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three-and-a-half-hour dinner at Nobu, a high-
end Japanese restaurant, to pitch Whitman
on running his new company. “I told him, ‘You
know what, this might be kind of fun,’ ” says
Whitman.
“Fun,” to these two overachievers, is a plan
so grandiose that success means nothing less
than becoming the entertainment industry’s
next big thing. Whitman, the new company’s
CEO, and Katzenberg, its chairman, aspire
for Quibi to be to short-form video—think: 10
minutes or less and viewed on a phone—what
Kleenex is to tissues and Google is to search.
“We’ll actually create the next chapter of film
narrative,” says Katzenberg, never short of
ambition. “Five or 10 years from now, we’ll
look back and go, ‘There was the era of mov-
ies, there was the era of television, and there’s
the era of Quibi.’ ”
Confident but not naive about the magni-
tude of their gambit, the two are out hus-
tling like interns, pitching until their voices
grow hoarse. Quibi hasn’t even launched its
service—it plans to by the end of the year. But
thanks to the prodigious networking ability of
its two top dogs, it already has landed impres-
sive talent, from A-list directors to industry
big shots like journalist Janice Min and music
executive Doug Herzog.
In fact, Quibi’s most important selling point
may just be the juice Katzenberg and Whit-
man bring to the project. Lena Waithe, an
Emmy Award–winning actress, producer, and
screenwriter, attributes her interest in Quibi
to “Katzenberg and his brand and the fact
that he’s proven himself time and time again.”
She’s developing a documentary series for
Quibi about sneaker culture that she had been
close to selling to a streaming service when
Katzenberg swooped in. As for Whitman, “her
network is gigantic, everybody trusts her, and
everybody likes her,” says venture capitalist
Marc Andreessen, a fellow HP board member.
Reputations alone won’t guarantee Quibi’s
success, of course. The company seeks to
capture 18- to 35-year-olds during their
“in-between” moments: on the train to work,
waiting in line at Starbucks, boarding a flight.
Yet its business model is to sell these youthful
viewers subscriptions in an era of ubiquitous
free video. “Trying to create what’s essentially
‘lean back’ content, even if it’s shorter, and
delivering that to mobile platforms exclu-IT’S DINNERTIMEmidweek at the
celebrity-heavy Los Angeles restaurant
Craig’s, and Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg
Whitman are holding court in a highly
visible corner booth. If Hollywood were
a high school cafeteria, theirs would be
the cool kids’ table. Other diners smile
and nod in their direction. The record
executive Tommy Mottola stops by.
The restaurant’s owner, Craig Susser,
leans in to shake hands. “I haven’t heard
much about you lately,” says Susser.
“Are you doing anything?” All laugh
uproariously. The joke’s on whoever
thought gobs of money and a pair of
expired executive titles would force
these two into retirement.
At first glance, Whitman and Katzenberg seem a bit like the
oil and vinegar that dress the $16 kale salad at this joint. She
made her name in left-brain Silicon Valley, running eBay and
then Hewlett-Packard. He looms large over right-brain Holly-
wood as the former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and long-
time CEO of DreamWorks Animation. She ran for governor of
California as a Republican. He’s raised big bucks for Democrats.
She wears paisley scarves; he prefers Stan Smiths. It’s kind of
hard to imagine them enjoying a meal together, let alone joining
forces to create Quibi, a short-form video platform—its name is
short for “quick bites”—that has raised a billion dollars from the
likes of Disney, Fox, Time Warner, and NBCUniversal, all before
writing a line of code or releasing a snippet of video.
Yet this odd couple finish each other’s sentences like friends
who have known each other for decades, which, in fact, they
have. They met in 1989 at Disney, where Whitman worked in
the entertainment giant’s famed strategic-planning group while
Katzenberg was busy reviving Disney’s motion picture arm. Kat-
zenberg claims Whitman was the only business type he enjoyed
talking to back then. Years later, when she was CEO of eBay, he
asked her to join the board of DreamWorks Animation. Whit-
man stayed for five years before stepping down for her 2010
gubernatorial campaign. (Katzenberg’s reaction upon learning
Whitman would run as a Republican: “Are you fucking kidding
me?”) She was trounced by Democrat Jerry Brown.
So when HP announced in late 2017 that Whitman would be
leaving her latest corporate gig, Katzenberg, who had just started
raising money for a then-unnamed video venture, called within
minutes to ask what she was up to. Despite having vied months
earlier for the job of running troubled ride-hailing startup Uber,
Whitman told Katzenberg she was thinking of taking some time
off. “I said, ‘No, I mean, what are you up to tomorrow night?’ ”
Katzenberg recalls. The next day he flew up to the Bay Area for a
HOLLYWOOD’S NEW ODD COUPLE