I’ve had a few prospective investors ask this very question, I know I would ask it before investing in a company, so I want you to know...We Have a Plan!
The next question you may be asking is, "Why wait to unveil it? What’s with the mystery?"
Well, what I’ve discovered on the road to creating this Regulation CF Investment Opportunity for YOU is that it’s not like other crowdfunding situations, (for example like Kickstarter). For one, there is a ton of upfront planning and investment into lawyers, incorporating, SEC filings, etc but even more than that, there are SEC regulations on what we can say, and not say, and when we can actually say it. Unlike Kickstarter, I couldn’t tease that this was coming or even talk about it in any way before the launch so we had to keep it quiet. Secondly, I can’t make any bold statements about what could happen with this company and lastly, I can’t add on “milestones” (like Kickstarter) to say we will do more if we hit a certain amount.
This last fact makes it very hard to say how much we will do in Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, etc - because we currently don’t know what working capital I will have when we finish this first offering, but that's ok. Even with that hurdle, you all have caught the vision and I want you to know how I plan to spend some of the initial investment.
Our plan is to create short form (3-5 minute) animated series and potentially launch them onto YouTube and other social media channels to gain a following. We will own a good portion of each of the IP (sharing it with the creators) with the potential payout being from multiple streams: ad revenue, possibly expanding a series with the big studios/streamers, and/or creating our own merchandising and licensing deals with some of our more popular series. Ultimately, selling the company is the longer term possibility. It’s a longer ROI, we know, because of the upfront creation and marketing to gain eyes. We plan to run the company lean, with as few employees as possible and running each series as its own mini virtual studio. Each series animation “team” will probably be one to three people. I have a lot of experience building artistic teams and we have great producers in place to make sure each one runs efficiently.
While I can not legally speculate on how successful we will be in this plan, in my opinion, this is where entertainment is headed. Not many, if any, companies are investing in the next big talents in animation - and then letting them co-own that creation. They go with tried and true creators with hits behind them. We already have that with the Pencilish team, so we will be looking for the next big creators.
Pencilish will work with creators all over the world and help them get their creations into the world (and in some cases, we may give them seed money to create their series) while also doing something only the big studios do: we'll market & advertise those series to the public. We all have a distribution system in our pockets (our smart phones), why do we need the large studios owning everything we artists create? Those days are gone. The best part is, we will be using the systems that are already in place.
I call Pencilish Animation Studios an “Animation Revolution” because it’s a studio Funded AND Owned by Fans and we are working with creators to give them a chance that few in the animation industry have. Yes, our investors get to own a piece of that Intellectual Property, but the creators will also. It's a Win-Win Situation!
Lastly, many have asked, do we have properties and ideas already? The answer is YES. I have many TV style series that I have developed while planning for this, but we have also started to reach out to experienced professionals about their animated series. Picking which ones to greenlight as a series will be the hard part!
We hope to share more about the series soon, but it’s the hardest part to share because of the complexities of IP copyright law. We hope to share what we can.
What’s next after that? The sky is the limit!
That’s it for now- I hope this only gets you more excited about investing in Pencilish Animation Studios!
Viva La Revolution!
- Tom Bancroft