Very True by Verissimo

In this conversation, Alex reconnects with his friend Itai Joseph, filmmaker and founder of Fondu, to explore what actually goes into making video content that feels effortless, and what it takes to build a creative business without a boss. Itai shares his journey from making home movies as a kid in Zanesville, Ohio, through film school at Northwestern, to building Fondu, a remote-first creative video agency, out of the shift to digital storytelling during the pandemic.

Alex and Itai dive deep into the full anatomy of video production, from concept and audience to the shoot and the edit, and how generative AI is starting to remove the "no do-overs" constraint that's always made video riskier than other forms of content. They also get into the mechanics of running your own business: what to delegate, what to keep for yourself, and how to stay connected to the work that actually energizes you instead of just the work that keeps the business running.

Effortless Is the Hardest Thing to Make: Itai and Alex compare good video production to watching Roger Federer play tennis, the more natural it looks, the more work went into it.

No More Reshoots: Itai walks through how AI is changing iteration in video, letting his team regenerate a style frame instead of re-shooting an entire scene.

Naive vs. Expert: Alex and Itai debate whether building a big business requires knowing nothing about your market, while building a small, sustainable one requires knowing it intimately.

Delegate the Craft, Keep the Vision: Itai explains why he's pulled back from hands-on production to focus on strategy, AI transformation, and business development, and how founders scale by defining their role from the inside out.

Front-Load Your Relationships: Alex and Itai agree that the relationships built earliest in a career compound the most, and are often what create opportunities decades later.

About Very True: Hosted by Alex Oppenheimer, Very True by Verissimo Ventures explores the honest, unvarnished stories of founders and the real problems they are solving. We look past the hype to find the truth in technology and entrepreneurship.