MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian
How I Built This with Guy Raz
Guy Raz | Wondery
4.8 • 31.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2024
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Isaac Larian moved from Iran to Los Angeles at age 17 with just a few hundred dollars, and went on to build one of the biggest toy companies in the world. Along the way, he took on Barbie with a wildly successful line of punky dolls called Bratz — a success that touched off an epic legal battle with Mattel. Today, at age 70, Isaac is still the CEO of MGA Entertainment, and says he still has the fighter’s instinct that he learned in the slums of Tehran.
This episode was produced by Alex Cheng with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei.
It was edited by Neva Grant with research assistance and fact-checking from Carla Esteves and Zazil Davis-Vazquez.
Our engineers were Gilly Moon and Robert Rodriguez.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wundery Plus subscribers can listen to how I built this early and ad free right now. |
| 0:05.0 | Join Wundery Plus in the Wundery App or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:10.0 | We're driven by the search for better, but when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. |
| 0:17.3 | Don't search match with indeed. |
| 0:20.3 | Leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day, |
| 0:25.0 | Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences. |
| 0:29.0 | So the more you use indeed, the better it gets. |
| 0:32.0 | Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use indeed to hire great talent fast. |
| 0:39.0 | And listeners of this show will get a 100 pound sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at |
| 0:45.9 | Indeed.com slash How I Built. |
| 0:48.8 | Indeed.com slash How I Built. |
| 0:51.3 | Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need, indeed. |
| 0:55.0 | This episode is brought to you by Pipe Drive, the easy and effective CRM for closing more deals |
| 1:02.0 | and driving small business growth. |
| 1:04.0 | Hello I'm Emily and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, |
| 1:08.0 | the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. |
| 1:12.0 | And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. |
| 1:15.6 | Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say Popstar and Shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. |
| 1:21.0 | No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew |
| 1:28.0 | Ridgeley. Yeah, that's right. It's Stone Cold Icon, George Michael. |
| 1:32.7 | From Teen Pop Sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet |
| 1:37.1 | join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. |
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