WRAL Tech Wire published an article in December detailing the growth of the company, ‘UNC students could be building a digital media winner in Triad Studios’. Tristan Gardner and Baaqir Yusuf were highlighted throughout the piece. The article also took a look into the future growth of the company.

Most students come home from winter break rested and ready for another semester. In January of 2018, five students returned to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ready to launch a company.

During its first year in business, Triad Studios took in around $82,000 in revenue. As their second year in business wraps up, Triad’s Chief Marketing and Brand Officer, Baaqir Yusuf, says they’ve more than quadrupled that figure.

Triad Studios is a media production agency located on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill and was founded by students Baaqir Yusuf, Michael Thomas, Tristan Gardner, Daniel Pan and Justin Fouts.

The founders connected through UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and found that they all had a passion for storytelling, videography and business. Triad “came at the intersection of these passions,” said Yusuf.

Tristan Gardner, Triad’s chief executive officer, says the team was inspired by creators on YouTube producing innovative travel content.

“We wanted to create visual stories like those but we thought to make videos for businesses rather than personal journeys,” said Gardner. “We wanted to connect today’s digital, scroll-crazy consumers with the story of a business or organization.”

The company was initially a comprehensive creative consultancy offering services from photography to web design. Since then, Triad has specialized its services as a media production agency primarily offering high-quality video production.

The group has produced content for many North Carolina companies including the Carolina Brewery, UNC School of Medicine and Bedlam Vodka, and has also worked with national brands like Red Bull.

“Our focus on relationship building with how we interact with our clients makes our work so much more meaningful,” said Yusuf.

All of the founders take a roll in creative direction in addition to business duties.

“We all come from business backgrounds that give us the framework and mindset to make strategically critical business decisions,” said Gardner.  “We keep each other to a financially lean startup model with a high-growth vision in mind.”

Triad prices at $200 per hour with the average cost of a project falling between $4,000 and $12,000. The company promises a two-week turnaround time for a final deliverable once filming is complete. However, some projects may take up to four months for completion.

FUTURE GROWTH

The company aims to open another studio in Raleigh in 2021 and has expanded its original team of five to a team of 11, all of whom are students.

While Gardner graduated this past May, the other four founders are graduating from UNC in May of 2020 and will go full-time with the company, which the founders say is growing faster and faster.

“We’ve seen an immense domino effect especially in the past 6 months from the work we’ve been doing,” said Yusuf. “Our social media has grown over time, but the ways in which we acquire the most clients are from referrals and word of mouth from existing, happy clients.”

While the company may have more mobility to move once the founders graduate, Gardner says being in North Carolina is a “true differentiator.”

Chapel Hill will remain home-base for the company in the near future due to proximity to mentors and to maintain the strategic partnerships that Triad has formed with UNC.

“We can’t see Triad’s main studio moving out of the state in the next five years, although we may have satellite studios in other states,” said Gardner. “We’ve not come across a company in [North Carolina] that does work the way we do.”

While Triad is going into 2020 with positive prospects, the company hasn’t been immune to the challenges facing a young business. Onboarding and training new employees, standardizing work quality and meeting uncommon client expectations have been struggles for the company.

A unique challenge has been operating a team composed entirely of full-time students.

“I’d say one of the biggest challenges the company has faced is really just balancing work-life with school pressures and having fun at the same time,” said Yusuf. “It’s easy to get caught up in constant work, and growth, and work, and a seemingly limitless amount of tasks, but it’s equally important to take a breath and go have some fun too.”

While the founders may not be students for very much longer, Gardner maintains that student hires have attributed to the success of the company.

“I’ve seen that some of the most valuable things students have is their ideas,” said Gardner. “Our student employees and interns have provided unique suggestions and have challenged us to think in unique ways about everything from what coffee we buy for the break room to the bottlenecks we can alleviate in our post-production process.”

Eventually, Triad wants to work on long-term brand strategy for socially-beneficial lifestyle companies. Short-term, the group hopes to travel internationally for client work and is looking forward to the launch of a TV show they’ve been working on, called ‘Sip’d’, in 2020.

“We want to tell impactful and innovative stories to inspire the youth in the world to make positive change in their communities through our media and video productions,” said Yusuf. “Working with such amazing people and on such impactful work in just the past two years has energized us immensely towards this vision and long-term goal.”

This exciting new series allows Ryan Vet to combine his international experiences, business investments and specialized education with his passion and understanding of craft beverages.

We all have that one beverage we unconditionally love! Whether it is tea, coffee, wine, beer, whiskey or cocktails, everyone has a preference. Ryan C Vet, an innovative business leader, American entrepreneur, speaker, author, investor, and trained sommelier, loves to explore craft beverages around the globe. The dynamic entrepreneur is set to be the host of the upcoming TV series Sip’d. The show is slated to be a revolutionary entertainment experience. Specially curated for lovers of coffee, tea, beer, wine, spirits or anything in a cup!

Ryan C. Vet is an American who was born on August 4, 1990, in Scranton, PA. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, IL, and now lives in Durham, NC. He was a Business Administration student, with a concentration in Marketing as well as Sales, and a minor in Psychology in the 2013 class of Elon University. Ryan has received training from both the Court of Master Sommeliers and the Wine and Spirit Education Trust and became a true expert on craft beverages.

Vet is a serial entrepreneur, who founded his first company at a tender age of 14, providing multi-national marketing services to over 200 clients and frequently working with non-profit organizations. Since then, Ryan has launched and managed many successful companies in the software and healthcare space. He is also a notable public speaker and regularly speaks on matters such as managing millennials, customer experiences, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

Ryan is a craft beverage aficionado. He has done it all, from setting up a lemonade stand in the suburbs of Chicago to running a secret coffee shop outside his dorm room at Elon University. Soon, he launched a multi-location craft beverage lounge with his business partner. Ryan loves all sorts of beverages, his undying love for beverages helped him land the role as a host in the upcoming series, Sip’d.

Ryan co-founder of Beer Starts Here, a mobile app he exited a mere 3 months later. In 2014, he and a business partner launched The Oak House in Elon, a craft beverage lounge, in Elon, NC, across from the university which he had attended years earlier. Later, in 2019, he launched the second location in Durham, NC where Ryan currently resides.

Currently, Vet is busy filming the first series of episodes for Sip’d. The travel TV show will air in Spring 2020. Vet is on a mission to unite beverage lovers, spread knowledgeable anecdotes, and revel in the beauty of the culturally significant global drinks that have been a part of our lives for decades, and is all set to display his penchant for beverages via Sip’d.

Here’s how student-run Triad Studios has made it in less than two years

In January 2018, Triad Studios was founded by five college students who shared a strong passion for business, video creation and entrepreneurship.

Co-founder Baaqir Yusuf brought the group together. Tristan Gardner and Justin Fouts were two fellow UNC students in the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Other co-founders, Daniel Pan and Michael Thomas, were Yusuf’s childhood friends.

After evaluating their skill sets, the five students saw an opportunity in the market for video creation. They decided to launch Triad Studios, a creative media production agency that specializes in cinematic storytelling through videography.

One of the group’s earliest challenges was acquiring its initial clients, Yusuf said. For six months following the company’s launch, they worked from an apartment before moving to an office.

“Everybody’s resilience in pushing through failure and obstacles and just constantly striving toward that shared vision and shared goal that we have together — it’s super, super valuable to have a team of people that can just fail and then take that failure as a learning opportunity and push forward to make that a huge success after the fact,” Yusuf, Triad’s chief marketing and branding officer, said.

He said the group had to endure the many challenges that come with starting a company while balancing their schoolwork.

Triad Studios strives to help clients showcase their brand through videos and storytelling geared toward global and millennial audiences, according to the company’s website.

“What makes our content different from other content is that it speaks to younger audiences a lot better and more effectively than a lot of other content that you will see,” Yusuf said. “That’s what we call the Triad style — it’s not just the cinematography, but it’s also the color, the way we light things, the way we shoot, the way we edit.”

Triad creates digital content for artists, public figures, events, commercial brands, institutions and media campaigns. While much of their work is centered in the Triangle, the company’s work has also taken them as far as Texas and New York.

The company is new and the staff is young, but Triad’s services have attracted over 65 clients across different industries. They have completed work for institutions at UNC such as Kenan-Flagler and the Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Other clients include Bedlam Vodka, Carolina Brewery and a member of the UNC Clef Hangers who proposed to his then-girlfriend during one of the groups’ performances.

