Assertion Supported
Ovitz: AI music platforms Suno and Udio construct songs using copyrighted IP
“We've seen it, what's going on with Suno and Udio, where they're taking IP that other people own, even 10 seconds of it, and Constructing custom-made songs.”
Insight
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”
Opinion
Ovitz: Roughly 90% of co-founded businesses push out one founder
“I don't want to put a percentage on it, because I honestly don't know. But if you asked me, off the top of my head, I'd say 90%.”
Insight
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…”
Insight
Ovitz: AI requires modern operators to be generalists unless founding deep tech
“Today, there's no such thing. Today, you have to be a generalist. You have to know a little bit about everything, and then, unless you're a deep scientist, and you're founding Palantir, or Anthropic, or one of these businesses that require extraordinary brain …”
Opinion
Ovitz: Phil Knight is the most competitive businessman alive
“Phil Knight is the most competitive businessman alive, and bar none.”
Opinion
Ovitz agrees with Peter Thiel's Stanford lectures advocating for corporate monopolies
“I love Peter Thiel's Monopoly lectures at Stanford. He's spot on.”
Insight
Ovitz: Producers shouldn't enter the editing room with visionary directors like Scorsese
“First of all, he shouldn't have been in the editing room. It's okay for Marty's agents to be in the editing room, but not the producer, unless the producer is someone incredibly close to him where they've done multiple movies together.”
Disclosure
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…”
Insight
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.”
Disclosure
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…”
Assertion Contradicted
Ovitz: Stanley Kubrick never had any talent agent besides Michael Ovitz
“He never had an agent except me, and I could talk to him because Marty basically educated me”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ovitz: CAA represented 46 of top 50 grossing filmmakers
“Having A 75% market share of the talent for me wasn't enough, which people thought I was crazy, because no one had ever gotten over 25. We had 46 of the top 50 grossing filmmakers in the world.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ovitz: CAA made 35 Coke ads on 6-ad budget
“Coke was doing six commercials a year for the same budget. We did 35 for the same budget, and we got Quincy Jones to redo their theme song, and we changed their saying.”
Assertion Contradicted
Ovitz: CAA never lost a single agent during his tenure
“We didn't lose an agent in the whole time I was at CA, not one.”
Opinion
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…”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Insight
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, …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Assertion Partly supported
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.”
Disclosure
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,”
Michael Ovitz