:23... more people to the film festival. It j-

Tim Fulton 13:24Right

Jay Clouse 13:24... it makes sense. So we were like, "Oh, that's interesting." And then he ended that conversation with a, "Oh, by the way, there is a film festival in Columbus next month."

Tim Fulton 13:33Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 13:33"And if you want to submit to that film festival, get me a clip this week that I can have reviewed by the panel of judges." And we didn't know what the timing of this was gonna be. Like, we weren't even in editing yet. So very quickly-

Tim Fulton 13:46Okay

Jay Clouse 13:47... that week, we literally cut, like, a super rough 45-minute clip of this film-

Tim Fulton 13:52Okay

Jay Clouse 13:52... that got accepted, and then we had about three weeks to finish editing the film for the festival.

Tim Fulton 13:58That's fast.

Jay Clouse 14:00Yeah, I mean, the whole thing-

Tim Fulton 14:01Yeah

Jay Clouse 14:01... the whole thing was shot and edited and then screened in a period of three and a half months.

Tim Fulton 14:07Wow, okay. So you, you've talked about sort of the impetus for it. This intern was... It was basically a, "We've got this idea, and this is, quote-unquote, 'free labor,' or rather free to you. They're being compensated by this program at Ohio State."

Jay Clouse 14:24Right.

Tim Fulton 14:24And you're like, "We kinda wanna do this thing." And so this intern, Kyle, Kyle Skinner, it's almost like he opened up the floodgates for you a little bit, and you just didn't even know they were there, especially in terms of folks being willing to be interviewed. There's a narrative there about what you know the Columbus startup scene, but you're also like, "Oh, this is actually insider knowledge," some of which you didn't even know, I'm sure.

Jay Clouse 14:47Yeah.

Tim Fulton 14:48Uh, talking to folks like Tom Walker at Rev1 Ventures, talking to Matt Armstead, my colleague, full disclosure. And yeah, and so it was like, "Oh, we have all this now, and we have to do something with it."

Jay Clouse 15:01Yeah. Well, I... You know, like I said, we thought this would be a prototype, so I just started reaching out to people in town that I thought would be sympathetic to being interviewed. And-

Tim Fulton 15:09Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 15:09... I, my pitch to them was basically, "Hey, we're working on a film project this summer, um, probably 20 to 30 minutes long. Would you be interested or open to a 30-minute interview?" Like, I didn't know-

Tim Fulton 15:20Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 15:20... we were gonna be doing a public screening. This is what gave me, like, a ton of anxiety later when we were doing the screening at a film festival. This was not-

Tim Fulton 15:26Oh, yeah

Jay Clouse 15:27... what I warned people was going to happen. But, um, yeah, and, and everyone just said yes. I think there was one person who didn't get back to me or, or maybe two people who didn't get back to me or weren't available. But people just kept saying yes. So now we're interviewing all these people around town who are known as being pillars of the startup community, and it just felt like we had to do something about this because Columbus, in my opinion, is in a really interesting point in time as it relates to startup and venture activity across the country in what I think is, like, a, a revolution of how companies are being started and funded. And, um, you know, I would put Columbus at, like, the bottom of a top 10 list of cities across the country that, uh, have vibrant startup ecosystems.

Tim Fulton 16:12Okay.

Jay Clouse 16:12Which sounds almost like a put-down, but you get to 10 cities really, really quickly if you start thinking about it.

Tim Fulton 16:16Yeah.

Jay Clouse 16:16You know? You have, you have San Francisco, New York, Boston, Austin, Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis, and that's seven already.

Tim Fulton 16:25Right.

Jay Clouse 16:25So depending on how you wanna throw in Indy, Nashville, uh, Detroit, Cincinnati, Columbus, like, you get to a top 10 list pretty quickly with stuff that you just say, "Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, uh, further ahead than Columbus." But it's an interesting time because there's a lot of tier three cities who are looking very aspirationally at what Columbus is doing.

Tim Fulton 16:46Okay. And so talk... We'll get back to sort of the process of the film and the, and the feedback that you've gotten from it, but talk about what are, for those that haven't seen the film, and hopefully this is an encouragement for them to see it, what the film doesn't do is make those comparisons, right?

Jay Clouse 17:04Correct.