Triad Studios crafted a five-minute video from over 400 minutes of interviews showcasing students’ experiences and memories at Kenan-Flagler for Shimul Melwani, a professor at the school. The video was played at the school’s 2019 undergraduate commencement.

Pleased with the contemporary style of the video and the collaborative work experience, Melwani hired Triad Studios to complete several more projects that focused on the branding of the undergraduate business school program.

“It was just really fun,” Melwani said. “I just had such an amazing experience and through the summer we continued to work on things. Each time I walk in their office, by the time I leave I’m always in a more positive mood and more excited about the final product.”

Clients also see an impact from using Triad Studios’ videos.

The video Triad created to market The Cabana, a beauty salon located in Sanford, generated thousands of views on Facebook and increased the salon’s revenue and business tremendously, Yusuf said. Following the public response to the video, The Cabana’s owner was able to move to a larger space.

“I love the environment that I work in, I love what I do, I love finding a client and fulfilling their needs and seeing their reaction once we send them the final video,” Connor Thompson, director of client management, said. “That’s probably the most rewarding thing for me personally.”

The company has undergone significant growth since its creation less than two years ago. In its first fiscal year, Triad Studios made $82,000 in revenue. In its second year, Yusuf said Triad Studios is on track to make six times that number.

Triad Studios now has a staff of 12 — all current students except for Gardner, who graduated last year. The four co-founders and other staff members are seniors this year, and many plan to work full-time at Triad after graduation, continuing to seek new clients and grow the company.

“We are all hard workers, we all have goals, we all are business savvy,” Thompson said. “When you combine all those great minds into one thing — one common idea — and everybody is inspired, hardworking and driven, then great things happen. And I think that’s an obvious result of what we have here.”

A handful of uber-successful individuals have helped establish a narrative that dropping out of college is the key to entrepreneurial success. However, for most aspiring entrepreneurs this could not be more wrong.

Entrepreneurship education is improving every year

Universities all across the nation have added entrepreneurship as a major or minor degree option, as well as hired experienced entrepreneurs as clinical professors to teach the craft. You can get a great head start on many of the learned skills and behaviors that others might have to learn through “failing forward.” Entrepreneurship education will put you a step ahead of others by helping you better understand the journey, and provide you with tangible experiences to learn by doing without many of the risks associated with starting your own business. 

Aside from entrepreneurship-specific education, skills you build in STEM, Computer Science, or Humanitarian studies will have an invaluable impact on the way you think about solving problems. Entrepreneurship in and of itself is just the ability to solve a problem more effectively than what the market provides. The discipline you choose to study can provide an excellent foundation for discovering intriguing problems to solve.

A community of support

When you’re a student entrepreneur, everyone wants to see you succeed. Universities have many different student e-ship clubs, think tanks, startup competitions, mentorship programs, and startup accelerators. Ultimately, this large network of driven peers and resources who are interested in supporting one another in their startup endeavors will make sure you don’t feel alone in your pursuit.

Your network will grow exponentially

“It’s not about the grades you make, but about the hands you shake.” This age-old quote reigns too true in entrepreneurship. You have no idea where one connection can lead to – whether it’s a potential client, a valuable advisor, or even an interested investor down the road. College provides you with an invaluable platform to network with prestigious professionals. Whether it’s a professor, a friend, an alumni, or even someone you meet on a night out, the network effect is always more powerful than you’d imagine. 

Heck, I randomly met one of my most valuable mentors who single-handedly changed the trajectory of my life at 2:00 in the morning during my freshman year at Benny’s Pizza (Thanks for offering to share some advice with a young, confused Baaqir, David). 

A college degree shows commitment to potential clients and investors

While I’ll acknowledge that most skills can absolutely be learned on the Internet in today’s digital landscape, many of your potential clients, investors, mentors, or future partners see a lot of value in the work ethic and commitment it takes to graduate college. A college degree holds a lot of weight in outsiders’ perception and increases your validity as a skilled professional of your craft. 

The rigor associated with a university education not only prepares you for the hardships of growing as an entrepreneur, but also shows the world that you have the ability to overcome challenging obstacles, be resilient through failure, and take steps to accomplish goals you set out for yourself.

