For this next one, we actually have founder scaling strategies and negotiation
insights from the co -founder of e -entertainment television with Larry Namer and
Richard Wilson. And so Larry Namer, oh, perfect. And if you guys want to head out
that back door that way, we'll get you guys set up for this next one. But for
this one, just so you guys know, Larry Namer, you probably have seen him with e
-entertainment or on our stage. But he is an entrepreneur in the media space and
innovator with over 50 years experience in the entertainment industry and he is best
known for founding e -entertainment television, a network currently in 140 countries
and valued at over $5 billion. So everyone a round of applause for Larry and
Richard Wilson. >> I appreciate everyone being here today and for everybody's
attention. Excited to have Larry here with us today. Some of you have met Larry
once before at our events, but he's recently released a new book, hold it up here,
it's called Offscript, and it says, "Never Follow the Crowd." I finished that book
this week, actually, to make sure I'd have some sharp questions for Larry today. And
it was really interesting, took a bunch of notes, and I think that having people
here on stage who have built something from scratch that was completely new in their
industry, and they've been able to scale it to a billion dollars valuation exit.
It's something pretty unique, and it makes me lean forward as a founder. A couple
things from the book I wanted to emphasize. Larry started out as a cable splicer,
making $90 a week in New York City, digging underneath the streets, tying together
wires. He also had a theme in his book of being firm but fair with people.
He made some bold asks to make big jumps during his career a few times. He talks
about simplifying the complex several times in his book. He also talked about passion
and how you don't want to follow your passion too much. So we'll get into a lot
of these topics, but I encourage you to check out the book afterwards to connect
with Larry after he's offstage. What else would you add to your bio or introduction
that maybe Charlie didn't mention as you walked on stage. - Sure, I mean, everybody
knows E and I call this era of my life, my Kardashians repentance tour after
apologizing to the world for unleashing them. But I've started media companies in
Russia. I had the number one TV show in Russia five days a week for 10 years. I
started a big music festival in Russia. Unfortunately, my partner was the guy named
Vladimir Putin.
And we had to end that festival about four years ago for obvious reasons.
I moved on to China. I still have a company in China with still the only American
company that's allowed to be in the media business in China. We do everything there.
And then when COVID came, I started doing stuff here in the U .S. again, all with
a social impact component to it. So that's kind of what I'm up to these days.
Great. Thank you. And I saw that you got a Hollywood Lifetime Achievement Award as
well. Is that right? Yeah. I've kind of resisted getting Lifetime Achievement Awards
because I figured maybe they spoke to my doctor and they know something. I don't.
But, and Also with the book, people have been after me to write the book for God
knows how long and I've always resisted it, but literally I reinvent myself almost
every seven years.
And while I do TV and film and other media pretty well, my real passion has been
cooking. So I decided that I'll do the book with the various phases in my life,
anecdotes that go with those phases, but also with the recipes that inspired me. So
the book is somewhere between a bio and a cookbook.
- Great, and in the book, you actually mentioned that if you just follow your
passion, you might end up homeless pretty quickly. Can you talk to that? - Sure, I
get people all the time and people ask me to talk to entrepreneurs and stuff, and
people like my passion is knitting eyeglass cases or things like that.
And just 'cause you're passionate about it, if there's no financial sustainability to
it, my feeling is don't do it. I mean, I always tell people, find something that
you're good at, work the hell out of it and become great at it, and then that
will become your passion. I mean, that's kind of the way it was with me with the
television world. I mean, I didn't start out thinking I was gonna create TV shows
all around the world and I just worked my butt off until I figured out how you do
it and stuff like that. But my passion is cooking and it's great and when I get
stressed out, I go into kitchen and cook and you know, but to do it to make a
living, we all have the same necessities of life. We gotta pay the rent, we gotta
send our kids to school and do all of that stuff there. And if you can't sustain
financially by following your passion, you should find a different passion. >> Right.
