Hidden Gems: Meet Alex Loprieno of WeShort

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Loprieno. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Alessandro Loprieno, a 32-year-old entrepreneur from Puglia, has also made his passion for filmmaking his job and mission, it has taken more than 15 years.

After studying at the University of Bari – Languages, Literature and Arts – he continued his education at the Bocconi School of Management and recently completed the Y Combinator Startup School.

He spent nine years in aviation working as a flight attendant at Ryanair, and today colors his entrepreneurial life with a passion for film, finance, travel, marketing, technology and innovation.

As CEO of WeShort he deals with people from all over the world every day and enjoys talking about startups, investments and technology along with his activities in the film industry.

He loves supporting people who want to grow and improve. He truly believes that if you do good, it will come back.

He is very ambitious and determined to achieve goals by placing a high value on relationships and family.

Naturally born for networking, he considers public relations his most valuable talent.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not smooth at all guys! The challenge is every day. Solving problems is a must to be succeeding. After investing on myself with personal growth training and business school I got ready for entrepreneurial life and…

…I got fired from the job that put food on my table for nine years in the moment I founded WeShort (I used to work for Ryanair). I cannot say that I was upset, sometimes you need external factors to “burn the ships” behind you.

It has been a bumpy ride so far, in Q4 2020 I started my company WeShort from scratch from an idea I had during the spring of 2019. Without large financial capabilities, I launched myself and with my team into this journey.

It’s not easy at all, Me and a dozen of crazy dreamers like me (WeShort team I recruited at the beginning) have been working a lot of hours a day for two years, with the vision that what we were doing will be in the near future a solid piece of film industry.

We have been working to create a company with a long-term goal: make short films a mainstream entertainment choice.

It has been deployed the lean startup method on many parts of the business: product, marketing team building, public relations, business development, and fundraising.

Me as CEO and founder, after pitching and pitching to investors so many times, I carried out the startup stage successfully until today, raising the money we needed to bootstrap (nearly $1M). This couldn’t be possible if I didn’t have a team on which rely and personally supported by mentors such as Federico Dionisio (also my early-stage investor) and advisor like Sabino Sernia, Massimo Ciaglia, Francesco Mantegazzini, Giovanni De Blasio, Michele Chieffi and Giancarlo Chetta.

After 18 months on the market, I feel we are on the right path at the same time we are far away from being the company WeShort potentially can become.

My dream with WeShort is to go for an IPO in NYSE or Nasdaq by 2026.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about WeShort?
WeShort is a streaming platform dedicated to the world of short cinema, available worldwide and on all iOS and Android web and mobile devices. Founded in late 2020 by 32-year-old Alessandro Loprieno from Puglia, the platform was created with the aim of enhancing the thousands of short films and series from all over the world and giving a third entertainment option to the general public: from the works of yet-to-be-discovered talented directors to Oscar, BAFTA, Sundance, and Cannes awards. A WeShort section is already present in TCL’s channel offerings on more than 44 million smart TVs worldwide and on the catalog of the CHILI platform, a European digital entertainment reality.

Currently, the platform has a library of more than 1,000 short films from 40 countries in 15 different languages and subtitled in the five most spoken languages, in addition to Italian. The service is available on TVs, smartphones, and PCs for a subscription of 2.99 euros per month, with the possibility of a free trial. Available content includes short films for children.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
WeShort Closes €1 Million Financing Round.

WeShort, the on-demand short film platform, which won the Giffoni Edition 2021 Special Award, has closed a €1 million financing round. The lead investor in the deal is Minerva Pictures, a historic Italian film production and distribution company led by Santo Versace and Gianluca Curti, which subscribed with a 30 percent stake. A group of business angels made up of leading figures from the world of startups, cinema, marketing, fashion, and technology also contributed to the closing of the round.

The fact that Minerva Pictures chose to invest in WeShort marks a historic and unprecedented step in this market segment and in the history of short films globally. Honestly, it was what I aspired to from the very beginning, in late 2020, when in my home in Bisceglie, Puglia, I was conceiving WeShort and laying the groundwork for the startup.

It was an almost dreamlike journey, in such a “short” time we experienced a cinema of emotions and beautiful memories.

October a month to remember for WeShort, beyond the financial and industrial support, on a personal level I am very grateful to be flanked on this growth path by two authoritative figures from the world of entrepreneurship and the film industry such as Ad Gianluca Curti and President Santo Versace, also a man from the South, of great vision and experience, from whom I am inspired to be able to achieve important results. For WeShort, October 2022 will always be a month to remember also for another reason, there was the premiere of the WeShort Originals.

It is “Caramelle” a 3D animated short film produced by Panebarco and Mediterraneo Cinematografica, which had its world premiere on October 15 at the Auditorium Conciliazione at Alice Nella Città as part of the Rome Film Festival, where it won the “Audience Award – Best Short Film.

Pricing:

• 4Weeks $2,99
• 4Seasons $29,99

Contact Info:

• Website: www.weshort.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexloprieno/

Image Credits
Michele Illuzzi 2022