The Cinapse Team
At Cinapse, we’ve assembled a stellar team of experts from both Hollywood sets and Silicon Valley startups, with strong backgrounds in film production, design, engineering, and security.
How We Got Started
After a whirlwind five year career in actual Silicon Valley, our CEO Greg was brought on as the Lead Tech Consultant on the final season of HBO’s Silicon Valley. He started at the beginning of pre-production, spending all day with the writers advising on both technical accuracy and story. When Heather joined to prep for shooting, they worked closely to establish the broader world in front of the camera.
Throughout production, Greg noticed the stark difference between the technology used in the filming and post production processes, and the lack thereof on the physical production management. As Herman and Heather educated Greg about the day-to-day of production, Greg taught them about startups and technology solutions in other industries. After work on Silicon Valley wrapped, Greg and Herman founded Cinapse to correct for these technological disparities and to revolutionize the filmmaking process.
Cinapse: Our Mission
We are passionate about the intersection of current technology and filmmaking. From our hands-on experience, we deeply understand the complexity of both. Our vision successfully joins the two, reinventing the film industry by streamlining the day-to-day of physical production with cutting edge, bespoke industrial software. Our products are built and designed from our experience—providing productions with unprecedented simplicity, safety, and connectivity.
Our Founding Members
Greg Kufera
Greg is our CEO. After graduating in Pure Math from Princeton, Greg immediately launched Kufera Creative, a product consultancy based in San Francisco.
Through Kufera Creative, Greg researched, built, and scaled mobile and web products for tech companies like Jyve, Expo, and Jopwell. After a year co-founding a cryptocurrency company called Stream Token, Greg became the Lead Tech Consultant on HBO’s Silicon Valley, spending every day in the writers room and on set for the final season.
As Greg became more versed in the filmmaking language and processes, he grew passionate about developing solutions to the problems and frustrations expressed by his colleagues every day on set.
Heather Wagner
Heather, our CPO, is responsible for user experience.
Heather has been working on sets for the last 14 years—first accumulating her 600 days as a Set PA in Los Angeles and New Mexico on films and TV shows like Breaking Bad, Lone Survivor, and Justified. She joined the DGA Trainee Class of 2013 and has been working as a Key 2nd for years, most recently on The Mandalorian and Silicon Valley.
In all the years Heather has been working in the film industry, she has been concerned about paper-based workflows and has been eager to change them. As an AD, Heather knows what it takes day-to-day, on the floor, to develop and implement functional, flexible systems that the crew can easily access and use in the fast paced, fluid environment of set.
Herman Phillips
Herman is our COO. He began working in the industry as a non-union commercial line producer and assistant director in the Southeast, and has been working in Los Angeles as a Set Production Assistant to earn his days for the 600 Day requirement to join the Directors Guild of America. He has worked on a variety of productions such as Disney+’s The Mandalorian, HBO’s Euphoria, Insecure, Ballers, Perry Mason, and Silicon Valley.
For the past four years, Herman has researched how to reduce information asymmetry in physical production and how to effectively create technology that works within the complex Hollywood labor system. The more we can keep the whole crew on the same page and create a symmetrical information environment, the more efficient crews can be.
After experiencing firsthand the inefficiencies of paper-based workflows and systems on set and the overall lack of digital technology in managing physical production, Herman began working on mobile app technology solutions for film and television production in 2019. This led to many conversations with Greg, and ultimately, founding Cinapse together.
Roger Tran
Roger is our Head of Design and Chief Creative Officer. After graduating with a degree in Architectural Design and Theory from Stanford University, he pursued a Master of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and subsequently launched a user-experience design consultancy in 2015.
With a multidisciplinary background in both physical and digital experience design, Roger specializes in designing user-friendly solutions for complex operations and workflows. He has worked with several enterprise technology startups in San Francisco like Jyve, Patreon, DigitalPay, and Stream Token.
Roger joined Cinapse to develop elegant products, user interfaces, and user experiences that simplify the extraordinarily complex universe of on-set production. His design philosophy resonates deeply with Cinapse’s mission of optimizing complexity into simple, swift, and beautiful interactions.
Final Thoughts
Everyone at Cinapse is coming together with our individual expertise to make our products revolutionary, functional, and the new industry standard.
