Page 82 - Forbes - USA (October 2019)

America with a Macintosh PowerBook, searching
for his future.
Serendipity arrived when his friend and now
wife of nearly two decades, designer Diane von
Furstenberg, began selling scarves on QVC. They
sold like hotcakes and she tipped him to the op-
portunity. “I had only known screens for narra-
78 tive storytelling purposes,” Diller says. “Here I
saw a screen being used at this primitive conver-
gence of telephones, televisions and computers.”
R
E He was hooked, thanks to Von Furstenberg, who
L
L herself has an estimated net worth of $200 mil-
I
D lion. “I will say an idea, or she’ll say something,

Y and it bounces, and the ball goes in the air and
R
R it drops where it drops,” Diller says of their rela-
A
B tionship. “We are stimulants in each other’s lives.”

In 1992, QVC was put up for sale, and Diller says
E
L that with the backing of Comcast’s Roberts fami-
I
F
O ly he invested $25 million and took control of the
R company. He promptly tried to buy Paramount,
P
but got in a bidding war with Viacom’s Sumner
which Diller produced after taking over Para- Understudy Redstone and lost the $9.6 billion prize. Then, in
mount. In it, Walter Matthau plays a flamed-out Unlike his college 1994, on the eve of a planned merger with CBS,
dropout boss, IAC
ballplayer who transforms a talentless team of CEO Jerry Levin the Roberts bought QVC out, earning Diller a $130
California Little Leaguers into contenders for the has two Ivy League million windfall. But he was jobless once again.
degrees, a bachelor’s
championship. It’s a perfect summary of Diller’s in economics Help came in the form of Liberty Media’s John
career. and a master’s in Malone (ranked No. 75, with $7.3 billion), who,
engineering.
“Everybody thought this television kid knew Diller says, helped finance his acquisition of Sil-
nothing about movies,” he says, noting that the ver King Broadcasting in 1995. At the time, Sil-
$9 million film grossed $32 million. “I had this ver King was little more than a collection of UHF
little movie, and I was able to mother it to com- stations that controlled a stake in QVC’s compet-
pletion. This little jewel wasn’t the biggest movie itor, the Home Shopping Network. But it was the
ever made, but it was a joy,” Diller says, beaming. beginning of IAC.
“Everybody was betting against it.” With Malone’s backing, Diller
Born in San Francisco in 1942 and raised in started making deals—and lots of
D I L L E R
Beverly Hills, where his father ran a success- money. In 1997 he cut a deal to buy
ful real estate business, Diller attended UCLA R E L I S H E S 55% of cable-TV network USA from
but dropped out eventually finding a job in the B E I N G A N Edgar Bronfman Jr. for $4.1 billion.
mail room of the William Morris talent agency. Less than four years later he flipped
U N D E R D O G .
There he worked alongside future industry icon it to Vivendi for $11 billion. In 1997
W H E N I T
David Geffen. He moved to ABC in 1964 and hit he also bought half of Ticketmas-
pay dirt a few years later, at the age of 25, birth- C O M E S T O ter for $210 million, snapping up
ing the network’s Movie of the Week concept, the A C Q U I S I T I O N S , the rest in 2003. He spun off Tick-
start of a decades-long rise. At 30, he was named etmaster in 2008 and merged it
H E T E N D S T O
vice president of prime time; a year later, in 1974, with Live Nation two years later.
he decamped to the silver screen at Paramount, B U Y M I S F I T S The business, a near monopoly in
where he worked for almost a decade, producing T H AT O T H E R S concert and sports ticketing, is now
a stream of hits like Raiders. worth $15 billion.
D I S M I S S .
In 1984, Diller left that cushy job to build a In the late 1990s, Alexander von
fourth national network for Rupert Murdoch. Furstenberg, Diane’s son, recom-
Onlookers predicted disaster. With little budget, mended that Diller look into an early online dat-
he built Fox Broadcasting into a powerhouse by ing site. Both believed dating would move on-
making contrarian bets on shows like Married . . . line. They soon discovered Dallas-based Match.
with Children and The Simpsons. Having con- com and began investing in the company in 1999.
quered Hollywood, Diller decided to start over. Eventually it would merge with hipper platforms
“I was getting less and less curious, which, for like Tinder and Hinge. With a total investment
me, is fatal.” He quit Fox in 1992 and wandered of $1.6 billion, he’s seen the value of IAC’s stake

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