The Mail Cart: Friday, July 17th

👋 Welcome to The Mail Cart. This is Warner, founder of AvA. Connect with me here.

🎥 Everybody celebrates their wins on socials. Time to celebrate my losses. More below.

📰 New York gains a major surge in production while LA’s growth slows. The World Cup is almost over (leaving hundreds of records in its wake). Sundance Institute partners with UCLA students, and more.

🎟️ We are throwing an exclusive early screening with Magnolia Pictures’ new movie: I Want Your Sex with Olivia Wilde, Charli XCX & Johnny Knoxville on 7/23 in LA. RSVP HERE 🌴

Plus join us for happy hours on the same day in Nashville and Chicago.

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⭐ New York posted a major surge in Film and TV production (+57% compared to last year)

Credit: Hollywood Reporter

⭐ The World Cup comes to an end on Sunday, and here are some of the last highlights we will share about it:

Tickets for the final are selling for over $11,000 (AKA the highest ever for a US sporting event), with the previous record being for the Super Bowl around ~$9,500
Both semi-final games broke the all time US viewing records for the round in succession, with 11.5 million viewers on average being beaten out the next day by 15.1 million
Our king Erling Haaland was unfortunately knocked out, but the memes will live on forever 💘

⭐ Sundance Institute set up a talent development partnership with UCLA’s entertainment programs

❝

“This collaboration connects Sundance Collab — our global online platform for visionary creators — with UCLA’s distinguished legacy of artist development. Together, we’re creating an unprecedented pipeline to amplify independent voices and evolve the future of storytelling and connected audience engagement.”

— Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director of Sundance Institute

⭐ Netflix is teaming up with Mythical to have their shows uploaded directly to the platform on the same day as they are posted to YouTube

Netflix has worked with plenty of creators up to this point, from Jay Shetty to Barstool Sports, but having videos post to both platforms same-day will be fascinating to watch.

They're scooping up basically every creator they can in a war for engagement, as YouTube and creator content take up an increasingly large share of viewing hours. Not sure becoming the catch-all for content is the right move in this era..

⭐ Fandango enters the streaming wars

Versant will fold its free streaming service into the main Fandango brand (yes that orange movie ticket site), adding more movies, TV and sports to chase Tubi, Pluto TV, and Roku Channel.

It seems like every 2000s media brand is suddenly an ad supported streamer.

Everyone celebrates the wins. I wanted to share my wildly unpredictable path that gave me the scars, skills and unfair advantages to build AvA. Every part of AvA (and the tech company we’re launching soon) exists because of a near-win, hard lesson, relationship, win, or many failures along the way.

✖️ Worked at 2 tech companies in college and started a concert promotion company convincing bar owners to let me throw parties for my friends. Skipped a lot of class. Became obsessed with community.

✖️ Took a tech job in DC building a CRM & ticketing platform for music venues. Decided to move to LA and go all in on Entertainment instead.

✖️ Worked in music touring at WME. Got promoted to agent trainee and realized I wasn’t meant to be an agent. Early-life crisis.

✖️ Moved to music touring at Live Nation. Loved it. Then the pandemic hit and the entire department was furloughed. Much bigger crisis.

✖️ Convinced myself I needed an MBA. Studied during the day. Hated every second.

✖️ Ran spin classes on the beach to make ends meet and applied to hundreds of jobs. Massive crisis and lowest point of my life.

✖️ Joined Looped, a virtual livestream company, overseeing talent & partnerships 5 years before launching my own livestream show. Thought it would be the life-changing exit. IRL & the world reopened instead.

✖️ Helped launch an NFT company with one of my favorite former coworkers. Don’t ask.

✖️ Ran marketing and oversaw a 100% nonprofit festival in Phoenix ft. everyone from ODESZA to Maggie Rogers to Leon Bridges. Incredibly fulfilling, but hard to turn that into the career I wanted.

✖️ Launched a brand partnerships agency and worked with a bunch of festivals. I was working with dream brands and thought I had found my lane. But very seasonal & I saw the creator economy exploding. Had FOMO.

✖️ Jumped over to lead partnerships at a digital agency. Big clients but it was toxic enough to finally make me bet on myself and go all in on AvA.

Careers are almost never linear. Every one of those stops taught me what I was good at, what I hated, what kind of company I eventually wanted to build, and the person I wanted to become. Bet on yourself. You’ll learn more from trying and failing than you ever will from staying comfortable and wondering what could’ve happened.

I sat down with Steve Mosko (ex-Chairman of Sony Pictures TV), who inspired me to share that journey.

Full interview below: