Episode 84
3 Founders, 1 Vision (ft. Rise Media)
Three best mates, a shared obsession with parkour, and a camera. That is where Rise Media began. Mark Lunt and Dan Morbin have known each other since nursery; they met Mike Lienard at fifteen through the London free-running scene, filming each other launching off things in the Jackass and MTV era. They reunited at university, started shooting paid music videos, formed Rise in 2011, and went all-in around 2014. Today it is a nine-person, all-inclusive studio in South London.
In this episode, the trio joins Dario and Kyrill for the show’s first-ever three-guest conversation, and it is a candid look at what it actually takes to run a company with three co-founders. They dig into buying gear outright versus renting, the server and backup infrastructure that quietly changed their business, how they hire and keep a team, the fine art of managing client expectations, and the rare on-set shorthand that only comes from a lifetime of friendship.
Key Takeaways
- Shared passions fuel growth. A common background, in this case parkour and free running, sparked the founders’ love of camera work and gave Rise a distinctive identity and story.
- Buy gear that earns its keep. Rise buys kit outright and slowly, prioritizing workhorse cameras, lenses, and lighting they use every week, and renting cinema cameras for the one-off jobs that need them.
- Infrastructure beats toys. Servers, a Parsec-based remote editing setup, and a disciplined three-location backup changed the business more than any new camera, enabling fast turnarounds and remote freelancers.
- Culture drives retention. A nicer office, perks like gym memberships and private healthcare, passion-project funding, and team reviews keep good people, and finding good people is the hard part.
- Manage expectations, not just quality. A happy client is less about how good the video is and more about how the result compares to what they expected, so set expectations early and often.
- Be willing to say no. Rather than under-crew a shoot and risk their reputation, Rise will advise against a job or turn it down, and clients often respect them more for it.
- Keep roles defined yet flexible. Each founder has a clear specialty, technical, creative, and people-facing, while everyone still dips into shooting, editing, and directing to stay fresh.
- Build all-inclusive and in-house. Handling everything from pre-production through post, plus digital marketing aftercare, gives clients a seamless, cost-effective process.
- Friends first, partners second. With three co-founders there is never a split decision, and a friendship that predates the business is what makes the two-versus-one calls painless.
Timestamps
From Parkour to Production
Rise Media did not start with a business plan; it started with parkour. Mark and Dan had been friends since nursery, and they met Mike at fifteen through free running, all of them filming each other doing stupid, brilliant things in the MTV and Jackass era. That love of camera work followed them to university, where they reunited on a digital film course, started shooting paid music videos as coursework, and formally launched Rise in 2011, going fully in around 2014.
The turning point was their first real contract: a preferred-supplier deal with News Corp that gave them a forecast of work for the first time, followed closely by Hearst and its stable of magazine brands. Crucially, even while freelancing individually, they always pitched under one banner, Rise, and that team-first instinct became the company’s ethos.
A distinctive origin is genuinely useful positioning, the same idea behind the power of niching down and building a magnetic brand around who you actually are.
Buying Gear That Earns Its Keep
One of the most practical threads is about money and equipment. Rise buys kit outright, no finance or leasing, and takes its time doing it, which meant zero equipment overheads when the pandemic shut everything down. Their rule is simple: buy what earns heavy use. The FX6s go out several times a week and are worth owning; a cinema camera used two or three times a year is cheaper to rent, so they sold their beloved RED Gemini and hire in for the jobs that call for it.
They also buy into whatever their trusted freelancers shoot on, so the whole ecosystem stays compatible. Matching tools to the work is what separates a sustainable studio from a gear-acquisition habit, part of what distinguishes a production company from a videographer and what shapes what a video actually costs.
Post-Production That Scales
As the team grew, the founders are candid that the least glamorous investments mattered most. They moved off external hard drives to a plumbed-in server setup (QNAP and Synology), added dedicated edit machines, and built a three-location backup: the primary edit server in the office, a second office server for the archive, and an offsite copy at a founder’s home. When Dropbox hiked its price to roughly nine thousand a year, they bought their own servers instead and expect to make the cost back in a couple of years.
