David Straus brings an entrepreneur's vision and an idealist's passion to his position as Chief Executive Officer of Withoutabox, Inc., the market-leading network for independent filmmakers that he co-founded with Joe Neulight in 2000.

Withoutabox launched at the height of the last tech boom, inspired by the founders' obstacles as independent filmmakers trying to navigate the costly, cumbersome film festival circuit and negotiating distribution for their films. When the technology bubble burst and other companies sputtered, Withoutabox survived and thrived. It serves a crucial need for an ever-growing population of filmmakers and a worldwide proliferation of festivals. It's also helping to drive the democratization of the movie business, changing the rules of distribution, marketing and exhibition.

The partners, who began working together while graduate students at UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television, created the International Film Submission System, which enables independent filmmakers to submit their work to as many or as few festivals as they choose simply by filling out one online application. For Straus, this was a starting point to high ambitions, building a company that is leading the effort to dramatically decentralize filmmaking, putting the power and control back in the hands of individual filmmakers.

After completing his undergraduate degree in political psychology at Claremont Colleges' Pitzer campus, Straus was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Hungary, which grew out of his efforts to help Jewish Refuseniks leave the Soviet Union. While living in Budapest, he came to understand film as the most universal and potent means of social communication. Later, as he began working in film, he realized the medium needed to become more accessible, and that to do that artists would need to be empowered to self-distribute.

After meeting Neulight at UCLA and discovering shared cinematic and business interests, Straus approached Neulight about starting a small side business buying and renting out AVID systems to Hollywood productions in the early days of non-linear editing. It funded their graduate school tuition as well as their own student projects. It would also show the two classmates they worked well together, each with a true entrepreneurial spirit that would lead them into Withoutabox.

Working as producers, directors and writers, Mr. Straus and Mr. Neulight made a number of short films that played widely and successfully on the international film festival circuit. Straus was also a producer on "Amy's Orgasm," a feature that secured domestic distribution and was voted the audience prize at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

This experience as filmmakers meant the two men traveled to festivals as disperse as Telluride in the mountains of Colorado and India for the Bombay Film Festival, they learned first hand how difficult and inefficient it was for independent filmmakers to gain visibility (let alone compensation) for their work.

While enduring the frustrations of trying to market one of their films at a festival in New York in 1999, Straus began talking to Neulight about partnering in a new endeavor that would one day help filmmakers everywhere succeed and thrive in their business and art. Neulight, who possesses a knack for systems and invention, conceived of the International Film Submission System as a point of entry, and together they spearheaded the idea creation, and organization of a company that would-in just a few short years-serve the needs of filmmakers at festivals, in distribution, and beyond.

Starting with just a handful of filmmakers as members and a few festivals as customers, Withoutabox has now grown to nearly 100,000 film rights holders in more than 200 countries, and more than 600 festivals now depend on the company to bring them top filmmakers and superior films. It has the largest database of independent films and film rights in the world.

In the last year, the company has expanded its offerings to include services that enable independent filmmakers to market their films themselves, self-distribute their work and even sell DVDs, all outside the major studio system. With the new Audience by Withoutabox, the company has become a player in the growing social networking phenomenon that the Internet enables.

Straus and his colleagues at Withoutabox add features and services underscoring the commitment to democratize the filmmaking process on a nearly monthly basis. David Straus' overriding mission continues: to knock down walls that limit opportunities for artists-underscoring his selection of Withoutabox as the Company's name. Indeed, for this Los Angeles native, the process of freeing filmmakers has just begun.

Without a box
Withoutabox, Inc. is the worldwide network whose mission of advancing independent film allows 100,000 filmmakers in over 200 countries to distribute, screen, and monetize their work. The Company serves rightsholders by democratizing the tools of distribution and by creating opportunities that help them to build the largest connected audience for their work. Withoutabox's synergistic suite of tools (including two patents) organizes, for the first time in the history of the film business, an highly effective business and social environment where independent film--and, in the future, other forms of creative and intellectual media--can thrive.

By bringing filmmakers, film festivals, film buyers and film lovers together into a vertically integrated global system, Withoutabox is re-inventing a classic supply chain. This new media model provides marketing and financial opportunities to filmmakers through direct, efficient access to global markets--in sharp contrast to the traditional, top-down approach used by the major film studios.

With members ranging from first-time filmmakers to winners of the Academy Award, Withoutabox is a media company used by more independent filmmakers than any other in the world.