Danny Cohen: From Leading the BBC to Leading Venture Capitalist |E1079

Harry Stebbings 0:00 I love the theater. But I look at it, and I'm always like, "Is it a good business?"

Danny Cohen 0:03 You can make money, but you're never gonna make a huge amount of money. The real money comes in a- at access entertainment. We don't think about one investment vertical, film or television. We think about attention and eyeballs. If you think about attention and eyeballs, and you create an opportunity to pick the best in class right across the entertainment sphere. Whatever business you're in, whether you're an investor or you run a business, being honest about what your strengths are and where you need to lean on other people, that is the secret of success to me. I believe in storytelling as an incredible source of revenue. The entertainment world is all about storytelling, and storytelling by companies and founders is not always as good as it needs to be.

Harry Stebbings 0:38 Which brand do you think tells the best stories today?

Danny Cohen 0:41 I think IKEA's very good at storytelling.

Harry Stebbings 0:43 Why IKEA?

Danny Cohen 0:44 I just think-

Harry Stebbings 0:47 Danny, this is such a joy to do. I've wanted to do this one for a long time. Lior and Akin have said so many wonderful things. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Danny Cohen 0:53 Oh, pleasure. It's very nice to be here. Um, you've had, uh, really amazing people actually on your podcast before. So nice to be, uh, in their company.

Harry Stebbings 1:00 Do you know what, Danny? I think it's the British accent for the American audience. It, it makes a big difference. They put you 10 IQ points higher, actually.

Danny Cohen 1:06 Good. Good.

Harry Stebbings 1:06 Tell me, it's a fascinating background that you have and not the usual in terms of starting in the entertainment industry and then moving to investing. How did you make that transition, Danny?

Danny Cohen 1:16 So my job before working for Access for Len Blevatnik was running the television division of the BBC. I ran networks, pre-BBC TV networks. I was in charge of production and all the green lighted content. And I'd been there about eight years. I was ready actually to just, to do something different. The way I think about it is, I want to work until I'm really old. I think that's what keeps you healthy. So I was about 43, 44, um, when I reflected on that. I thought, "Well, I'm not even halfway through my career if I'm gonna work till I'm old." Do I want to be doing the same thing with the same people in the same world, however wonderful and exciting it is, 'cause it is, you know, great, those jobs are great, and they're very, very fascinating, interesting and stimulating. Do I wanna be doing those for another 25, 30, 35 years? And I couldn't imagine that. So I left the BBC without deciding what I was gonna do next because I knew I needed some time to really think about it and decompress. Those jobs are very intense. And I went and had some nice meetings on the West Coast and, and so on, with, um, TV businesses and studios and so on. But around that time, Len Blevatnik had approached me. I'd known Len actually through my wife for quite a long time. And the proposition he offered was so much more interesting, so much more diverse, so much more learning and education for myself, so much more runway to have a long career in this rather than treading, you know, around the same turf I had been for the first 25 years of my career. It was just much, much more appealing.

Harry Stebbings 2:35 Can I ask you, eight years at the BBC in the position that you were, there must have been some really big takeaways in terms of how it shaped your operating mindset and how you act today. What would you say are one or two of the biggest?

Danny Cohen 2:46 It's all about talent. Um, whether that's about a founder of a company or a, you know, a presenter on a, on a BBC One or a mainstream network show, the fundamental thing is it's all about talent. It's all about teams. It's all about being honest about what you're not good at and what you need support from other people at. It's all about delegating, doing the things that only you can do. And if you're in a very senior role in a business, and I, you know, I sometimes say this to the CEOs of the, of the, uh, companies we invest in. If the thing you're doing on your list is something someone else in the company should be doing, you probably shouldn't be doing it. Because your focus as CEO should be on only on the things only you can do. So I learnt lots about management. And I think that's helped me a bit because not all investors have had, you know, many decades in management.

Harry Stebbings 3:31 Mm-hmm.

Danny Cohen 3:31 They come to it in a different route. So I think that's actually something I can bring to it. And I, and I also think those management skills, the time and measurement, gives you hopefully some emotional intelligence about how to work with people that I think is also very important in, in the way you approach, uh, the companies you've invested in.

Harry Stebbings 3:47 I think people talk a lot about kind of the decay of operator experience, especially applied to technology. But I think the most valuable thing is actually just how to handle people.

Danny Cohen 3:53 But also understand it's hard. I mean, it is hard managing things. And sometimes when you sit outside as an investor, you can sometimes think, "Oh, why didn't they do this? Why didn't they do that?" And often you don't understand the complexity of what the person in the hot seat as the manager was having to do and all the different elements they were having to juggle. So I think those things around emotional intelligence and management experience can give you a deeper understanding of the challenges a business faces.

Harry Stebbings 4:16 Can I ask, in terms of the challenges, uh, over eight years at the BBC, there's gonna be some challenges. What was the biggest challenge that you faced do you think?

Danny Cohen 4:25 I think the biggest challenge is the one that I think about every day now, which is the fragmentation of audiences, fragmentation of entertainment audiences, and the rapid shift to digital consumption of entertainment. You know, you have day-to-day crises, whether that's around a certain show or anything else. But the biggest challenge, the macro challenge, the most interesting challenges is about that fragmentation and that digital transition. And that's very challenging for a legacy broadcaster like the BBC or like a network in the US, CBS, ABC, when you can see those audiences fracturing and going towards digital consumption and curated consumption. That's the biggest ongoing challenge both for me then, going back a few years, and I think still for the management of, of broadcasters and TV stations now.

Harry Stebbings 5:08 Uh, I had this beautiful structure of the conversation, and I'm just kind of gonna ignore it because I want to just roll with this. How did they then think about it? Internally, when they think about that fragmentation, what are they saying, and what did you think when you were

Harry Stebbings 5:20 in that seat?

Danny Cohen 5:21 First of all, you shouldn't accept that linear television is over, broadcast television is over. Particularly for older audiences, they are watching s- quite a lot of amount. So channels have value. But I believe particularly with digital audiences, it's the young audiences that have obviously moved over first. And you really need to pay a lot of attention to what young audiences are doing 'cause they're the pathfinder for the older audiences.So I try to think most about youth audiences as the kind of pathfinder to what the future will be like. And I, you see that in other places. You know, I, one very interesting stat I've, I've noticed more recently was, so in the US, more hours are consumed of YouTube on connected TVs than Netflix. And that's because, you know, you can watch YouTube now on your main TV, um, and people are watching so much YouTube, it's now more hours than Netflix. So that gives you an idea about how the ground has shifted. Telling you something about my age, I remember when this country, when a fourth network channel was, uh, announ- uh, started broadcasting, Channel 4. Okay? That was in the '80s. Can you imagine that now? You have hundreds if not thousands of sources of entertainment across, across a broad, broad spectrum. I think you focus on the young to start with because they're the pathfinders. And the key, more than anything, is have great content. If you don't have great content, you've not got anything great to distribute. So you start with the content and you go from there. And that, you know, there's a well-known phrase, "Content is king or queen," and, and that's still the case. Because unless you've got good things to watch, unless you've understood the zeitgeist, unless you've got the right talent, you've got nothing of quality or value to distribute.

Harry Stebbings 6:50 "Content is king." I get you. I agree. Do you know what I find worrying? Discovery. You know, I'm in the content game too.

Danny Cohen 6:58 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 6:58 W- there are some amazing pieces of content that never, ever see much attention. And it's 'cause discovery is, like, a fundamentally broken thing. How do you think about the problem of discovery of great content in a world of so much content?

Danny Cohen 7:11 You're 100% right. It's a big, big problem. I mean, I,

Danny Cohen 7:14 I've been involved with, uh, one or two projects that went to streaming platforms, very, very high-quality projects that just disappeared. Really great work with great talent involved. And that's because there's so much on there, they don't market very much. They trust only on the algorithm to throw things at you. And frankly, I, uh, the quality of those algorithms is, I think, slightly overrated because it's, take some of those streaming platforms, the stuff they offer me as the things they'd li- like to watch, they don't often offer me something I really want to watch. So I, I think they're amazing platforms but actually the quality of the recommendation engines is not as good as I think people hope they would be. And so that problem of discovery is a very, very profound one now. I, I actually-

Harry Stebbings 7:53 But you think it's better on YouTube and that's why they do so much better actually now?

Danny Cohen 7:57 Possibly.

Harry Stebbings 7:58 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 7:58 Possibly. I mean, you know, hard to bet against Google on any of these things. I mean, I, I, I downloaded, uh, an app to my phone called Must Watch which you can put in any TV piece of content and it'll tell you what platform it's on in your country as a way of trying to aid this discovery problem. And it's good. It's not amazing, but it's good. But it speaks to exactly what you're saying, which is, it's very hard to find the stuff you want to watch. And it's very hard to know even where to look for it. I think we've all had that experience that we know that there's this huge amount of content out there, but we've sat at home flicking around looking for what to watch and we've not found something we want to.

