The Dream Team

Insights from people behind the technology at one of Hollywood's hottest start-up.

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Insights from the people behind the technology at Hollywood's hottest start-up

Barely two years ago, three of the most powerful men in Hollywood came together to do something that hadn't been done for 50 years: build a movie studio. It's called DreamWorks SKG, as in Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, and it's one of the best-financed start-ups in history. The three founders dug deep into their silk-lined pockets to produce $33.3 million each, but their combined offerings account for only about 5% of the company's equity. The remaining $2 billion or so is spread out among a who's who of wealthy investors and institutions. Most notable is Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft, who purchased 23.4% of the studio for $492 million.
So what will S, K, and G do with all that money? The plan, as it stands now, is to produce about eight motion pictures a year, television shows, interactive games, and music CDs. There's even a video arcade in the works.
Of course, DreamWorks doesn't just have cash; it's also got talent. So far, it's had little trouble luring the most gifted writers, actors, musicians, producers, directors, and animators in the business into its fold. But for DreamWorks to sustain its growth from start-up to entertainment giant, it'll take more than just a star-spangled cast. Like any new company, it will have to be faster, smarter, and more efficient than the competition. That's why the studio was as selective in hiring its chief information officer as it was in recruiting its top animators. Soon after launching the company, the founders plucked Lynn Jacobs from MCA to head up their information-systems (IS) team. Jacobs is a star in her own right, with credits that include 10 years as an aerospace engineer.

Jacobs was charged with assembling information systems that could keep pace with a company expanding at supersonic speed. When she first arrived, in January 1995, DreamWorks employed a scant 20 people. Today the DreamWorks machine has more than 900 workers. In many fast-growing companies, technological systems are built ad hoc -- applications are added one by one as needed. Jacobs and her team are taking a more global approach: first determining -- even anticipating -- the automation and business needs of each of the company's nine units and then designing applications that are both specific to each unit and capable of being combined into one centralized system. The goal is to have applications that can one day fit together without a hitch.

Although the new studio shuns titles (and dress codes), each top member of Jacobs's technology department has a distinct role: Petrus Williams heads up operations; Ann Delaney, Afshin Cangarlu, and John Sasali design and build applications and systems; Tom Kotlarek is responsible for the overall systems architecture; and Hugh Mendelsohn acts as a bridge between IS and the business end. We brought together Jacobs and her crew in Jacobs's office to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of starting a company from scratch.

Besides the star power of the founders, what attracted you to DreamWorks?

Jacobs: DreamWorks offers a chance to start with a blank page and do things the way you think they ought to be done -- to use your creative energies to reinvent business practices. I've always had different ideas about how to build technological systems. This is an opportunity to prove to myself and others that some of those ideas actually make sense. I've always believed that the entertainment industry could do things better and more efficiently. But it's hard to make the changes necessary for those improvements when you're working in a big company with an established bureaucracy.

What's it like to have infinite resources at your fingertips and such deep pockets?
Jacobs: That's probably the biggest myth about us. Everyone thinks that we must have a sky-high budget and unlimited resources. It's really not true for the technology group -- we operate pretty close to the bone. The company is well-funded, but the plan is to spend as little cash as possible on back-office and technological infrastructure. The real money gets dumped into developing product.

What are the advantages of working for a start-up?
Jacobs: We are trying to build applications for business units that still haven't been entirely defined. That's an incredible opportunity for us, because we can work with the businesspeople to determine the best business practices. It's also an incredible challenge. But if we really do our jobs well, we should add value to the process.

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