Ian Mackey

The Man Behind Grand Theft Auto VI and a $45 Billion Media Empire: Strauss Zelnick Strauss Zelnick has been one of the most powerful people in media for decades, and most people still don't know his name. He took over Take-Two Interactive while the company was under criminal investigation and was 6 months from bankruptcy. It had one product that made money (GTA); everything else was unprofitable. Since then, Take-Two has gone from a $700 million disaster to a $45 billion empire built on Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead, and NBA 2K. His management philosophy fits on a napkin: hire the best creative talent on Earth, don't interfere, and run a rational company. He's been doing that for more than 4 decades. This conversation was awesome. 0:00 Hostile Takeover With No Money 1:29 Becoming the New Media Guy 3:58 Lessons From Entertainment History 9:44 Why Hollywood Feared Games 11:52 Fox Turnaround and Barry Diller 20:54 Rupert Murdoch and High Stakes Calm 26:20 Taking the Leap to Crystal Dynamics 38:04 Bootstrapping Without Capital 43:57 Carl Icahn Connection 47:01 Take Two Proxy Coup 56:36 Turnaround Cost Cutting Playbook 1:01:37 Leading Creative Geniuses 1:06:24 Rationality Beats Magic 1:07:54 Borderlands Bet 1:09:28 GTA Timelines Pressure 1:11:22 Specific Goals Visualization 1:21:34 Service Leadership Mindset 1:31:52 Media vs. Entertainment 1:34:22 AI Productivity Reality 1:36:08 Why Hits Surprise Includes paid partnerships.

The Man Behind Grand Theft Auto VI and a $45 Billion Media Empire: Strauss Zelnick Strauss Zelnick has been one of the most powerful people in media for decades, and most people still don't know his name. He took over Take-Two Interactive while the company was under criminal investigation and was 6 months from bankruptcy. It had one product that made money (GTA); everything else was unprofitable. Since then, Take-Two has gone from a $700 million disaster to a $45 billion empire built on Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead, and NBA 2K. His management philosophy fits on a napkin: hire the best creative talent on Earth, don't interfere, and run a rational company. He's been doing that for more than 4 decades. This conversation was awesome. 0:00 Hostile Takeover With No Money 1:29 Becoming the New Media Guy 3:58 Lessons From Entertainment History 9:44 Why Hollywood Feared Games 11:52 Fox Turnaround and Barry Diller 20:54 Rupert Murdoch and High Stakes Calm 26:20 Taking the Leap to Crystal Dynamics 38:04 Bootstrapping Without Capital 43:57 Carl Icahn Connection 47:01 Take Two Proxy Coup 56:36 Turnaround Cost Cutting Playbook 1:01:37 Leading Creative Geniuses 1:06:24 Rationality Beats Magic 1:07:54 Borderlands Bet 1:09:28 GTA Timelines Pressure 1:11:22 Specific Goals Visualization 1:21:34 Service Leadership Mindset 1:31:52 Media vs. Entertainment 1:34:22 AI Productivity Reality 1:36:08 Why Hits Surprise Includes paid partnerships.

Is it possible to have an entire company of A players? Adam has 400 employees and a $150 billion market cap. His answer to this question was insightful: “We expect our engineers to be product people so we don't have much of a product org. We expect them to be A players. Now to have a team of A players you've got to be able to recognize A players. I know that Giovanni is an A-plus player. I know that he has no tolerance for anything that's not an A player. He's very quick to go "You've got to be at this level or you're out." Putting people like that in leadership roles allows me to have confidence because they're impatient and they're not going to enable talent that's not qualified in these key roles. You're always turning over people that don't meet your need. You want to be as lean as possible. Now when you have an A player you don't want to cut those people. Those people are super powerful—especially as we go forward. You're going to need lean teams that know how to use AI. Your best people know how to use AI better than your mediocre people and it's not by some sort of linear function. It's much greater than that. Our team is constructed to have leaders who are A players or A-plus players who can see the A players underneath and who have no patience for anything that's not a A player and are very willing to fire on sight if they feel like you're not cutting it. Because we are lean most of our people are very smart. But sometimes being smart is not enough. You've got to be really into building what we want to build. If you're not cut out for it you're going to get really good severance and you go off along your way.”

I saw this And created this

American Airlines needs to die. We just don't need it. It's our shittiest airline by far, and its continued existence is financially hurting the healthier carriers. Let it die and be absorbed by United/Delta/Southwest. Its time is over.

I love SFO. You get off a long flight in a half-asleep twilight and immediately they're like "ok have u considered a 19th century chinese basket" "have u considered the early 2000s united airlines spoon" "have u considered a 1996 lowrider from arizona"

What's the best predictor of world-class performance in runners? Volume of Training. You've got to spend a lot of time doing the thing if you want to get good at just about anything.

I had an incredible conversation with Rick Rubin