David Straus brings an entrepreneur’s ingenuity, an idealist’s passion and an innovator’s vision as CEO of Withoutabox, the leading worldwide online media company dedicated to advancing independent film. Founded in 2000 by Straus and Joe Neulight, Withoutabox connects more than 150,000 filmmakers to nearly 3,000 film festivals in 200 countries worldwide. Withoutabox is owned by Amazon.com’s the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), the Web’s most comprehensive and authoritative source of movie, television and celebrities that acquired Withoutabox in January 2008. Inspired by Straus’ and Neulight’s frustrations with trying to navigate through the cumbersome film festival submission process while graduate students at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, they created Withoutabox to democratize the movie business with a suite of online tools designed to empower filmmakers and other content creators to self-distribute and monetize their films.
Before launching Withoutabox, Straus and Neulight produced numerous short films that played widely and successfully on the international film festival circuit.