Tim Fulton 17:05It's, it's very sort of this is a portrait. We're not putting up Nashville right next to you, and we're not putting up, you know-

Jay Clouse 17:13Correct

Tim Fulton 17:13... Minneapolis, all those other cities that you just mentioned. What, though, given your knowledge from both being in the startup scene, working in that community, and your work with Upside, what's different in Columbus? And talk to me about not potential, but talk about what's actually different.

Jay Clouse 17:32A couple major things that come to mind. You have, you have Drive Capital-

Tim Fulton 17:37Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 17:37... which is one of the flagship large-scale venture investment firms that are post-seed in the middle of the country, you know? They were one of the first. And something we've realized in Upside is during the period of, like, 2014 to 2015, there were a handful of, uh, high-profile Silicon Valley investors who basically defected and went to different parts of the country saying, "We think this can be done in different parts of the co- country." We talked to one a couple weeks ago in Bozeman, Montana. We talked to a guy a few months ago who headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin.

Tim Fulton 18:10Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 18:11And the Drive guys landed in here in Columbus, Ohio. And so what Columbus has is that type of large-scale venture firm. We've had some earlier stage investing firms like Rev1 and Uh, we have a very large angel group presence here in Columbus as well. We have a ton of universities and knowledge workers. We have a ton of Fortune 500 companies, and we have a very interesting state funding mechanism from an economic development standpoint, the Third Frontier program, which is all of Ohio, but Columbus obviously benefits from that.

Tim Fulton 18:45Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 18:46A lot of that stuff is very different than what you see in other cities. Um-

Tim Fulton 18:50Okay

Jay Clouse 18:51... and also Ohio is a really interesting state because there are three cities in Ohio that are all relatively similar in this regard. Almost no other state has multiple cities that you would mention in the same breath with, like, the top level cities besides-

Tim Fulton 19:06Right

Jay Clouse 19:07... Texas is one.

Tim Fulton 19:10Texas, California.

Jay Clouse 19:12California, maybe Florida, but most states that are having a tier two or tier three startup ecosystem, they have like one city in that state that you would say, "That's where this is really happening," and that, that would be one breath.

Tim Fulton 19:28Okay. What is it that places those other cities above us? What's different there?

Jay Clouse 19:35In the cities that are outpacing Columbus, what you see mostly is a larger number of, uh, venture investing firms. Like, a lot of cities will have more than one Drive. We have, like, one Drive. You know, we have one Drive, one Rev1. There's usually more competition and collaboration of capital in the cities that are outpacing us. LA, for example, has something like 120 different firms, and they're still, like, middle of a top 10 list, you know?

Tim Fulton 20:03Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 20:04So that's significantly different, and there's the obvious, you know, fallout then of fewer startup companies. This is all... The, the, the concept of a flywheel is very, very real because until you have more money and more companies, you can't have as many outcomes. You can't have as many experienced entrepreneurs and experienced startup employees who can become entrepreneurs. All of that flywheel needs to get turning into place, and Columbus is starting to see it with exits like CoverMyMeds.

Tim Fulton 20:32Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 20:34But a lot of these cities, like Chicago has had several CoverMyMeds type companies.

Tim Fulton 20:40Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 20:40Um, and we haven't gotten there yet. There's not as much capital here. But also, most states don't have this state funding mechanism of the Third Frontier program, which is, like, very different. Uh, Philadelphia has something similar called the Benjamin Franklin Technology Program, but most states don't have that. And a large part of "Test City USA," the film, dives a little bit deeper into that program.

Tim Fulton 21:04Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 21:04Um, because it is unique about Columbus, and, uh, people have differing opinions about it, frankly.

Tim Fulton 21:11Mm-hmm. And so you're, you're talking a lot about funding and resources in terms of human capital. What are the other sort of opportunities for startups in this ecosystem specifically?

Jay Clouse 21:25Well, any ecosystem you look at, you wanna look at your unique strengths, and that usually comes from industry, universities. So in places like Pittsburgh, you have Carnegie Mellon, and, uh, that birthed an industry of autonomous for a lo- in a lot of ways. In Detroit, you have the old school automobile industry. In Nashville, you have a lot of healthcare. In Columbus, we see things like insurance becoming a big player.