It seemed like in your trajectory, you had this ability to look at something
complex, make it more simple. You could negotiate with unions, with executive
management. You could, you know, ride both sides of, like, how people would normally
think where it might be one side or the other. Typically, is that partially how you
got done things that people said were impossible, or it just seems unreal, what's
happened? - Yeah, you know, people say, "Well, what is your mind work the way it
was?" And other than my mother dropping me in my head when I was one year old,
which he really did, there's no other logical explanation for it, but I had an
interest in career path because I started out in a technical side of the cable
business when nobody believed that anybody would ever pay for television. So I mean,
Richard mentioned that I literally got a job splicing the cables in the sewers of
Manhattan for $90 a week, but because I knew how to read and write, the union
asked me to become part of the negotiating committee to negotiate against time
incorporated when time was just a publishing company. And so I did that.
And then for whatever and they decided that at 23 years old I would be a good
vice chairman of the cable TV workers of America. So at 23 I was a union official
and then eventually moved into management. It was to be in a great time there
because timing decided that over 10 years they wanted to move from being a
publishing company to a media company. So I got to be part of the group that
started HBO and basically the cable business as we know it,
which is no longer the cable business as we know it.
- Right, and when you moved from New York to, I think it was Cable America in Los
Angeles, you basically told them, like, "Well, I need to get paid four times, "so
I'm getting paid now," and you didn't expect them to give it to you. I mean, that
bold ask, and then eventually them caving and pretty much giving you everything that
you had boldly asked for, is that partially what made you bold enough to start E,
just seeing that stuff could actually work when you do stuff like that? - Yeah, I
mean, I grew up, I was a New York kid, family were immigrants, and their aspiration
for me was to get a job with a pension and be able to retire securely and all
that. But when the big cities began to franchise cable TV, they realized that cable
was not just about good reception, it wasn't just for rural, but they were all
other opportunities, But they all wanted the cable to go underground. Well, the only
guy in the country who knew how to build underground was me, because I did it in
Manhattan. And when I left, I was at 25, I became director of operations of
Manhattan cable, the biggest cable company in the country, if not the world. And
there was a Canadian company that won the franchise for Los Angeles, and they kept
calling me and I go, "No, I'm not doing it. I'm like a Brooklyn kid. I ain't
going to La La Land and then finally the chairman of this Canadian company called
me up and said you know you got a girlfriend I went yeah he goes okay I fly you
and a girlfriend out to LA put you in the belly hotel you got a limo for the
weekend I want an hour of your time I said listen as long as you understand that
there's no way in the world I'm possibly gonna take this job I'll do it so of
course we came out and I was you know an arrogant idiot then and we go through
the hour and I'm going okay, you got 58 minutes left and I go, you got two
minutes left and I go okay, you're done. And he goes, all right, one last question.
What would it take for you to move out here? So I just decided I'm gonna ask for
ridiculous stuff. So I asked for like four times what I'm making in New York. At
that time Liberace had a house in Sherman Oaks with a piano shaped swimming pool. I
go, I want you to rent the Liberace house for me and I want a car with a, it
was even before cell phones. I want a car with a mobile phone. And he just looked
at me and said, "You're out of your mind, we would never do that." And I went,
"Great, Adios, you're hours up, I'm gone." But then I went back to New York and I
was in the winter and when it snows in New York, it's always nice the first day.
But then after that, you get splashed with this black gook from TaxiCabs gone by
and I got splashed and I get to my office and my assistant says, "Oh, that guy
keeps calling you from Canada." I go, "I'll get him on the phone." And, you know,
I got on the phone with him. He goes, "What you asked for was ridiculous, but how
fast could you be out here?" So then I had my foot in my mouth, so that's why
I'm in LA.
So yeah, let's give him a round of applause. So in the book, you mentioned two
things that are kind of connected. One is, when you're in Los Angeles, assume
everyone is lying until they prove to you otherwise. And then two, when someone
lies, then listen to who they're telling you they are and don't ever work with them
again and don't give them a second chance and expect them to change. Can you talk
to that for a minute about any tests that you do to figure out who's honest, who's
not, et cetera? - Sure, I mean, like I say, I always start out with, and I could
go and tell somebody. And the good part about being me is nobody knows who I am
because I've been a hermit. So like I'll go to some place and somebody say, "What
do you do?" I say, "Well, I'm making a movie." They go, "I'm making a slate of
movies." My feeling is in LA in particular, whenever somebody tells you something,
just assume they're lying. You can't get hurt. Assume they're lying until they prove
to you they're not lying.
