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Larry Namer on Building E! Entertainment

Summary

Richard C. Wilson speaks with Larry Namer, co-founder of E! Entertainment Television, about building a media company from an unconventional start. Namer describes moving from cable operations into entrepreneurship, creating a television network despite doubts, and finding ways to make a limited initial budget work. He explains why a business idea needs a path to financial sustainability, how simplifying a complex concept can help an audience connect with it, and why founders need to examine the economics around an opportunity. The discussion also covers working with large companies and choosing partners carefully. Namer treats honesty as a basic condition for doing business. He reflects on a costly internet venture that taught him to look beyond a strong concept at market and technology conditions. Founders, family office investors, and executives evaluating new ventures can use the conversation to think more clearly about capital needs and operating constraints. It also considers the discipline required to keep building when others doubt the idea.

Key Moments

A strong idea needs a workable path to customers and cash flow. In this Family Office Club fireside chat, I spoke with Larry Namer, co-founder of E! Entertainment Television, about building a company in an industry where people said the concept would not work. His account gives founders and investors a practical way to assess ambition: look at the customer, the operating model, the capital available, and the conditions that could change the economics.

Namer describes starting in cable operations and moving into roles that exposed him to labor negotiations and company management. That experience helped him see how technical work connected with distribution. He and his partner saw an opening for a different kind of television network, one that could meet audience demand. The market's skepticism did not settle whether the idea had merit, but it did shape the path they had to take.

For family offices considering an operating company or a direct investment, the conversation is a reminder to separate a founder's conviction from the evidence around the business. Ask what problem the company solves, who will pay for it, and what capabilities it needs to deliver. A clear answer can help a family office decide whether a direct investment fits its time horizon and skills. Our guide on what family offices look for in a deal offers related questions to consider.

Make the Plan Fit the Resources

Namer recalls that the capital he and his partner initially secured was far below the amount they thought a network required. They chose to work within that constraint. They used less costly equipment and brought in interns, then found a distinctive way to present entertainment news. The point for a founder is not that every business can start small. It is that a large initial budget should be tested against the actual work required to reach the next milestone.

Investors can help by asking a founder to break a large funding request into operating needs. Which costs are necessary before launch? Which can wait until customers respond? What proof would justify the next stage of spending? This discussion can lead to a more useful capital plan and make it easier to see whether the team can adjust when conditions change. For a direct opportunity with projected cash flows, the direct deal IRR and MOIC calculator can help organize return assumptions for review.

Resourcefulness also has limits. A stripped-down launch does not fix weak demand or poor unit economics. Namer's account of an internet venture makes that clear: a promising domain and steady visitors did not protect the business when advertising revenue fell below the cost of serving users. The lesson for founders is to track the economics behind growth. The lesson for investors is to stress test revenue sources and costs under less favorable conditions, including cases that make the pitch less exciting.

Keep the Offer Clear and the Relationships Honest

One theme in the discussion is simplifying complex ideas. Namer describes E! programming as bringing a more conversational, accessible view to entertainment coverage. That approach gave viewers a reason to pay attention and helped the company stand apart. Founders can apply the same discipline to a pitch: explain what the product does, who needs it, and why the company can deliver it. If the case takes too long to make clear, the team may need to refine the offer before raising capital.

Namer also talks about trust as a practical business filter. In his experience, a person who lies to others may later act the same way toward a partner. That perspective matters in family office investing, where relationships can extend across deals and years. How a founder handles communication and commitments forms part of the working relationship, alongside the numbers. Family offices can make expectations clear early and pay attention to how counterparties handle difficult conversations.

Partnerships with large public companies bring their own demands. Namer says that knowing how a large organization works can help a founder anticipate slow review and decision processes. He also describes choosing to build companies independently when a corporate partner's working style did not fit. Founders should understand who has authority, how approvals happen, and whether both sides can stay engaged long enough to reach an agreement. For more on preparing an opportunity for family office conversations, see our guide to raising capital from family offices.

Test the Idea Against Changing Conditions

Namer's reflections point to a useful balance for founders and investors: hold a clear view of the opportunity, but keep checking the assumptions that support it. Customer interest and distribution affect whether a concept can become a durable company. Technology and revenue conditions also shape its prospects. His experience shows how a founder can adapt as circumstances shift. The original plan may change as the business learns what customers value and what the market will support.

For family offices, this is relevant when evaluating a founder who has a bold story and an ambitious target. Look at the operating evidence and the team's response to setbacks. Then review the financial model beneath the narrative. Ask how the company will preserve options if costs rise or revenue shifts. Strong founders do not need every answer at the outset, but they need to learn quickly and make decisions based on what the business shows them. That is how a compelling idea can earn the time and capital required to grow.

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0:00 people kept saying you can't do you're not ruper Murdoch you're not Fox you're not Time Warner and my partner Allan and I just were going but it's such a good idea somebody eventually will do it excited to have Larry here with us today uh some of you have met Larry once before at our events but he's recently released a new book I'll hold it up here it's called off script and it says I've never follow the crowd I finished that book uh this week actually to make sure I'd have some sharp questions for Larry today and it was really interesting took a bunch of notes and I think that um having people here on stage who have built something from scratch that was completely new in their industry and they've been able to scale it to a billion dollars uh valuation exit is something pretty unique and it's pretty uh makes me lean forward as a Founder a couple things from the book I wanted to emphasize um Larry started out as a cable splicer making $90 a week in New York City digging underneath the streets tying together um he also had a theme in his book of being firm but fair with people um he made some bold asks to make big jumps during his career a few times he talks about simplifying the complex uh several times in his book um he also talked about Um passion and how you don't want

1:19 to follow your passion too much so we'll get into a lot of these topics but I encourage you to check out the book afterwards to connect with Larry after he's off stage um what else would you add to your bio or introduction that maybe Charlie didn't mention as you um walked on stage sure I mean everybody knows e and I I call this era of my life Mike Kardashian's repentance tour um I have to apologize to the world for unleashing them but um I I've started media companies in Russia I had the number one TV show in Russia 5 days a week for 10 years um I started a big music festival in Russia unfortunately my partner was a guy named Vladimir Putin um and we had to end that Festival uh about four years ago for obvious reasons uh I moved on to China I we're still I have a company in China we're still the only American company that's allowed to be in the media business in China we do everything there and then when covid came I started doing stuff here in the US again um all with a social impact component to it so that's kind of what I'm up to these days great thank you and I saw that you got a Hollywood Lifetime Achievement Award as well is that right yeah I I've I've kind of resisted getting lifetime achievement

2:37 awards because I figured maybe they spoke to my doctor and they know something I don't um but and then also with the book um people have went after me to write the book for God knows how long and I've always resisted it but literally I I reinvent myself almost every seven years um and my real while I do TV and film and other media pretty well my real passion has been cooking so we took the I decided that I'll do the book with the various phases of my life anecdotes that go with those phases but also with the recipes that inspired me so the book is somewhere between a bio and a cookbook great and then uh in the book you actually mentioned that if you just follow your passion you might end up homeless pretty quickly can you talk to that sure I I I get people all the time and people ask me to talk to entrepreneurs and stuff and you know people are like uh my passion is uh you know knitting uh eyeglass cases or you know things like that and and just because you're passionate about it if there's no Financial sustainability to it my feeling is don't do it I mean find some I always tell people find something that you're good at work the hell out of it and become great at it and then that

3:55 will become your passion um I mean that's kind of the way it was with me with the T teleion world I mean I didn't start out thinking I was going to create QV shows all around the world and you know I just work my butt off until I figured out how you do it and stuff like that but my passion is cooking and it's great and when I get stressed out I go in the kitchen and cook and uh you know but to do it as a to make a living we all have the same necessities of life we got to pay the rent we got to send our kids to school and do all of that stuff there and if you can't sustain financially by following your passion you should find a different passion right it seemed like uh in your trajectory you had this ability to look at something complex make it more simple you could negotiate with unions with executive management you could um you know ride both sides of like how people would normally think where it might be one side or the other typically is that partially how you got done things that people said were impossible or it just seems unreal what's happened yeah um you know people say why does your mind work the way it wasn't other than my mother dropping me in my head when I was one year old which he really did um there's no other logical explanation for it but um I I I I I had an interesting career path because I started out in the

5:13 technical side of the Cable business but nobody believed that anybody would ever pay for television so I mean Richard mentioned that I literally got a job splicing the cables in the sewers of Manhattan for $90 a week but because I knew how to read and write the union asked me to become part of the negotiating committee to negotiate Against Time Incorporated when time was just a publishing company and um so I I did that and then for whatever reason they decided that at 23 years old I would be a good Vice chairman of the cable TV workers of America so at 23 I was a union official and then eventually moved into management it it was to be in a great time there because timing decided that over 10 years they wanted to move from being a publishing company to a media company so I got to be part of the group that started HBO and you know basically the Cable business as we know it which is no longer the Cable business as we knew it right and um when you moved from New York to I think it was cable America in Los Angeles you know you basically told them like well I need to get paid four times so I'm getting paid now and you didn't expect them to give it to you I mean that bold ask and then eventually them caving and pretty much giving you everything that you had boldly asked for is that partially what made you bold enough to start e just seeing that stuff could actually work when you do stuff

6:30 like that yeah I mean I I grew up I was a you know a New York kid family family were immigrants and their aspiration for me was to you know get a job with a pension and be able to retire securely and all that but when the big cities began to franchise cable TV they realized that um cable was not just about good reception it wasn't just for Rural but there were all other opportunities but they all wanted the cable to go underground well the only guy in the country who knew how to build underground was me because did it in Manhattan and when I left man I was that 25 I became director of operations of Manhattan cable the biggest cable company and in the country if not the world and uh there was a Canadian company that won the franchise for Los Angeles and they kept calling me and I going no I'm not doing it I'm like a Brooklyn kid I I a't going to La La Land um and then finally the chairman of this Canadian company called me up and said uh you know you got a girlfriend I went yeah he goes okay I fly you do and a girlfriend out to LA uh put you in the B Hotel you got a limo for the weekend um I want an hour of your time I said listen as long as you understand that there's no way in the world I'm possibly going to take this job I'll do it so of course we came out and I was you know an arrogant idiot and then we go through the hour and I'm going okay you got 58

7:49 minutes left and I go you got 2 minutes left and I go okay you're done and he goes all right one last question what would it take for you to move out here so I just decided I'm going to ask ridicul stuff so I asked for like four times what I'm making in New York um at that time Liberace had a house in Sherman Oaks with a piano shaped swimming pool I go I want you to rent the Liberace house for me and I want a car with a mo it was even before cell phones I want a car with a mobile phone and he just looked at me and said you're out of your mind we would never do that I went great adios your hour's up I'm gone but then I went back to New York and it was in the winter and when it snows in New York it's always nice the first day but then after that you get splashed with this black G from taxi cabs going by and I got splashed and I get to my office and my assistant says oh that guy keeps calling you from Canada I go I get him on the phone and you know I got on the phone with him he goes what you asked for is ridiculous but how fast could you be out here so then I had my foot in my mouth so that's why I'm in La so uh yes give a round of applause so in the book you mentioned two things that are kind of connected um one is when you're in Los Angeles assume everyone is lying until they prove to you otherwise and then two when someone lies then listen to who they're telling

9:09 you they are and don't ever work with them again and don't don't give them a second chance and expect them to change can you talk to that for a minute about any tests that you do to figure out who's honest who's not Etc sure I I mean like I say I I always start out with and you know I could go and tell somebody and then the good part about being me is nobody knows who I am because I've been a Hermit um so like I'll go to some place and somebody say what do you do I say well I'm making a movie they go I'm making a slate of movies um my my feeling is in LA in particular whenever somebody tells you something just assume they're lying you can't get hurt assume they're lying until they prove to you they're not lying and um so that that's the way we kind of operated and then you know if they prove it then you could take them in but if you find out that they're lying whether they you know some to screw someone else sooner or later they're going to get you um so just don't do business that way um we've heard many times on stage from you know Billion Dollar Plus family offices super successful investors that they are doing things that other people said was impossible or that their story seems unreal um what is it that you think allowed you to to persevere and get that done like to to see it through a lot of people say it's stupidity uh but um the one thing with e which is I think the

10:28 most interesting there's never been a TV network of size that's ever been started by a person as opposed to a media company and that was the way it was then and it's the way it was now it's he is now in 142 countries and the valuation of last they told me were up around7 billion and you know it's just to me it's crazy numbers um just um people kept saying you can't do you're not rer Murdoch you're not Fox you're not Time Warner and my partner Allan and I just were going but it's such a good idea somebody eventually will do it um it was interesting and and Richard knows this when we started the the number to start a TV network was somewhere between 60 and $100 million um after three and a half years of not being able to raise ense um we realized nobody was giving us 60 or $100 million and we we actually met a bond house on Wall Street who just started Investment Banking and when Allan and I somebody introduced us we went in the office and the guy had like movie posters on the wall and he's going oh I love this I used to be the reporter for my college newspaper and you know and he goes I really want to do it I said great could you give us more like the the hundred million so we could do everything we want he goes oh no no I can't do that I go all right what is it

11:45 60 he goes well I'm only allow to sign for two and A2 I'm going like what am I going to do with two and A2 like the minimum is 60 he goes that's all I could sign for and we just said you know what we're smart enough we'll figure it out so we literally took the two and half million um I had a friend teaching radio television film at the University of Texas in Austin and I called him up and I said Brian I need interns like badley so he sent me 31 kids from Texas half of which never went back to Texas after um so he started with 11 employees and 31 interns and you know obviously our investors who put that first two and a half in were kind of happy with the way it turned out that's great I hear from so many people that have a new concept and idea could be a fintech product or Ai and they say oh no we need $11 million to get started we need 30 million we need 60 million uh what would you say to them that you've learned from that well I think you know if you look at our experience I mean I think it really uh a lot of what made us successful is that is that saying you know necessity is the mother of invention I mean we had no money I mean we didn't have enough money to buy real equipment I I ended up buying TV equipment from a company that was making sales T sales training tapes and stuff like that but when we put it

13:03 on television everybody's going like oh my God that thing looks so pirate well little did they know we couldn't afford the real equipment and um just things we applied for um uh credentials to go to the Academy Awards and they turned us down they well you're some dumb little cable network no we're not giving you credentials so me and the crew we literally climbed over the fence and we were on the red car we were on the red Carver for about a half an hour hour before security caught us but when people watched it I mean we took such a very different look at Hollywood everybody was like thinking it's rocket science or something and we were just like Hollywood is funny stuff don't try and make believe it's more than that and we would be there you know where normal people would be going so Mr Cruz tell us about your next movie we were like whoa Tom those are like great shoes where' to get them so it became very pirate and people going we felt like we were flying the wall seeing something that we weren't supposed to and I'm going yeah you weren't supposed to that's great I know uh Steve Madden couldn't get into a show to sell his shoes so we parked his truck out front and sold him out the back of his truck famously right Mr Beast recently said he didn't know why his chocolate was breaking at Walmart so he put a GoPro camera inside and recorded how his chocolate being broken on the shelf and

14:20 he said yeah I'm not supposed to do that I had to figure it out to survive right so that's basically what you're saying and we we did you know I mean the first show that really was a big breakthrough for us was um um Talk Soup and when I first came up with that everybody going Larry you must you're out of your mind you want to do a TV show that makes fun of TV shows and I'm like yeah exactly um and they were like H we don't know if that'll work well that show ran 26 years um you and then I was in an elevator the next show I was in an elevator in New York and I met this tall radio guy and he was telling me Oh you got to come see my radio show I'm going to see your radio show what's there to see he goes no you got to come so I went and um and I you know it was a revelation I went back and told my folks I said I want to put cameras in this guy's radio studio and they were like Larry we thought you were out of your mind when you did Talk Soup but radio's been dead for 40 years I said you don't understand this is not a radio show this is an ensemble sitcom this is W krp in Cincinnati in in reality any that iy was how Stern so Howard obviously went on to do pretty well pretty well um what's a million-dollar Insight that you've had to learn the hard way um they you'd like to share with Founders here in the room well I you know I I always go my biggest failure um and I haven't had many so

15:40 it's good I could tell a story um me and a few friends when the internet was really taking off we owned this domain named television.com and we were like wow what a great name and then then like people were were fighting to get domain names and I think Barry Diller or somebody came to us and said will I'll give you $6 billion to buy the domain from you and I'm like Barry look at this face does this look like a stupid kid I said if sex.com sells for 10 million television.com is 12 and he was like Larry you're out of your mind you know we're not giving you that and whatever so we didn't sell it and we actually put it on the air we were like YouTube before YouTube so it was when uh the big internet Heyday advertising was selling for $25 per th000 viewers and we we were doing great uh we were getting a million unique users a month with no marketing expense anyway because they just Google television and they come up with television.com um and then the market crashed and it went from $25 per th000 to 25 cents per thousand but it would cost us a dollar and for everybody who watched it we would continue to lose money um so it really taught me that you got to really pay attention to more than just the good idea you got to pay

16:58 attention the to the economic environment the political environment the technology environment Etc and stuff so that was that was my biggest failure all right um what about people that want to work with publicly traded companies and do a joint venture like with a corporate Venture Capital group any suggestions for dealing with big companies to strike agreements because you've obviously done a ton of that um yeah I mean we've done a bunch of those I mean um first you got to have you know uh thick skin and and a lot of a lot of patience I mean it the reason we've been successful we moveed so much but I spent 10 years at timing so I know how big companies work but um and and I know whenever there's a good idea they're going to spend the next year studying it so we just learn to get there before and stuff so you really got to pay attention before you do deals with big public companies who are you're going to be able to get along and deal in that environment and stuff and most of the time for us the answer has been no I mean I'm an entrepreneur I have no patience for stupidity um and um yeah and so our feeling is we'll start the companies and we'll sell it to them in a few years and that's worked out pretty well awesome uh what's a question maybe I should have asked you or a question

18:15 someone else has asked you that you'd like to answer um well a lot of people ask me why I spend all my time in LA these days I I I have a big company in China um we literally do everything in there but they Co I was spending most of my time um there a good good piece of my time and um then when Co came they wanted me to quarantine in a Chinese hotel for 3 weeks and they would feed me under the door and stuff and even though I had an apartment in Beijing uh they wouldn't uh they wouldn't do it um so then when Co ended I was ready to start going back but my daughter decided that it was time to have a baby so she totally guilts me like you're not going to keep going out of town and not seeing your little grandbaby all the time so I spend most of my time in LA now great awesome well appreciate your time Larry let's all give him a big round of applause thank you join the family office club by visiting family offices.com we look forward to seeing you at our next live event