A year after the Writers Guild of America launched a four-month strike that brought Josh Weinberg's startup to a grinding halt, the Philadelphia founder is in talks with major studios to expand the adoption of his company's technology on film and TV sets.
Since its launch in 2018, Weinberg's company RABS, an acronym for "Run a Better Set," has landed deals with "every single major studio," he said. That includes Netflix, NBCUniversal, Universal Pictures, Disney and others.
RABS' technology helps assistant directors and production assistants track, pay, onboard and better manage background talent. The company has more deals in the works as it looks to widen the breadth of the technology and make it the industry standard, according to Weinberg.
There's been no shortage of demand of late, Weinberg said, with RABS being used on 99 Emmy Award-winning TV shows and 55 Golden Globe Award-winning productions. In total, it's been part of some 550 productions, including those with area ties like Adam Sandler's Netflix film "Hustle," HBO's hit limited series "Mare of Easttown" and its spinoff "Task," which is currently filming in Delaware County.
With the Writers Guild strike behind it, Weinberg, 31, said RABS is poised for growth in 2024.
The idea for RABS came about when Weinberg, a graduate of Lower Merion High School and Tulane University, got a job working on a production set for the USA Network series "Queen of the South." He was put in charge of some 80 extras, tasked with managing stacks of employment documents, contracts and vouchers.
"I did it all wrong," said Weinberg, who was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list last year.
Determined to find a more streamlined process,he spent two and a half years developing software that could simplify the process of managing extras, and copious amounts of paperwork, on set. During that time, he had three unsuccessful attempts with software engineers before finally having a breakthrough in January 2018.
Despite a slow start, his break finally came through USA Network's series "The Purge" and Netflix's series "Daybreak," released in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
After they adopted the technology, more studios started seeking it out. Then Covid-19 hit and film productions were indefinitely paused.
Though the pandemic was a setback, when studios began filming again they sought out RABS as part of an effort to reduce paper and therefore extra touch points.
Weinberg went from working with a show every three months to having 30 clients per month. From 2020 to 2021, RABS sales quintupled, before jumping another 15% between 2021 and 2022.
The upward trajectory hit a roadblock last year when the Writers Guild authorized a strike, and sales for RABS dipped 55% in 2023 compared with 2022.
As with the aftereffects of Covid-19, Weinberg thinks the business is poised for growth after the industry lull and is projecting sales in 2024 to grow 20% to 40% above 2022 figures, which he declined to disclose.
"When [the strike] ended [in September] it was similar to Covid where we started to get rapid-fire calls again," Weinberg said. "We were once again ready for the moment."
To meet anticipated demand, Weinberg is also expanding his services. He has a partnership with a major studio, which he declined to disclose, to build out custom in-house technology. One example of those expanded services would be a similar management technology for crew members during the pre-production process, rather than on-set talent.
"The growth is now these clients are really good clients and they're also curious for better technology solutions," Weinberg said. "So the growth trajectory is within our existing markets, continu[ing] to push and to develop imaginative, technical solutions for them so we can serve more of their shows and more niche segments within each of their shows."
Despite recent growth, Weinberg has managed to keep the RABS team to six employees and is looking to add two more. Thus far, he has bootstrapped the company with no plans to seek venture capital.
While most studios are based in Southern California, Weinberg said he doesn't have plans to relocate from Philadelphia. With production costs higher on the West Coast, he sees advantages to remaining in the region as more studios move sets east where it's more cost effective. His base gives him easy access to increasingly popular filming locations like New York, New Jersey and Atlanta.
"We feel we are already back stronger than we were before the strike and we're going to continue because we're offering a lot more to productions than we even were prior to the strike," Weinberg said.