So that that's the way we kind of operate it and then you know if they prove it
then you could take them in but if you find out that they're lying whether they
You know Did something to screw someone else sooner or later? They're gonna get you
So just don't do business that way We've heard many times on stage from you know
Billion dollar plus family offices super successful investors that they are doing
things that other people said was impossible or that their story seems unreal. What
is it that you think allowed you to persevere and get that done, like to see it
through? - A lot of people say it's stupidity,
but the one thing with E, which is I think the most interesting, there's never been
a TV network of size that's ever been started by a person, as opposed to a media
company, and that was the way it was then, and it's the way it was now. He is
now in 142 countries and the valuation of last day told me we're up around seven
billion dollars and you know it's just to me it's crazy numbers.
Just people kept saying you can't do you're not Rupert Murdoch, you're not Fox,
you're not Time Warner and my partner Alan and I just were going but it's such a
good idea somebody eventually will do it. It was interesting and and Richard Richard
knows this. When we started, the number to start a TV network was somewhere between
60 and 100 million dollars.
After three and a half years of not being able to raise 10 cents, we realized
nobody was giving us 60 or 100 million dollars. And we actually met up Bond House
on Wall Street who just started investment banking. And when Alan and I, somebody
introduced us, we went in the office and the guy had like post is on the wall,
and he's going, "Oh, I love this, I used to be the reporter "for my college
newspaper," and he goes, "I really want to do it," and I say, "Great, could you
give us more like the 100 million?" So we could do everything we want. He goes,
"Oh, no, no, I can't do that." I go, "All right, what is it, 60?" He goes, "Well,
I'm only allowed a sign for two and a half." I'm going like, "What am I gonna do
with two and a half? "It's like the minimum is 60." He goes, "That's all I could
sign for." And we just said, you know what, we're smart enough, we'll figure it
out. So we literally took the two and a half million dollars. I had a friend
teaching radio, television, film at the University of Texas in Austin. And I called
him up and I said, Brian, I need interns like badly. So he sent me 31 kids from
Texas, half of which never went back to Texas after.
So he started with 11 employees and 31 You know obviously our investors who put
that first two and a half in were kind of happy with the way it turned out
That's great. I hear from so many people that have a new concept and idea It could
be a fintech product or AI and they say oh no, we need 11 million dollars to get
started We need 30 million. We need 60 million What would you say to them that
you've learned from that? Well, I think you know if you look at our experience I
mean, I think it really a lot of what made us made us successful, is that saying,
you know, "Necessity is the mother of invention." I mean, we had no money. I mean,
we didn't have enough money to buy real equipment. I ended up buying TV equipment
from a company that was making sales training tapes and stuff like that.
But when we put it on television, everybody's going like, "Oh my God, that thing
looks so pirate." Well, little did they know we couldn't afford the real equipment.
And just things we applied for credentials to go to the Academy Awards and they
turned us down. They said, "Well, I have some dumb little cable network. No, we're
not going to be in credentials." So me and the crew, we literally climbed over the
fence and we were on the red carpet. We were on the red carpet for about a half
an hour before security caught us. But when people watched it, I mean, we took such
a very different look at Hollywood. Everybody was like thinking it's rocket science
or something. And we were just like, Hollywood is funny stuff. Don't try and make
believe it's more than that. And we would be there, you know, when normal people
would be going, "So, Mr. Cruise, tell us about your next movie." We were like,
"Whoa, Tom, those are like great shoes. "Where did you get them?" So it became very
pirate and people were going, "We felt like we were flying on the wall "seeing
something that we weren't supposed to. And I'm going, "Yeah, you weren't supposed
to." That's great. I know Steve Madden couldn't get into a show to sell his shoes.
