This guest post was submitted by SGN founder and Executive Chairman, Shervin Pishevar. The entrepreneur and angel investor was founding president of Webs.com, a co-founder of Hotprints and Hyperoffice and has made several investments, including Nowmov, Aardvark, Thread.com, Gowalla, and Qwiki.
So I just logged into my email tonight and I see this email titled: Super Talent. The writer is a casting director from Romania who now lives in London. She’s worked on a number of movies with great directors like Spike Jonze. The email reads:
I’ve found you through this TechCrunch article “Democratizing Talent: Guy Oseary, Greyson Chance, NowMov, IndieGoGo and the Future of Talent.” Thank you very much, it was an inspiration for me . I wrote about it on my blog too.
Following your story, I’ve discovered this brilliant filmmaker and composer: Josh Beattie.He has 17 years and I think he is GENIUS. If someone would invest a small amount of money in this kid he would be the next big Hollywood film director. If you can recommend Josh to your super agent friends, it would be fantastic.
Thank you very much for reading this email.
Kind regards,
Andreea Tanasescu
I click on the short film, To Clair; From Sonny, half expecting not to be impressed. Instead, I am floored by this 17-year-old director, Josh Beattie. Working with a few friends, Josh uses regular equipment, like an SLR camera and even composes his own music.
Josh and his friends posted this video in September 2010 and now the world is starting to notice. They have done amazing work and are an inspiration to so many others.
Democratizing talent is fueled by wider and cheaper access to technology, information and the ability to broadcast and distribute human innovation and creativity to the whole world with optimal efficiency. Let all the walls fall down and we all rise up.
In my essay, Democratizing Talent, I concluded:
There are countless others in so many fields who are waiting to be discovered. He might be coding away in a tiny apartment in Moscow. She might be writing the next great novel in Buenos Aires. He’s composing the next great classical sonata in Karachi. He might be designing the next great wave of architecture in Tehran. She might be painting her way to the next Picasso. He’s discovering a cure for a cancer in Kenya.
The better we can incubate the world’s talent and the better we can broadcast those talents to each other the faster we can progress and inspire each other forward. Or as the lyrics to the Paparazzi song say:
We are the crowd
We’re a co-coming
Ready for those flashing lights
Baby, there’s no other superstar…
I obviously left out the boy in Australia who will be the next great director. I’m excited to discover all the other amazing talents I left out around the world.