Michael Ovitz
37 statements across 2 episodes · 12 bullish · 4 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Nov 23, 2025 by Michael Ovitz · said 9 times in 2 episodes since 2025 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Michael Ovitz's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by David Senra (8), Marc Andreessen (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 8 mentions in 1 episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Michael Ovitz, oldest first
Nov 23, 2025
Ovitz: Ran three newspaper delivery routes at age nine using aliases
“When I had a paper route at nine, I realized I had enough time to do three paper routes. And I went under another name, got the other two, because the guy delivering the bulk of papers thought he was delivering to three different people, and he thought no one …”
Nov 23, 2025 neutral
Ovitz: Loudcloud buyers in 1999 did not understand what cloud meant
“When I was on the board of Mark's first company Loud Cloud, they were dealing in an area that frankly, I really at the beginning in 1999 didn't understand it because they were talking about the cloud. I don't think anybody we were selling to understood what th…”
Nov 23, 2025 positive
Ovitz: Growing up without wealth instills drive that privileged peers rarely develop
“Because it gave me a sense of drive, ambition, and a goal-oriented thinking that any of my friends that didn't
Grow up like that, sort of, either, it was binary, they either had it, or they didn't have it, and most of the time they didn't have it.”
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025 negative
Ovitz: Rigid VC guardrails are counterproductive when investing in creative talent
“I frankly invest off people, not off all these insane rules that a lot of my friends that are venture capitalists put up, these kind of
guardrails that they won't go outside of. I've never seen a guardrail I don't try to jump. And I think that's the worst thi…”
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025 bearish
Nov 23, 2025 positive
Nov 23, 2025 positive
Patrick Collison spent 2.5 hours interrogating Ovitz's career mistakes
“Patrick sits down. He said, are you ready? I said, yeah, I'm starving. He goes, no, no, no, no. See your book? I said, yeah. He says, I have a lot of questions. I said, oh, sure, anything. He said, no. I want to know. I've marked every place you made a mistake…”
Nov 23, 2025 positive
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025
Ovitz: Traveled weekly to NYC and took red-eyes to work six-day weeks
“I traveled to New York every week, to Japan once a month, and to Europe once a month, and, but I did, I decided to do everything short. So if I went to New York, I would go for one day But I'd get in that one day, breakfast, lunch, drinks, dinner, meetings in …”
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025 positive
Ovitz: All businesses require aggressive market control and pursuit of monopoly
“Every business is the same. Now, the details are different, right, but the business is. The blocking and tackling is all the same. And it's always about momentum and focus and loyalty and aggressive, ah, control of marketplace and monopoly. Monopoly. I'm a mon…”
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025 positive
Ovitz: David Rockefeller funded MoMA expansion without explicitly asking trustees for money
“David raised all the money by himself to build the new museum.
And he took me out to dinner after I was a trustee, and we spent three hours talking about politics, art,
People, things that had happened in his life, travel, his 10,000 index card file... And he …”
Nov 23, 2025
Aug 9, 2026 neutral
Aug 9, 2026 negative
Ovitz defaults to twenty-minute Zoom meetings instead of standard hour blocks
“When someone says to me, I have to take an hour of Zoom, I kind of laugh at them. I said, what law is there on the planet that says a Zoom has to be an hour? I said, frankly, if you get free Zoom, they cut you off in 45 minutes. I said, so what rule is it that…”
Aug 9, 2026 positive
Ovitz pitched Jurassic Park to Spielberg, who agreed to direct immediately
“When I put Jurassic Park together, and I read the book, I said to Michael a couple of things. I said, one, it's brilliant, and everyone loves dinosaurs. Two, you don't need a big star, because the dinosaur's the star, which was important financially. And three…”
Aug 9, 2026
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…”
Aug 9, 2026 neutral
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…”
Aug 9, 2026
Ovitz: Creative companies die without leaders who intrinsically understand talent
“My thesis about all these companies, if you don't have someone that understands talent running the company, because you can always get an operator, if you don't have someone who understands talent, that company's gonna die”
Aug 9, 2026
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…”
Aug 9, 2026 bullish
Aug 9, 2026 positive
Aug 9, 2026 positive
Aug 9, 2026 negative
Aug 9, 2026
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.”
Aug 9, 2026
Aug 9, 2026 neutral
Aug 9, 2026
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.”
Aug 9, 2026 positive
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…”
Aug 9, 2026
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, …”
Aug 9, 2026
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…”
Aug 9, 2026 positive
Ovitz: Josh Kushner is wildly effective because he yields when proven wrong
“Josh then is exactly the same as the Josh today. There's no difference. Wildly smart, very loyal, low key, thoughtful, highly intelligent, and very easy to talk to, and will hold his ground But what makes him fantastic is he'll yield his position if he, if you…”