Photographer: Stephen Hilger/Bloomberg News.
I recently sat down with entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg whose latest venture is mobile-first, millennial-focused video subscription service Quibi. Part 1 (of 2) of my interview was published in Forbes last week, in which Katzenberg discussed Quibi, Netflix and the future of entertainment.
Here, in Part 2, my primary goal was to get a real sense of a man who, as he says, “swings for the fences” in everything he does. First, as a young assistant for Hollywood legend Barry Diller who was then Chairman of Paramount Pictures. Then, as Paramount’s President of Production at the young age of 29, where he reported to Michael Eisner. Next, as top dog of Disney’s motion picture group after Eisner became Disney’s CEO and took Katzenberg with him. Later, after being fired from Disney, when he formed his own studio, DreamWorks, with fellow moguls Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. And now with Quibi, after having made some significant digital moves in between, like buying - and then selling at a 5X return - digital-first video pioneer AwesomenessTV. Katzenberg, ever the disruptor, was well ahead of virtually all other “traditional” entertainment executives when he jumped head first into the digitally-driven, transformed media and entertainment world.
What drives Katzenberg? What motivates him to push so hard after all these years? And who inspires and motivates him due to their own brand of fearless innovation? Some of Katzenberg’s answers may surprise you. (Note: I have made some very minor edits to our Q&A for the sake of clarity.)
I. KATZENBERG: ON WHAT MOTIVATES HIM
Jeffrey, given all the success you’ve had, what is it that drives you to do what you do? What motivates you to run hard and keep running? Obviously, you don’t need to come into the office and take several breakfast meetings each day.
JK: I think it’s a bunch of things, and they sort of intersect with one another. First and perhaps most fundamentally, which has been true my entire life, work is happiness for me. I’m happy when I’m working. I’m happy when I have tasks and things that have to get done. And it’s been true whether I’ve been a twenty year old kid as a gopher, Barry Diller’s assistant, or chasing the sun, the moon, the stars, and pretty much the whole galaxy, which is what we’re doing now [here at Quibi]. I have tended to be my happiest when I have something that seems to fall between what’s improbable and impossible. And in a way that’s kind of hard for me to explain.
Pretty much every chapter of my career began with “well, that’s a tall mountain,” or “maybe that’s not gonna work out so well,” or “I don’t know, that’s a tall order.” Whether it was when I went to work for [New York City’s then-Mayor] John Lindsay. Or whether I was a 16 year old teenager, or going to work for Barry Diller as his assistant and becoming head of Paramount at a very, very young age. Going to Disney with Michael Eisner. Everybody had thought we had lost our minds. Why would you go there [to Disney]? The place is dead. Finished. The place was in its nadir. If you look at the history of the Walt Disney Company and the great highs and lows, and then greater highs, and the greatest highs that they have today. If you had to pick a place where it was probably bottom of the bottom of the bottom, it was 1984 when we [Michael Eisner and I] went there. And starting DreamWorks, starting the first studio in 65 years, everybody went “Well, that’s not gonna work.” You know Steven [Spielberg] and David [Geffen] as partners, you go, “Great, but that’s not gonna work, the three of them in one sandbox; and it’s just a different era and different time, no one is going to be able to start a new studio.” So, spinning off and building an animation studio only. Quibi is just the latest chapter in that somewhere between improbable and impossible. And so that’s happiness squared.
II. KATZENBERG: ON WHOM HE RESPECTS & WHO INSPIRES HIM
When you think about other disruptors, and those who operate in the same realm and mindset of your “improbable to impossible,” whom do you respect in the worlds of media and entertainment?
JK: In the world that surrounds me, Bob Iger, Ted Sarandos, Tim Cook and Eddie Cue, Jeff Bezos. These are the greatest of them all. And one that I had a very bumpy relationship with was Steve Jobs. I made that very first deal for Pixar at Disney, the three picture deal that started with Toy Story. And I don’t know how many people this is true of, I'm told it’s not a lot, that in Steve Jobs’ world, people fell into one of two categories. You either were a shithead or a genius, and I had the distinction of having been both several times. I’m told that usually when you’re a shithead you never recover. And those were literally the words. I kind of ping ponged back and forth. No question [Steve Jobs was] brilliant, inspiring.
Is there anybody who’s under the radar, who you feel is doing really amazing, transformational things in the media and entertainment world?
JK: The person who was my mentor and the one that I’ve admired and continue [to admire], and even as I’ve started WndrCo [Katzenberg’s parent company to Quibi] I actually look to his path to find mine, is Barry Diller. Barry is one of the great disruptors of our generation. He has reinvented himself time and time and time again. Walked out on top of his career in this industry, and discovered this new world of the Internet and sort of said, “hmm, I’m gonna go figure that out.” He’s created $70 to $80 billion of market cap and is still going as strong today as ever, and is a renaissance man. He’s an intellectual. He has curiosity above and beyond almost anybody. He is incredibly well read and incredibly articulate and is a great storyteller in his own right. And he appreciates art and artists. So he’s kind of the sort of “got it all.”
If you enjoyed this interview, stay tuned for my interview with Katzenberg’s partner-in-crime at Quibi, tech titan Meg Whitman. That will be posted in Forbes next week.
