This was the second year we helped our friends at InnoVenture Iowa produce a kickoff video for their incredibly popular "InnoVenture Challenge" startup pitch competition. The main goal of this kickoff video was to hype up a crowd filled with entrepreneurs, investors, and everyone in between.
InnoVenture Iowa leads the InnoVenture Iowa Fund - a $30M co-investment fund and the state of Iowa's first public venture capital fund. They focus on funding early-stage Iowa startups while spurring future innovation in industries where Iowa is naturally competitive (biosciences, manufacturing, agriculture). They play a prominent role in supporting and leading the startup ecosystem in Iowa.
When we first met with our client Kaylee, Managing Director at InnoVenture Iowa, to discuss potential themes and ideas for the kickoff video, we knew we wanted to be provocative. We wanted creative that would provoke the audience and allow them to truly reflect on their own relationship with entrepreneurship, coming away inspired about their potential.
One idea that came up early was finding a way to incorporate (and refute) all of the negative sentiment around startups, investments, and markets that comes from talking heads and pundits. That was all the direction we needed and went straight to script writing.
Within two weeks we had our rough storyboard and treatment. The idea was simple - the video opens with a startup founder coming home after a long day of founder-life, only to be greeted with negative news from talking heads on the TV. We're then taken to real life founders from the InnoVenture Iowa portfolio, as they talk us through their own successes, encouraging the audience that the "time is now" for entrepreneurship.
Once we walked this through with the client and received creative approval, we moved forward with script writing and the rest of pre production!
The scope of production was very big - four scenes in four geographically disparate locations across Illinois and Iowa. With intentional planning, a few energy drinks and a lot of driving on I-80, we were able to capture all of our necessary footage within a few weeks.
Post production was a collaborative process between the director, Dan, and our fantastic editor, Sam. With a clear storyboard for what we wanted our end video to look like, Sam did a fantastic job blending multiple styles of video together to bring the client's vision to life.
We couldn't have been happier with the opportunity to create this campaign video for Innoventure Iowa. Ultimately, this is only possible through the trust Kaylee and the rest of the InnoVenture Iowa team had in us this year to push the boundaries and make something great.
The end result was fantastic, with over 350+ attendees cheering, hooting and hollering during the viewing at the live event!
