Karl Moore: This is Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, talking management for The Globe and Mail. Today, I am talking with Andy Nulman, who was the CEO of the Just for Laughs [comedy] festivals and currently [president] of Airborne [Mobile]. Andy is a McGill graduate. We are here at McGill for homecoming, so were delighted to shoot this before a couple hundred of McGill alumni who made it back to campus on this beautiful autumn day. Good afternoon, Andy.
Andy Nulman: Hey Karl, wow.
KM: Andy, you were involved with Just for Laughs as an entrepreneur, now onto Airborne. You have been an entrepreneur a couple of times, what we call a serial entrepreneur. What is the mind of an entrepreneur? How is it different from a corporate manager type, like I was at IBM? What's the mind of an entrepreneur?
AN: Well, the mind of an entrepreneur is the mind of madness because what you are doing is that you are going against the grain. Everybody is telling you that you can't do it. I have to tell you that it was the same thing for Airborne as it was for Just for Laughs.
When we started, people thought that we were crazy. Never mind my family but even our investors thought this. I have a great story to tell you about Airborne investors. When we started with Gilbert Rozon, who was, he was the original founder of Just for Laughs, I came along to help him co-found the English side. When we started out, nobody believed in us. Nobody! We went to the States and I will never forget this. We were excited to get a meeting, and the great William Morris of the huge talent agency gave us a meeting, and we were so excited that they actually let us meet them – and they wouldn't take us into their offices. They came out and met us in the lobby. We sat in the lobby pitching for our Just for Laughs festival.
So then they tell us: “Let me see if I get this straight.” So remember that a comedy festival did not exist. “You are doing a comedy festival, bilingual, in Montreal, right?” Yes, that's exactly what we're doing. Basically, we were shown the door countless times. The same thing with Airborne. [When] we started Airborne, our pitch was that the mobile device was going to be way more than just a telephone. We went to people and said that what is going to happen one day is that – and this is true, I still have the notes – what you are going to see one day is that the screens on your phone are going to be in colour and there is going to be video on it. Then, they looked at us and said, “Are you nuts? You're crazy!”
So, that's really the mind of an entrepreneur. If you can go ahead and fight the wall of everyone telling you, no, that it can't be done, then you have something at hand. I have always said that if you fight the consensus, that's when you know that you have a winning idea. I never believed in the consensus. I never believed when people said [no]. If you ask a whole bunch of people, [and they say] “oh, that's a great idea”, or “you have got a real winner,” “it's 100 per cent,” then you know that you got a losing idea. I swear it's true.
People will go ahead and they will fight you, and I see this all the time. I see a great marketing campaign or a great product – you know there are bits of dead bodies. You know that there are bits of people who say that this will never work and I guarantee you that it will never work. That is the mind of an entrepreneur. If you can fight that and laugh at that, then you have a chance. If you let that beat you, then you are history.
KM: How did you come up with the idea because I have all sorts of ideas but they are dumb ones, in retrospect, most of the time. But you had an idea that turned out to be brilliant. How did you know that was the one, as opposed to the other ideas that came floating through?
