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: Business fundamentals are identical across every industry
“The reality of business, which very few people really grasp, is that the basics of business, no matter what the field is, are exactly the same. The blocking and tackling parts are the same.”
Ovitz: Building tech startups is structurally identical to packaging Hollywood entertainment
“A film or a television show or a book or a song is packaged around talent. Talent, creator, engineer, same thing. Talent needs someone to help execute. Engineer needs people around them to help get the business in line and organize, coded, whatever they need d…”
Ovitz spent a year cultivating Japanese relationships while impatient American peers failed
“In the early eighties, I was going to Japan once a month for business, and friends of mine were going, and they'd come back, and they'd call me, and they said, my God, I just had the greatest meeting in Japan. I'm going to close. And I'd start laughing, and th…”
Ovitz: Business is a cutthroat sport requiring Magic Johnson's competitive drive
“Business is a competitive cutthroat sport. Now, I'm not saying you do anything immoral or illegal, and you have to have guidelines, but if you're not willing to get out there and do what Magic Johnson did on the court, or Michael Jordan, or any of the greats, …”
Ovitz: Magic Johnson was the first contemporary athlete to build a business
“He came to me and said, look, I want to be in business. No other athletes at that time said that, and they did their service, and 35, they were done. Irvin said, when I'm done, I want to be able to be a businessman, and we went and set that course.”
Ovitz mailed weekly CAA movie star signing announcements to rival agency partners
“Every time we signed a movie star, which was once a week, we took out a full red page ad in Variety. This is when there was no computers. People actually read and took out every Friday. Every time we signed a movie star, I took that ad, tore it, put it in an e…”
Ovitz: CAA once represented 46 of the top 50 box office filmmakers
“At one time, CAA representative of the top 50 grossing variety box office filmmakers, we had 46. 46. And I was upset, because I didn't have all of them. There were four I couldn't get, and it really upset me, and it gnawed at me my whole career there.”
Ovitz consulted for Steve Jobs on Pixar during its earliest days
“I consulted for years for him on Pixar when he first had the idea, and it was some of the best times I ever had because he's whip smart, unbelievable memory, totally unstoppable with an idea,”
Ovitz: Dealmakers and founders must never dwell on lost deals or mistakes
“You can't look back. I am so upset when friends of mine that try to do deals that I consult on, and they make a mistake or they lose it, and then they dwell on it. It's dumb. It's not going to change. So what are you looking back for? I don't like to look back…”
Ovitz: David Geffen and Barry Diller are better read than most PhDs
“These guys didn't go to college. They're better read than most PhDs that I know in any field.”
Ovitz: CAA agents were required to answer colleagues before clients or buyers
“Our inner office rule was you had to answer your associates first before the clients, before the buyers.”
Ovitz: Self-deception is the primary cause of professional failure across industries
“Well, I think the first place everybody goes wrong is they start to believe things that aren't true. People tend to deceive themselves. I find that to be a common denominator amongst everybody across every kind of industry. It happens everywhere.”
Ovitz: Entertainment power lists are nonsense and power is an ephemeral lease
“I thought these power lists that they developed in the entertainment business were just sheer nonsense because there's no such thing as power. It doesn't exist. And when people would say this one's the second most or the 10th most or you're the most powerful, …”
Ovitz: CAA financially supported early executive allies who fell on hard times
“You know, at CA we kept a list of every single executive That helped us in the first three or five years that then had trouble, and we got everyone a job, and if we couldn't get them a job, we made sure they had money. Because they helped us when we had nothin…”
Ovitz: Ask the Busiest Person When You Need Something Done
“When I need something done, I ask the busiest person I know to do it, because they'll get it done. Ask someone with too much time, it never gets done.”
Ovitz: Michael Crichton was the smartest person I knew until Marc Andreessen
“Well, he was the smartest person I knew until I met Marc Andreessen, and then I had the greatest lunch of my life where I put them in a room with me, and I put one on each end of the table and me in the middle, and I felt like I was at Wimbledon or the U.S. Op…”
Ovitz: Peter Thiel hired me to monetize Palantir before it had revenue
“I was introduced to him by Peter Thiel who had invested a lot of money in Palantir and there was no income. He asked me to help monetize it, which shows that you don't have to be totally technical to be in the tech world.”
Ovitz: Current tech founders care about past failures, not past successes
“This generation in tech. They just want to know They don't want to know what you've done that's great. They want to know what you failed at and how to avoid it.”
Ovitz: Stripe's Collison brothers are among the smartest executives in tech
“And I think the Collinson brothers are two of the smartest guys in the business.”
Ovitz: CAA banned internal political discussions during meetings to protect clients
“I didn't even allow political discussions to take place in meetings. I didn't want to get involved with our clients' politics.”
Ovitz: Building momentum requires continuous effort without cutting back even 10%
“When you're building momentum, you cannot quit. And that's the counter problem, counter argument to when we talked about cutting back. When you're building momentum, you don't want to stop even for 10% of your time.”
Ovitz: CAA recruited roughly 80% of executives internally or from standout competitors
“Matter of fact, we recruited, I'd say, 80% of our executives like that. We either groom inside or recruited them from the competition because they had our standards and they were at the wrong place in our mind.”
Ovitz: My AI watermarking startup partnered with Universal and Sony Music
“And now Universal, and then Dennis Coker and Rob Stringer at Sony. So we have the two biggest music companies, and we're watermarking songs, and we will go live very shortly.”
Ovitz: Leaders Must Resist Dopamine Addiction from Relentless Execution Momentum
“There's a negative In that as a successful business person where you're feeding on the dopamine of getting all these wonderful things done, and because you're on this roll and you have momentum, you can get so much more done that you want to do it every second…”
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 → |