Brian Ludlow Talks to Bloomberg About Betting on a Market Everyone Called “Too Small”

Creative Art Partners co-founder and CEO Brian Ludlow sits down with Bloomberg Businessweek for its “CEO Diet” series to talk about the advice he chose not to take — and how the art rental market everyone dismissed as too small became the foundation for an entirely new industry.

Bloomberg Businessweek's “The CEO Diet” is a monthly series in which executives from around the world share how they manage their time, their teams, and their careers — including the advice they've taken, and the advice they've deliberately ignored. In its latest installment, 13 chief executives and founders opened up about the guidance they decided not to follow, for better or worse. Among them: Brian Ludlow.

“Something I've always believed: The best opportunities are found in markets that seem too small or insignificant for anyone else to care about,”

says Ludlow, co-founder and CEO of the Los Angeles-based art rental and sales platform Creative Art Partners. Early on, people told him the market for renting art was too small to build a business on.

“When you own a niche others ignore, you build momentum, refine your product and define the category on your own terms. The market everyone told me was too small turned out to be the foundation for an entirely new industry.”

Read the full Bloomberg Businessweek feature, “Advice That CEOs and Founders Have Ignored, for Better or Worse,” here