Michael Ovitz
Chairman, Treville Capital Group. On 7 shows, 8 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestorauthor@MichaelOvitz ↗LinkedIn ↗michaelovitz.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Ovitz co-founded Creative Artists Agency in 1975, turning it into Hollywood's dominant talent agency before serving as President of The Walt Disney Company. He later transitioned into technology investing, founded Broad Beach Ventures, advised Andreessen Horowitz, and authored the memoir Who Is Michael Ovitz?
7shows
8appearances
174statements
35resolved
13supported
11contradicted
37%fully supported
127said about them ↓ Everything Michael Ovitz said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Ovitz: Don't read books to learn how to collect art
“When people ask me, how do I learn how to collect art? Do I read all these books? I said, don't read anything. I told you this on the last podcast.”
Ovitz: Mike Bloomberg Was an Amazingly Great Mayor Due to Business Background
“I was commenting about what an amazingly great mayor Mike Bloomberg was, even though he got in by accident. Cause he was a business guy and he thought about everything in terms of getting it done and how do you do it?”
Ovitz: The US Tech Scene Will Decisively Outcompete the Rest of the World
“I'll put Our tech scene up against anyone's in the world, hands down, we'll kill them. We'll kill them. We're just motivated, free thinkers.”
At Its Peak, CAA Represented 46 of the Top 50 Grossing Directors
“We had a 76% market share of talent. We had 46 of the top 50 grossing directors in the world.”
CAA Advised Corporate Owners of Three-Fifths of the Entertainment Industry
“So we had the owners of MGM, which were credibly in a bank, which I was a consultant to the chairman. We had the owners of Universal Studios, which was Matsusta Electric. And we had the owners of CBS Records and Columbia, which was Sony. And we had the owners …”
Ovitz: AI will primarily benefit production planning rather than harm content creation
“I happen to feel it's going to be a big benefit in production, especially in production planning with respect to creativity.”
Ovitz: Hollywood's entertainment community is overly insular and siloed
“The thing about Los Angeles and the, and particularly the entertainment community is it's an incredibly siloed community. They don't accept people. Very well from the outside, which, by the way, makes it very inbred, and it's not particularly wise.”
Ovitz: Streaming has basically destroyed the legacy entertainment business
“First of all, streaming has basically destroyed the legacy business.”
Ovitz: Streaming eliminated back-end profit-sharing deals in entertainment
“The entertainment business went from a, you get paid up front, and then you get a piece of the profits. So since streaming's come, you get paid up front, there are no profits.”
Ovitz: CAA represented 75% of Hollywood talent eight years after founding
“So we basically took 75% of the talent to the company within eight years of starting.”
Ovitz: Modern media is returning to legacy network-style censorship
“Some of the biggest fights as agents we ever had was protecting our creatives against the authority of what was the censorship department. And we're right back there now. We are right back there now.”
CAA represented roughly 45 of the top 50 highest-grossing directors in 1990
“And frankly, as CAA gained momentum in the eighties and early nineties, they didn't have a lot of choice because of the 50 top grossing directors in the, for example, in 90, CAA represented like 45 of them. So it was impossible. You couldn't say no.”
Coca-Cola approved all 35 commercials CAA presented in their agency shootout
“We got awarded the account And of the 35 commercials we presented, they approved every single one.”
CAA ran the Coca-Cola advertising account with six people versus McCann's 300
“So we had McCann Erickson had 300 human beings working on the Coke account. We had six.”
CAA lost fewer than six clients over a 25-year period
“As a matter of fact, in a 25 year period, I think we lost under six, five or six clients.”
Ovitz: CAA was first to represent Hoffman, Pacino, and De Niro simultaneously
“So, you know, I, we signed Hoffman, Pacino, and De Niro, which had never been done in history.”
Sony co-founder Akio Morita wanted a studio because Betamax lost to VHS
“Mr. Morita came to see me and wanted to buy, get into owning content because he was upset that Betamax, which was a superior technology to VHS, was losing to VHS. So he wanted to own a studio”
Ovitz: Seagram offered Warner Bros $6B cash standstill after buying 14%
“We had quietly accumulated 14% of the stock through Allen and Company for the Bronfman family. And I met with Steve Ross three weeks before he passed away. He was one of the greatest guys in history of the business. And he gave me three hours of his time where…”
Michael Ovitz proposed that Disney acquire Yahoo and CBS Records
“When I went to Disney, I put together seven initiatives. That I wrote about in the book that would have made Disney a fortune, starting with buying Yahoo, buying CBS records for two billion dollars, which is worth 10 times, 20 times that right now.”
Ovitz: CAA could not have succeeded using a less aggressive approach
“Someone asked me the other day, do you think you could have done it differently in the day? And I don't think that we could have because we were in a cutthroat business to start with.”
