Shane Smith Quotes

I have plenty of investments that I wish I'd never made. But the model is to lose money on a lot of investments and then make 1,000X or 10,000X on an investment.

Networks can typically invest tens of millions of dollars in the development of a pilot. And if they put the show on the air and it fails, that's all lost money. There's no monetization of a broken series.

You have to spend a lot to make a lot. It's not like I'm sitting on top of a pile of money.

I invested in many companies, and I'm happy this one worked. This is capitalism. You invest in stock, it goes up, it goes down. You know, if you don't like capitalism, you don't like making money with stock, move to Cuba or China.

I have done well out of TV, but not well enough to buy football clubs. I'm not sure it's ever a way to make money.

I have no complaints about losing money I put in high-risk investments. I did some of that when I had real money; my informed choice, my measured gamble.

In the U.K., there's absolutely no money for television. So you can do pretty much whatever you want. They're not losing money on any of the shows, so they'll give you a lot of creative freedom. In the United States, there are millions and millions of dollars at stake, so they need a sure formula.

I'd never bought the idea that you don't lose money by underestimating the intelligence of the audience. Although perhaps I should add that I've never really made that much money.

When you do bigger films, the financiers take more risks.

There's still a lot of investors wondering what to invest in. And, of course, I think entertainment looks attractive when you read the few films that make these insane amounts of money. What they don't know is they don't always do that.

You can make great money in a utility type of business by borrowing cheaply and lending sensibly but that's not what's being done.

There’s nothing like doing things with OPM—Other People’s Money. It takes the risk out of it.

Sometimes, more money is spent on promotion of a film than the making of it. I don't understand that logic. The movie should run on its merit.

The film business seems to attract rules more than any other business. I don't know why it does. I think it's because there's so much money at stake.

At the end of the day, filmmaking is a business. You want everyone to make money.

Banks always want their capital requirements to be as low as possible, so they can take more risks, which can enable them to make more money – and reap bigger bonuses for executives.

You can be far more aggressive when you're making good profits.

A wise person does not undertake any business with the risk of losing the capital money in search of making a profit.

It's actually a pretty basic concept: when businesses feel secure and confident, they are more likely to grow, hire, and invest. Conversely, when the economy is unstable, businesses often become much more risk averse, and in many cases, they're forced to make undesirable cuts that affect their bottom line.

I've learned that all investments have risk.

I made my money with good investments, I'm going to make maybe $1 million a year just with my real estate.

Well, there's always risk in long-term investment.

Content financing is a difficult beast no matter what era of Hollywood we're talking about.

There's no such thing as wealth without risk.

Why take the pay-per-view gamble? I don't need to do that.