AN $800 GOAT BUILT STEPHEN COLBERT A SOFTWARE COMPANY

🚨 An $800 goat turned Stephen Colbert into a software founder.

The Hollywood Reporter reports Colbert has closed a $5 million seed round for Scripto, the cloud-based scriptwriting company he co-founded with former Colbert Report writer and coder Rob Dubbin.

The origin story is exactly as dumb as it sounds. In late 2010, The Colbert Report was writing scripts in the Associated Press's ENPS system. It crashed often and did not allow real collaboration. Writers cut a goat from a bit during rewrites, nobody saved the change, and the goat arrived on set anyway. Cost to the production: around $800. Colbert says that is what "really broke us."

Dubbin offered to build something bespoke. Colbert bankrolled it. Three years later it was in beta.

Then it spread. The Daily Show asked how the Report was producing so fast. Last Week Tonight, Full Frontal and The Opposition followed. On The Late Show the software was rebuilt to handle roughly 200 people touching a script at the same time, and moved off server racks into the cloud.

During the 2023 writers' strike, Colbert says he considered selling. He grew it instead, hiring Josh Kline, Final Draft's former chief strategy officer, as CEO.

The round was led by Todd Steifel, with Colbert, his wife Evelyn McGee Colbert, J.J. Abrams and Marc Cuban participating. Users now include the Primetime Emmys, the WGA Awards, the Clios, SNL in the U.S. and U.K., and several AAA video games. It is free for personal use and charges once teams collaborate.

His stated ambition, per THR: "Tech Oligarch!"

Would you rather have Colbert's late-night salary or his equity in Scripto?

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