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.“Ticketing just naturally seemed like something you’ll want to do in this wired world,” he said.For Allen, the stake in Ticketmaster also brought entree into a world he was enamored of.Located 1,000 miles-plus to the south of Seattle in Los Angeles, Ticketmaster was in the heart of Hollywood, maker of the movies he adored.By controlling116THE ACCIDENTAL ZILLIONAIRETicketmaster, Allen became the newest member of the Hollywood elite, owner of one of the most powerful companies in the live-events business.He was invited to affairs where he began meeting stars in the music and movie industries.Ticketmaster was very important to Allen, but he didn’t run the company; he never ran his companies, although he usually had a huge influence.Not so, here.The operations of the company fell under the purview of 15-year Ticketmaster CEO Fred Rosen.Rosen had been with Ticketmaster since it was owned by the Chicago-based Pritzker family who sold it to Allen.Rosen had never wanted the Pritzkers to sell out—his suggestion had been to go public.He didn’t have any ownership stake in the company, so a sale would mean nothing to him financially, despite all the years he’d put into the company.When the Pritzkers decided to sell, Rosen planned to leave.Allen asked Rosen to stay.Rosen wanted full control of the company.After some negotiation, Rosen agreed to stay and Allen steered clear.Occasionally, he gave Ticketmaster ideas, and even put some pressure on Rosen to use some of them, like launching a magazine (which it did) and a TV show (which never materialized).Allen was also helpful in mediating at least one situation, when Ticketmaster and Microsoft scuffled over an unauthorized link to the Ticketmaster Web site from Microsoft’s Sidewalk site.Another time, Allen arranged for Starwave to help Ticketmaster build its Web site.Naturally, Ticketmaster executives were invited to attend his annual Synergy Summit.To the hoi polloi at Ticketmaster, Allen was a guy who knew computers.On one visit to Ticketmaster offices, Allen helped Rosen figure out how to work his computer.(Rosen hadn’t had a computer before.) Another time, one former senior executive nearly mistook Allen for a tech-support staffer.During his first few weeks, the executive was having trouble with his computer and popped his head out of his office to call for help.Looking down the hall, he spotted Allen.“He was dumpy.He was wearing navy Dockers, aPAUL ALLEN, VENTURE CAPITALIST117tattered shirt, and this scraggly beard,” says the executive.“I was new to the company and I thought he was the IT guy.” The executive stopped himself before asking the chairman of Ticketmaster into his office for IT assistance.The staffers at Ticketmaster never really got to know their big boss.He wasn’t around much, and when he was, they didn’t realize who he was.Clearly, Allen was an awkward fit at the nontechie Ticketmaster, but he tagged along on one company retreat at a resort in Santa Barbara, California, anyway.While the senior executives knew full well who Allen was, the rest of the staff didn’t.Allen preferred those people, who were less obsequious.“He wanted to hang out with mid-level people,” says the former Ticketmaster executive.“Everyone was sitting by the pool, and when he heard they were going shopping, he said he wanted to go, too.Those people were too young to be intimidated.” They thought nothing of Allen’s position in the company relative to theirs and let him tag along.At another event, Ticketmaster’s annual retreat in Aspen, Colorado, Allen had former Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart along with him, to the bewilderment of other company executives, who were still trying to figure him out.“He seemed to cultivate the ‘cool rich guy’ thing,” says a former Ticketmaster executive.After four years of controlling Ticketmaster, Allen got out.He had never been all that involved in the company, aside from a few moments of synergy, here and there, and it hadn’t ever really connected with his other holdings.By this time, May 1997, Allen was also very secure in his Hollywood standing.In 1995, he had become the primary backer of the new Hollywood studio DreamWorks SKG, so he now had a regular table at the hotspots in town.Allen bailed out of Ticketmaster once a suitor came calling.The sale of Ticketmaster was a money-maker for Allen.In November 1996, seven months before Allen agreed to sell, Ticketmaster pulled off an IPO that valued the company at $494.2 million.Allen held 12.3 million shares, trading at the time at $12.75 each.118THE ACCIDENTAL ZILLIONAIREThe interested buyer was media mogul Barry Diller, who saw Ticketmaster as an opportunity to grow his own empire, which then included QVC and the Home Shopping Network.He offered Allen 7.2 million shares of HSN valued at about $209 million.Allen made $40 million on the deal.Allen’s obliviousness to business, his inability to get a stand-out success behind him after Microsoft and the fact of his accumulating fortune coming almost entirely from a single source inspired one publication in 1994 to famously dub him the “accidental zillionaire,” a tag that has stuck with him ever since [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]