The real unlock was Parsec, which lets editors, including freelancers, beam into a dedicated machine and cut straight off the server without shipping drives or downloading footage. Solid systems are what let a studio take on bigger, more complex work, closely tied to a smooth corporate video production process and the animation work Rise also delivers in-house.
Building a Team People Stay At
Rise handles projects in-house with a nine-person team, and the founders are deliberate about culture. Their first hire, John, was an editor and animator brought on because editing had become the bottleneck; he now leads post-production. They have since added shooters, editors, and a producer, and they invest in keeping them: a nicer office people actually enjoy, perks like gym memberships and private healthcare, twice-yearly team reviews, and a passion-project initiative where the company funds a team member’s pitched idea. They have even opened up the directors’ business chats to the whole team.
As Dan puts it, retention is the goal because the hardest part is finding good people. Investing in your team is one of the highest-return decisions a studio can make, exactly the ground covered in growing and investing in your team and vetting and managing talent.
Creativity Within the Brief
Every studio wrestles with the tension between creative ambition and client expectations, and Rise is refreshingly practical about it. In a market full of one-man-bands, they are confident enough to advise a client against an under-crewed shoot, or even turn a job down, rather than risk delivering work that hurts their reputation. Dan’s go-to line reframes it around the client: he tells them he does not feel he can complete the project to a quality they will be happy with, which puts the onus on the budget, not on his ability.
Their bigger insight is that client happiness is a fine art of managing expectations, not just maximizing quality. Getting that balance right starts before the shoot, with the clarity that goes into pitching as a producer and helping a client choose the right partner in the first place.
“Having a happy client at the end of the project is a fine art, and it’s not necessarily to do with how good the video is, it’s all to do with their expectations in relation to how good the video is.”
Mike Lienard, Rise MediaThree Directors, One Vision
Running a company with three founders could be chaos, but Rise makes it a strength. Their skill sets are genuinely different: Mark is the technical mind who also handles accounts and a lot of producing, Dan is the creative and director, and Mike is the people person who drives business development and lead generation. With three of them there is never a split decision, and it took more than a decade for their roles to fully settle, so they still happily dip into shooting, editing, and directing to keep things fresh. They direct together as The Rise Guys, backed by an all-inclusive, in-house model that spans pre-production to post plus digital marketing aftercare.
That full-service, tightly-run approach is exactly how boutique studios punch above their weight, and it is the same long-game thinking behind building a video business that lasts. If you want a Toronto team with that same all-inclusive range, from promotional and event work to a full slate of corporate video, that is what Lapse Productions does.
“I think the key is that the three of us are friends before business partners.”
Dan Morbin, Rise MediaFrequently Asked Questions
Who are the founders of Rise Media?
Mike Lienard, Dan Morbin, and Mark Lunt, friends since school who reunited at university, founded Rise Media in 2011, and still direct together as The Rise Guys.
What is Rise Media?
An all-inclusive video production company based in South London, producing branded content, commercials, event, animation, and property video for brands, with in-house production and full digital marketing aftercare.
How did parkour lead to a video company?
The founders’ shared passion for parkour and free running got them filming each other as teenagers, and that love of camera work grew into Rise Media.
How does Rise Media retain its team?
By investing in culture: a nicer office, perks like gym memberships and private healthcare, funded passion projects, and regular team reviews, because the hardest part is finding good people.
How do three founders divide the work?
Each has a defined specialty, technical, creative, and people-facing, while keeping cross-functional skills so the team stays agile. With three founders, decisions never end in a tie.
The Hosts
Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov are the co-founders of Lapse Productions, a Toronto video production company, and the hosts of Creatives Grab Coffee, a weekly show about the business of video production.
About
Creatives Grab Coffee is a podcast about the business behind video production: sales, strategy, pricing, team building, and everything that happens off camera. New episodes every week on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Lapse Productions is a Toronto-based video production company serving tech, finance, healthcare, and manufacturing clients with corporate, promotional, event, and animation video. New to commissioning video? Start with our guide to the types of corporate video.
Rise Media is an all-inclusive video production company based in South London, founded in 2011 by Mike Lienard, Dan Morbin, and Mark Lunt. The nine-person team handles branded content, commercials, event, animation, and property video in-house, backed by full digital marketing aftercare, for clients including News Corp and Hearst. Learn more at risemedia.co.uk.
