Ryan Kavanaugh

Ryan Kavanaugh
Kavanaugh in 2013
Born	Ryan Colin Kavanaugh December 4, 1974 (1974-12-04) (age 42) Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation	CEO of Relativity Media, financier
Known for	Moneyball approach to film finance, philanthropy, and wealth
Net worth	$1 billion (March 2013)
Spouse(s)	Britta Lazenga (m. 2011; div. 2014) Jessica Roffey (m. 2015)

Ryan Colin Kavanaugh (born December 4, 1974) is an American businessman, film producer and film financier. He is the founder and CEO of Relativity Media. Through Relativity, he has financed more than 200 films representing more than $17 billion in revenue (earning the nickname "Billion Dollar Producer"). He is credited as of April 19, 2014 as the producer of 61 films and known for creating a new "Moneyball" model of film finance. He was named by Variety as 2011's "Showman of the Year" and was #22 on the Fortune "40 Under 40" list. He was #19 on the Forbes 2013 list of youngest billionaires, and he entered an investment partnership with Ron Burkle. He is active in philanthropy and was named a Hollywood Humanitarian by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He is the 24th highest grossing producer in box office of all time.

Kavanaugh was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California, where he was raised in the Brentwood neighborhood and attended Brentwood High School. His mother, Leslie (Levin), is a real estate broker, and his father, Jack Konitz, a dentist turned businessman, was born in Germany and later changed his surname to "Kavanaugh" before his son's birth. After attending UCLA, Kavanaugh founded a small venture capital firm, which struggled in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and was eventually wound up.

Kavanaugh founded Relativity Media after briefly serving as a consultant to other small businesses and venture capitalists. In the late 1990s, he asked his father for a $50,000 loan to start his own hedge fund; his father declined, but this did not dissuade Ryan, whose aim was to use mathematical tools to connect financing and movie projects in a more efficient manner than traditional Hollywood finance. At Relativity, he created what is now known as "the model", a monte carlo model designed to predict the odds of a given film being successful. No film at Relativity is given a green light unless the model predicts a high probability of profitability. During Relativity’s first year of operation, Kavanaugh executed what was considered to be an innovative finance deal for Marvel Studios which led them to create the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Kavanaugh went on to structure business deals for such companies as: Sony, Universal, Warner Brothers, among many others. Kavanaugh has acquired a number of assets, including the marketing and distribution operations of John Malone's Liberty Media/Starz film unit Overture Films, and reaching a first of its kind TV pay deal with Netflix.