Olivier French’s idea for a film-finance startup started with a digital wallet. His co-founder came from a boxing gym in South Beach.
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French had spent more than 20 years working across film production and finance when he began thinking about a payment wallet built specifically for an industry where money can move through producers, banks, tax authorities, lenders, vendors and talent before a movie ever reaches an audience.
Then, at a South Beach boxing gym, he met tech executive Aleksandre “Sandro” Kokhreidze.
“We started talking about various projects we could do together,” French told Refresh Miami. Once French zeroed in on what he saw as the bigger problem, he said Kokhreidze was “the perfect guy” to help tackle it. Kokhreidze has a hybrid tech-finance background, having worked on projects for Nike, Fidelity, and Japanese insurance giant Tokio Marine.
The result is Q Intelligence, a Miami-based startup building what the founders call a financial operating system for global film and television production.
The problem Q is going after is partly a consequence of how movies get made. A single production might combine tax incentives from multiple countries, private financing, and other forms of capital, then send money through payroll companies, escrow accounts, and vendors while managing contracts and a shooting schedule.
And something, French noted, inevitably goes wrong.
“In the meantime, you can’t stop shooting because you’re burning money,” he said. The issue, as he sees it, is a gap between reporting and action: by the time financial information reaches decision-makers, a production may already have moved on. The company estimates that cost reports can arrive five to seven days late and put typical production overruns at 20% to 40%.
Q aims to sit above existing production tools, giving producers and financiers a clearer view of budgets, contracts, capital and payments rather than replacing the systems they already use. Think of it as a layer connecting budgeting, tax incentives, banks, escrow, and payroll with real-time reporting and financial controls.
For users, the process would begin with uploading a production budget. Q would help assess tax incentives and build the project’s capital stack, then track financial activity as production progresses.
French emphasized that the goal is not to automate the producer out of the process. “We’re about providing the right intelligence and allowing the producer – the human in the loop, as we say – to make better decisions quicker.”
For now, Q is starting with a narrower product focused on tax incentives. French said the company has partnered with a tax-incentive provider and is building its own product on top, with two or three pilot programs expected to be signed in the coming weeks. Its roadmap then moves into approval controls, escrow, payments, and, eventually, reporting and intelligence for investors, insurers, and lenders.
The company is also raising a $250,000 bridge SAFE followed by a planned $2.5 million seed round.
For French, Miami has proven a fitting place to build a company sitting between finance, tech and entertainment. He pointed to our city’s growing pool of entrepreneurs, VCs and capital, while acknowledging that film’s traditional centers remain elsewhere.
But Q’s ambitions extend well beyond South Florida.
“The long-term vision is that we want to become the infrastructure for how capital moves through production,” French said. “We want to be the intelligence layer and the control layer that sits above everything.”
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