Tim Fulton 21:50Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 21:50We also see healthcare. Uh, you'll see things like cybersecurity. Now with Drive's focus on robotics and, uh, helping bring robotics companies here, you're seeing more robotics here as well. So if you, if you tie into those industries, retail is another big one.

Tim Fulton 22:07Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 22:07If you tie into those industries of what Columbus historically has institutional and long-term knowledge and experience for-

Tim Fulton 22:15Right

Jay Clouse 22:15... you have a compelling reason to start that type of company in this city as opposed to Bozeman, Montana, where you don't have that same industry. Just because you can start the company everywhere or anywhere, I should say, it doesn't need to be in the Valley, doesn't mean that there aren't distinct advantages to different cities for different types of companies.

Tim Fulton 22:35Right. Obviously a startup that starts here that's within one of those verticals is gonna have probably an easier time. They've got experience there. Folks in the field know Columbus. Um, they're probably gonna be able to hopefully hire away some talent that already works in that space, and so you're not, for lack of a better term, onboarding them into it. Um, should startups sort of make sure that they're focusing in that, or are there other... are there opportunities outside of those verticals for startups in Columbus? 'Cause I would think specifically about, like, you know, you just named what we do well. I don't think you named healthcare, but I think we have more hospitals here per capita than any other large metropolitan city. And I'm thinking about CoverMyMeds exit, which is arguably a medical business and an insurance business. I think about Root Insurance, which hasn't had an exit, but has a huge influx of capital. Think of Beam Dental, which our good friend Alex Frommeyer is heading up, and all the successes I see are, are within those verticals.

Jay Clouse 23:42Well, and, and that's partially because we're familiar with them too. Like, I think-

Tim Fulton 23:47Okay

Jay Clouse 23:47... I think a lot of people would start talking about companies like Fisna Robotics or, um, Finite State, a cybersecurity firm, they would start talking about them in the same breath as Root and Beam Dental when they know those spaces better. I'm not super-

Tim Fulton 24:04I see

Jay Clouse 24:04... familiar with robotics or cyber, but those companies are fairly recent additions to Drive's portfolio that-

Tim Fulton 24:11Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 24:11... I know people are really bullish about. So I, I do think, to your original question, of course there's opportunity outside of those regions. You know, it's already-

Tim Fulton 24:21Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 24:21... going to be more difficult to start a company not in the Valley. That's just the truth pretty much no matter what. And so if you aren't, you also aren't p- playing to the strengths of your unique geographical ecosystem, sure, you can still do that. Like, we've, we've come a long way in being able to connect with anybody across the country. Through video conferencing and, and things like that, but it is gonna be harder

Tim Fulton 24:42And the, the exce- we should note that, you know, we're recording this in August of 2020. There's an a- acceptability to that as well.

Jay Clouse 24:49Yeah. It's just gonna be harder. And, and most, most founders here in Columbus even, even if they've gotten drive backing would tell you that when it's time to fundraise, they're going to spend weeks, if not months, on, uh, the West Coast with meetings.

Tim Fulton 25:03Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 25:04You know, like they'll do these short-term deployments to go out there and have meetings and bring capital back. So firms are more interested in investing across the country, but that doesn't mean you don't still, or didn't at least before, uh, this pandemic, have to go to them. I am bullish and optimistic that this pandemic as a forcing function is going to get people to realize, like, "Oh, I can conduct the same diligence digitally. I don't need a satellite office. I don't need to be somewhere." Like, I think this-

Tim Fulton 25:33Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 25:33... levels the playing field a lot for, for founders across the country, but we'll see.

Tim Fulton 25:38Yeah. Back to the film a little bit. What sort of, what feedback did you receive on it afterwards? Do the Tom Walkers of Columbus look at it as like, "This is a great portrait of it"? Have folks felt like it was a fair representation of what's going on in Columbus?

Jay Clouse 25:55Most of the folks who were in the film were able to attend the premiere.

Tim Fulton 25:58Okay.

Jay Clouse 25:58And so I had a lot of anxiety because, again, I didn't tell people when I was interviewing them that it was going to be premiered on a giant screen at The Gateway. I just said, "Here-"

Tim Fulton 26:06Small question. Did, like when you first interviewed them, d- were, did they even sign a release? 'Cause you just didn't e-

Jay Clouse 26:12Every one of them.

Tim Fulton 26:13So that happened at least.

Jay Clouse 26:15Yeah.

