Michael Ovitz
Co-founder of Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and Hollywood dealmaker
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Michael Ovitz co-founded Creative Artists Agency in 1974 and built it, against roughly 200 established agencies, into the firm that at one point represented 46 of the top 50 grossing filmmakers; he now helps form companies in tech, defense and biopharma. The lesson most worth taking from him is that relentless work, a culture where nobody cares who scores, and a model built to outlast the founder beat standing and connections.
I'm not arrogant at all, actually. I just know I'm going to outwork every one of them.
Founder of CAA Michael Ovitz: "I Just Knew I Was Going to Outwork Every One of Them"
Michael Ovitz: the story and the lessons
1How Michael Ovitz built CAA against 200 rival agencies
Ovitz started CAA in 1974 with no standing and a plan to outwork everyone. When he left William Morris, a close friend predicted he would be job hunting within a year because almost 200 agencies already existed.
Ovitz's answer was that he was not arrogant, he simply knew he would outwork every one of them.
He went after writers first because they power packaging. Within six months CAA met a leading TV literary agency about merging, since writers are the source of packaging talent together for studios.
The four partners there said CAA would never represent movie stars. Ovitz replied that CAA would have all of them. The merger did not happen.
Ovitz mailed every signing ad to the four doubters for ten years. CAA signed a movie star about once a week and ran a full-page Variety ad every Friday; Ovitz tore out each one and mailed it to the four partners who said it would never happen.
At one point CAA represented 46 of the top 50 grossing filmmakers, and the four he missed still gnawed at him.
He ran CAA on shared credit, learned from Magic Johnson's fast break. Magic passing to whoever could score taught him only the basket matters. If a task was not done by 5:00, a department head or Ovitz did it himself.
He never asked anyone, even the youngest, to do something he would not do. "I didn't care who scored. I just wanted to score."
Every 90 days all 200 staff sat chairs touching and pitched. Each person had 30 seconds, could not pass, and Ovitz called on the quiet ones. A mailroom clerk's cable idea made him an agent on the spot.
The first meeting opened with "No idea is too dumb," since a bad idea can spark a good one. Anyone leaving had to push a chair back and leave a visible hole, and people later thanked him for pushing them out of it.
Ovitz built CAA's model and values to outlast him. CAA is as strong in 2026 as when he left, because successors kept the same values while taking the business where it needed to go.
He treats durability as a binary test: "It either works or it doesn't. 50 years in business proves that it works."
2Michael Ovitz's biggest deals and packages
He packaged Jurassic Park around the one director who could make it. Ovitz told Michael Crichton the dinosaurs were the stars, so no big name was needed, and that only Spielberg could make it real. Spielberg read it and called the next day: "I'm in."
Spielberg's fear was a film that looked like an early Godzilla movie, so he tested effects houses and blended CGI with built dinosaur parts, never fully showing the creature. The CGI dinosaurs run only about four minutes.
Ovitz spent a year building trust in Japan before any assignment. In the early 1980s he flew to Japan monthly, and he delayed the Matsushita meeting in Hawaii four weeks to prepare and match the culture's pace.
Friends came back sure they would close and never did. His interest in Japan began in high school, when Japanese American friends invited him to dinner at their homes. Matsushita then held $15 to 20 billion in liquidity.
With Phil Knight he pitched a college football playoff decades early. A CAA and Nike venture showed about 150 NCAA presidents in Kansas City that a playoff would earn schools millions versus bowl games. They declined and commissioned a 500-page report that reached the same conclusion.
UCLA chancellor Chuck Young, whom Ovitz knew as chairman of the UCLA Medical Center, got them the audience. Colleges adopted a playoff about 30 years later, and Ovitz calls the money left on the table frightening.
He and Bill Ackman bid to take Universal Music Group private. The stock had slid about 10 points under its IPO price; their friendly, public offer is conditioned on Lucian Grainge continuing to run it, with Ovitz as chair helping on tech and AI.
Ackman has been his friend for 33 years. The decision rests with one family that controls 28% of the stock.
Ovitz helped launch Magic Johnson's business career. Magic told him he wanted a business career after playing, something no other athlete of that time said, and they set that course together.
3Michael Ovitz's rules on founders, creators and talent
A talent company dies without a leader who understands talent. Ovitz argues an operator can always be hired, but talent sense cannot, which is why Grainge, who signs every artist, is central to the UMG bid.
"If you don't have someone who understands talent, that company's going to die."
Hard creators are protecting their vision, not being difficult. Ovitz watched Martin Scorsese take Harvey Weinstein apart over poor notes and ended the meeting fast because Scorsese was right.
His rule is to give notes and let the creator decide, except on timing; a producer belongs in the editing room only after several films with the director. On Rain Man, Barry Levinson lost money daily while Dustin Hoffman found the character, and Ovitz calls the result perfect.
Ovitz prizes founders who hold firm until proven wrong. He says Steve Jobs took intransigent positions but could be talked out of them, and calls that the best trait any businessman can have. He sees the same in Josh Kushner.
Jobs saw computer animation when Disney did not: "They were wrong. He was right." He met Kushner at Harvard Business School and says he is the same person today, guarding the soul of Thrive.
He refuses to look back at lost deals. Ovitz repeats Barry Diller's line after losing to Sumner Redstone: "He won, we lost. Next case."
Friends who dwell on losses frustrate him because the outcome will not change. Having made every business mistake, he uses that to steer young founders away from the same ones.
Great creators know their craft's history, and Ovitz expects it. He gathered a film preservation group around Scorsese with Spielberg, Pollack, Coppola and Kubrick, yet at one film school no student knew David Lean, Frank Capra or Michael Curtiz.
He holds that most great art comes from earlier art and collects that way himself, owning African antiquities and three Picassos that grew out of them.
Business is a competitive sport, and Ovitz plays to win outright. He agrees with Peter Thiel that monopoly is the goal and wants to beat rivals "as fast, as cleanly, as simply, and as brutally as we can."
He frames it as competition within legal and moral limits, and as a contest with himself.
4How Michael Ovitz works as a generalist today
Ovitz treats every industry as the same blocking and tackling. A film is packaged around talent and a startup around a founder; both need execution, financing, distribution, marketing, profit and a lasting culture.
He applies that checklist to AI, consumer, defense and biopharma ventures he says he is unqualified for on paper. "How do you build something that lasts beyond you?"
He screens every idea with five plain questions. Is it interesting, will it last, can it be built, financed and distributed. Interest also rises with the standing of whoever brings it.
He says, "I collect art and people," but many ideas simply do not interest him.
Ovitz refuses to be typecast as a specialist. He has always been a generalist and says only deep scientists, like the founders of Palantir or Anthropic, can stay specialists now.
"I work overtime to not be categorized."
AI cut his deal research from weeks to hours. Matsushita prep took four weeks in a library and stockbroker's office with a physical 10-K; a comparable deal now took six or seven hours over two days on three AI platforms.
He learns enough vocabulary fast to follow young founders, and calls AI a generalist's superpower that adds to instinct built over decades.
He keeps calls to 20 minutes and cuts small talk. Ovitz refuses the default hour-long Zoom, saving small talk for meals and making exceptions only for critical diligence.
"What law is there on the planet that says a Zoom has to be an hour?"
Ovitz says he has never been busier, and calls it joy. He has worked in technology since 1992 and says each meeting with a young founder stretches his brain.
People close to him want him to work less; he disagrees, telling a mentee, "Consider me Dracula for the brain."
Founder of CAA Michael Ovitz: "I Just Knew I Was Going to Outwork Every One of Them"
Ovitz shows how a founder with no standing beat a field of about 200 agencies on work ethic, a shared-credit culture and a business model built to outlast him. The result is a CAA that is still strong 50 years on, and a set of habits Ovitz still applies to technology and deals at the age of a retiree.
Ovitz started CAA in 1974 with no standing and a plan to outwork everyone. When he left William Morris, a close friend predicted he would be job hunting within a year because almost 200 agencies already existed.
Ovitz's answer was that he was not arrogant, he simply knew he would outwork every one of them.
He went after writers first because they power packaging. Within six months CAA met a leading TV literary agency about merging, since writers are the source of packaging talent together for studios.
The four partners there said CAA would never represent movie stars. Ovitz replied that CAA would have all of them. The merger did not happen.
Ovitz mailed every signing ad to the four doubters for ten years. CAA signed a movie star about once a week and ran a full-page Variety ad every Friday; Ovitz tore out each one and mailed it to the four partners who said it would never happen.
At one point CAA represented 46 of the top 50 grossing filmmakers, and the four he missed still gnawed at him.
He ran CAA on shared credit, learned from Magic Johnson's fast break. Magic passing to whoever could score taught him only the basket matters. If a task was not done by 5:00, a department head or Ovitz did it himself.
He never asked anyone, even the youngest, to do something he would not do. "I didn't care who scored. I just wanted to score."
Every 90 days all 200 staff sat chairs touching and pitched. Each person had 30 seconds, could not pass, and Ovitz called on the quiet ones. A mailroom clerk's cable idea made him an agent on the spot.
The first meeting opened with "No idea is too dumb," since a bad idea can spark a good one. Anyone leaving had to push a chair back and leave a visible hole, and people later thanked him for pushing them out of it.
Ovitz built CAA's model and values to outlast him. CAA is as strong in 2026 as when he left, because successors kept the same values while taking the business where it needed to go.
He treats durability as a binary test: "It either works or it doesn't. 50 years in business proves that it works."