It can be a complex decision when deciding whether to continue your education or drop out of school relative to your entrepreneurial pursuit. Be sure to do your research on what a university experience can provide you relative to your goals. It could impact you in magnitudes you wouldn’t even be able to imagine.

It sure did for me.

When starting Triad, our obvious and primary focus was finding our first set of clients. It was the first crucial step in building our portfolio and brand. Here are 4 tips we learned along the way to getting great video clients.

Yo, did you remember to bring our new business cards?

Yeah, I got em.

Having just started Triad Studios, our primary goals were centered around finding our first clients. We couldn’t do that by just sitting back and waiting.

After a full day of classes, my co-founder Tristan and I each threw on a blazer and tossed some business cards in our pockets. We began our daily trek of walking into almost every single store on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill to introduce ourselves and our newfound venture. 

While this method didn’t necessarily net us our first couple of clients, our bold, relationship-oriented approach to client acquisition across varying forms helped us in many ways. If you’re looking for new ways to get clients, focus first on perfecting these four crucial tactics:

Your network is your net worth

I wish I could put into words how profound of an effect a single conversation can have on clients’ future potential. Every conversation you have with someone about the work you do has implications for hundreds, if not thousands, of future connections. To this day, over 80% of the clients we’ve worked with have been from word-of-mouth referrals and relationships we’ve formed with people that talk positively about what we do.

Get out there and do your best to be confident and proud of the value that you can provide to the world. While it’s important to talk about what you do, be mindful of never actually “selling” your video service. This can come across as inauthentic or money-grabbing. Instead, talk neutrally as a strategic expert on the topic and allow the conversation to flow naturally. 

Also, don’t be afraid to ask for warm introductions to second or third-degree connections. A sense of trust and familiarity between people can go a long way in getting you in a directed discovery meeting. The cold email or calling strategy is, in my experience, a waste of time in such a relationship-oriented industry built on trust.

Become an authority; consistently put out the best content possible

Triad can attribute their first client to an Instagram DM received from the owner of a spa salon who saw (and loved) a cinematic video we created of a snow day in Chapel Hill, NC. In my four years as a student at UNC-Chapel Hill, it snowed once. Luckily it was around the exact time when Triad first formed in January 2018. Jumping on the opportunity to get to know each other and creatively work together, we decided to put together a short cinematic video of the beautiful, snow-covered college town. We posted it on our Instagram page, and subsequently, an owner of a spa in a neighboring city saw it and asked for us to produce a video for her business. 

Whether it’s an entertaining or informative video or blog article about a specific topic or message, work to become an authority online about your business and craft. For example, put out content on subjects such as:

• How Much Does it Cost to Produce a Video?
• The 3 Most Important Audio Effects in Video Production

By becoming an authority, you inherently portray yourself as a strategic partner to any potential client that comes across your work on the business side – one step past the beautiful visuals you may be producing. You also boost your SEO rankings by doing this.

Take business risks – make a short “proof” video for a potential client

Even though you might have a strong portfolio of work on your website, it can be difficult for specific clients to visualize how their own content might look in some instances. It can be helpful to put together a short video that demonstrates your interest and expertise in the potential project or body of work, to win more prominent clients and bigger deals.

For example, we sought to win a contract with a massive tourism and development authority. We took the risk of traveling down to the city and spending a significant amount of time creating a video specific to the potential project even though we knew we wouldn’t see a dime for that video. It ended up paying off tremendously because it helped us win the contract in the long run.

Be as professional as you can possibly be

It may sound trivial, but maintaining a high level of professionalism in the way you carry yourself and portray your business is paramount to your brand and success. 

Dress well, don’t be late for meetings, and have all of your documents and presentations clean and ready for display. Be attentive during meeting sessions and take notes of what you discuss with clients. Focus on crafting your proposals and contracts to be highly detailed and mindful of points addressed in client meetings, and design your documents to be cohesive with your brand image. Send thank-you notes after projects are complete appreciating your clients for their business. 

Not missing a beat on your professionalism and attitude will pay healthy dividends in ways you won’t immediately conceptualize. 