Harry Stebbings 8:30 M- my worry is also this gets worse and worse with AI and content creation. Y- we have a h- we, we use AI to create content today.

Danny Cohen 8:36 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 8:36 And what it will do in two to three years, I think will 10X the supply of content.

Danny Cohen 8:40 Yep.

Harry Stebbings 8:41 How do you think about that worsening the discovery problem even further?

Danny Cohen 8:45 It's gonna worsen it. I think you're right. I think, you know, there's a big who knows about everything in AI now. But hits and stars. Okay? I mean, hits and stars. And, and that's something Len actually says quite a lot. You know, as someone who bought one of the three majors in music and has plenty of experience in entertainment like me now, you have to focus on talent to give yourself the best chance. Um, you also have to take risks. You know, that's something I learned throughout my career. If you try and do exactly what people have done before, you often get a, a sort of slightly shallower facsimile of it, a faded facsimile. And you have to take risk, which means some of them don't work, but some of them do. Um, you know, they zig, we zag, that kind of thing. And actually, that really fits with Len's, uh, perspective of investment too. You know, he's something of a contrarian investor who will look for opportunities in the opposite direction from where other people are looking. And I think that's actually been, um, one of the hallmarks of his success.

Harry Stebbings 9:38 Do you know another thing I worry about is kind of the, it sounds a bit strong of me, but kind of the bastardization of content, which is we can have a 60-minute episode, and then there'll be a 45-second clip which just takes a very strong viewpoint.

Danny Cohen 9:51 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 9:51 And that is the one that's shared on Twitter with 45 million views.

Danny Cohen 9:54 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 9:55 And the episode may get a million views.

Danny Cohen 9:57 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 9:57 That 1/45th.

Danny Cohen 9:59 Uh, uh, you're right. You're right. I don't know whether one can battle that stuff. You know, I, I don't know whether one has to work out, "Okay, how do you manage that?" Because there was, there was a very interesting recent large-scale survey in the UK, which it said that, I think, young people in the UK are watching over an hour's TikTok a day now-

Harry Stebbings 10:17 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 10:17 ... on average, which seems astonishing for one platform.

Harry Stebbings 10:21 I do that.

Danny Cohen 10:22 Do you?

Harry Stebbings 10:22 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 10:23 Over an hour? And, uh-

Harry Stebbings 10:24 But I study the trends of what works and what doesn't. There's tools which show-

Danny Cohen 10:27 And it's a rabbit hole, isn't it?

Harry Stebbings 10:28 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 10:28 It's a rabbit hole and, uh, it's fun. But it's an incredible, has an incredible ability, both that and Instagram Reel, to suck up time.

Harry Stebbings 10:36 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 10:36 Now, I'm not sure you can, you're not gonna be able to fight those trends. But you can ask yourself, "What can I do to make sure that the short-form content I'm creating has the best chance of taking people to the long-form episode?" And you could argue that's a r- kind of responsibility if you care about long-form content. I really care about long-form content. Not just because of my, I don't know, my value set and what I'm interested in. But often, that's where the money is.You know, it's the long form content where the money is as an investor. You know, you're not going to make much of, unless you're a very highly, um, influential influencer on TikTok, you're not making much at the moment. YouTube, the big YouTube, um, creators, they make money on the long form videos that you can put adverts in.

Harry Stebbings 11:19 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 11:19 That's where the money is. And that's true of a lot of these, you know, that if you have a great 105 minute or 120 minute movie, you've got a good chance of success. You've not- not really got anything like that chance of success with a minute clip.

Harry Stebbings 11:30 Yeah. That's what I worry about also with this generation of TikTok stars, where it's like they're fine, you know, several who do make a lot of money, but actually in the broad scheme of things, the creator economy does not make actually very much money at all there.

Danny Cohen 11:41 Well, I think you have to, again, give credit to YouTube on that actually, because

Danny Cohen 11:45 that's where you look at the biggest creators on YouTube, they're making tens of millions. And there's a- there's a- there's a set behind them who are making thousands a month or hundreds a month. And that is a platform where you can take your- take your talent and make money from it. Whereas I agree with you, some of these other, um, platforms, there's no pathway at the moment. Now you could argue that these companies will work out what that pathway is. They'll work out a way of rewarding, um, their- their top creators and creators generally to do it. But we're not seeing that pathway yet.

Harry Stebbings 12:14 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 12:14 And so I would advise people if you want to be a creator and it's obviously a growing part of the economy, focus on the areas where you- where you could actually make money. And if that means doing short form, make focus on that short form, throwing your audience to the long form.

Harry Stebbings 12:27 Yeah. I actually don't believe in investing in the creator economy.

Danny Cohen 12:31 No.

Harry Stebbings 12:31 And I know that sounds strange, but it's because so much value accrues to the top 0.1%.

Danny Cohen 12:35 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 12:36 So much that actually generally speaking, your credit card for content creators, the, uh, you know, provider that allows you to do content creator taxes better, whatever that is, it's just not a big enough market.

Danny Cohen 12:47 Well, we- we have a really great investment in that area actually called Spotter. And they would be better about talking about their business than I, but- but, uh, you might want to approach them for a future podcast because they're exceptional. They are doing very well at what they do. They've become a home for creators and it's a big business for us now. It's be interesting for you as an interesting challenge to your perspective to have them on and they could tell you about their business.

Harry Stebbings 13:06 What do legacy media think about it? Like what does the BBC think about the creator economy? There's a TikTok star who does kind of, uh, news, um, in the UK and he has 10 million followers now and the BBC attacked him recently. I'm just wondering like, what is the response from legacy media to the rise of this form of media?

Danny Cohen 13:24 I think they're massively challenged by it. Um, I think you see their attempts to- to respond to it. I don't know, this morning Taylor Swift being at an NFL match last night with her new boyfriend was one of the main stories on the BBC News website.

Harry Stebbings 13:38 Was there- was there a match on? I just saw Taylor Swift in a box all the time. (laughs)

Danny Cohen 13:41 Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what, that's the point, yeah. So- so- so why is that there? That's not really news in the way you would expect the BBC to present news and as a story of significance, but what they're trying to do by doing that, and which other legacy media also have to try and do, is track young audience, make those young audiences feel that there are some topics which are particularly focused on them. Now I'm not saying by that the young audiences are not interested in real world news, they're only interested in Taylor Swift, but they might be more interested in both than- than an older audience. So they, that's what they- they can only do it through the stories they tell and where they put those stories.

Harry Stebbings 14:13 Do you not think that's kind of a what and a where? And what I mean by that is like, that is, I'm- I'm guessing and so forgive me if I'm wrong, but that is a written piece of content on the BBC News website, and I think it's the wrong what, it probably should be a short form video or an animated clip or whatever that is, and it shouldn't be on the BBC website 'cause that's not where they are either.

Danny Cohen 14:32 Well, this is the problem though, that- that's a catch-22, isn't it? Because if they're not on that website, you can't get young audiences to the BBC, so you've got to keep trying and- and you've got to see whether you can attract them. I think in that story there was probably something to click on, which was probably the Instagram clip of her, you know, Taylor Swift laughing at the game or whatever, uh, surrounded by some other celebrities. But as I say, that's not the only thing young people are interested in. But the- the- you can see these efforts to attract younger people to legacy platforms because they know that those audiences seeping away from them and that's a big, big, big challenge for them, for their futures. It's existential actually for those companies.

Harry Stebbings 15:06 What do you think happens in five years time?

Danny Cohen 15:09 Uh, to legacy media?

Harry Stebbings 15:10 Yeah. So I- I had someone, uh, recently say to me that actually with AI and the explosion of content, they will become more valuable because they are verified sources of media that you can trust. And you know there is a person there, they have morals, they have liable versus AI first could be anything.

Danny Cohen 15:27 I hope that's true. I- I think brands, trusted brands are really important. But AI isn't the thing that's suddenly going to, uh, challenge trusted brands. Social media has already done that for- for, what, 10, 15 years now. You know, the breakdown in shared truths, the breakdown in our understanding of a shared reality and what's really happened, that's already happened. So AI might make that worse arguably, but I don't think that's a new thing with AI. I think- I think you hope, and I hope as a kind of concerned citizen that those brands hold on to truth, but I don't know. I mean, if- if that many young people are getting their news from TikTok, why would they, when they're 10 years older decide they want it on the BBC? They may do, but I- I'm just not sure and I- I do find that concerning. And it's not that the story for these services is over, it's just they've got massive, massive challenges and they're going to require great leadership, great talent, new distribution models to be able to survive.

Harry Stebbings 16:24 Do you think the incentive structure is aligned to that? And what I mean by that is in a world where, you know, bluntly I make a lot of money from my podcast. If I was in a traditional media house, I would be paid a salary. Like the BBC's salary incentive structure is not nearly as attractive as what one can earn in a modern media world.

