Robert Fried

And it worked.

At that time, Columbia Pictures was considered at the vanguard of business thinking and financially performed extremely well relative to the other studios.

And it was ultimately acquired by Sony.

At the time, it was owned by Coca-Cola.

But my interest was not in movies per se, but in the enterprise of the business and

And it was evident that the most fragmented piece of the movie business was actual production.

That's where an entrepreneur could do the most.

Everything else was large company dealing with large company.

But each film is an individual startup in essence.

So I gravitated towards production and Hollywood is very much about trends and what's hot now.

And at that time, MBAs and spreadsheet analysis was like the hot unknown thing.

So there was an intrigue about those of us that were in Hollywood doing that.

So there was more interest in me than was warranted.

And as things go in Hollywood, that meant I got the creative job.

One plus one doesn't seem to equal two, but that's the way it works.

And I ended up in the production departments of these companies, and then ultimately producing films.

And liked it very much.

I mean, making films is a great thing.

But then in the 90s, the Internet really became more interesting in a way to me.

So I sort of started mixing my time somewhat between films and then internet deals and internet startups, and I got involved in three of them.