Bob Johnson, founder of BET, on the company’s sale to Viacom for almost $4B and the key skills of entrepreneurship.
This season, we’re speaking with entrepreneurs who have successfully scaled and sold their companies with a particular focus on their exits. In this episode we sit down with Bob Johnson, the groundbreaking entrepreneur and founder of BET. In the late 1970s, Bob Johnson came up with what some might say was a radical idea - programming by and for African Americans. And so BET was born. Twenty years later, Bob Johnson sold the company to Viacom for almost four billion dollars, making him one of the wealthiest African Americans in the country.
We sit down for a candid conversation with Bob about how he built the company, the importance of finding investors who shared his values, and why he finally sold BET. Along the way, Bob offers some important playbook points regarding team-building and self-confidence. Finally, Bob leaves us with an analysis of the current investment landscape and provides suggestions for how underrepresented entrepreneurs can overcome obstacles that stand between them and their pursuit of capital.
Come on and join us for the ride.
