Icebox creates original online animation. The four founders of
Icebox started in November 1999 with an idea for a Web site that
would be fresh and cool and different for their 15- to 34-year-old
audience. They wanted to attract the top creative talent in
Hollywood as contributors, but they knew they had to do it quickly,
for their competition had already organized. Pop.com, the
partnership that included Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, Ron
Howard and Paul Allen, had announced its intent to deliver digital
content just one month before. (That venture never materialized,
and the site is now owned by another company.)
All four founders of Icebox had quite impressive resumes.
Sanford, 35, had founded and managed the new technology division at
International Creative Management. The other three-Jonathan
Collier, 39; Howard Gordon, 39; and Rob LaZebnik, 37-had built
Hollywood reputations for their work on King of the Hill,
The X-Files and The Simpsons.
The financial terms would have been substantially better with an
angel in-vestment, but the Icebox team felt an incubator would
accelerate the start-up phase. "We went to the incubator
because we needed speed to market and we needed to scale the
business quickly," says Sanford.
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They chose a major incubator in the Los Angeles area:
eCompanies, started by Jake Winebaum and Sky Dayton in mid-1999.
The two are experienced entre-preneurs: Dayton, whom Sanford had
known for several years, is the founder and chair of Earthlink, and
Winebaum is a Disney graduate who worked on most of the Mouse's
internal Internet projects. "We came here because Sky Dayton
understood what we wanted to do and was passionate about it,"
says Sanford. "And we knew that Jake [Winebaum] had to think
about content models before at Disney."
Icebox fit the eCompanies profile: It was a start-up with the
potential to become No. 1 in its category, it used a concept that
was fundamentally better online, and it met similar eCompanies
criteria. Like most incubators, eCompanies is looking for
entrepreneurs with track records who, while knowing what it takes
to build a company, need help.
Starting with Sanford and a computer (the other founders kept
their day jobs and contributed creative content), Icebox grew along
the same path all incubatees at eCompanies follow. Sanford met with
experienced teams headed by second-generation Internet executives
in each of seven areas: business strategy, finance, recruiting,
creative, technology, business development and marketing. The teams
help founders build their companies until a permanent staff is
hired-but, even then, they still work together in a symbiotic
relationship. It saves time. For instance, the eCom-panies'
recruiting department hires staff for all the start-ups. That frees
up the entrepreneur's time for building the company fast.
Icebox went from idea to incubatee in only two months and
launched its Web site five months later. The founders graduated
soon after, sporting a strong man-agement team and a couple million
in revenue. In addition, Icebox has continued to expand its
offerings and has more than 23 programs, including its animated
series "Starship Regulars," which is licensed to appear
on Showtime.
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