What are those crazy kids up to now?

I’ve been starting companies since I was a kid, some of them successes and many of them failures. (The first serious one was in 1970, the blues and jazz record label Oblivion Records with my great friend and partner Tom Pomposello [and, for a bit, Dick Pennington]; it was a classic creative success and business bust.) I’ve been through music recording, TV & film production, advertising, and food journalism. Even underground comics and chocolate bars.

Rounding the corner at 50 years old I promised myself (and more importantly my wife, my most incisive and prettiest business advisor) to focus on my cartoon business which had been taking off with its first big hit. Mostly, I’ve stuck to that priority. (“Mostly” because, as a long time media executive, I treated our cartoons in the broader context of media which led us, like everyone else, into the internet.) Right now, I’ve got a direct interest in four companies.



Frederator Studios started in 1998, right after I left Hanna-Barbera; we’ve been producing cartoons ever since. As of 2009, we’ve made 14 television series, four TV movies, two internet series, and over 200 cartoon shorts. Our first feature film is about to begin production. Our blogs and internet TV network were the first of their kind in the media business. Cartoons are fun.

In 2007, I founded the media company Next New Networks; right now it’s America’s most successful independent internet TV company. At first with my partner Emil Rensing, and then with co-founders Herb Scannell, Tim Shey, and Jed Simmons, we’re on our way to launching 101 online TV networks, for specialized communities ranging from automotive to fashion to entertainment.

Sawhorse Media are young New York based content innovators, who are already on their way to great success with the Shorty Awards, Newsgroper, and Musebin. I’m proud to be their first investor and board member.

Founder David Karp started at Frederator as a 14 year old intern, and then participated in his first successful business at 16, engineering a pioneering Web 2.0 busniess. At 19 he imagined and engineered Channel Frederator for us (which led me to the path of forming Next New Networks). A year later he had innovated once again with the amazing social media platform tumblr. Once again, I’m an angel investor and board member.