Andreessen Interviewing Ovitz
Via All Things D, a strong interview on CAA as a disruptor in the 75-year-old entertainment talent game with a $100k line of credit, utilizing only $21k.
What’s interesting on both a disruptor and company building level is that Ovitz and his early partners were able “with a standing start” to launch CAA. Ovitz shares how they went for their bank line, and the head of the bank was good friends with William Morris’ CFO, where Ovitz et al were currently agents. Realizing they were about to all get fired, they pulled an all-nighter to lock up their partnership, and then went in the next morning and resigned.
Similar in some nature to how Ari Emanuel and his departing ICM coterie created Endeavor in 1995, Ovitz shares the hardships of the early days. Like an internet startup, CAA was independent looking to leverage deals.
Call it image disruption, but Ovitz and team had to carve out an instant image then propagate it with talent. Brand (and image) was paramount which is obviously a Southern/Northern California difference, but CAA’s early days were also pre- most consumer technology.
Ovitz jokes about media being disintermediated, an ugly word but one in which the instant scale of technology reach has yet to be fully understood by Hollywood.
Social media – for what it was worth – in 1975, when CAA was founded, consisted of making a list of potential clients and then methodically working to close them; early networking as it were. CAA reconstituted the talent agency model, differentiating it while overnight creating an agency on par with the established.
One can imagine Andreessen’s interest in Ovitz would be in creating disruptive/upstart businesses that outmaneuver and then continue to build as successors of their media vertical. As media companies transform, it will be interesting to watch how traditional media success stories work to tell a new story in digital.
