I’ve always liked Mark, he has the sort of chutzpah you can only pick up when you’re worth $2.3 billion. He’s willing to swing wide, take chances and talk about them. It’s the same reason I like Richard Branson (who happens to be worth $2.4 billion).
Well Mark was talking about entrepreneurship in Esquire sometime in 2006 and he raised some points which are particularly apropos now with the economy in its heels and everyone searching for a way to punch their way through to the other side.
Here are two, you should click through to the article to see the rest.
Wherever I see people doing something the way it’s always been done, the way it’s “supposed” to be done, following the same old trends, well, that’s just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.
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For HDNet, I’m just looking for programming that I think is going to be memorable, that is going to impact people personally, and stuff that people will think is funny — kind of like a baby HBO from a content perspective. Most companies, most media companies or public companies, are geared toward earnings per share, and that drives everything: hitting the numbers, hitting the quarter mark. But to me, it’s not about that. It’s about: Can we have an impact? If it’s Dan Rather or Dennis Rodman, it doesn’t matter — I don’t care, as long as it’s something unique. Everybody else does nothing more creative than following the trend. It’s like: Let’s do another poker show. Now let’s extend that to blackjack. Now let’s mix blackjack with poker. Now let’s pimp my ride, let’s pimp my house, let’s get tattoos, let’s get bounty hunters. If everybody else is doing it, I don’t want to do it. Rather than trying to grovel for an extra share of viewers like most media companies do these days, I’d rather just throw it up against the wall and take some chances.
