Pixar's Early Days - A Never-Before-Seen Interview With Steve Jobs, 1996

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

November 18, 2025

Duration

22m

Channel

Steve Jobs Archive

Watch on YouTube

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📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

To mark Toy Story’s 30th anniversary, we’re sharing a never-before-seen interview with Steve from November 22, 1996—exactly one year after the film debuted in theaters. Toy Story was the world’s first entirely computer-animated feature-length film. An instant hit with audiences and critics, it also transformed Pixar, which went public the week after its premiere. Buoyed by Toy Story’s success, Pixar’s stock price closed at nearly double its initial offering, giving it a market valuation of approximately $1.5 billion and marking the largest IPO of 1995. The following year, Toy Story was nominated for three Academy Awards en route to winning a Special Achievement Oscar in March. In July, Pixar announced that it would close its television-commercial unit to focus primarily on feature films. By the time of the interview, the team had grown by 70 percent in less than a year; A Bug’s Life was in production; and behind the scenes, Steve was using his new leverage to renegotiate Pixar’s partnership with Disney. In this footage, Steve reveals the long game behind Pixar’s seeming overnight success. With striking clarity, he explains how its business model gives artists and engineers a stake in their creations, and he reflects on what Disney’s hard-won wisdom taught him about focus and discipline. He also talks about the challenge of leading a team so talented that it inverts the usual hierarchy, the incentives that inspire people to stay with the company, and the deeper purpose that unites them all: to tell stories that last and put something of enduring value into the culture. At Pixar, Steve collaborated closely with president Ed Catmull and refined a management approach centered on creating the conditions for talent to thrive. When he returned to Apple a few weeks after this interview, his experience at Pixar shaped how he saw his role as CEO: building a company on timeless ideas made new through technology. www.stevejobsarchive.com

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Steve Jobs

  guest

  Co-founder of Apple and (in 1996) owner/CEO of Pixar, overseeing its business strategy and partnership with Disney.

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Steve Jobs Archive, featuring Steve Jobs, Pixar's Early Days - A Never-Before-Seen Interview With Steve Jobs, 1996 explores Steve Jobs on Pixar: culture, Disney partnership, story-first animation Steve Jobs says he bought into Ed Catmull’s vision of creating the first fully computer-animated feature film, a decade-long effort that culminated in Toy Story’s release and success.