In this conversation we sit down with Scott Nihill, the co-founder of Embreate - an interdisciplinary agency focused on creating and producing original, interactive, story-based experiences that is resident at StartWell.

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Qasim Virjee 0:20

All right back once again for this time, the 15th episode of the struggle Podcast. I'm Qasim Virjee, the CEO, and founder of start well, and this time around, I'm in the studio on King Street West in Toronto with Scott from Embrey. Eight. There was another, another person in the studio a second ago. But unfortunately, Alison, your partner? All right, yeah, two partners in the company had a cold. So she'll be joining us for another session of the podcast. Unfortunately, it's just Scott and myself. So that might make it more boring. I don't know. We'll see. We're talking about their company embryo and a couple other things to do with Toronto's animation. Illustration kind of creative scene, we'll see where this conversation takes us. And with that, I welcome you to the studio. Thank you very much good to be here. Or do you want to just introduce to our listeners introduce who you are, and then we'll jump into the company a little bit? Sure.

Scott Nihill 1:15

Yep. My name is Scott. I run a company called Ember eight been working in the I guess, the industry, sort of gaming, interactive animation, music, video, that sort of thing for about 15 years.

Qasim Virjee 1:29

15 years. So this goes back to like, when, you know, the media Wild West a little bit the days of flash? Yeah, Macro media.

Scott Nihill 1:36

Yeah, I can remember a time when the first studio that I worked at was a place called Big casters. It's not around anymore. But that was at a time when the you know, maybe down Richmond street, there was a handful of companies doing websites, right. Not doing fancy flash websites at the time. Oh, yeah. But the, you know, this whole kind of maker scene, and the startup scene, which just didn't exist whatsoever at that point.

Qasim Virjee 2:04

Yeah, absolutely. Better force. No, I remember. I mean, I remember the early days of kind of the media scene, it was all intermingled. Right? interactive design was this thing people were thinking about for digital interfaces with fresh kind of eyes. And it was conversational from Yeah, all elements from web to animation to it's interesting to content creation in linear kind of narrative format, as well. And those, yeah, it was a very creative time in Toronto. I think we're also the city felt like it was coming out of whatever it had been always but this kind of like sleepy Anglo malaise. For me anyway, when I moved here in 2005, from New York, so I felt like I was coming into this kind of like, too large to be as provincial as it felt city. And I knew interesting things were going to start to that was one of my motivators for

Scott Nihill 2:54

coming here. So that's where you were from was New York, or That's

Qasim Virjee 2:57

right. I was recently from like, I spent a year in New York before coming here. And then before that, all over the place. So I guess, Montreal, for university and before that, I was in Nairobi, Kenya for like six years, and doing my own levels, a levels like school, and originally before that as an Albertan. Okay, so yeah, I don't know if I've ever said it on the mic. But yeah, I was born in Edmonton.

Scott Nihill 3:22

Alright, you're coming out? Yeah, I remember a couple years ago, I went to New York for a few months and came back and was amazed at how much of a sort of a cottage town Toronto felt like compared to the size of, you know, in the experience of a city like New York, but living here, it feels like there's a lot happening, and there's a lot going on, but it is it is still a city that where I think there's a lot of room to grow.

Qasim Virjee 3: