Two years ago, Alex and I launched NOVA. But really, it started before that. Four years ago, we were having the same conversation over and over. I was freelancing and he was at WME, and we kept coming back to the same question: why does this industry make it so hard for people to get in and stay in?
We were surrounded by talented people with no real support system. No consistent work, late payments, no clear path forward. And on the other side, people hiring didn’t know where to find them. It didn’t make sense, so we decided to try and fix it.
We started with an Instagram page. In the first year, over 7,000 jobs were posted and more than $10,000,000 in work moved through the network. But what mattered more was the community that started to form around it. A lot of those people are now some of our closest friends, and that part has shaped everything that came after.
From there, things started to expand in a real way. We launched our first video campaign with over 40 creatives involved, pulling in friends, mentors, advisors, and investors. It was seven days of shooting across LA and New York, and it was the first time everything we had been talking about actually came to life. Not long after, we launched the app. On day one, the community showed up and we hit #35 on the App Store. That was the moment it felt real.
We dropped our first campaign, “Time to Get a Job,” shot by our friend Conor Cunningham. It was direct and honest, and it captured exactly what we had been building toward. From there, we kept pushing. We opened our studio in West Hollywood to create a physical space for the same community we had built online. A place for shoots, projects, and ideas to come together in real life. We also launched Creative Confessional as a way to hear directly from creatives about their process, their perspective, and the parts of the work you don’t usually see.
Along the way, there were moments that went beyond what we expected. When the LA fires hit, we launched Pair+Care to support people who were displaced, connecting over 5,000 families with volunteers, brands, and businesses. That moment showed us what this community actually is. Not just creative, but willing to show up for each other when it matters. We’ve also had the chance to do things that felt surreal at the time, like hosting events at the Natural History Museum with Adidas and Lucid Monday, with Alchemist DJing in front of dinosaur skeletons, and working on campaigns with people we grew up watching.
But none of that is really the point. What matters is what’s been built underneath all of it. Two years in, over $90,000,000 has been connected to creatives across more than 500 cities, with hundreds of thousands of connections and projects made through the platform. And it still feels like the beginning.
Right now, the creative industry is shifting fast. AI is going to flood everything with content, and a lot of it will start to look the same. When that happens, taste is what actually matters, and taste is human. That’s what we’re building around.
NOVA 2.0 is coming this summer. It’s a full rebuild and the biggest update we’ve done. The goal stays the same: make it easier for creatives to find work, build real relationships, and actually sustain themselves doing what they’re good at.
Two years in, and we’re just getting started