Pixar: The Early Days A never-before-seen 1996 interview

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.