Tim Fulton 26:15So that's good.

Jay Clouse 26:15Yep. Every one of them signed a release before we interviewed. Um, so that was, that was why I felt safe doing it. It wasn't that I thought legally I was having any issues.

Tim Fulton 26:23Right.

Jay Clouse 26:24It was like reputationally, because I didn't want this to be a soft-

Tim Fulton 26:30A gotcha

Jay Clouse 26:30... like, I didn't want it to be a gotcha, but I also didn't want it-

Tim Fulton 26:32Right

Jay Clouse 26:32... to just be like a fluff piece about why I love Columbus. I do love Columbus, but I didn't want to glaze over issues too.

Tim Fulton 26:40Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 26:40So just about everyone who was in the film did come to the premiere, and the people who I was most anxious about, uh, their response, they all gave me positive feedback. Um, not everybody made it. Like, um, you mentioned Tom. Tom didn't make it to the premiere.

Tim Fulton 26:53Uh-huh.

Jay Clouse 26:53I don't know if you've seen it. Um, I didn't send like a Dropbox link to everyone in the film. Maybe I should have. It's available online, but it is something that we're putting up for rent or purchase to help-

Tim Fulton 27:04Right

Jay Clouse 27:04... recoup some of the other costs that we did incur with the film. Uh, and also half it's going to, um, nonprofits benefiting COVID relief right now.

Tim Fulton 27:11Okay.

Jay Clouse 27:12So we thought, we thought that was a way we could do some good, but I'm sure it did limit the number of people who have seen it. Overwhelmingly, feedback has been positive. The negative pieces of feedback that I 100% agree with are that there weren't enough women in the film. Um-

Tim Fulton 27:27Fair

Jay Clouse 27:27... and yeah, I agree. And part of the, part of the flaw of this process, because we thought it was going to be a prototype-

Tim Fulton 27:35Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 27:35... I wasn't thinking from the beginning about the perfect cast. I was thinking about a great cast and people I could get in touch with.

Tim Fulton 27:43Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 27:44And so we were 20 interviews deep by the time I realized we were going to be doing something bigger with this.

Tim Fulton 27:51Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 27:52And, uh, it was just tough on the timeframe we had and, uh, the number, the amount of material we already had to get as di- diverse of a cast as I could.

Tim Fulton 28:02Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 28:02And arguably, the people making decisions in Columbus in this ecosystem aren't as diverse as they should be either. So it was-

Tim Fulton 28:09Very fair point

Jay Clouse 28:09... it was tough for me to even think about who, who to get in touch with. So that was feedback we got that I think is extremely valid. Um-

Tim Fulton 28:16Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 28:16... even guys like Ben Blancara. I didn't get Ben Blanc- Ben Blancara in the film. He is one of the-

Tim Fulton 28:20Hmm

Jay Clouse 28:20... OG, like tech-

Tim Fulton 28:22Yeah

Jay Clouse 28:22... tech and startup ecosystem people here in Columbus, and I didn't interview him, and that's like a genuine regret of mine.

Tim Fulton 28:28Anything else about sort of the, the film or... 'Cause it's done now, right?

Jay Clouse 28:33Yeah.

Tim Fulton 28:33Like, it's packaged up. You've obviously got the raw footage if you wanna re-cut it. But, uh, anything else that you would've changed about sort of the, the making of it? F- And that could be anything from, "I wish we had a vision for what we were gonna do with it when we started," to, "I wish we didn't have to rush through things so that we could sort of craft a different narrative." This is, this is the, the more about the creative process.

Jay Clouse 28:58Yeah. Yeah. And thank you for asking because I did riff on this for like 20 minutes as bonus material for this film months after it passed, basically to kinda give a similar recount. And-

Tim Fulton 29:09Okay

Jay Clouse 29:09... what I, what I've kind of landed on is, of course I wish we had more time to edit it. Standard documentary production... By the way, this is my first film I've ever produced, so

Tim Fulton 29:20Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Clouse 29:21Standard documentary pro-

Tim Fulton 29:22But you're speaking from a point of authority 'cause you've done it.

Jay Clouse 29:25Yeah.

Tim Fulton 29:25So yeah.

Jay Clouse 29:26But like, I didn't know what I was doing when I was doing it. Standard documentary procedure or, like, best practice would tell you that you should have a couple of characters that you follow their narrative and their story as part of pushing the entire documentary story forward.

Tim Fulton 29:42Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 29:43I didn't wanna do that. Um, and maybe I should've. I also-

Tim Fulton 29:48Okay

Jay Clouse 29:48... I also opted for not having my voice in the film at all. Instead of-

Tim Fulton 29:52Uh-huh

Jay Clouse 29:52... narration, we used what I call like title screens, where if I needed-

Tim Fulton 29:57Yeah

Jay Clouse 29:57... to fill in some gaps of information, we had a black screen with, with some white text to help give some, some facts to-

Tim Fulton 30:03Yeah

Jay Clouse 30:03... push the story forward. I like that as a device. Could it have been narrated? Yes. But we went into this, and being from Columbus and being obviously biased, I was actively from the beginning trying to fight my own bias about what the story here was. So-

Tim Fulton 30:20Okay

Jay Clouse 30:20... do- down to the interviews that I conducted, I was trying to get people to talk from their perspective strengths, weaknesses, how it's happened with Columbus. And then once we had all the content, we started cutting it to say, "What is the story here?" As opposed to saying, "This is the story. Let me get material to back it." I didn't wanna do that.

Tim Fulton 30:44Right

Jay Clouse 30:44So I'm proud of that. But do I wish we had more time to cut it even better? Of course. Obviously we do. We, we literally didn't have the final file that was being aired at the fir- first film festival until the morning of. You know, like-

Tim Fulton 30:56Wow

Jay Clouse 30:57... I exported the file that night, um, walked with a thumb drive to the theater that morning.

Tim Fulton 31:02That's real dangerous to just render it, you know, eight hours before, and it's like, "What if I ran, run out of storage?"

Jay Clouse 31:08We-

Tim Fulton 31:08"What if it just doesn't work for some reason?"

Jay Clouse 31:11We wanted as much time as possible to edit it, because we were doing, we were doing waves of edits as we were going. And at the time I wasn't living with my girlfriend, but I was watching, like, every version of it with her at her apartment. And we watched it, and I'd just be scribbling notes of, like, at this timestamp we need to change this and this. We need to cut this.

Tim Fulton 31:28Yep.

Jay Clouse 31:29We need B-roll here. We need to fix this sound. And I would continuously go back to Kyle with, like, 20 edits, and every time I'm just telling myself, like, "I am so screwed. This movie is garbage. People aren't gonna like it. I, like, tricked all these people into being in it." Like, I thought I was reputationally screwed. And also-

Tim Fulton 31:47Okay

Jay Clouse 31:47... like, we're, we're tackling things where there are people in the film who had vocal criticisms of the Third Frontier program-

Tim Fulton 31:55Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 31:55... of how Rev1 handles, like, working with the Angel community here, how diversity is a real issue here. Like, these are all issues that we brought up in the film that people voluntarily told me, but I didn't wanna-

Tim Fulton 32:06Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 32:06... ruin their reputations either. Like this is a small town.

Tim Fulton 32:08Right.

Jay Clouse 32:09And so I was, it... I haven't thought about this in a while, but I was very, very anxious around releasing the film. And I'm glad that we did put the conflict in there, but it doesn't follow a standard narrative arc that you would see. We kinda broke it up into Columbus's history, um, a snapshot of, uh, some of the venture wins that have happened, uh, the Columbus grassroots startup community, and, uh, kinda looking forward, you know, how the city is growing. Even things related to real estate and housing equity. Like, we touch on all of that. But yeah, it's not quite a narrative arc from a person, more of a narrative arc from a city's growth.

Tim Fulton 32:49Yeah. To sort of counter what you're saying, I do think it holds together as a here's an informational piece that is interesting. But there are sort of narrative elements that maybe you need, but I don't... I think it holds up is what I'm saying.

Jay Clouse 33:07I 100% could have used the coaching and guidance of someone who'd done this before. You know?

Tim Fulton 33:12Yeah.

Jay Clouse 33:12Like, my, my entire production history was in audio. Like, short form audio, just doing interviews with one person.

Tim Fulton 33:19Mm.