Note that these are all things you don’t have to be perfect at from your business’s inception. It took us hundreds of hours of practice and experience to be refined at these pieces of advice. 

Never stop reflecting and working to improve on your failures and shortcomings. And if you keep doing that, before you know it, getting more clients will be the least of your worries.

Success is as equally about the money or the idea as it is about the attitude and behavior. Triad has an ironclad shared belief system and work ethic.

“If you want to be an anomaly, then you have to act like one.”  — Gary Vaynerchuk, Belarusian-American entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is a volatile and risky pursuit. Many ventures fail, whether failure is within one year or ten, for a menagerie of reasons, from shifting consumer trends to poor leadership and a thousand more. 

Gary Vaynerchuk’s quote is one of the few truths in the world of entrepreneurship. Success is as equally about the money or the idea as it is about the attitude and behavior. If you want to make a million dollars but can’t keep yourself from watching an episode of Game of Thrones instead of going to the gym, how will you make a million dollars?  (Disclaimer: skipping the gym to watch Game of Thrones—without doubt the team’s favorite show—every now and then won’t put the nail in the coffin, but you get the point.) 

The very nature of Triad is rather anomalous. Founded by five college students, the work dynamic alone is unique. Everyone at Triad is involved in many different life pursuits. Our schedules change every day, but we still manage to run as an efficient company because of a few key elements that all successful startups employ: self-discipline, open and honest communication, and shared vision. 

The self-discipline hearkens back to the example about making a million dollars—it really comes down to knowing when to work and when to hang out with friends, watch TV, or do whatever else you may with your time. Be it school work or Triad work, prioritizing that productivity is key. If she were writing this post, my mom, being full of inspirational quips that she used to make me repeat every morning before driving off to school, would say: “Do what you HAVE to do so you can do what you WANT to do.” 

Fortunately for Triad, often what we have to do and what we want to do overlap. Since we’re not just coworkers, but also friends, working rarely ever feels like work because we’re spending time with one another. A Friday night concert will be a lot more enjoyable if you finish a task before laying on the couch and browsing Twitter. And if a conflict were to arise from whatever it is that needs to be done, things get a lot more difficult if you put that responsibility off. 

That factor of unpredictability—Murphy’s Law, in a business-related sense—is what makes relevant the open and honest communication. When something goes wrong, say, a piece of equipment breaks or you forgot to press record before catching what was (supposed to be) a great shot, the first and most important thing to do is communicate with someone. The team at Triad prioritizes this to the highest degree.

The team is more than just a team—we’re a business family, and the advantageous things about being a family is that our communication can be more personal and in-depth. We know each other outside of the work environment and can therefore better understand how each member responds to dilemmas. You can’t fix a problem as a team without such communication, and Triad has had their share of problems, mishaps, and dilemmas. Problem-solving is like battling a hydra, because with every solution comes two more problems. The efficiency and legitimacy with which we can communicate allows us to navigate our way out of sticky situations. It has been fundamental for our success, but moreover, that communication was something we identified off the bat as essential for operation. 

Once again, that leads me to repeat the importance of compatibility that comes with our business family. The founders did not just share an idea, they shared—and still share—a vision, albeit one that has grown and developed as the last two years has unfolded around us all. During the company’s first few months, the shared vision allowed the founders to keep each other on track and allow them to find their own lanes, in which they advanced the company to its current place. As the company has grown and more team members have joined, the importance of compatibility has not faded. 

These three key elements—self-discipline, open and honest communication, and shared vision—coalesce into a work ethic that has driven this company so far. Baaqir said it himself, that people don’t understand what they are capable of until they do it. But it takes a dedicated work ethic, the willingness to work from 8 a.m. until midnight, balancing extracurricular organizations, learning new skills, personal lives, and whatever else in the meanwhile. 

Triad has an ironclad shared belief system and work ethic. We focus on internal efficiency by employing and discussing those aforementioned key elements. We vocalize our expectations for the company and for each of us individually and we make sure we follow through with them. The strategies that we employ are by no means anomalous, but we believe we are an anomaly and therefore become one, and that is what makes all the difference. 

“The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing.” — Socrates

The quote above is often attributed to Socrates, but the delightful irony is that the quote has no verifiable source. Whether or not it was Socrates, or a misinterpretation of Plato’s paraphrasing, or someone else entirely, the quote still carries an important truth—A lot of times, and honestly probably all of the time, we know nothing (Ygritte would be so proud). 

