I went from living in a house with five guys in Palo Alto, and living off their leftovers, to all of a sudden having all kinds of resources. And I wanted to figure out how I could take the blessing of these resources and share it with the world.
My goal was to be at the point - no older than 40 - where I would have enough resources to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged people.
When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.
I wanted to be a writer, to write these stories that would make people see the world in a different way. But I ended up going to business school because I thought I could ultimately get to where I wanted to go faster that way.
As a philanthropist, I give away a lot of money every year. Yet I thought there was a higher leverage to come in and create movies and TV shows that were actually able to do some good in the world.
As a teenager I read a lot of books. Books with lots of scary trends, things like nuclear weapons and overpopulation and global diseases, and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to write stories that showed people these problems and that we could do something about them.'
My views tend to be centrist. I'm not a big fan of George W., but my politics tend to be more Republican than not.
When I started Participant, I felt that the movie business was ripe for a company that dealt with big issues in a systemic way. I was a little surprised that nobody had done it before. But to most people, entertainment is escapism.
My goal was to leverage the power of movies and the reach they have and include important messages. Of course, they still have to be entertaining so that people will watch them, but I wanted to make sure there was a message, a takeaway.
As an industry, the film industry is better than most. It's not perfect - I wish every company would carbon-offset their productions - but it's better than one would expect.
Young entrepreneurs, in general, feel they're too busy running their companies, which I think is a mistake. But once they're older, you see much more of a propensity to be involved in philanthropy.
I learned Hollywood is a small community, and you really have to be a part of the community to get anything done. Unlike traditional industries, where you can do things from afar with phone calls and e-mail, this town is really about being social. Because that's how trust gets built.
At Participant, I am the board. I am the sole greenlight at the company. If something happened to me, that would be a problem.
My goal is to make the biggest difference possible in the world. I have only so many resources and so much time.
It's a real concern of mine every day. What can we do? How much can we do? How quickly can we address all these important things?
The goal of Participant is to tell stories that serve as catalysts for social change. With our television channel, we can bring those stories into the homes of our viewers every day.
When I first moved to Hollywood from Silicon Valley, I had some misgivings. But I found that there were some advantages to being in Hollywood. And, in fact, some advantages to owning your own media company. And I also found that Hollywood and Silicon Valley have a lot more in common than I would have dreamed.
I backpacked around the world and went to places like Mexico City and Pakistan, where I'm like, 'Oh. Things aren't quite as good.'
Looking at America, which has so much wealth and potential and yet has so many deep-rooted problems, I think it gives us, as Canadians, an opportunity to be on the world stage on the climate change issue.
We gravitated to the idea of social entrepreneurs when it was a fairly nascent thing. We began to build the organization, focused on investing in and celebrating social entrepreneurs. Not long after that, we realized there was another opportunity to help bring them together and tell their stories.
