Pixar Is Another Steve Job's Big Success
Before Jobs became Apple CEO again, he was the CEO and owner of Pixar. Today Pixar is a household name, but in the mid-'90s it was still working on its first feature film (Toy Story) and struggling financially. Jobs, tired of funding the company himself, recruited Levy to be Pixar's CFO and turn the business around.
Levy's book shows how he worked closely with Jobs to focus Pixar's business, build an iconic brand and ultimately guide it toward a successful IPO and later an acquisition by Disney.
But for those interested in all things Apple, the book provides something more: a detailed account of how Pixar finally helped Jobs escape what is typically referred to as his "wilderness years." That's the decade or so between his firing from Apple and his return.
When Levy first met Jobs, the Apple founder's reputation was in doubt. He had been ousted from Apple. His followup company, NeXT computer, was struggling. And Pixar, the business he bought from Lucasfilm for its animation technology, was bleeding money with little to show for it.
For starters, Jobs learned how to be more "collaborative" and cede some control to others, according to Levy. "He wasn't the product maker at Pixar," he told CNNMoney. "He wasn't a filmmaker."
And it was through Pixar that Jobs got his first true taste of the entertainment industry. (In one particularly endearing moment in the book, Jobs is nearly ecstatic to learn that an A-list Hollywood exec he's meeting with has to duck out to take a call from Robert Redford.)
"We literally learned the entertainment industry together there," Levy told CNNMoney. "We literally shuttled back and forth to Hollywood to learn it."
The knowledge and relationships he cultivated in that industry would prove useful as he pushed to turn Apple around with products in the entertainment space like the iPod, iTunes Store and Apple TV.
Full Article From CNN
Full Article From CNN
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