James Joyce, entrepreneur

At the critical elevator pitch, Joyce whetted investors’ appetites with the opening gambit: Dublin, a European city of 350,000, had no cinema and two more cities in the same country, Cork and Belfast, were also without a cinema. (Joyce the hustler bumped up Dublin’s population to 500,000 for effect.) Ireland, with close to a million urban dwellers, was virgin trading soil ripe for far-sighted operators. For a man who was a better spender than saver who would experience money problems throughout his life, the contract Joyce negotiated reveals a canny financial operator, and a true salesman. He convinced the partners to give him 10 per cent of the equity and profits, although he didn’t invest a penny. He was also paid expenses and a wage. Hands were shaken, the deal was done, Joyce was off. The portrait of the artist as a young entrepreneur.

…the mind that wrote Ulysses was also the mind that opened Ireland’s first cinema.

Here is the full FT story.  By the way, this being the 100th year of Ulysses, you should read that book if you haven’t already.  It is one of the very best books!  And it really isn’t that difficult.  If you need to, just keep on going, don’t try to figure it all out…