Danny Cohen 16:44 That's always been the case. People are decently paid there, but you can work in other places. I think, you know, in the case of the BBC and I left quite a while ago now, people are very proud to work there.It's an amazing place to work. You feel like you have a ro-

Harry Stebbings 16:57 Do you think they still are? And I don't mean that rudely, but there's been a lot of shade on-

Danny Cohen 17:00 I think some. Yeah, I think some, but not all. Uh, and actually, you know, I think this comes in, in phases. There was a moment, I remember, when I was there where everyone seemed to want to work for Google or Facebook. Not sure everyone feels like that now. I think some. You know, the problem with, uh, all this area is generalizations and, yeah, there's, uh, there is, I'm sure, 10X, 20X the amount of young people who wanna work at the BBC th- than they have roles for.

Harry Stebbings 17:20 Do you think BBC, ITV, traditional legacy media, do you think they are more or less valuable in five years, if you were to put it back down?

Danny Cohen 17:28 Y- y- it just depends on your strategy. I mean, you know, ITV have done a very good job. You know, for global audiences, that's the main commercial channel in the UK. They've done a very good job of building out their production and distribution capabilities, so they're not just reliant on, on, uh, linear television transmission. So I- I really think it depends on strategy. And I'm not someone who really believes you can imagine what's gonna happen in five years at this time, because things are changing so fast. AI, look how AI, what AI has done in just the last few months once people began to understand the power of gene- generative AI. I think people tell you with confidence they know what's gonna happen in five years, they're, to me, they're overconfident.

Harry Stebbings 18:00 Do you worry about the business model of media? And what I mean by that is, like, traditional advertising. I mean, we remember the days when it was, like, X Factor on a Saturday night, and those slots on ITV were, like, a million each or whatever it was.

Danny Cohen 18:12 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 18:13 People mostly watch on demand, catch up, watch TikTok.

Danny Cohen 18:16 Yeah. So this actually goes to the heart of, uh, the investment strategy I lead on at my part of Access, Access Entertainment, that we don't think about one investment vertical, film or television. We think about attention and eyeballs. And that attention and eyeballs, that can be across a wide range of entertainment experiences. So if you think about attention and eyeballs rather than, "I can only invest in film and television," then you create an opportunity to pick the best in class, or try and invest in the best in class, across, right across the entertainment sphere. So at Access Entertainment, we invest in film and television, but we also invest in gaming, we invest in the creator economy, uh, we invest in other kinds of digital content. Uh, we invest in live theater, and we also actually just started our first immersive experience. We've launched a show earlier this year with David Hockney.

Harry Stebbings 19:03 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 19:04 Um-

Harry Stebbings 19:04 Lightroom?

Danny Cohen 19:05 Yeah, Lightroom. We're the main investor in Lightroom. We actually just announced a- our second show for Lightroom, which is with Tom Hanks. Uh, so that's the way I approach, uh, investment with lens backing. It's all possible because of Len Blavatnik's backing and his strategic flexibility. But if you don't think about format, but you think about talent and people across, and companies across the entertainment spectrum, then I think you give yourself the best chance.

Harry Stebbings 19:27 Does attention and eyeballs ever not lead to financial value creation?

Danny Cohen 19:32 TikTok might be an example of that.

Harry Stebbings 19:34 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 19:34 So there are ... And that's why you've got to be, you know, try and be smart and try and back the right things. But if you think about entertainment like that, rather than in subcategories, I think you give yourself that chance. I also think you create more opportunities. So if you're working with talent in one area, whether that's a founder or a, a, you know, a star, you might end up doing more with them in another area. And, uh, again, that kind of flexibility, that strategic flexibility, that flexibility of capital that Len and Access allow, means you can search out the best opportunities from a very wide spectrum.

Harry Stebbings 20:06 The thing that I found fascinating when I was obviously doing the research for this is, the upside maximization cases across these industries are very different. You know, y- obviously, you mentioned kind of Lightroom there, and then obviously, you own theaters, even. It's a very different upside to a Tripledot. You know, I think Tripledot could be a $10 billion company in the next five years if we execute well and right. Respectfully, a theater is not gonna be a $10 billion business. Uh, there is a limit to the value that can accrue in a theater. How do you think about upside maximization when investing when there are very different profiles?

Danny Cohen 20:40 You're, you're 100% right, and it's one of the advantages and actually joys of working for someone that's one person's capital,

Danny Cohen 20:47 because different things will have different types of value. So you're right. Tripledot, amazing gaming company, amazing founders. I think the sky's the limit, and I think they'll, they'll continue to be great at executing. A theater, uh, you get a certain rent a week. You ... There's only the same amount of tickets, uh, seats every week. Productions cost a certain amount, and you can invest a certain amount in them. But I have, I, I work in a, in a very fortunate place, where I work for someone who both likes making money and likes building big businesses, but also has a great love of the arts and a great love of storytelling, um, and a great appreciation of talent. And so there are things we do in the mix at Access which aren't about pro- profit maximization, but are about smaller profits and also a love of the arts. And I feel extremely fortunate, actually, to be in that position, because I love the arts, and it's great to work with someone who, um, is the same.

Harry Stebbings 21:41 Can I ask you, does it also impact downside scenario planning? When you think about loss ratios in startups, we both know many startups fail. It's harder for actual physical events, I imagine, to fail. Immersive experiences, theaters, it's hard to fail like a startup would go to zero.

Danny Cohen 21:56 That's true. I mean, it's, it's certainly true in a theater 'cause you own the real estate.

Harry Stebbings 21:59 (laughs)

Danny Cohen 22:00 So as a minimum, you've got, you know, uh, it's a grade one, we own the, uh, Len owns the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Harry Stebbings 22:05 Mm-hmm.

Danny Cohen 22:05 Uh, it's a grade one listed building. It's been, uh, on that site for 300 years. It's prime real estate in London. Has to have a specific use, but it's prime real estate in London. So there's no way of going to zero. The, the, the way of maximizing its profitability is to bring in big stars and big shows. So for example, in January, we have Sarah Snook, you know, Shiv from Succession.

Harry Stebbings 22:24 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 22:25 She's starring in a play at the Haymarket. She's actually playing all 26 characters in the new version of Dorian Gray. Um, and that's a real sweet spot for me. Big talent and innovation in, in production. That's the way you maximize it. But you're right, you've got something there, um, which has value. Similarly, if you have the privilege of working with someone like David Hockney, an immersive show with David Hockney has IP value that we share with him in terms of royalties and license fees, and you can take that show around the world. So you're right. The, the, the, uh, downside scenario case is different.

Harry Stebbings 22:54 And it's really interesting you mentioned, obviously, Sarah Snook and David Hockney there. You know, we saw, um, Lionel Messi agree in his MLS deal actually to have a revenue share with Apple TV.

Danny Cohen 23:04 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 23:04 And it's kind of the-... transition of value from talent, or from kind of, uh, media b- company to talent and actually them taking more and more of the pie. Do you think we'll continue to see that? Do you think when you have Tom Hanks in a play or whatever it is, they'll have the power to say, "Actually, I want more of the top line"?

Danny Cohen 23:24 They might do. Everything's a negotiation, as y- as you know. Um, you know, you have to s- understand, start with the understanding the basic economics. If someone like, um, Tom Hanks, who's incredible, is making a movie, the economics are very different from doing a sh- an immersive art show, s- similarly with Sarah Snook and Succession and performing in a play. So you have to understand the base economics and what's available. But everything's a negotiation.

Harry Stebbings 23:45 Guys, are theaters good business? I love the theater. But I look at it and I'm always like, "That's, it's a lot of cost."

Danny Cohen 23:51 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 23:52 Is it a good business?

Danny Cohen 23:53 It depends what you're comparing it to. If you're comparing it to a fast-growing tech stock, um, probably not. Uh, but it might be a lot more stable than, you know, some of the trends we've seen in tech stocks in the last, in the last, uh, year or two. You can make money, but you're never gonna g- make a huge amount of money. The real money comes in the creativity. You know, if you look at, you know, the stars of musicals like Andrew Lloyd Webber and so on, you know, they're billionaires, and rightly so because they've created, uh, a, a piece of art which has lasted decades and people continue to want to see. So in a, in that kind of area with, in that kind of area, theater, IP is the key.

Harry Stebbings 24:27 I get you. Okay. What's the hardest thing about investing across so many different disciplines?

Danny Cohen 24:31 Keeping the bar high. Um, the way Access is run, it's a lean operation. We try and invest in other companies rather than build a lot of our own infrastructure. Uh, when I arrived, I couldn't quite understand that because, you know, the asset size that, that Access Industries has and Len Blavatnik has is, it's a lot of money. Um, but it's a smallish team. And it took me a while to understand that. And I think, one, it's a business and Len wants to set the right example. We're lean and we expect our companies to be lean. But actually what it makes you do is focus on really exciting opportunities rather than just doing lots of things.

Harry Stebbings 25:02 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 25:03 So it keeps the bar high. You know, focus on big things, not doing lots of things is a kind of important mantra at Access, an important mantra for Len. And so that's how we think about it. So keeping the bar high, bandwidth, making sure you're focusing on the right things, I thi- I think that's the biggest challenge.

Harry Stebbings 25:19 It's so interesting 'cause, you know, you mentioned David Hockney, Tom Hanks, Sarah Snook, and then we have Lee Ortinak and at Tripledotil.

Danny Cohen 25:24 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 25:25 And you mentioned, you know, other companies that you invest in. I don't n- interview investors who invest across disciplines like you do. What are the commonalities in the best talent regardless of whether they're on stage or in a boardroom?

Danny Cohen 25:39 Yeah, it's a great question and, and that sort of investing rather than being stuck in one format really leads you to ask yourself that. It's a really interesting question also about how you decide someone is really smart and good. Okay. Let's take Lee Ortich, um, as an example. I felt I knew pretty quickly that Lee Ort and Akin were special.

Harry Stebbings 25:56 (laughs)

Danny Cohen 25:57 Okay? Uh, I didn't need to spend 48 hours in their company to understand that. Now, it was backed up by some metrics. It was backed up by what they'd previously done in the industry. It was backed up by the fact that already at an early stage of their company, they were already profitable. You know, there were tha- those, those were there to support you. But I also, you could just feel it and see it. And it really asks an interesting question about what is it about founders that gives you the confidence to invest in them? And I think it's this mixture. Uh, it's, it's metrics, but it's also a question of emotional int- intelligence and an ability to read people, ability to understand what they're like. I think y- what you notice are some commonalities are extreme drive, focus on quality, an ability to, to separate what really matters from all the other stuff going on, a passion and an understanding for what they do, uh, an attention to detail. All of those things are some of those things. And, and there is true of someone acting on the stage at a 300-year-old theater as they are of a, of a gaming company. And, and flexibility of mind, because as conditions change, what do you do about that? If conditions change, how flexible are you in, in changing your approach?

Harry Stebbings 27:05 It's actually why I like to in- uh, it's why I like to invest mostly actually in serial entrepreneurs like Lee Ort or Akin.

Danny Cohen 27:11 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 27:11 'Cause I find with age, you understand nuance more.

Danny Cohen 27:14 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 27:14 Where when you're young, everything's black and white.

Danny Cohen 27:17 I, I, I think that's right, and actually it's something that I benefit a great deal from when I'm spending time with Len, because he has seen so much.

Harry Stebbings 27:24 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 27:24 He's seen patterns, he's seen experiences, he's understood so many different areas that that and his ability to kind of generate that and, and push that out to you is very, very valuable.

Harry Stebbings 27:35 Yeah. No, I, I totally agree with you there. What's the questions that you ask to unveil that? And so like one thing that I will ask is like, "Tell me how you first made money."

Danny Cohen 27:46 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 27:46 And that always shows like true entrepreneurial grit.

Danny Cohen 27:49 Yeah. I sometimes go a bit, back a bit further actually.

Harry Stebbings 27:52 Mm-hmm.

Danny Cohen 27:52 I kinda like to know where people, what they were interested in when they were teenagers and, uh, did they study university and all that matters. But there's two answers to that. One, the degree is interesting. (laughs) But if they hadn't, maybe that tells you something else about them, about th- their hunger for business and their desire for business. And I think you learn quite a lot about people when they s- almost tell their foundation story a step back from where you go.

Harry Stebbings 28:11 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 28:12 But I think that question of where you first made money is a, is a really, really good one. I, I am also interested in have they always been in one area or have they moved around? Again, n- there's not one definite right or wrong answer t- what that means. But you learn a lot from that also. You learn a b- lot about people's focus, uh, their attention, their drive, the quality of their execution in the past. I, I, I like all of those details too.

Harry Stebbings 28:36 It's funny, I find that the best founders that I work with have a hobby that is just very unusual.

Danny Cohen 28:43 Oh, that's interesting.

Harry Stebbings 28:43 So-

Danny Cohen 28:43 Give me an example.

Harry Stebbings 28:45 Akin, he will absolutely master the shit out of online chess.

Danny Cohen 28:49 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 28:50 And he will get so deep in it in understanding every possible optionality tree of moves. And, and then I'll have one who is fascinated by lodging for families in the 17th century in England-

Danny Cohen 29:02 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 29:02 ... and how some did multi-family lodgings to save money-

Danny Cohen 29:05 Right.

Harry Stebbings 29:05 ... and how others slept outside.

Danny Cohen 29:07 Right.

Harry Stebbings 29:07 Bizarre often.

Danny Cohen 29:08 Do you have-... one of those?

Harry Stebbings 29:10 I mean, a- actually, yes. I have a fascination with coffee in particular and double espressos.

Danny Cohen 29:14 Really? Okay.

Harry Stebbings 29:15 And so I will study the different beans to the end of the world.

Danny Cohen 29:18 Okay.

Harry Stebbings 29:19 And then hunt them down and go all over London for them. And then think about, like, the steam levels that need to be cr-

Danny Cohen 29:25 Wow.

Harry Stebbings 29:25 So yeah.

Danny Cohen 29:26 Oh, that's interesting. And it tends to be one thing like that?

Harry Stebbings 29:28 It tends to be one thing.

Danny Cohen 29:29 Okay.

Harry Stebbings 29:29 And it can move.

Danny Cohen 29:30 And where's the best cup of coffee in, in London?

Harry Stebbings 29:32 Daisy Green, just by Portman Square.

Danny Cohen 29:34 And New York?

Harry Stebbings 29:35 New York, I don't know.

Danny Cohen 29:36 Okay.

Harry Stebbings 29:36 I don't spend too much time in New York.

Danny Cohen 29:38 Okay.

Harry Stebbings 29:38 But I love that. And so I find that... Is there anything that's different between them when you look at, like, kind of maybe the more cre- and sometimes I'd say more creative, but when you look at your actors, your directors, writers, versus the founders, is there anything where the best have a difference?

Danny Cohen 29:54 On-stage talent often come with a range of insecurities. Uh, it's a different thing that, you know, they take a risk and put themselves out in the public that the rest of us don't. That involves risk and vulnerability that most of us don't ever experience. So that's something interesting in how you manage them and get the best out of them. Um, I, I think that's actually one really, really important difference, that they take a different kind of risk. A founder is taking risk with people's money. An actor or an artist is taking a risk in a very public way about how people will respond to their art and what they're doing on stage or on film or, or in a gallery. So the... I think that's actually one of the interesting things you have to do. And again, it comes around to how you manage people, how you understand what concerns them, how you can best support them. What are the strengths you have that other people might not have or you've got more of? I'll, I'll give you another example. So my background, I am not going to be the fastest in the room on the Excel, okay? I understand how the Excel works, okay? I can do the maths, but I won't be the fastest. But I may be one of the better people at understanding, uh, how people are feeling about their work, how you can encourage them the most, what kind of incentives they need, and how you can best support them. So it's about... also about being very honest with yourself about what your strengths are, and where you're much better to he- lean on other people. You, you mentioned it actually earlier when we were just chatting before you started about your network and the people you rely on who can do stuff better than you.

Harry Stebbings 31:22 Mm.

Danny Cohen 31:22 And I think one of the... Uh, whatever business you're in, whether you're an investor or, or you run a business, being honest about what your strengths are, and being honest about where you need to lean on other people, that is the secret of success to me. The secret of success is surrounding yourself with brilliant people who can fill in the bits that you're not as good at.

Harry Stebbings 31:39 Have you ever thought someone was brilliant and you were wrong?

Danny Cohen 31:42 Yeah, I'm sure I have, yeah. Uh, uh-

Harry Stebbings 31:44 What, what did you not see that you should have seen, or see that you-

Danny Cohen 31:48 Mm-hmm. It's a good question.

Harry Stebbings 31:48 An example would be like, I very much fall for the sales-led founder who can sell with charisma and charm, but when it comes to operational execution, not great.

Danny Cohen 31:57 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 31:57 Like, being blunt, Leo is amazing.

Danny Cohen 31:59 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 31:59 He doesn't always have the slick charm and social graces that an American founder can have.

Danny Cohen 32:04 No, and then they're managing very well without, uh-

Harry Stebbings 32:06 (laughs) Oh, it's a good thing. I'd much rather have Leo.

Danny Cohen 32:08 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I think the holes become pretty clear pretty quickly. And, and hopefully you see those before the investment. You know, hopefully that initial meeting or initial Zoom, if you ask the right questions, the holes become pretty clear and you have a quite cl- quick sense of, "This... either this isn't ready or this isn't for me full stop." And sometimes it can be... Sometimes it can be something like you wouldn't expect, like, they don't seem very discreet. You know, they're talking about other investors or they're critical of other people. Sometimes you get a flag like that, you think, "This isn't gonna be for me."

Harry Stebbings 32:40 Oh, very often.

Danny Cohen 32:41 And, and, and so sometimes the, the flags are around things which are not necessarily about, "Okay, here's our business plan," but are the behavioral things around the way they talk to you and what it might tell about how they might run their business.

Harry Stebbings 32:52 I totally agree with that. When people name names on investors kind of callously or flippantly, it's always a big sign.

Danny Cohen 32:58 Yeah, it's a big sign and, and, and, and it's, you know, just about respecting other people, isn't it? And, and, and knowing what's appropriate where.

Harry Stebbings 33:04 How do you give hard feedback well? Akin told me this. He said, "You're one of the loveliest people." But he's like, "Ask him how he gives hard feedback in a caring way."

Danny Cohen 33:14 So I, I think the thing is, if you are generally good to people, when you say something directly, they really notice. One is the product of the other. That if your, if your temperament is always be shouty or overaggressive, I think people begin to tune you out a bit. Whereas if you, if you're supportive and helpful, it makes... it actually makes it easier when you have to say the tough thing because it, it's sort of, "Oh my God, they're saying that now. They must mean it." And I still think you can present that well. You, you know, you can easily say, "Listen, I'm gonna be very direct with you now," or, "I'm saying this 'cause I think it's gonna help you," and then you say something very directly. But I do think the two come together, that if you are thoughtful generally, that when you have to be very direct and sometimes tough, which I c- I can be, you're noticed more because you're... that's not your typical MO.

Harry Stebbings 34:01 Danny, when do you cut the cord? My biggest mistake as a manager is not firing people fast enough.

Danny Cohen 34:06 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 34:07 When do you cut the cord and, "I've, I've had enough of being supportive."

Danny Cohen 34:10 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 34:10 "It's not working."

Danny Cohen 34:11 Well, I, I can't give you a time difference, but I, I know this from other people I work with and I feel it the same, if you know in your heart it's not working, do it sooner. And we've all had that experience where you leave someone in place too long and you think, "We'll give them another chance and another chance." We all d- we all do it, um, and I'm sure the most sophisticated investors do it. And then a year later or nine months or 18 months later, you make the decision you should have made 18 months ago and you think to yourself, "I should have done that earlier, I knew it." So I, I think when you know, you know, and you have to act because it's very, very rare that you go further down the line and you- and you're wrong on that.

Harry Stebbings 34:46 Do you start with full trust, or is it there to be gained over time?

Danny Cohen 34:50 I think there's an... there's an immediate signal you're giving of confidence by g-... investing or empowering a new CEO, then they've got to prove back a bit of confidence after that. So you created the runway of confidence for them, but that doesn't mean they've got your confidence forever. It means that they've then got to validate, you know, what, what's the phrase? Um, trust and-

Harry Stebbings 35:10 Trust and verify.

Danny Cohen 35:11 ... trust and verify. I think it's an example of that really, isn't it? That, that you give that initial vote of confidence, but then you've gotta g- g- you know, "Help me. Help me. Show me I was right. Give me the signs, the data, the results which prove I was right and that y- we're on the right path."

Harry Stebbings 35:25 Have you ever had your trust broken?

Danny Cohen 35:27 Yes. Probably in television a few times, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 35:30 Did, did you become jaded as a result?

Danny Cohen 35:32 Not really. I mean, it made me very cautious about working with those people again.

Harry Stebbings 35:36 Yes.

Danny Cohen 35:36 Um, but there's, you know, there's so many good people to work with. There's so many people you can work with who you can ultimately trust or understand why they've made the decisions they have, that it's not really a problem. But if your trust is badly broken, it's very hard to go back.

Harry Stebbings 35:48 Yeah. I agree with that. You said something earlier, which I just, it really struck me, but I didn't want to interrupt you at the time, and it was, you said you wanted to kind of work for, you know, a very significant time and really for the rest of your life. Do you have to love what you do?

Danny Cohen 36:02 Uh, do you have to love what you do? I, I think so, as you get older actually. I think as you get a little bit older, you do.

Harry Stebbings 36:07 What changes? Why, why as you get older you do?

Danny Cohen 36:10 I think when you're younger, you, you're, you're kinda h- you're ready to hustle more. You'll ready put up with staff. It doesn't mean that as you're older, you shouldn't put yourself in some uncomfortable positions and situations, because you learn from those uncomfortable situations. I think you think, you know, "I want to use my time in the most valuable way possible. Um, and therefore, I want to enjoy what I'm doing." Now, I- by the way, that's a privilege. I, I reckon a small percentage of the population are, "I really love..." can say they really love what they're doing.

Harry Stebbings 36:39 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 36:39 And, and there's a lot of people just have to do a job, and they, you know, they get what they can out of it, but they can't say they love, love, love it. So, I, I think if you, if you are able to do a job where you love it, you, you should realize how privileged you are.

Harry Stebbings 36:49 Yeah. No, I, I totally agree with that. If you could change one thing about your job, what would you change?

Danny Cohen 36:54 Honestly, I feel very fortunate. I, and there may be an answer out there, and I could come back to it. I feel incredibly fortunate about what I do, because I've got all these new areas to learn and I've learnt about the last few years beyond what I was doing before. I've got a very enabling boss who's incredibly strategic and I learn a lot from.

Harry Stebbings 37:11 He is nice.

Danny Cohen 37:11 Uh, we've got a large amount of capital at our ... eh, you know, that we can use, but we keep the bar high and we don't make too many investments. So, I, I feel very, very fortunate.

Harry Stebbings 37:19 Danny, what does the decision-making look like, if you don't mind me asking? Is it like a weekly call with an investment committee? Is it you and Len on a call?

Danny Cohen 37:27 So, it really varies depending on the size of the investment. So, if it's quite a small investment, then it's something we ... I might talk to Len just about directly, you know, in relative terms. If it's a very large sum of money, what we do is we get together. The, the, the way Len has built Access is he has a v- uh, you know, quite a wide varie- there's wide variety in my area, but there's a even wider variety across the Access Industries group. We have real estate team, and heavy industries team. We have biotech. We have real estate. Uh, we have some major investments in things like Warner Music and DAZN and Calpine and LyondellBasell. So we have a very wide range of, um ... small team, but a great range of experience across industries and in investing in general. We help each other. We may not always have the specific industry knowledge, but, you know, as we've talked about, y- there's a lot of questions which are true of investing in general. So we try and pressure test ideas together, uh, when we meet every week.

Harry Stebbings 38:21 Can I ask, did you feel ... and, and I hope it's okay for me to ask, an element of imposter syndrome? I know when I went from media to investing myself-

Danny Cohen 38:28 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 38:28 ... it was a real, "Oh, I don't ... I never done this before. This is a new skill to be learned." Did you feel that when you made the move?

Danny Cohen 38:35 I knew I had a lot to learn.

Harry Stebbings 38:37 Mm-hmm.

Danny Cohen 38:37 I felt really nervous, which is what I wanted to feel. You know, I didn't want to feel like I was gonna keep doing the same thing for another two or three decades. The feeling of

Danny Cohen 38:46 nervousness was an active decision, and it was about, as I was saying, that pathway to having an interesting career for another 25, 30 years. But yeah, I had a lot to learn. I had a lot to learn on the finance side. Uh, I had a lot to learn about investing.

Harry Stebbings 38:57 What was the hardest thing to learn? Akin asked that one.

Danny Cohen 39:00 The hardest thing to learn, in a way, is how strange the way the markets behave is, because I, I don't find it always entirely rational.

Harry Stebbings 39:09 (laughs)

Danny Cohen 39:10 And coming t- I found that quite surprising. Um-

Harry Stebbings 39:13 Have you heard the statement, "A market can stay irrational longer than your company can stay solvent"?

Danny Cohen 39:18 Yeah. That's, that sounds true to me. The only sh-

Harry Stebbings 39:21 How does that shape your thinking then if you take that one level deeper? If it doesn't always seem rational, do you do anything as a result then?

Danny Cohen 39:27 Well, to some extent, you, you have to move with the trends. So obviously, we've seen that movement from, uh, you know, "It's all about revenue," to, "Show me you can make some money. Show me you can make some profit." So it's partly about understanding how things are changing and how things are gonna be changing the way they're valued. I think it actually just takes you back to fundamentals. Do you believe in these people? Do you believe in this idea? Do you believe in their execution? And then regardless of that, you, you give your best chance of a good outcome. Not every time, but regardless of that, you give your best chance of a good outcome.

Harry Stebbings 39:52 Yeah. I get you. Um, yeah. It's, it's challenging. What was your favorite part about the move? What was freeing about it?

Danny Cohen 40:01 Um, lack of bureaucracy. The agility, um, of a place like Access compared to a l- you know ... I manage about 3,000 people. At the BBC, it's an organization of 20,000 people. It's a huge tanker that's, you know, takes long time to move things around. Um, so I think agility, flexibility, access to capital, uh, that you can spend on a range of different things, you know, not just the t- the television digital space. I think all of those things have been great.

Harry Stebbings 40:30 What do you think is your biggest insecurity today?

Danny Cohen 40:32 Am I ... got the right people around me to help me? And I, I b- really believe I have, but that's the thing you always want to keep testing. Can the people around me on the things I'm less good at, can they a- answer the questions for me that I can't answer myself? Uh-

Harry Stebbings 40:43 Are you good at delegating?

Danny Cohen 40:44 I think so. I think so, though we're a lean organization. I think the other thing is, you know, you always have insecurity around certain investments you've made. You know, I think you get, it gets particular rather than, you know, um, you know, the, the big fundamentals around anxiety or anything. I think it's, you know, have we got this one right? What do we learn from it if we haven't got right? Um, you know, how might this change our investment thesis in this area? I think you can have the insecurities around certain things rather than I, I, I don't ... I'm not sure I have a kind of large macro insecurity. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 41:11 What would you say in terms of biggest miss, how did that impact your mind?

Danny Cohen 41:49 ... invest more in that. And I didn't take the investment, and it would have been in A text in about 15 months. Um, so that was a really interesting, maybe painful learning. We all have those learnings in investing. But what I took from it was, uh, was if you believe in something, it's okay to double down. Um, it's okay to take more than one risk in an area. Um, so that was one I really learnt a lot from.

Harry Stebbings 42:15 Uh, one of my biggest hit... I love that. One of my biggest hit was, uh, it, it worked really well and you had great success with it. How did that impact your mindset?

Danny Cohen 42:23 Don't get carried away. (laughs) It's hard. Lots of things can happen still in the future. Take a long term view. Um, don't grow your ego. Um, remain humble. Keep listening. People often go wrong when they get c-... And I've seen it, you know, with people on television. People often go wrong when they get too carried away by a moment of success or a period of success.

Harry Stebbings 42:47 How do you keep them on the ground? Founders have the same. They raise that big 100 million round with Sequoia leading, your business still loses money.

Danny Cohen 42:54 Yeah, I think you've just got to keep bringing people round to focus on execution. That's what it's all about in the end, how... You know, if you can just ask very, you know, granular, specific questions around execution. Provide support, but I, I think that's the only way, because that's what brings people back down to Earth from the clouds.

Harry Stebbings 43:10 Two final ones, which is... Oh, actually, one on marriage. What's the secret to a happy marriage, Danny?

Danny Cohen 43:16 So I married up.

Harry Stebbings 43:18 (laughs)

Danny Cohen 43:18 I married someone much smarter than me. My advice would be marry someone smarter than you. My wife's a lady called Narina Herz. She sits on a number of company boards. She's on the board of Warner Music, Mattel, Workhuman. She's also written a number of best-selling books. So she's clearly, clearly much smarter than me.

Harry Stebbings 43:33 (laughs)

Danny Cohen 43:33 Support your partner, enable them, liberate them, um, cherish them. Those are the things I try and do and I know she does for me. So, um, I'm fortunate to be very, very happily married.

Harry Stebbings 43:44 In terms of parenting, as you... Oh, on marrying up, does that ever make you feel insecure?

Danny Cohen 43:49 Marrying up?

Harry Stebbings 43:50 Yeah. I've been out with girls and th- they've had that before, and then I suddenly feel very, very insecure about myself.

Danny Cohen 43:55 I, I think Narina tells me that I'm sort of confident enough in myself not to feel that, even though I know she's, you know, she's very, very smart. But I don't... No, I think, I think it's the best thing you can possibly do, because it makes life very, very interesting. You can be proud of each other's achievements. Um, so no, I, I, I, uh, tr- try and hold back that insecurity, because the benefits of it are, are, are so great. And also, if you're both ambitious people, if you want to achieve a lot, if you both like traveling and, and having new experiences and keep learning, it couldn't be better to have a wife who, who, or husband who is the same.

Harry Stebbings 44:26 How do you retain romance with time?

Danny Cohen 44:28 Wow, this place... This is going into places I didn't expect. You just have to cherish the person and keep seeing, you know, make them feel special. And you do it at special moments like birthdays, but really it's about w- the way you treat each other every day, I think.

Harry Stebbings 44:41 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 44:41 It's not just about making one big moment. It's about the way you treat each other every day.

Harry Stebbings 44:45 A- akin in

Danny Cohen 44:46 ... use this for life advice, Danny, so this is- Oh, I, yeah, I actually didn't know that, but, um-

Harry Stebbings 44:50 Yeah, yeah.

Danny Cohen 44:50 ... so yeah, but that, that's fine.

Harry Stebbings 44:52 You know what is one of the most popular discussion points on the show, though?

Danny Cohen 44:55 Is?

Harry Stebbings 44:55 It is actually like-

Danny Cohen 44:56 Happiness?

Harry Stebbings 44:56 It's happiness.

Danny Cohen 44:56 But it's core to happiness. You know, mar- marriage, your partner an-

Harry Stebbings 45:00 And meaning, yeah.

Danny Cohen 45:00 It's core to happiness and meaning, um, and h-

Harry Stebbings 45:02 Do you worry about the loneliness pandemic? We spoke to Eileen about kind of people management and how they feel, and you said about kind of being the, really very good at how they feel. I'm really worried that actually, which is more depressed and lonely in this?

Danny Cohen 45:13 So, so my, my much smarter than me wife wrote a book about this three or so years ago before everyone started talking about it, uh, called The Lonely Century. Um, and she actually wrote it before the pandemic, because she, through some experiences she'd had of, uh, teaching and some work she'd actually been doing on the, on the rise of the far right in Europe, she could see this loneliness trend building. So she wrote a book which was published. She actually delivered it, uh, first to publisher in March '20, just as the pandemic was starting, and then took it back to w- to rewrite sections to weave the pandemic in. As someone who did ... editing and helping with that book, um, yes, it's a very... It's a huge, huge issue for young people as much as old people. The data around, you know, young people are actually lonelier than old people. Those are some terrible stories and, uh, things around old people. But I think it's a massive, massive thing. I think digital culture and social media and our phones have played a massive role in that. So yeah, b- um, buy The Lonely Century today and you'll, you'll see. But what, what's interesting about the b-

Harry Stebbings 46:09 Do you ever find that hard investing in media, though, where our game is about more views, you staying on site for longer, us being able to bluntly captivate and manipulate you for longer? 'Cause that's how we make money.

Danny Cohen 46:21 Yeah, but you, um, you want people to have a diverse life. You can't take p- you know, take responsibility for the way people live their lives. Um, we do things, in our case, like the shared experience of the theater, or the shared experience of going to a David Hockney show or a Tom Hank show on the moon, as we're gonna have at The Light Room soon. So, you know, we try and balance it in what we do. Uh, but yeah, there, there's an interesting risk there. We don't have any direct investments in my area in, um, say s- you know, in Facebook or anything like that.

Harry Stebbings 46:49 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 46:49 So, um, people have different views on that stuff. But yeah, uh, and the, and the, you know, it, it impacts politics. It impacts your physical health. It impacts, um, the decisions we make about how we live our daily lives and our relationships. So, it's a big, big thing, and I, um... Narina was actually really the first into it in a public sense in recent times.

Harry Stebbings 47:07 The thing I just can't get my head around, and then we'll do a quick fire, is just like the business model of loneliness. And what I mean by that is like, respectfully, your calms and your meditation and your mental wellness apps, solutions...... so far, just haven't proven to be good businesses-

Danny Cohen 47:23 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 47:24 ... across the board.

Danny Cohen 47:24 So, Noreena, Noreena describes this in the chapter book as the loneliness economy. It's wide. You know, it, it goes from those things to, you know, she found classes where people go and have hugs with each other.

Harry Stebbings 47:35 Huh.

Danny Cohen 47:36 Okay? So,

Danny Cohen 47:37 so there's different ways of doing it where there's YouTube stars who eat loads and people find company in watching them eat and eat their food, particularly in Asia, actually, in this one. People get company from eating their meal with this person eating on screen. So the, the range and diversity of the loneliness economy is huge. M- And I, and I think it's gonna keep growing.

Harry Stebbings 47:58 Do you think it consolidates to one or two platforms? And do you think there will be platform providers whose try and solve mental health and loneliness in the next few years that take a lion's share?

Danny Cohen 48:08 Maybe. I think it's so difficult and complicated, I, I don't really know the answer to that. I mean, some of it, you know, there's, there was an amazing woman in Wales that Noreena writes in the book who started these chatty benches in parks, where, you know, it's a bench to chat on and people who needed someone to talk to could come and chat there and make a friend. So, so there's so many different ways, both in the physical world and in the digital world where... that this needs addressing.

Harry Stebbings 48:31 I find that fascinating. Um, but listen, great discussion on the book. (laughs)

Danny Cohen 48:35 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 48:35 Um, I wanna move into a quick fire. So I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts.

Danny Cohen 48:39 Okay.

Harry Stebbings 48:39 Does that sound okay?

Danny Cohen 48:40 Yeah, that sounds all right.

Harry Stebbings 48:41 'Cause trust me, you've got through to personal, so I mean-

Danny Cohen 48:43 Right.

Harry Stebbings 48:43 ... this is easy.

Danny Cohen 48:44 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 48:44 What do you believe that others around you maybe disagree with?

Danny Cohen 48:48 I think I believe in storytelling as an, a incredible source of revenue in terms of film, television, theater. And I think if you, you know, in a way you hinted at it, they won't necessarily be the high growth, you know, of gaming or creator economy that it could do. But I believe fundamentally, if you find the right things, you can make a lot of money in that area. I mean, look at, look at Barbie in the last few weeks, 1.6 billion and growing. So I, I, I really believe that, you know, it's about hits and stars and it's hard, but I think the idea that you can't still make a lot of money from high quality, well-judged, long form storytelling is not correct. It's not all going to be about TikTok.

Harry Stebbings 49:26 You mentioned Barbie there. We had Barbie and Oppenheimer in that kind of mammoth weekend.

Danny Cohen 49:30 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:30 A- and talk to me first, like, and this may be a little bit unfair and a quick fire, but COVID, cinemas, how was that? (laughs)

Danny Cohen 49:37 Disastrous for cinema. I mean, utterly disastrous. I mean, Barbie and Oppenheimer were a wonderful moment, but it was actually became quite a frustrating moment because it was the biggest moment since the pandemic where you felt the electricity of cinemas.

Harry Stebbings 49:49 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 49:50 You felt that moment of an event weekend. You felt people returning in their droves. And then we were in a writers' and actors' strike, and the knowledge that there would be some kind of dislocation in content supply for cinema in the future. And so I found it both a joyous moment to see that, but also because of the, the, the labor disputes, and of course good news is one of them has already been solved, the writers' one, looks like there's an agreement, it was also quite a frustrating moment because, you know, I went to LA a couple of weeks later. There was a lot of frustration and disenchantment in LA at that point before the writers' strike certainly was agreed because everything was stuck. So it was an interesting moment for cinema, that, where it was a moment of elation, but also, hm, we might be stuck again soon. You know, I don't know the ins and outs of the dispute, but I'm very hopeful that the actors' strike gets settled soon and, and people get back to work.

Harry Stebbings 50:39 What does the dislocation mean in terms of that content supply? Does it mean we won't have enough content for six months?

Danny Cohen 50:45 It sort of depends how long it goes on for. Um, and if you're not, you know, one of our investments, a company called A24, an independent studio, they, you know, they, they were able to keep making a lot of things. It's really about the studios and those big platforms like Netflix and Amazon. But yeah, there will be a point, a pinch point in the next year to 18 months where there's probably a bit less content around than before. We talked at the beginning of podcast about maybe there might be too much content around and, um, you know, a refinement of that might be a good thing. I think it's really gonna depend now on how long the actors' strike continues. And if people get back to work quite soon, they may not notice that dislocation. But certainly, you know, if any industry pauses for four months, five months, six months, supply dwindles.

Harry Stebbings 51:27 Is it ending now?

Danny Cohen 51:29 The-

Harry Stebbings 51:30 The strikes.

Danny Cohen 51:31 Well, the writers' one has ended.

Harry Stebbings 51:33 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 51:33 We think. I mean, it still needs to be ratified by and

Narrator 51:35 (laughs)

Danny Cohen 51:35 ... signed by members, but the actors are still on strike. I actually think today there might be new t- talks begin with the actors and the actors' union and the platforms and studios begin again today. So I'm hopeful that that gets settled. Interestingly, there's, you know, a number of things that p- people might know about AI in those distr- in those discussions about how actors, the relationship between actors and AI. So I'm hopeful that gets resolved quite quickly and, and the industry gets going.

Harry Stebbings 51:57 Why is Broadway more expensive than the West End? I saw this and I, I didn't have any idea why.

Danny Cohen 52:03 I think a lot of it's cost base, and part of that cost base is union costs. The union costs of ma- on many things in New York are higher. But what we're noticing, and we're finding it more and more extreme, is that the cost of financing a play or a musical in the West, London's West End can be four times less than financing on Broadway.

Harry Stebbings 52:21 Huh.

Danny Cohen 52:22 And that's very problematic. Now you could argue-

Harry Stebbings 52:25 But that's purely 'cause of unions and...

Danny Cohen 52:26 Unions and other reasons for cost bases and, and, and, and wage structures and everything else. And, and to be honest, someone on Broadway will be able to tell you more on that. But that's, those are, those are at least some of the fundamentals. I think this is really problematic for Broadway because Broadway partly benefits from and exists because of the generosity of some very wealthy people to keep backing a very, very high risk type of investment. And if those investors begin to feel that the risk has just gone too high because the bud- the capitalization for this musical is now 25 million, where three or four years ago it might have been 15 million, and they think it's gonna take three years to get my money back, if that, I think m- even with the amazing goodwill of those people, those benefacts of Broadway, they're beginn- gonna begin to think differently about it. And they're going to ask themselves more and more questions about whether they want to be supporting that. So I, I do... it's good for the West End in one way, but I d- I, it's something I am grown concerned about. Now you could argue that the, you can get higher average ticket price on Broadway than the West End, and therefore you could recoup quicker. But still, the maths of that-

Harry Stebbings 53:31 You could, but to that extent, are you gonna get 4X the ticket price?

Danny Cohen 53:33 The ma-

Harry Stebbings 53:33 I don't think so.

Danny Cohen 53:34 The maths of that...... you know, are hard. And, and it's making us, certainly at this point at Access, Access Entertainment, much more cautious about what we invest in on Broadway. So-

Harry Stebbings 53:45 So when you look at Hamilton, sorry I'm so naive, is, is, is all the value created there in IP? In the music, in the DVDs, in the merch?

Danny Cohen 53:53 No. No. I mean, the musics has a lot of value and, and the Hamilton soundtrack was released on, you know, the record company Len owns is Warner Music, so there's been a lot of value in that. But if you're selling out theater every night, there's, there's m- you're gonna start making money. And then the other thing you'll get is that, um, if you invest in the original production, you have a right to invest in all the other productions around the world.

Harry Stebbings 54:14 Ah.

Danny Cohen 54:14 So, Access is an investor in Hamilton in New York, but also in London, and in Australia, and in other countries. You earn that right by taking that risk. Want to invest in a successful production as it moves around the world.

Harry Stebbings 54:26 Okay. I totally get you there. Tell me, what's your biggest lesson from working with Len?

Danny Cohen 54:30 He always says, "Do big things. Do less and do big things." I think that's right. I think, you know, you've only got so much amount of bandwidth. But, you know, I, I learn whenever I'm with him, and he's very generous with his time with me, I learn things every time from his business experience. A story he might tell, or he'll say, you know, "Generally speaking, I've found this and I've seen this pattern." So there are some, like, big things, but actually I, I, when you're lucky enough to work with someone like that, you know, one of the world's most successful businessmen, you learn w- from them all the time. You learn from every conversation. Sometimes you might say something that interests them as well, but I definitely learn all the time from him.

Harry Stebbings 55:06 You can have dinner with anyone, dead or alive.

Danny Cohen 55:08 Charles Dickens.

Harry Stebbings 55:09 Why?

Danny Cohen 55:10 It's no contest. I mean, you were talking about coffee, coffee beans earlier. Um, 19th century English literature is my thing, and most particularly Charles Dickens.

Harry Stebbings 55:19 Do you have a favorite Charles Dickens quote?

Danny Cohen 55:21 I don't. My favorite book, Great Expectations.

Harry Stebbings 55:24 Why, why that one?

Danny Cohen 55:26 I think it's, for me, the most perfect novel in the English language. When you start thinking about storytelling, and, and this is why, you know, I did an English literature degree, um, and I think that's given me great training for the rest of my work in terms of storytelling. You think about character, you think about structure, you think about plot, you think about dialogue. Uh, you think about the emotional impact of what you've read. And for me, Great Expectations unifies those in the most perfect way I've, I've seen in any book I've ever read. Actually reread it again last year. And I adore Charles Dickens. So that's the thing, that's my thing.

Harry Stebbings 55:57 (laughs) Do you think we've lost the art of storytelling?

Danny Cohen 55:59 No.

Harry Stebbings 55:59 You don't.

Danny Cohen 56:00 No.

Harry Stebbings 56:00 Do you find many good s-

Danny Cohen 56:01 Why would you think s- why would you say that?

Harry Stebbings 56:02 'Cause I don't think we have many good storytellers, especially in, in technology and investing.

Danny Cohen 56:06 So I think you're right about that.

Harry Stebbings 56:07 It's a learned game. They'll say, "Oh..."

Danny Cohen 56:09 I, I think you're right. It's a really interesting point of connectivity between the worlds I've been in. The, the, the entertainment world is all about storytelling, and storytelling by c- companies and founders is not always as good as it needs to be.

Harry Stebbings 56:20 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 56:21 Sometimes it's about assuming too much knowledge, I find sometimes with founders. That they expect the person they're pitching to to understand a whole set of things about what they do or about the, the area they're in, m- that the investor may just not have. So I think, I think a lot of it is breaking things down to their simple initial components and building a story.

