ERICK KWIECIEN

FOUNDER, CEO

There isn’t a time Erick can remember where he wasn’t making films. He’d borrow his father’s VHS camera and make home movies of his family where he grew up at the Jersey Shore. These projects evolved into stop motion and sketch comedy films made in his basement “studio.” In high school, he convinced his teachers to allow him to make films instead of writing reports. An epiphany came when he first screened one of his films for his class. These “English videos” garnered him a certain reputation in school, and he started making films for classes he wasn’t even enrolled in. Standing in the back of the darkened room and watching his classmates react to what he’d made was the biggest thrill of his life, and he’s been chasing that feeling ever since.

A few years later, he skipped his college graduation ceremony to drive across the country to Los Angeles, where he called every production company in town seeking an internship. He got one reply, and went on to work for David Friendly, who was producing Little Miss Sunshine at the time - a film for which David would earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Over the next several years, Erick was exposed to nearly every side of the entertainment business, and did stints working at Creative Artists Agency, the Directors Guild of America, WWE Films, and on television productions for NBC.

In 2011, a rare opportunity emerged to become an early employee at Square - a disruptive tech company based in San Francisco founded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter. What interested Erick about Square was that it was already in the process of investing in an in-house film production team. This is when Erick met Lisa Yadao, who also worked on the film production team. Over the next decade, Erick traveled all over the world and gained valuable experience making commercials and branded films. His time at Square culminated with producing several documentary films - the last of which, Exit 12, won Best Documentary Short at SXSW Film Festival, was acquired by FOX Searchlight, and received Oscar attention.