fbpx

4th Kind Entertainment

In the age of YouTube and smartphones, how does a small video production company distinguish themselves from anyone who can hold a camera? In the words of 4th Kind Entertainment’s owners and founders, Curt Donohue and Jason Graisa: empathy mapping and humor. “We spend a lot of time with our clients to find out who their clients are,” says Curt.

4th Kind Entertainment, a Denver area video production company, specializes on customer discovery and injecting commercials, informational videos and creative shorts with targeted humor. They got their start thanks to Craigslist in early 2014; Curt was creating websites and screen-captures for training and wanted to up his game by adding live-action video when he stumbled upon a posting by Jason looking for people to collaborate with on video and film projects. The two connected, and discovered their partnership was a complementary match. Jason had the technical, screenwriting and creative skills that Curt could harness with his extensive business and project management knowledge. After meeting Curt, Jason said, “I knew he had a different mindset that I needed to have.”

Curt was already involved with the North Metro Denver Small Business Development Center (SBDC), having taken several classes including the Leading Edge program, and becoming involved as a consultant before starting 4th Kind Entertainment. “Developing a business plan can be frustrating,” said Curt, “All these trainings put me on the path of, ‘What do I need to do next?’”

They got involved with the SBDC from the client side, and took advantage of the invaluable network of mentors and opportunities to network with other business as potential clients and collaborators. “Networking is new to me, but the SBDC events put me in an environment that was comfortable,” said Jason. They harnessed these events to build their initial client base to begin generating the revenue required to fund creative projects.

In the near future, 4thKind Entertainment is planning to attack the video contest market, and has already seen success after winning a recent TripAdvisor.com contest with their Fargo commercial. After their revenue streams stabilize and they build more experience, the company hopes to take on more creative endeavors, such as short or feature films to explore the creative side of their business. Jason sees the company making waves in the commercial industry, hoping to initiate a revolution of storytelling through engaging people in a different way as media evolves. 4th Kind Entertainment’s vision for the future focuses on creativity. “The better we get at the creative stuff, the more we can apply to the commercial stuff.”

“We’ve done pretty amazing things in a very short period of time,” said Jason. They’re proud to be SBDC clients, encouraging others to take advantage of the opportunities and the ‘astounding level and quality of resources’ available for entrepreneurs.

Key Results

Key Results is a small company with a long reach. For almost twenty years, Owner, Marge Fajardo, has worked with individual leaders globally and a variety of business groups from small local companies to large governmental agencies in Washington D.C. The ultimate goal of Key Results is to improve the interpersonal health of an organization and build on their people-power to produce better results. Prior to starting Key Results, Fajardo worked in business, government, and

Read More »
Old School Heros

Tom Concannon, owner of Old School Heros, had the business plans set, loans lined up, and was even doing walk throughs to lease a space for his brick and mortar sandwich shop in Thornton, a dream that had been in the making for more than 25 years and one he had been actively pursuing for the past four years. But suddenly all those plans fell away. Sound familiar? As restaurants shuttered across the country, grappling

Read More »
Melaxation Box

After a record year for stress and anxiety we could all use some relaxation. A silver lining of the collective trauma experienced throughout the pandemic is the importance of self-care that has been illuminated. Makalah Emanuel, CEO and Founder of Melaxation Boxes, is on a mission to continue amplifying the message of self-care through her business which sells boxes filled with hand-made gifts, thoughtful activities, and products from Black-Indigenous-People of Color-(BIPOC) owned businesses. “After a crazy year a gift of self-care felt like the most appropriate gift to give family members and friends,” Makalah says.

Read More »
Rise Collective Counseling

There is rarely a linear path to entrepreneurship. Often, it is a series of twists and turns, ups and downs, that wind us through the business journey. That has surely been the case for Lori Christensen, owner of Rocky Mountain Brownies. Lori was sailing through a highly successful law career, when a series of life altering circumstances forced her to reconsider what she valued most and what kind of life she wanted to lead.

Read More »
Black Hound Design Company

Black Hound…a name one would at first think was associated to a dog training business or a hunting operation; however, the reality is that it belongs to a custom furniture design and manufacturing business…Black Hound Custom Furniture and Design. In 2013, the owners, James and Kate Hixson, had an idea…a vision that would expand and enhance James’s college education in sculpturing. What started as a wood sculpture for a friend, evolved into a prosperous and

Read More »
Mass FX Media

Mass FX Media is a small business that delivers big creativity in the area of video production. Shawna Schultz and her husband, Matt, met in high school, drawn together by their interest in producing videos. After they both completed their Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in film production at the University of Colorado, they got jobs making documentaries for Group Publishing for almost three years. When faced with the opportunity to go on a four-month

Read More »
Skip to content