This time on Startup Foundations we host Carolyn Pitt, founder of productions.com, a job marketplace for film production that connects studios, music labels and corporate brands with local film crews.

Carolyn explains how huge inefficiencies in hiring for film production in her native Atlanta inspired her to build a platform that leverages technology to make hiring easier, more diverse and more cost-effective. Carolyn discusses the entertainment industry landscape from the production perspective, how parts of it are still pretty archaic, and how the pandemic accelerated some necessary changes.

Carolyn also breaks down her customer base and shares how she managed to quickly expand her business from Georgia to a few major cities in the US and Canada. She talks about some of the challenges she faced raising money as a non tech African-American woman founder based in Atlanta, and how her experience in an incubator and in accelerators helped her during the fundraising process.

Carolyn chats about the success of Calendly influencing the startup scene in Atlanta, and gives her thoughts on what can be done to make the world of startups more inclusive. She also shares valuable advice for first-time founders who are based outside of the major startup centres like Silicon Valley or New York.