Today we’d like to introduce you to Sharif Bennett.
Hi Sharif, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Myself and my two co-founders are all graduates of Swarthmore College located just a few miles outside of downtown Philadelphia. Upon graduation, we all attempted to break into the industry in different ways. Julian Haffner, our legal counsel, works as an Entertainment Lawyer, Prince Ace, our CEO, worked as a producer in Hollywood and I tried my hands at acting, improv comedy, and stand-up. After failing to break into the industry, I moved into Tech Sales but always maintained the desire to somehow make a difference for struggling artists. In 2019 Prince reached out to Julian and I with a vision of making the everyday person an investor in art. He had just completed work on a film entitled Malibu Road and had this idea of turning the film into a “digital asset” and allowing for pieces of it to be sold in a token fashion. Since then, we have raised enough money from our Friends and Family round to complete the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and will be launching out platform at the start of 2023.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Getting this project completed and to the masses has been a difficult journey to say the least. The first major challenge is simply education. To the majority of the public, investing in art seems not only difficult but not even something the average person has ever thought of participating in. I liken it to the feudal system in Europe centuries ago. A peasant who worked the land never imagined that they could purchase lands because the system itself was not set up to do so. A king owned all of the land and granted land to a lord who then allowed peasants to farm that land in exchange for protection. Banking had yet to evolve so home equity loans and mutual funds were years away from developing.
In this same fashion, the everyday person today doesn’t think about investing in art because the cost is extremely high, and/or they lack the network necessary to participate because historically art investment is reserved for the uber-wealthy. What we are doing is creating an eco-system that allows for fractional investment in art, thus a person doesn’t need to be a millionaire. In fact, investment in one of our films may be the equivalent of a single cell phone bill.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about CineBlock?
CineBlock is a digital platform that specializes in filmmaker fundraising, content monetization, and creating alternative investment opportunities for the everyday fan. We have built an ecosystem that allows for a content creator’s work to be tokenized into a digital asset and distributed on the blockchain to facilitate the ability for anyone to purchase a stake in their project at any stage of production. The platform offers monetization opportunities through our proprietary NFT marketplace, e-commerce store, and equity tokenization model. The investor or stakeholder will be able to monitor and track all transactions as they relate to the project and will receive their share of revenue directly to their accounts in real-time.
What matters most to you? Why?
Access. Access. Access.
For the longest, only the super-wealthy have had access. Access to property, good healthcare, good education etc. Technology has now opened the doors to allow what we like to call “fractional investment.” This concept is what will allow everyday people to begin to take part in art investment. In a similar fashion to how mutual funds allowed people to invest in a plethora of securities, Blockchain allows for an asset to become digital, and its value dispersed amongst various shareholders. This “Collective capitalism” is not only beneficial for the investor but allows for the content creator to more easily recoup funds they have spent to make their film/project. The content creator now has access to a larger investor pool. Access. Access. Access.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://cineblock.info/
- Instagram: @cineblockfilms
- Facebook: @cineblockfilms
- Twitter: @cineblockfilms
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CineBlockFilms