Ovitz: Golden Age Hollywood moguls were far more ruthless than CAA
“If you go back to the moguls of the thirties, forties, and fifties, the mayors, the Thalbergs, the Harry Cones, the Jack Warners of Warner Brothers, William Fox, you know, founded Fox Studios. These guys were tough as nails. They took no prisoners. They made u…”
Ovitz: Streaming capital and direct distribution make this a golden age
“It's a great time to be a creative person, because we went from a dearth of money to more money than anyone needs, and a new form of distribution.”
Ovitz: CAA's culture ate Hollywood just like a16z's ate venture capital
“Our culture ate the entertainment business. It just did, and so did the Andreessen Horowitz culture.”
Ovitz: Current tech era is more exciting than Hollywood's 1980s-90s golden age
“It's the most exciting time I've ever seen in my entire life, and that includes the entertainment sweet spot of the late seventies through the end of the nineties, which was the last great period in the film business and television business, pre-streaming obvi…”
The other half of the tape: Michael Ovitz's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 119 times in 30 episodes across the shows. 8 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ben Gilbert 20Ramtin Naimi 16David Rosenthal 13Chris Lyons 13Ben Horowitz 11Doc O'Connor 10Jason Calacanis 9David Senra 9
Statements about Michael Ovitz, by other people (8)
Horowitz: Negotiators must do anything legal and moral to close deals
“Look, I believe in artificial deadlines. I believe in playing one against the other. And I believe that you have to do anything and everything possible short of Immoral or illegal to get the damn deal done.”
Adding Michael Ovitz to a16z's board was internally controversial
“Yeah, it was it was controversial at the time, even amongst our own board. I won't name names, but yeah, it was it was different to have him.”
Naimi: Michael Ovitz owns the best Picasso, Rothko, and Kline artworks
“Michael, you know, I think he's got three Picassos, but I think he's got the three best Picassos ever. And he's got probably the best Mark Rothko I've ever seen. He's got the best Franz Klein I'd seen. Even on contemporary artists, he has the single best Laura…”
Chris Lyons: Andreessen Horowitz was modeled after CAA's service model
“The firm was actually built off Of CAA's model, and Ovitz was on the board of Mark and Ben's company, and so that's where they originally got the idea for A-sixteen Z and having a service-based model”
Horowitz: CAA became the world's top talent agency within 15 years
“The fact that he was able to create, by far, the most successful talent agency in the world, 15 years after starting, 75 years after vaudeville, is an impossible business story.”
Michael Ovitz lasted one year as Disney president, exiting with $140M severance
“So Ovitz lasts just over a year at Disney and leaves in December, 1996 with a hundred and forty million dollar severance package.”
Magic Johnson: Michael Ovitz reworked his NBA contract for free
“He reworked my contract to make me one of the highest paid in the NBA, But he did it, and then I said, well, how much I owe you? He said, I don't want nothing from you.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Acquired 34
the a16z Podcast 30
Invest Like the Best 20
Capital Allocators 13
All-In 12
David Senra 9
the Knowledge Project 1
2026 33 mentions in 5 episodes 7 per episode
- Inside The Life of Silicon Valley's First Athlete Investor | Magic Johnson
- Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- Marc Andreessen: The World Is More Malleable Than You Think
- The $2 Trillion Mind | Nicolai Tangen
- The NFL: How small-town teams became America's most valuable sports empire (Audio) · Acquired
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 53 mentions in 12 episodes 4 per episode
- How This VC Went From Broke to Becoming the Hot Hand in Silicon Valley · Invest Like The Best
- Coca-Cola: The Complete History & Strategy (Audio) · Acquired
- The Secret Marketing Strategy That Built a16z: From Zero to Legendary VC Firm
- AI, Attention, and Ownership: Ari Emanuel Explains the Next Era of Entertainment
- Ari Emanuel’s "Anti-AI" Bet on Live Entertainment · Invest Like The Best
- How Andreessen Horowitz Disrupted VC & What’s Coming Next
- TSMC · Acquired
- Daniel Ek, Spotify | David Senra
- 4 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2022 13 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- Benchmark Part I · Acquired
- Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version) · Acquired
- Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- SONY (75 years of electronics history in 3 hours) · Acquired
- E109: 2022 Bestie Awards Live from Twitter HQ
- E62: Elizabeth Holmes verdict, fraud origins & takeaways, navigating "The Great Markdown" & more
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 10 mentions in 1 episode
2020 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Michael's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DAVID SENRALEDGER | Chairman, Treville Capital Group | 2 | 44 | 29% 2/7 | full record on David Senra → |
| INVEST LIKE THE BESTLEDGER | Chairman, Treville Capital Group | 1 | 33 | 40% 4/10 | full record on Invest Like the Best → |
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Chairman, Treville Capital Group | 1 | 32 | 0% 0/2 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| ACQUIREDLEDGER | Chairman, Treville Capital Group | 1 | 23 | 67% 4/6 | full record on Acquired → |
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Chairman, Treville Capital Group | 1 | 19 | 40% 2/5 | full record on Capital Allocators → |
| ALL-INLEDGER | Chairman, Treville Capital Group | 1 | 14 | 0% 0/3 | full record on All-In → |
| a16zLEDGER | Chairman, Treville Capital Group | 1 | 9 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |