Daniel Shi

“Another great source of intel came from contacting employees who had quit or been fired. I often thought of myself as Silicon Valley’s HR department, conducting exit interviews right as people were ready to spill. It was time-consuming, but the effort paid off over and over. Remember: People always like to tell their side of the story.”
― Kara Swisher, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

“By 2017, the most successful and revolutionary film companies were the ones making films for nontraditional reasons. Amazon and Netflix were upending the lower tiers of the film business, from low-budget indie productions all the way up to $100 million star vehicles, in order to sell video subscriptions, shoes, and garden hoses. Apple looked like it might soon follow in their footsteps, making movies in order to sell more Apple TVs and iPads.”
― Ben Fritz, The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies

“The management of the St. Regis Hotel rued the day they accepted to take on the opening night party. Celebrated, highly profiled? Yes. But nothing was worth the grief of having to deal with the likes of me!”
― Robert Evans, The Kid Stays In The Picture: A Hollywood Life

“The rise of Marvel Studios over the past decade has been one of the most extraordinary stories in Hollywood history. Utilizing a crew of second-rate superheroes and run by a team of unproven executives, Marvel upended the industry’s conventional wisdom. Previously, almost everyone in Hollywood believed that the general public was interested only in marquee superheroes like Batman and Spider-Man, and nobody would see a movie about Ant-Man or the Guardians of the Galaxy; that the resources and experience of major studios gave them an unbeatable advantage over upstarts; that tightly managing budgets on would-be global “event” movies was penny-wise but pound-foolish; that tying together the plots of disparate films was too risky because if one failed, they all would; and that the only Hollywood brand name that meant anything to consumers was Disney.”
― Ben Fritz, The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies