USC GOULD BS IN LEGAL STUDIES

Ted Russell, Autograph’s chief operating officer and chief business officer.

A phone call from Rosenblatt was a life changer for Russell. He was running his own business advising practice, working for several large private equity and venture firms, when he heard what Rosenblatt, serial entrepreneur and founder of multiple tech media companies, was proposing.

“We talked about what the company could be and do, I met the other founders and it seemed like an interesting opportunity to work in a growing technology space,” Russell says. “I had done a lot of tech, media and entertainment work, and it all seemed to fit together.”

Russell oversees deal-making, finance, strategy, business development, innovation and people management for a company that has expanded from four to 120 people in just 15 months.

“[We have] a lot of moving parts that all need to work together seamlessly to deliver against the promise we make to brands, companies and talent,” Russell says.

Rosenblatt founded his first public company iMALL, a groundbreaking e-commerce platform for small businesses to sell products online, when he was a 2L at USC Gould, and went on to run Intermix/Myspace, the original social listen to both sides whether you agree or not. The law is a big part of everything I do.”

Both Rosenblatt and Russell applaud then-Dean Scott Bice’s torts class for training them to prepare and organize, and for Rosenblatt, Professor David Slawson’s contract law course proved instructive.

Russell also praised Professor Rob Saltzman for teaching him how to analyze issues, and legal writing classes that gave him a good foundation for his clerkship with the Hon. John Davies in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. Russell has also been a lecturer in law at USC Gould teaching ethics and negotiation.

As Autograph continues to grow, Rosenblatt continues to innovate, co-founding Adim, a new storytelling incubator that he hopes will be “the next Marvel” with Rob McElhenney, creator and actor on FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and actor Ryan Reynolds. Another son, Chase, a USC Marshall School of Business alum, is co-founder and CEO of Adim.

“We wanted to create something unique in the space. The analogy is baseball cards. They were the most treasured thing I owned as a kid. And now, in digital form you can collect NFTs and have them signed.”—Richard Rosenblatt (JD 1994)

network; soon after selling Intermix/Myspace to News Corp, he founded Demand Media (now Leaf Group), an innovative content creation platform that operated multiple online brands. More recently he founded and is CEO of Whip Media, which he calls “the Nielsen of the streaming world,” a content licensing and research platform for entertainment organizations that allows users to share TV and movie moments.

Though not practicing law today, Rosenblatt credits his Gould law degree with giving him the credibility and organized thinking he needed to run three public companies.

“It always helped me think in a very linear way,” he says. “Law helped me think ‘bullet one, section A’ and to look at both sides. As a good businessperson you learn to