Jay Clouse 33:19Never had taken something on to the scale of this before. And so I was literally just going off of gut feel from having watched a bunch of movies and documentaries myself. Like, Kyle of course had direction and guidance from what he had known, but this is his first film directing. Which is part of-

Tim Fulton 33:33Yeah

Jay Clouse 33:33... my favorite part of this whole thing, is this student walked away having directed a feature film that was showcased in two film festivals. Like-

Tim Fulton 33:40Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 33:41... so happy that he can say that and, and do something with that. Um-

Tim Fulton 33:45I will say also that the, the quality of the f- I, I think with projects like this you can get distract... You don't even realize that you could be distracted by quality. But lighting, sound, editing, never distracted by it. And that's-

Jay Clouse 34:01N-

Tim Fulton 34:01... a testament to the quality of it.

Jay Clouse 34:03That was ultimately why we decided to pursue doing a screening, because I couldn't believe... We didn't lose any video, we didn't lose any audio. All of it was useful, usable. All of it was good. Like, he-

Tim Fulton 34:13Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 34:13... framed shots well. The lighting on shots were great. I had just purchased, like, podcast audio equipment that we'd use for audio for this film, so it was-

Tim Fulton 34:23Mm

Jay Clouse 34:23... all great. Yeah, I was so proud of the way it looked and sounded, that I felt like we had to do something so it just didn't live on an external hard drive forever.

Tim Fulton 34:32Right. So you did the film festival in Columbus, and which film festival was that?

Jay Clouse 34:37That was Film Festival of Columbus.

Tim Fulton 34:39Got it. And then what did you do, what was the other festival it was in?

Jay Clouse 34:44Columbus International Film Festival.

Tim Fulton 34:45Ah, two, our two flagship film festivals.

Jay Clouse 34:49We did f- we, we did submit to about two dozen other film festivals, and I think there-

Tim Fulton 34:54Okay

Jay Clouse 34:54... I think there are a couple that still have not gotten back to us. Like, there was, there was one that I thought was a slam dunk that was already a digital film festival. At some point, like, these film festivals started shutting down and saying, "We're actually not having a film festival." But we did submit to a bunch of other ones, and some of them gave feedback. We had some harsh cr- feed- feedback from the Cleveland International Film Festival.

Tim Fulton 35:14Really?

Jay Clouse 35:14Some good feedback, but there were a couple judges who were just like, they were like, "I- is this a promo piece for Columbus?" And I was like, "Did you think it was a promo piece for Columbus?" But yeah, so that was an interesting experience. First time doing that. Who knows if I'll ever do this again, but yeah, it was two Columbus film festivals.

Tim Fulton 35:31And then what else did you do with... So what was then the distribution strategy?

Jay Clouse 35:36We had actually talked with, um, a distribution agent who-

Tim Fulton 35:41Okay

Jay Clouse 35:41... had experience getting things onto Netflix, HBO, Amazon. It's actually easier to do those things than you would think.

Tim Fulton 35:49Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 35:49But, um, we ultimately decided to self-publish through Vimeo on demand and distribute it online, because at some point I'm going to open it up to stream for free. That's just the way things will go, 'cause I want people to see it. Um-

Tim Fulton 36:02Okay

Jay Clouse 36:02... but in working with an agent like that, he g- he told us right off the bat that a couple of these outlets, like, they weren't going to be viable. HBO wasn't gonna do it. It's not their style of documentary. He's like, "Netflix might, but you would get very bad terms and it would be tough."

Tim Fulton 36:17Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 36:18In any of those cases, working through someone like that and for platforms like that, you give up all rights to, um, the edit. They could basically take the film and re-edit and reproduce it how they want if they wanted to.

Tim Fulton 36:32Okay.

Jay Clouse 36:33At least with that agent. And having already put so much of my reputation on the line with people locally-

Tim Fulton 36:41Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 36:42... I didn't want to give someone else control to make

Tim Fulton 36:45To sort of drive up conflict, to be like-

Jay Clouse 36:48Yeah

Tim Fulton 36:48... these are the bad things that are happening.

Jay Clouse 36:50Yeah.

Tim Fulton 36:51Yeah.

Jay Clouse 36:51So ultimately I was just like, "You know what? It's gonna live in the form that it is now. Do I wish we could do more? Could we do more? Do we have the files to do more? Yes. Let's leave it as it is. Let's self-dis- self-publish and distribute. Uh, did we leave maybe some money on the table? Sure. But not really the point."