Harry Stebbings 56:38 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 56:38 And storytelling needs thought, it needs structure, it needs, it needs a shape, it needs highlights. It needs all of those things that are true if you're making a film or you're telling the investment story when you're pitching your business. And, uh, to me, it has immense value and it's something that I love dearly.

Harry Stebbings 56:55 Can you learn to storytell?

Danny Cohen 56:57 Undoubtedly. There are, as I say, there are certain elements of it which you can learn, you can study, you can learn from people who are better at it than you. And some of them, I, as I say, they're fundamentals. It's about beginning, middle, and end. Okay, when you're thinking about storytelling, fundamental storytelling is a beginning, middle, and an end. So whether that's a novel, or a film, or a play, or an investor pitching their business, what's the beginning, the middle, and end of your story? How do you want to tell it? How do you want to grow people's understanding? Where do you want to land some key points? You know, w- all of those things. Where are your reveals? All of those things are true of, of very different kinds of storytelling.

Harry Stebbings 57:32 Which brand do you think tells the best stories today?

Danny Cohen 57:36 I think IKEA's very good at storytelling.

Harry Stebbings 57:38 Why? Why IKEA?

Danny Cohen 57:38 Yeah. Uh, maybe it's in my mind, I saw it again last night. I just think you know what they are, you know what their tone is, you know what they do. Um, and they, and they keep delivering. I think that's a really, really interesting brand.

Harry Stebbings 57:48 For me, it, that Nike will always shine through. That everyone is an athlete.

Danny Cohen 57:52 Yeah. It's great. Did you watch Air?

Harry Stebbings 57:54 I did.

Danny Cohen 57:55 Yeah, it was a terrific movie, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 57:56 Amazing.

Danny Cohen 57:57 Yeah. Yeah, no, they're ... Listen, they're, they're extremely good at it. And also some people can be good at storytelling and then lose their way.

Harry Stebbings 58:02 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 58:03 You know, you can have a great brand and a clear story-

Harry Stebbings 58:05 Do you know what I find unbelievable is Chanel. And the reason I find Chanel amazing as a storyteller and a brand is because teenagers in Beijing love it, mothers in New York do, and grandmothers in Paris do.

Danny Cohen 58:15 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:16 Normally with stories, it works for an audience.

Danny Cohen 58:18 You know there's an initial clarity of proposition there, and a consistency of proposition, that I think you're rewarded for.

Harry Stebbings 58:25 Huh.

Danny Cohen 58:25 The-

Harry Stebbings 58:25 What do you mean by that? Sorry.

Danny Cohen 58:27 Often people over-complicate things, I think, when it comes to a brand. It, a brand is, uh, a hallmark of something you like and maybe quality, but it's also a feeling a brand gives you. And a feeling is quite a simple thing in one level. It has to be clear and immediately accessible, because feelings are things you don't think about. They're just what you feel as a reaction to something. And I think some of the best brands, they, they keep the brand clear and consistent once they've achieved it, you know, success in it-

Harry Stebbings 58:54 Mm-hmm.

Danny Cohen 58:54 ... and that gives you a g- a great advantage.

Harry Stebbings 58:56 Do you think there's been any massive brand missteps?

Danny Cohen 58:58 I think there's been mismanagement. Yeah, I think you could probably look at some of the tech companies. And they don't seem responsive to concerns. They don't seem responsive to how people feel about their platforms and the dangers of them.

Harry Stebbings 59:11 You know who's most amazing, I think, is Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg was like the most hated nerd in tech-

Danny Cohen 59:17 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 59:17 ... for a stint, and now he's come back to fighting Elon Musk in the Colosseum-

Danny Cohen 59:21 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 59:21 ... being in VR, and everyone going, "This guy's ripped and he's kinda cool again."

Danny Cohen 59:26 Yeah, I think some people like that. Not always, but yeah, but that, maybe that's-

Harry Stebbings 59:30 The rejuvenation of Microsoft. Do you remember when we were all like-

Danny Cohen 59:33 Juveni- yeah.

Harry Stebbings 59:33 ... Microsoft, "What are they doing?"

Danny Cohen 59:34 Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, listen, there's amazing stories like that. Lego is another great story of that, isn't there? I mean, it's an incredible thing. I actually think, you know, what Mattel are doing with Barbie is pretty exceptional at the moment as well.

Harry Stebbings 59:44 (laughs)

Danny Cohen 59:44 I mean, that's a remarkable story of taking a decades-old brand and making it feel incredibly of the moment, incredibly contemporary, uh, bringing new audiences to it. So, so I think it's always possible, but you have to have a strategy, a very clear strategy for doing so.

Harry Stebbings 59:57 Do you worry about woke culture?

Danny Cohen 59:59 I find, d'you know, I find there's two extremes to this now and they both annoy me. People just use "woke" too easily now as a generalization.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:06 Okay.

Danny Cohen 1:00:07 It, it's much more subtle, it's much more complex than that. So on one side you've got woke, and you- on the other side you've got people who are m- w- woke criticizing people who are more traditional. And both sides have got to a point of kind of, they've lost the ability to be subtle, to understand complexity, to understand nuance, and that means they're too easy to dismiss each other. You know, it's too easy to dismiss people who are of more traditional values, going, "Oh, they're just traditional, they're old-school values," in the same way it's too easy to go, "Oh, that's woke. There's nothing to it." And I think it goes to polarization of debate, and I think it goes to social media has a role in that. But actually, I fi- I find, I find both ends of the spectrum really, really off-putting because they don't allow for really actually thinking about it. They allow for too-easy dismissal of people's opinions that are different to your own and an unwillingness to understand why they have that opinion.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:57 That's a very thoughtful answer. (laughs)

Danny Cohen 1:00:58 Well, I, I think it's a massive thing for our culture. Yeah. I, I, I do think it's a massive thing for our culture. Um, and, and, and we need to re- reintroduce nuance and specificity to it. Every subject, every question in the woke-versus-traditional debate is different.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:11 D'you worry about the eradication of cultural history? And what I mean by that is, like, you know, Roald Dahl is getting, you know, uh, edited-

Danny Cohen 1:01:18 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:18 ... for many of his characters.

Danny Cohen 1:01:20 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:20 I mean, I'm sure there will be Dickens quotes, lines, statements that will not be woke.

Danny Cohen 1:01:25 I think that, for me, and this is why you have different things, you know, there's some things I feel very traditional on. On that one, I don't think anyone should be changing Roald Dahl or Charles Dickens. I think you may want to no- in your footnotes note something about that l- use of language. It sort of undermines the intelligence of people not to be able to see and understand that, and, and if you wanna read a footnote, do, but I, yeah, I, I think that culture history stuff is stupid. It, listen, it asks really, really interesting questions of, of how you feel about different artists over time. I, I, I love Virginia Woolf. I studied her a lot when I was younger.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:56 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 1:01:56 I didn't feel great when I read that some of her diaries, and there was, and diaries and there's some pretty unpleasant antisemitic things. So how you separate the art from the artist is also a really interesting and important question, um, and how you e- make sure you introduce nuance into these topics is really, really important.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:12 No, I, I totally get you. Um, tell me, media in 10 years, final one. You can paint the ideal landscape for you, how you would like media and content to look. What would that landscape look like in an ideal world?

Danny Cohen 1:02:25 Less distribution, less confusing distribution structure, easier for people to navigate.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:31 What is a less confusing distribution structure?

Danny Cohen 1:02:33 Just too many, too many different ways. And, and, and I d- I think that's gonna be proved by, not all of these platforms are gonna survive.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:40 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 1:02:40 There's just too many, you know, you gotta have too many subscriptions. It's too much for people. It's too expensive. It's too confusing. So I, I, I think you're gonna see consolidation there, which is in the interests of business, but also in the interests of the consumer. We're going to be evermore curators of our own experience. I don't believe that people will want to stop having live experiences. Look at Taylor Swift's concerts. I mean, look at that. You know, we... The David Hockney show, we've sold over a quarter million tickets in, in, in a short time. So I think people are gonna wanna live in the real world. I don't believe that people are gonna only wanna live in the other world. My big, big hope at the same time is people put their phones down more (laughs) and, um, spend more time with each other and spend more time experiencing things and thinking, because, I don't know, I, I thought to myself quite a while ago, "Do I wanna get to s- the age of 70 and think I've spent a huge chunk of my life staring at my phone?" I, I think that would've been a depressing way to spend too much of your life.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:33 Yeah.

Danny Cohen 1:03:33 And so we, how we dislocate ourselves, how we wean ourselves off the addictive quality of our smartphones is, I think, important to our happiness.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:41 Danny, listen, I've loved doing this. Thank you for putting up with my very wayward questions.

Danny Cohen 1:03:45 It's okay. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:03:45 We've gone all over the shop, but I've loved it.

Danny Cohen 1:03:47 It's okay. Yeah, it's a pleasure.