Pixar: The Early Days A never-before-seen 1996 interview (opens in new tab)

Steve's comments around merging the culture of creatives and technologists, and how hard it is to attract and _retain_ the kind of world-changing talent that was necessary to invent a new category are interesting: "the very best creative people will only go to work at a few places, Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks,"... "in the same sense, the very best computer scientists and computer graphics people will only go work in a few places, and Pixar is one of those..." "I think Pixar is the only place in the world that can hire the best from both of these areas."

It feels like there are some obvious parallels to what we're seeing in AI hiring, where you have a firm like Anthropic that openly acknowledges that they're not going to try to compete on comp but on culture, compared to Meta which is basically saying "we'll give you more money than god if you join our efforts to throw things at the wall and be part of this," and watching as people churn out even though the opportunity cost on the surface may be unfathomable.

Put another way: Steve truly understood the virtue and value of that cultural component to not just attract but _retain_ that kind of world-class talent, and _that's_ what he attributes Pixar's success to. He goes on to talk about how getting those disparate talent worlds to stick together for a decade, and how valuable that is.

Direct link to the interview: https://youtu.be/R0XmBKsRJF8

(I was locked out of the embedded player on suspicion of being a bot)

As Steve Jobs muses that Snow white was enjoyed 60 years after it's release but computers go to the sedimentary layer. While it's true that you can't re-release the 1984 Mac debut to fanfare and profit 40 years later - a small group of dedicated enthusiasts are still running their original Macs and others in emulation - so they arent' completely fossilized!

This seems like a nice gloss of varnish over a really rocky history for this company. Lucas needed money and sold the the fledgling graphics company division, who then pivoted a few times from making hardware to making rendering software to making shorts (to promote the hardware and software) and then TV commercials to keep the lights on.

Spoiler Alert: I love the part where he says "It Is the Story Stupid" beyond all the sophisticated artifacts to represent stories.

In 1999, Jobs received an award from the Silicon Valley Alum of Harvard Business School for his Pixar work. In his thank you remarks, he said he had no illusions about there being many people who’d be booting up their Power Mac G4 in 50 years but he was dead certain that millions would still be watching Toy Story. Twenty five years in, his prediction holds.