Determining and accepting what we don’t and didn’t know has been pivotal in our development as a company. A successful entrepreneur asks as many questions as one can, but the admittance of ignorance is not always. Sure, it’s easy to ask a few questions at the beginning and then slowly wind down, believing you’ve learned everything you can, but that simply is impossible. It takes a heightened, intentional self-awareness to not only be able to ask and ask, but to keep yourself from forgetting to ask. 

Our self-commitment to questions has helped us to forge relationships with incredible people who have mentored us, advised us, and pointed us along the way to entrepreneurial success. It took us a great deal of that self-awareness to bring ourselves to remember the importance of asking. The five founders knew very well how little they knew.

We’ll focus on Jim Kitchen, an entrepreneur in-residence at Chapel Hill. Jim gave us a launchpad—both figuratively and literally, given that he’s our office landlord—and provided us with strategic recommendations and an expansive network of other professionals to reach out to with our incessant questions, all of whom have helped us in countless ways. 

Triad came to know Jim through Tristan, who had him as a professor and admired his worldly, entrepreneurial background. Like us, Jim delved into business as a college student, creating a company that packaged travel, hotel, and other accommodations together in such a way that targeted college students looking for spring break plans. In the time since, he’s pursued other ventures. 

As his student, Tristan badgered him with questions and conversation after class and in the process developed a relationship that has time and time again been crucial to Triad’s direction and growth. The relationship became so influential to Tristan that he realized his goals for medical school at the time were not what he actually wanted to achieve, and so he switched his focus toward business and entrepreneurship. 

Jim’s generosity to Triad has been enormous. Aside from his general business knowledge that he doles out, he helped us secure an office space last summer—within hours. The summer started with several weeks of the team working and sleeping in Tristan’s living room when Tristan reached out to Jim and inquired about office space. Later that day, Jim handed over the keys to a new office space, which Triad has since expanded into an office with an attached conference room on Franklin Street. 

He gives back to the broader entrepreneurship community, as well, through his work at Launch Chapel Hill. Companies started by our peers on campus have used Jim as a key resource for working through the difficulties of starting a business and his dedication to young businesspeople is unmatched. 

But Jim’s story is not limited to Chapel Hill. Throughout his life, he has traveled to quite a few countries—a staggering amount, actually, of 180. 180 countries, where has not simply stepped over the border and said, “Welp, it was nice to see you, Djibouti!” In each place, he pushes his comfort zone and explores the cultures and histories of the incredible places he’s been able to visit. He’s documented his travels on videos, which Triad is currently working on consolidating into a videographic travel journal of a scope that could rival Magellan, ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, and all those other guys. 

It’s difficult to imagine where Triad would be without Jim and his endless advice and assistance. He exemplifies the concept of a professional mentor and is someone who has deeply impacted this company and the lives of our team. Helping to compile and edit the videos from his odyssey is the least we can do to reciprocate what he has done for us. 

But Jim is not our only mentor, and he has encouraged us to seek other opinions and perspectives from other professionals who have met success in business, like Tim Flood, a Kenan-Flagler professor who advised us on building a portfolio and optimizing our website. Sharique Hasan, a graduate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Duke helped us identify the mistakes NOT to make and gave us substantial business direction. Dave Fouts, a regional CFO, advised us on forecasting and financial planning, and David Spratte, a fellow entrepreneur, has answered our questions about business strategy, sales, and managing people. 

These mentors, and many more, have listened to our questions and our concerns with patience and have responded with passion and interest in our endeavors. Their selfless advice has taught us so much about starting and running a business, but also about how to engage with clients, how to interact with the market, and much beyond. But it is important to remember mentors cannot give advice without questions that prompt it. We’re lucky to have a team who never stops wanting to ask and learn, and a humility that allows us to keep from getting too comfortable with what we know, because without that pursuit for advice and knowledge, we would not be the company and the people we are today.

