The Pixar Story | Hacker News Reader

The Pixar Story

economist.com

16 pointsdavidw6 comments

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Charlie Rose with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1996 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4952557933657865919

For some context: this is shortly after Toy Story, and before Jobs returned to Apple.

I recommend watching "The Pixar Story" when it comes on STARZ. A great documentary.

Two Words:

Steve Jobs.

Not really. If you read those unauthorized biographies of Steve Jobs, you will know besides Steve's financial backing, most of his management ideas were not adopted by Pixar and Steve Jobs yielded because he knew he's not good in that area. Steve's permanent obsession was making great computers when he bought Pixar from George Lucas. Most operation inside Pixars has been always run by Ed Catmull and John Lasseter and they basically do the way they want to get things done.

But nobody can denied Steve Jobs unconditional financial support during Pixar and Next's low point. And Steve Jobs reap his reward during the IPO of Pixar and buyout of Next.

Pixar success is all about the confluence of it's three major players.

1) Ed Catmull - He was the founder with the original vision and great technical skills. He also brings a humility to Pixar, hired only the smartest and best people, and knew that the art should drive the technology, not the other way around. I believe his biggest contribution was knowing he couldn't build Pixar by himself.

2) John Lasseter. Creative visionary. Pushed the tech people hard to think outside their comfort zones and find solutions to complicated problems. Without him, Pixar would be a dead software/hardware company.

3) Steve Jobs. Brought the cash. Let John and Ed do their thing. Managed the business relationships almost perfectly, negotiating the original deals w/ Disney, keeping Pixar insulated through some awful Eisner years, and, in my eyes, created the studio in the mold of a Silicon Valley company. He was also indispensable. He always gave just the right amount of push-back. Hopefully, Bob Iger can manage this as well as Steve did.

Well said. I guess maybe Steve Jobs learned the lesson from Pixar and brought it back to Apple. Has anyone thought that Jonathan Ive is playing the role to Apple just like John Lasseter to Pixar recently?

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