Damian Pelliccione — CEO of Revry on Launching a Queer TV Streamer, 4x Founder Diversity, and Grassroots Power

Damian Pelliccione is the co-founder and CEO of Revry. We discuss saying no to his family cheese business, being an early expert in live video for car shows, launching the 1st Queer streamer network from his living room, how a delayed mortgage and the launch of QueerX festival almost bankrupt the company, the power of grassroots marketing during SF Pride, how diversity inclusion starts with ownership, and changing the narrative for the Queer community.

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Chris Erwin:

Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.

Damian Pelliccione:

Cut to November, around Thanksgiving of 2015. I was playing a new Apple TV. You install it on your TV and you search for apps of apps that are of interest to you. I searched lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer. Nothing came up. I was like, ding. The light bulb went off. This is it. We're going to create the first LGBT streaming network. I had Alia, LaShawn, and Chris in my living. I said, "I have this idea. What do you guys think?" They were like, "Yeah, let's do it. We're all in."

Chris Erwin:

This week's episode features Damian Pelliccione, the co-founder and CEO of Revry. Damian was born in Canada, and since a young age had a passion for the creative arts. So he passed on taking over his family's large cheese and food distribution business, and moved to New York City to study acting and production. But after the tragic events of 9/11, Damian decided to move to LA and became an early mover and shaker in digital video. He did it all, from early web streaming and YouTube production, to producing live streams at car shows, and even running his own digital workshops.

Chris Erwin:

In 2015, Damian was sitting in his living room with three friends, frustrated by the fact that there wasn't any queer streamer apps on platforms like Apple TV or Amazon Prime, so he decided to change that and soon after launched the first 24/7 queer streamer network, Revry TV.

Chris Erwin:

Damian and I get into a lot of different things during our chat. Some highlights include how a delayed mortgage and the launch of the QueerX festival almost cost Damian the company, the wild success of grassroots marketing at San Francisco Pride, why Damian was such a standout at one of my executive dinners in LA, and changing the narrative for the queer community.

Chris Erwin:

All right, I'm pumped that we get to publish this episode during Pride month. Let's get to it.

Chris Erwin:

Damian, thanks for being on the podcast.

Damian Pelliccione:

Thanks so much, Chris, for having me. It's exciting to be here.

Chris Erwin:

Awesome. Let's rewind a bit. Why don't you tell me about where you grew up and what your household was like.

Damian Pelliccione:

Yeah, so I grew up actually in Canada. I'm from Toronto, a suburb of Toronto actually called Unionville, which is a small town, colonial, turn of the century, Victorian home that I grew up that was built in the later 1800s. It was a wonderful place to grow up because it was extremely multicultural. There was definitely not one of anything in terms of race and culture. Ironically enough, even though my family is extremely Italian, my father was actually born in Italy and immigrated at six years old to escape World War II. He was the youngest of six. Both my nonna and nonno, which is Italian for grandmother and grandfather-

Chris Erwin:

Oh, I'm Italian as well.

Damian Pelliccione:

Really?

Chris Erwin:

My mother was born in Italy, in Trieste, on what used to be the Yugoslavian border. I know nonna and pop pop. That's my grandparents.

Damian Pelliccione:

Parli Italiano?

Chris Erwin:

No. My mom spoke Italian growing up, and spoke it with my grandmother, but never taught the children. To this day, we always give my mom crap about that.

Damian Pelliccione:

[inaudible 00:03:33]. This is where my talking with my hands, that is completely my Italian [crosstalk 00:03:39].

Chris Erwin:

It's all coming together now.

Damian Pelliccione:

All coming together, yeah. My family, my dad, was from [inaudible 00:03:46], which is in the [inaudible 00:03:49] province of Abruzzo. Unfortunately it was ravaged by a massive earthquake in the early 2000s. Since recovered, but we still have family there. I have cousins actually there. My dad... cross section of Damian is my dad was the entrepreneur in the family. Him and my uncle started the family business, which is huge in Canada. We're, I think in the top five biggest Italian cheese distributors to Canada.