More on Jim Kitchen:

Tristan had him as a professor and admired his background and his story. Jim was an entrep in college as well and started a spring break vacation planning company targeted toward college kids. He packaged travel, hotel, accommodations all together before it was a huge thing. He did it specifically for spring break, his business took off from there and he did that throughout college. He’s done several other ventures. Tristan appreciated his experience and asked him questions and contacted him. That’s how his connection with Triad began. 

When we were working out of Tristan’s living room over the summer, Tristan reached out to him and let him know we wanted office space. Offered us space in his building in the room next door. Since then, we’ve expanded into the current offices and then added a conference room. 

Justin and Baaqir have had classes with him, continued his connection with the company and its people. 

Tristan—relationship started in class, he tried to impress and would ask him questions after class. Had great conversations with him, asked a lot of questions. He’s the one who made me further pursue entrep and ultimately led me away from med school. Good chance I wouldn’t be doing this without my conversations with Jim Kitchen. 

Jim had been an advisor to us from the start, very interested. Gave us the office space within a few hours of us reaching out for space. The team was sleeping on Tristan’s apartment floor basically and knew that it would be bad if they kept it up all summer. 

Gave us good advice on how to split equity, what positions to create and what markets to go for. He’s very big on competitive advantage and gave us a lot of advice. He was the first guy on our Board of Advisors. He saw us emerging and our relationship grew from more professional to 

Write about the fact that Jim is how we want to be in the future. He values really fun shit, he gives back, which is something I see us all doing in the future (he gives us the office for basically nothing). Generosity to entrepreneurship in the community is great. 

Update as to where we are now with Jim: He’s reached out to us to help with branding himself, producing videos for him that showcase all of his trips he took when he traveled. He’s almost traveled to every country (he’s been 180 out of 193 countries). He’s spent a few days at least in every single country and takes videos to document his experiences and does unique and memorable things, such as immersing himself in the cultures.  

When referencing other people, it shows that we look for a variety of opinions, but it’s okay to center it around Jim as the exemplification of what an advisor can be. All the other advisors offer unique views in unique aspects of business, so there is not much overlap but Jim is key.

Youth is wasted on the young. — George Bernard Shaw

How someone can claim youth is wasted on the young is beyond me, and while I have not had the experience of reading any of Shaw’s literary works, I have to say his pessimism about the capabilities of the young is all too nihilistic for my taste. 

Youth is power. Youth is opportunity. Youth is the promise of a future, one which can be harnessed and transformed into whatever the young so desire. Think about the young people alive today who are capitalizing on their age to change the world: Malala Yousafzai, who champions for women’s education, or Greta Thunberg, who has inspired a global, youth-led climate reform movement, or Austin Rief and Alex Lieberman, who, everyday, spread news to a million people in their Morning Brew newsletter. 

Being young in entrepreneurship entails underestimation and mishaps. But every failure is more than just that. It is an opportunity to learn, to be turned around as a stepladder for growth. Often, people mistake accepting failure as defeat and debasement, but the truth is quite the contrary. Owning failure is a quick way to earn respect, from peers and clients, but from more experienced professionals too. When you start a company at the age of 20 (as did the founders), owning those failures demonstrates far more than just awareness—accountability, trustworthiness, determination, and self-motivation are among other qualities that generate that respect.

When Triad was founded, a group of college students simply wanted to monetize their passions, but by having the aforementioned qualities, they realized they were capable of far more. After well over a year of tireless work, the company has created such desirable content that not only is the business growing, but other videographers and entrepreneurs approach our team members for advice, criticism, and mentorship.

An occupational hazard of youth is not just the tendency of older people to underestimate you, but also the tendency to underestimate yourself. Whatever you call it—self-doubt, impostor syndrome, hesitancy—it is a pervasive and irrefutable fact of being young. Age, however, more often than not, is arbitrary. 

The sheer fact that others legitimize Triad day after day, through seeking advice, through commissioning work, or through simple praise of the company, offsets the imposter syndrome the team can sometimes experience. Imposter syndrome is hardly more than a psychological scam, and while it can deal damage for entrepreneurs, particularly young ones, it is surmountable. Self-motivation is key to defeating it and to legitimize oneself, or one’s company. 

Passion is self-doubt’s nemesis and it is when you are young that passion can, and should be, pursued. There’s a you in youth for a reason. Youth is yours to claim, to own, and to brandish proudly toward the future.