He packaged Jurassic Park around the one director who could make it. Ovitz told Michael Crichton the dinosaurs were the stars, so no big name was needed, and that only Spielberg could make it real. Spielberg read it and called the next day: "I'm in."
Spielberg's fear was a film that looked like an early Godzilla movie, so he tested effects houses and blended CGI with built dinosaur parts, never fully showing the creature. The CGI dinosaurs run only about four minutes.
Ovitz spent a year building trust in Japan before any assignment. In the early 1980s he flew to Japan monthly, and he delayed the Matsushita meeting in Hawaii four weeks to prepare and match the culture's pace.
Friends came back sure they would close and never did. His interest in Japan began in high school, when Japanese American friends invited him to dinner at their homes. Matsushita then held $15 to 20 billion in liquidity.
With Phil Knight he pitched a college football playoff decades early. A CAA and Nike venture showed about 150 NCAA presidents in Kansas City that a playoff would earn schools millions versus bowl games. They declined and commissioned a 500-page report that reached the same conclusion.
UCLA chancellor Chuck Young, whom Ovitz knew as chairman of the UCLA Medical Center, got them the audience. Colleges adopted a playoff about 30 years later, and Ovitz calls the money left on the table frightening.
He and Bill Ackman bid to take Universal Music Group private. The stock had slid about 10 points under its IPO price; their friendly, public offer is conditioned on Lucian Grainge continuing to run it, with Ovitz as chair helping on tech and AI.
Ackman has been his friend for 33 years. The decision rests with one family that controls 28% of the stock.
Ovitz helped launch Magic Johnson's business career. Magic told him he wanted a business career after playing, something no other athlete of that time said, and they set that course together.
A talent company dies without a leader who understands talent. Ovitz argues an operator can always be hired, but talent sense cannot, which is why Grainge, who signs every artist, is central to the UMG bid.
"If you don't have someone who understands talent, that company's going to die."
Hard creators are protecting their vision, not being difficult. Ovitz watched Martin Scorsese take Harvey Weinstein apart over poor notes and ended the meeting fast because Scorsese was right.
His rule is to give notes and let the creator decide, except on timing; a producer belongs in the editing room only after several films with the director. On Rain Man, Barry Levinson lost money daily while Dustin Hoffman found the character, and Ovitz calls the result perfect.
Ovitz prizes founders who hold firm until proven wrong. He says Steve Jobs took intransigent positions but could be talked out of them, and calls that the best trait any businessman can have. He sees the same in Josh Kushner.
Jobs saw computer animation when Disney did not: "They were wrong. He was right." He met Kushner at Harvard Business School and says he is the same person today, guarding the soul of Thrive.
He refuses to look back at lost deals. Ovitz repeats Barry Diller's line after losing to Sumner Redstone: "He won, we lost. Next case."
Friends who dwell on losses frustrate him because the outcome will not change. Having made every business mistake, he uses that to steer young founders away from the same ones.
Great creators know their craft's history, and Ovitz expects it. He gathered a film preservation group around Scorsese with Spielberg, Pollack, Coppola and Kubrick, yet at one film school no student knew David Lean, Frank Capra or Michael Curtiz.
He holds that most great art comes from earlier art and collects that way himself, owning African antiquities and three Picassos that grew out of them.
Business is a competitive sport, and Ovitz plays to win outright. He agrees with Peter Thiel that monopoly is the goal and wants to beat rivals "as fast, as cleanly, as simply, and as brutally as we can."
He frames it as competition within legal and moral limits, and as a contest with himself.
Ovitz treats every industry as the same blocking and tackling. A film is packaged around talent and a startup around a founder; both need execution, financing, distribution, marketing, profit and a lasting culture.
He applies that checklist to AI, consumer, defense and biopharma ventures he says he is unqualified for on paper. "How do you build something that lasts beyond you?"
He screens every idea with five plain questions. Is it interesting, will it last, can it be built, financed and distributed. Interest also rises with the standing of whoever brings it.
He says, "I collect art and people," but many ideas simply do not interest him.
Ovitz refuses to be typecast as a specialist. He has always been a generalist and says only deep scientists, like the founders of Palantir or Anthropic, can stay specialists now.
"I work overtime to not be categorized."
AI cut his deal research from weeks to hours. Matsushita prep took four weeks in a library and stockbroker's office with a physical 10-K; a comparable deal now took six or seven hours over two days on three AI platforms.
He learns enough vocabulary fast to follow young founders, and calls AI a generalist's superpower that adds to instinct built over decades.
He keeps calls to 20 minutes and cuts small talk. Ovitz refuses the default hour-long Zoom, saving small talk for meals and making exceptions only for critical diligence.
"What law is there on the planet that says a Zoom has to be an hour?"
Ovitz says he has never been busier, and calls it joy. He has worked in technology since 1992 and says each meeting with a young founder stretches his brain.
People close to him want him to work less; he disagrees, telling a mentee, "Consider me Dracula for the brain."