We parked his truck out front and sold him out the back of his truck. Famously,
right, Mr. Beast recently said he didn't know why his chocolate was breaking at
Walmart. So we put a GoPro camera inside and recorded how his chocolate is being
broken on the shelf. And he said, "Yeah, I'm not supposed to do that. I had to
figure it out to survive." Right? So that's is what you're saying and we did you
know I mean the first show that really was a big breakthrough for us was talk soup
and when I first came up with that everybody going Larry you must you're out of
your mind you want to do a TV show that makes fun of TV shows and I'm like yeah
exactly and they were like oh we don't know if that'll work well that show ran 26
years you know and then I was in an elevator the next show I was in an elevator
in New York and I met this tall radio guy and he was telling me, oh, you gotta
come see my radio show. I'm coming to see your radio show, what's there to see? He
goes, no, you gotta come. So I went and I, you know, it was a revelation.
I went back and told my folks, I said, I wanna put cameras in this guy's radio
studio. And they were like, Larry, we thought you were out of your mind when you
did talk soup, but radio's been dead for 40 years. I said, you don't understand,
this is not a radio show, this is an ensemble sitcom. This is WKRP in Cincinnati
in reality. And I was how it's turned. So Howard obviously went on to do pretty
well. - Pretty well. What's a million dollar insight that you've had to learn the
hard way that you'd like to share with founders here in the room? - Well, I always
go my biggest failure. And I haven't had many, so it's good,
I could tell a story.
Me and a few friends, when the internet was really taking off, we owned this domain
name, television .com. And we were like, wow, what a great name. And then people
were fighting to get domain names. And I think Barry Diller or somebody came to us
and said, well, I'll give you $6 billion to buy the domain from you. And I'm like,
Barry, look at this face. Does this Just like a stupid kid, I said, "If sex .com
sells for 10 million, television .com is 12." And he was like, "Larry, you're out of
your mind, you know, we're not giving you that and whatever." So we didn't sell it.
And we actually put it on the air. We were like YouTube before YouTube. So it was
when the big internet heyday advertising was selling for $25 per thousand viewers.
And we were doing Great, we were getting a million unique users a month with no
marketing expense anyway, 'cause they just Google television and they come up with
television .com. And then the market crashed. And it went from $25 per thousand to
25 cents per thousand, but it would cost us a dollar. And for everybody who watched
it, we would continue to lose money. So it really taught me that You gotta really
pay attention to more than just the good idea. You gotta pay attention to the
economic environment, the political environment, the technology environment, et cetera
and stuff. So that was my biggest failure. - All right, what about people who wanna
work with publicly traded companies and do a joint venture like with a corporate
venture capital group? Any suggestions for dealing with big companies to strike
agreements? 'Cause you've obviously done a ton of that. - Yeah, I mean, we've done a
bunch of those. I mean, first you gotta have, you know, thick skin and a lot of
patience. I mean, the reason we've been successful is we've moved so much. I spent
10 years in timing, so I know how big companies work, but, and I know whenever
there's a good idea, they're gonna spend the next year studying it. So we just
learned to get there before and stuff. So you really gotta pay attention before you
do deals with the big public companies to are you gonna be able to get a long and
deal in that environment and stuff? And most of the time for us the answer has
been no. I mean, I'm an entrepreneur, I have no patience for stupidity.
And so our feeling is we'll start the companies and we'll sell it to them in a
few years and that's worked out pretty well. - Awesome. What's the question maybe I
should have asked you or a question someone else has asked you that you'd like to
answer?
- Well, a lot of people ask me why I spend all my time in LA these days. I have
a big company in China. We literally do everything in there. Until COVID, I was
spending most of my time, they're a good piece of my time. And then when COVID
came, they wanted me to quarantine in a Chinese hotel for three weeks and they
would feed me under the door and stuff. And even though I had an apartment in
Beijing, they wouldn't do it. So then when COVID ended,
I was ready to start going back, but my daughter decided that it was time to have
a baby. So she totally gilts me like, you're not gonna keep going out of town and
not seeing your little grandbaby all the time. So I spend most of my time in LA
now. Great. Awesome. Well, I appreciate your time Larry. Let's all give them a big
round of applause. Thank you.