Scripped For Screenwriters, Everything But The Sales Pitch

The elevator speech is the most important part of any new business. If you can describe what your business or product does in the length of an elevator ride, you can convince a potential customer or investor why he should give his money to you instead of someone else. However, if you can't describe your new business in one sentence, good luck ever getting it off the ground. The same can be said for movies; If you can tell your story in 30 seconds or less, you might have a hit on your hands. Pitching the finished product is the easy part; first you have to write your epic, thriller or comedy. Fortunately Scripped is here to help. Scripped brings screenplay writers, editors and buyers together on one site and gives them a marketplace where their ideas come to life. Think Google Docs for screenwriters Scripped was founded in 2006 by students from MIT, UCLA and USC with a mission to to make screen writing accessible to writers of all levels, providing both the tools and the community through a simple user interface. Scripped quickly took off. According to Scripped CFO, Ryan Buckley, the company has already attracted almost 4,000 writers in its short 14-week life in Beta. Scripped hopes to one day dominate in a market with $30 million in potential revenue. Buckley cited Zhura as one of their main rivals, but Scripped differentiates itself from its rival because " we took a different path in our online writing application and approach to script sharing," he said. Since launching, Scripped has become the preferred script-writing platform for students at Santa Clara University as well as Ball State. Scripped recently partnered with Script Frenzy becoming the writing tool of choice for the not-for-profit screenwriting competition. This week Scripped will also be competing in a business plan competition at UCLA, where they are semifinalists. Buckley credits his strong product team with helping him get through a rough first year. "Finding the right developer is always a pain," Buckley said . "Fortunately, we had a strong team from day one and suffered through the anxiety together. Getting the team right on the first try has been a fundamental key to Scripped's success." Helping other writers achieve success is a bit of a departure for Buckley, who is himself and accomplished writer. According to a recent entry on the Scripped Blog, Buckley's first publication of a poem was at the tender age of six. During his college years at UC Berkeley, his proposals for environmental sustainability initiatives at the gained the attention of the Chancellor and ultimately $100,000 to launch his projects. Now Buckley and his partners, President and CEO, Sunil Rajaraman and COO, Zak Freer, have created a software platform they hope will allow others to make a similar impact through writing. In a world of viral videos a simple idea can take the Internet by storm. While some of my favorite web clips are the unscripted kind, keep your eyes peeled for first Hollywood blockbuster compiled entirely on the Scripped platform.