Tuck gave me the ability to question prevailing assumptions about a business model and probe into things that might be causing inertia and standing in the way of innovation.

By Ashley Rabinovitch

Before he knew how to raise capital or analyze a P&L statement, Travis Page T’10 was a college student who aspired to manage top musical talent. He spent his summers working for an Orlando-based management company that sent him out on tour with artists like Britney Spears, NSYNC, and Puff Daddy. Frequent stints in production and tour management fed his lifelong passion for music, but the analyst in him was continually frustrated by the apparent randomness of his industry. 

“I quickly realized that if I was looking for a rational basis for who makes it big and who doesn’t, I would always be very frustrated,” he remembers. 

After rising to become a partner at a boutique music management company, Page reached a fork in the road. It was 2007, a nadir in the music industry. Layoffs were widespread, and the streaming revolution was not yet on the horizon. Rather than be the last man standing when the industry died, he reasoned, he would press the reset button and acquire a new set of skills in business school.

Page found a deep sense of belonging in Tuck’s Entertainment, Sports, and Media Club, where he collaborated with a group of like-minded MBA students to host the school’s first-ever Entertainment, Sports, and Media Symposium. In the classroom, he expanded his analytical skillset in preparation for new opportunities at the intersection of finance and media.

He spent several years on Wall Street, raising capital and managing M&A for Barclays’ media and entertainment clients, before he was recruited by a Tuck alumna, Carrie Ferman T’04, to head the finance and corporate development team at a new media company called Remark Media. This serendipitous connection set him on a trajectory that led to Sony Pictures in 2016.

As the vice president for corporate development at Sony, Page helped lead the effort to craft a strategy around anime streaming content. He spearheaded Sony’s acquisition of Funimation, Crunchyroll’s main competitor, before bringing the two together under the Crunchyroll umbrella. 

After the Funimation deal was complete, he reached out to his team and asked for the “canon”—everything he needed to watch to become an anime aficionado.

“I realized how amazing the art form was about ten minutes into my first Cowboy Bebop episode,” he says. “The largely hand-drawn animation allows you to create vibrant, kinetic scenes in a way that is unsurpassed even by CGI.” 

He also attributes the global growth of anime’s popularity to the synergy of the anime storytelling community in Tokyo, likening Japanese writers and producers to their creative forerunners in 1920s Paris and 1960s Haight-Ashbury.

Page bet on a specialty streaming service model at a time when many industry observers were predicting a consolidation of streaming services into a handful of companies. He credits his Tuck MBA with sharpening his instincts. “Tuck gave me the ability to question prevailing assumptions about a business model and probe into things that might be causing inertia and standing in the way of innovation,” he says. “I carry that mentality with me everywhere.” 

His instincts were spot on. Specialty services like Crunchyroll are exploding in popularity, showing the world that genres like anime are strong enough to stand alone. Crunchyroll recently hit 12 million subscribers, up from 4 million in early 2021, and is poised for meteoric growth in global markets like India and Brazil. Upwards of 260 million people across the globe watch anime, creating an almost endless runway for expansion.

“Crunchyroll and Funimation were both U.S. companies when they merged, but we are at an inflection point where most growth will come from other parts of the world," he says.

Page has experienced his fair share of hurdles on the road to combining multiple companies under one roof. Making a deal is always more straightforward than aligning management structure and culture, especially in a season of rapid growth, he notes.

What spurs him onward is the passion of the customers he serves. 

“One of the throughlines of my career, from the music industry to Crunchyroll, is fandom,” Page says. “Whether it is a Beyoncé concert or an anime convention, I love being part of movements that inspire enthusiasm and loyalty. That is how you know you’re part of a winning story.”