Chris Erwin:

Wow.

Damian Pelliccione:

They obviously distribute to the United States as well. They built that from scratch, my dad and my uncle, and now all my cousins run the company. I had no interest in selling cheese.

Chris Erwin:

Was the opportunity was available to you and you were just like, "Ah, pass"?

Damian Pelliccione:

Of course. In a big Italian family, the opportunity was given to me and my sister. Both of us past. My sister, Kelly, was definitely going into a different sector than sales and cheese distribution. It's ironic, because I'm in distribution, but I'm more on the film and TV side of distribution, not the food side of distribution. Definitely was very inspired by my father, who was a tremendous salesman, and an entrepreneur who ran his own businesses and obviously started the big family business with my uncle.

Damian Pelliccione:

Then, ironically enough, my mother is also Italian, but she is third generation. Her and her parents were born in Canada. Her grandparents were born in Italy, a different part of Italy, too. Calabria, which is the heel of Italy, just across from Sicily. It's a little bit different in terms of Italian traditions between the two families, but obviously my mom and my dad are wonderful people. My mother was a politician. She was chairman of the Catholic school board. So was my father, actually, before my mother was. She ran the race relations committee in our city where we grew up. You can see, my mother was a politician, and my father, the entrepreneur, and out comes Damian.

Chris Erwin:

Yeah, I was going to say, I was like, it makes total sense because I think about, you're the ultimate showmen. You have incredible charisma. I remember that from when we first met at one of our executive dinners. Then the entrepreneurial bend, now I know where that comes from. Yeah, totally get it now.

Damian Pelliccione:

One of the biggest things, you know Toronto. Most of my family lives in Woodbridge, or Vaughan, which is extremely Italian, predominantly Italian. My mother and my father were very much, this is instilled in me and my sister growing up, about being respectful and understanding and learning about all races, religions, and cultures and walks of life. They chose Unionville, which is a part of town where it was very eclectic. I had friends from all over the world, whose families were immigrants from all over the world. I had so many different cultural upbringings. My parents even made me and my sister, even though I was raised Catholic... I'm not very practicing myself. I consider myself Agnostic, but made us go to all the different: Hindu, Jewish, Islam, all the different sects to see what that religion could provide.

Chris Erwin:

Would you actually go to their places of worship?

Damian Pelliccione:

Yeah. I went once or twice to multiple places of worship my mother would take me and my sister to because she wanted us to experience everybody. I think that is where, at least for me, it was instilled at a very young age, were authenticity, diversity, and inclusion, before it was even a thing. This is the late 80s, early 90s. I'm 40 years old now. That was always a part of my upbringing. I think it's ironic where you have a mother politician, father, entrepreneur, and very inclusive family in terms of how we were raised and outcomes Damian and Revry.

Chris Erwin:

Your mother was super ahead of the times giving you exposure to these different religions and different cultures early on. I get that. I see that as a seed for what you're doing for the overall queer community, trying to drive awareness and inclusion and change the message around queer culture. I think that's brilliant.

Chris Erwin:

I think that you are involved in the dramatic arts and the school for film and TV at an early age as well. Was this something that came out in your teen years, or before then? When did that start to be?

Damian Pelliccione:

I was a scene stealer before I was even five years old. I think my performance started at family functions where I have some cousins, and we're all born the same year. I would direct and create the family productions. The kids would get together and we would put on some kind of a show, where it was a musical number, a comedy, or whatever. We would perform for the whole family in the living room. I did this growing up, I think until the time I was 10 or 12 years old. We made that a fun family activity. Of course that led me into being an actor, and I started with community theater, just like anyone else does in Unionville or Markham, Ontario, where I'm from.

Damian Pelliccione:

From there, I auditioned for t