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BY SASHA ROGELBERG
J osh Weinberg, 29, had his first
big break on the set of Amazon
Prime Video’s “The Marvelous
Mrs. Maisel,” not as an actor, but as the
CEO behind the app Run A Better Set.

RABS is a web application that
functions two-fold: It acts as a digi-
tal check-in system for extras on set
and is an accounting tool, tracking
when extras on set clock in and out
and providing all payment paperwork
digitally. When the app was tested on the set
of season three episode two of “Mrs.

Maisel” during a scene with more than
700 extras and background characters,
everything went off without a hitch.

Weinberg remembers a production
assistant saying to him at the end of the
day, “You saved my wrists. Will you do
this again tomorrow?”
The Fairmount resident, who grew up
in Wynnewood and was bar mitzvahed
at Beth David Reform Congregation
in Gladwyne, didn’t expect to build a
software company for a living, but now
he can’t imagine doing anything else.

In 2022, four years after RABS’ 2018
genesis, Weinberg hopes to have 100
simultaneous clients at RABS and con-
tinue to expand services the software
can offer to industry businesses, such as
creating a database of extras for casting
companies and doing proprietary soft-
ware development for studios.

Courtesy of Josh Weinberg
You initially wanted to be a
screenwriter or producer grow-
ing up. What was your first
experience in the industry?
My first real experience was, when
I was in college, I took a few of what
they call “day player” jobs; you come
on as a temporary worker as a PA
(production assistant).

The first real job that facilitated
RABS’ creation was facilitated by
my cousin, another good Yid from
Lower Merion, Scott Rosenbaum. He
was filming a show called “Queen of
the South,” which is actually still on
the air, and it was shooting its first
season in Dallas.

And so I get this job through good
old-fashioned nepotism, living in
Josh Weinberg
Dallas. And they said to me, “Josh,
you are going to be what’s called
the extras PA, which means, here
you go, kid: Here’s 80 extras; here’s
480 pieces of paper; here’s a fold-
ing table and some highlighters and
Post-It pads. Figure it out.”
So, really, day one, I just looked
at this process, and I thought it was
horrible. I went up to the producers a few
days later and said, “Do you mind
getting me the app that deals with all
of this?” And they looked at me like,
“What? What are you talking about?”
They basically said that doesn’t
exist, so I said, “OK, I’ll make it exist.”
Where did your interest in the
film industry come from?
My family would watch “Curb [Your
Enthusiasm]” together, we would
watch Mel Brooks movies … We’d
watch Eddie Murphy on “SNL”
(“Saturday Night Live”). Those expe-
riences are moving in a lot of ways.

I was always an excellent per-
former, really good in front of a
crowd for whatever reason. So it
seemed like the right fit because
when I was on stage, I could really
make people laugh.

And then when you get older, you
sort of get kind of caught in the idea
of, “This is how I can impress people;
this is how I can make money; this is
how I can get famous.” All that stuff,
in a way, created the beginning of
a trajectory for me to go into show
business. When did you realize RABS
had taken off?
There’s a financial moment when
that actually happened, and there
was also an attitude.

The attitude was there from the
beginning. I just believe that if you
want to create something, there has
to be a strong intention — let’s just
call it a spiritual sacrifice.

But the financial moment … COVID
genuinely altered the trajectory of
the business because suddenly
I had a proven service that was
COVID-safe and solved a lot of
new production problems, and it
was already there and reliable. And
shows needed to go paperless; they needed to be COVID-safe;
they needed to connect the remote accounting offices to the
productions; they needed to be more efficient because there
was a lot more payment information to track.

So COVID, in that first wave of July 2020 — after the pandemic
had been around for a few months and the productions came
back — that’s when, suddenly, we had the accelerated growth
of what some would expect to come five years down the line
happening within the first two years.

Why stay in Philadelphia?
I’ve chosen to stay in Philadelphia because the economy has
changed. The business is totally remote. Business is all over the
country. Philadelphia is not a show business town. The reality is
that shows are in Atlanta, New York, British Columbia, Toronto,
Calgary. They’re everywhere, so you might as well be where you want
to be. That’s why I’m here. JE
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