Tim Fulton 37:07And so your intent, I'm just reading between the lines, your intention right now is to sort of at least recoup the money and investment that you made in the film. And then once that well runs dry, you'll say, "Okay, anybody can watch this."

Jay Clouse 37:22Yeah. And I don't even have a hard figure on that. Like literally we released this three months ago online and from day one we were giving half of proceeds to, um, uh, We Feed Columbus, a-

Tim Fulton 37:34Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 37:35... an organization that came out of Can't Stop Columbus to basically support local restaurants and local families who are, uh, food insecure.

Tim Fulton 37:42Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 37:42And, um, I like being able to do that and I will keep doing that until people just refuse to buy it anymore. And at that point I'll probably say, "All right, let's just, let's just stream it. Let's make it more possible." Because, you know, to me the, the amazing outcome that I think will happen from this is 10 years from now this is gonna be a really interesting time capsule.

Tim Fulton 38:02Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a fair point. So what's next? What are you working on now?

Jay Clouse 38:09Well, we continue to, to publish Upside weekly. Um, that's fun. We are beginning to create, um, a couple more podcasts under the Upside umbrella as kind of our own network in, uh-

Tim Fulton 38:21Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 38:21... Cleveland and Cincinnati.

Tim Fulton 38:23Great.

Jay Clouse 38:24Um, that's all led by Eric. He's handling all of that. Personally, I've been, uh, continuing to double down on, um, uh, my project Freelancing School, which is a platform to educate people on how to make a living freelancing and help them to do that. That's articles, um, email courses, paid courses-

Tim Fulton 38:45Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 38:45... a community product, like a lot of content.

Tim Fulton 38:48Yeah.

Jay Clouse 38:48And, uh, my new podcast Creative Elements is also taking up quite a bit of time because I'm putting a lot of post-production into it.

Tim Fulton 38:54Yeah.

Jay Clouse 38:54But it's going really well. So I'm in a season of just making stuff and, um, a little bit of freelancing, but mostly making stuff.

Tim Fulton 39:02I love it. And a lot of other folks sort of in the context of their work have answered these next two questions and I want you to answer them in whatever context you want. I'll go ahead and f- give you both of them. What's great about Columbus? What could be better?

Jay Clouse 39:20I think what's great about Columbus is it's still such a blank slate of a city. Um, you can, you can make a run at just about anything you wanna do here. Aside from maybe like if you wanna be in the entertainment industry, you know.

Tim Fulton 39:33Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 39:33You probably gotta go to New York or L- or LA for that. But in a lot of ways you can, you can really do whatever you wanna do here. And there are some like really good examples of people doing that at a high level. Uh, James Clear lives in Columbus and he is like globally renowned now. Webb Smith is like talking, like redefining how we think about, uh, e-commerce and is the preeminent voice on e-commerce. He's in Columbus.

Tim Fulton 39:56Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 39:56A lot of people that you wouldn't expect just like doing really big things here. That's awesome. And you can do it in a way... Like I wouldn't be able to be living the lifestyle that I'm doing, I wouldn't be able to take all of last summer to create a film-

Tim Fulton 40:08Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 40:08... if my cost of living was two to three times higher in some other city. Like I would have to be taking on client work and filling my time with client work to just afford to live here. So it's a really great place where you can find balance between doing client work and also funding both monetarily and from a time perspective your own creative work.

Tim Fulton 40:26Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 40:27What could be better about Columbus? I wish it was more collaborative.

Tim Fulton 40:32Okay.

Jay Clouse 40:32I think, I think... And, and we hear the story in, in other cities that are up and coming. Developing or emerging ecosystems, when somebody begins to have a reputation for being at the forefront of that they get territorial and they don't-

Tim Fulton 40:45Mm-hmm

Jay Clouse 40:45... get collaborative and, uh, there's no longer a rising tide lifting all the boats.

Tim Fulton 40:50Mm-hmm.

Jay Clouse 40:50So I wish, um... I think some or- organizations and, and people in Columbus do that very, very well. I think, um, I think we could be, be doing better.

Tim Fulton 41:00Okay. That's fair. Jay, thank you so much for your time.

Jay Clouse 41:05Totally.

Tim Fulton 41:05Thanks, Jay. Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite independent creator. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.