Young Entrepreneur Dilan Mistry

Contributed by Gabriella Rudy | Written by Melani Morose Edelstein

Palos Verdes native Dilan Mistry is an optimist with faith in society and a strong belief in the power of stories. Beginning as a young student in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District and continuing today, Mistry has dedicated his life to connecting people and communities to the stories that live amongst us.

The filmmaker, entrepreneur, executive producer and investor began his creative and business endeavours as a Palos Verdes High School student. He began his first start up company, Dilan Mistry Films as a student and quickly cashed in on the idea by printing and selling t-shirts with the company’s names emblazoned down the arm. His interest in filmmaking and storytelling was honed as a three year member of the high school’s broadcast news program, Live from 205 where he came to believe that everybody has a story. As a self starter, Mistry is still gratified by the Instagram account he began back in the day @humansofpvhs. Each week, the account posted a profile on a student or staff member of PV High, revealing something unique about them that the community was unaware of.

“That’s probably one of the things that I’m most proud of. The account is still active and it’s so impactful,” Mistry says. “It really has such an emotional value to it that it resonates with people not just at PV High, but all across the Peninsula. It breaks boundaries.”

Breaking boundaries is important to Mistry due to his deep personal connection to the South Bay community. As a middle schooler, his mom Roma Mistry, retired from a law career to support him and his sister by working in leadership positions at their schools and more notably The Peninsula Education Foundation, simultaneously making a name for herself in the Palos Verdes community. As a result of his mom’s dedication he grew up with a strong support systemof family, friends, teachers and mentors to whom he attributes much of his current success.

“The people that shaped me growing up always encouraged me to dream big and pursue my passions from a really early age. That’s one of the biggest reasons I started @humansofpvhs, I really wanted to give back and show my appreciation for my community,” Mistry explains. While managing this account and searching for untold stories, Dilan was concurrently working on various projects for Dilan Mistry Films.

“At first, I was literally doing anything I could get my hands on, weddings, holiday parties, you name it. But then I started DMing brands on Instagram and offering to take photos of their products in exchange for the product itself. And from there, it just took off,” he says.

Working with brands such as Meister Watch, Thermo Tank, and Far Out Sunglasses gave Dilan business experience, which he soon channeled in the form of his second company founded in high school, Palos Verdes Tutoring Company. The company employed Dilan’s peers in an effort to pair students in need of scholarly assistance with tutors who had taken their exact classes with the same teachers years before.

“I wanted to do something where I could be more on the business side,” Dilan said. “At the time, working on Dilan Mistry Films, I was the one behind the camera doing everything. I wanted something different, an experience where I could manage the business from the top level.”

Despite never having tutored a single student Dilan was able to turn a nice profit out of his business model.

“It was super cool to get all my friends paid and to make them a lot of money. We got really creative with advertising. My friends and I would print out flyers and put them all over school in the most random spots like on the security’s golf carts and in the bathroom stalls, and it surprisingly worked really well,” he says. “PV Tutoring Company was my first real taste of the business world and it definitely helped me discover that that’s the world I belong in.”

This realization motivated Dilan to attend Chapman University to pursue his passions. Drawn to the collaborative environment the university fostered, Dilan utilized the resolve of his college community to help him create the two companies that he runs today, NativeFour and Intertidal LA. NativeFour, is a commercial production company that specializes in telling stories of drive and determination. Dilan and his partner/director, Cameron Thuman, work with clients to evoke motivational and underdog stories that define the brands they partner with. Mistry is proud of the work he does. Most notably, he and his team recently celebrated the premier of one NativeFour’s films “The Spirit of AMG: The Silber-Sau” at the famous Chinese theater in Hollywood.

“The vision for the company is to keep growing it, to keep working with more creatives, sign more directors to our roster and continue to meet really cool and inspiring people and tell their stories,” Dilan said. “It’s all very similar to @humansofpvhs honestly, I guess that was part of the inspiration.”

The inspiration morphed into the creation of the second company that Dilan leads today, Intertidal LA, which was founded two months before the pandemic began. The initial intent of the business was simply to make quick money to put toward films for NativeFour.

“In this business, you need capital,” Dilan said. “ I saw this opportunity where we were doing videos and getting asked, ‘Can you get results from them? Can you vertically integrate them?’ Once I realized that I could, Intertidal LA was born.”

The full-service marketing company gained traction quickly, and within the first six months of its launch, Dilan had signed multiple LA-centric clients. The main goal of Intertidal LA today is to fill any gaps companies may have in their marketing agendas and continue to support their clients once these issues have been fixed. And his favorite part: both Intertidal LA and NativeFour maintain Dilan’s strong connections to the South Bay community that he cherishes.

“I’ve always thought that the best way to give back to my community for the ways they’ve supported me is to support them right back, and that’s exactly what NativeFour and Intertidal LA do,” Dilan said. “Whether it’s working for the biggest brands in the world or small businesses in Palos Verdes, I’ve found a way to do both.”

Along with the progress he made in college creating and defining his companies before he graduated, Dilan made connections at school that have been integral to both his business and personal growth. Today, he takes pride in maintaining those connections and strengthening them, but especially in passing them along to others, just as he did back in high school.

“The thing that brings me the most satisfaction and enjoyment is taking two people who have no idea that one another exists, introducing them, watching them do something incredible together, and knowing that I had a small part of it,” he says. “That’s what I did in high school, that’s what I did in college, and that’s what I continue to do now.”