A never-before-seen 1996 interview
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.
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Comments
By disillusioned 2025-11-2122:393 reply 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.
By hunterjrj 2025-11-2217:12 > 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.
Both Jobs and Pixar’s Ed Catmull believed this so strongly that they took illegal measures to protect it:
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/ed-catmull-on-wage-...
By hnthrowaway0315 2025-11-2218:26 I think "The Soul of the New Machine" definitely captures the idea -- I don't have the exact words, but it's like playing pinball -- you win and you get to play the next one. The reward of completing a tough job is a tougher job.
I really love this kind of culture. Life is grey without being challenged to the limit.
To be absolutely clear though, Pixar had very good compensation in addition to all this. It was never about either or. They had both
By cma 2025-11-2223:23 And apparently wage fixing with competitors
By nobody_nothing 2025-11-222:38 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!
By popalchemist 2025-11-224:082 reply The value of Snow White is not diminished with time, though. Whereas the value of the original Mac is very linked to its time, and diminishes with each passing day.
It does diminish slightly though? Snow White is not a Disney tentpole the way it was in the 50s or even in the 80s.
How many 8-year-olds could pick out Snow White in a line-up?
By alt227 2025-11-2410:05 > How many 8-year-olds could pick out Snow White in a line-up?
Literally all of them. You obviously dont have kids!
By beowulfey 2025-11-2218:22 If you visit Disneyland regularly, Snow White is just as popular for costumes as any other princess and has been for a long time!
By brians 2025-11-2216:18 …all of them. Which is why the scene in Ralph Breaks the Internet works. And why some of the Shrek jokes work.
By petercooper 2025-11-2216:17 The remake of Snow White was only released earlier this year, so quite a few, if you mean the broad character.
By simondotau 2025-11-2210:341 reply All films diminish with time; only a minuscule number of films have cultural relevance that spans decades. Though it can be misleading to look to Disney films here, because they spend buttloads of money keeping successful films in their archive perennially relevant — through lavishly marketed home releases and, more recently, remakes.
By famouswaffles 2025-11-2220:471 reply The remakes are primarily a way to bank on the sustained relevance of some movies, not to keep them. Remakes of movies that are no longer relevant flop or heavily underperform and release to little fanfare.
By popalchemist 2025-11-241:29 Yes, the existence of the remakes is proof in favor of the continued relevance, not the opposite. Companies like Disney don't invest hundreds of millions (or more, if you count ancillary merchandising) in something they don't know to have an audience. Even when the films bomb theatrically, they make money in the long run through the "long tail" (VOD / home video purchases) and merchandising. So, yeah, the remakes are indicative of a continued relevance. Furthermore the original Snow White has a particular longevity since it was the first Walt Disney animated feature -- and the first animated feature in color. On top of that, it is based on the Grimm fairy tale which, though published in 1812, was likely in existence for hundreds of years prior to that publication. Per Joseph Campbell, stories like that have a continued relevance because they are expressing archetypal concerns; their value is not rooted in time, but in the unchanging aspects of the human psyche that remain relevant hundreds of years later.
So... yeah. Though there is a slight diminishment in the sense of its aesthetics, it objectively continues to be relevant, seeing as it was literally in theaters this year.
By Wowfunhappy 2025-11-221:27 But are they using it as the bicycle for the mind it was intended to be—to get work done, or at least be creative and express ideas—or are they just playing some games and seeing what they can get running?
By ayaros 2025-11-221:15 Amen!
