GaGa is a digital baby - that's how they communicate. There cant be any layers between the artists and their fans.
Mattel stepped up and changed the face of Barbie. Barbie looks a lot different than she did decades ago. Or even three weeks ago.
Hip hop is a multi-billion dollar business, and it was built off an opportunity that nobody else saw because they didn't understand the culture.
I was Jazzy Jeff's assistant.
What I like about Bre.ad is the simplicity of it. When you can explain it to people, like 'five-second billboards in front of a link shortener,' it makes a lot of sense.
Money doesn't make me tick. This definition of success doesn't make me tick. Managing some of the biggest stars in the world doesn't make me tick. Making my family proud makes me tick.
I'd like to open doors for underserved communities and minorities in entrepreneurship.
So many black kids aspire to be entertainers or professional athletes because those are the only role models they see that look like them. There are only 300 jobs in the NBA but an endless amount of opportunities as an entrepreneur. With enough hustle, entrepreneurship opens doors to a world of opportunities.
When I started Atom Factory, the idea was to do something small yet powerful. That name resonated with the mission.
I don't think we're out there aggressively looking for deals. Our strategy is that business follows the creative. We're not out there scouring the marketplace for opportunities.
I'm a very commonsense guy - I just look at the viability of the idea, if I feel the team has the ability to execute the idea. I also look at the investment syndicate, the size of the market, and then a lot of gut married on top of it.
Actors play different characters, so you have to build a new base around each new movie - with few exceptions, most actors don't have a fan base that just follows them around. With musicians, the fan base just goes everywhere they go.
You have a huge demographic shift that's happening in America. Globally.
I grew up carrying crates of records for Will Smith and those guys.
No one has bridged that gap between music and technology yet.
Music as a whole industry is growing exponentially, but in terms of the actual music file, when you look at the actual value there, to me, 'The Beatles' catalog should be worth more than Spotify.
Being born in the adolescent years of hip hop helped us learn about flux. And when you're in an industry that is constantly growing, changing, maturing... you get a chance to try different things out and a chance to fail.
If a kid goes and buys a CD at Best Buy, we have no idea who the person is, how many times they listen to it, or anything like that.
I thought I was going to be a rapper as a kid and used to hop the train down to Jazzy Jeff's studio for, like, six months straight waiting outside of the studio for the big break, and one day we got in the studio and played our demo for Will and Jeff and quickly learned that we weren't that good.
A lot of corporations now have venture arms that are investing in young entrepreneurs or building programs within so you can disrupt yourself internally instead of looking to those external factors.
