Greetings, traveler!

In an unexpected turn, YouTube surfaced a never-before-seen 1996 interview with Steve Jobs—a recording that had been sitting in obscurity for nearly three decades. The conversation took place right after the release of the first Toy Story, at the moment when Pixar was transitioning from an ambitious graphics research lab into a studio that would rewrite the rules of animated filmmaking.

Across twenty-two minutes, Jobs delivers a concentrated, almost surgical outline of his management philosophy. What’s striking today is how precisely his ideas resonate in 2025—clearer, sharper, and more relevant than when he said them.

Below is a detailed summary and analysis of the main themes from the interview.

Meeting Ed Catmull and the Beginning of Pixar

Jobs opens with the story of how he met Ed Catmull in 1985, then head of Lucasfilm’s computer division. Catmull showed him the team’s early graphics work and shared a long-term dream of making a fully computer-animated feature film.

Jobs recalls:

“He shared with me his dream about making the first computer animated feature film. And I bought into that dream both financially and spiritually.”

Ten years later that dream became Toy Story, which he calls:

“the first totally computer synthetic film of any kind… and it came out really well and became the third most successful animated film of any type.”

Jobs explains that he had worked in graphics for most of his life — Apple II, Macintosh, LaserWriter — but Pixar’s work was far beyond anything he had seen:

“The stuff that Ed and his team were doing was way ahead of anything I’d ever seen anyone do.”

Building a Studio Where Creative and Technical Teams Are Equals

Jobs stresses that he is not the filmmaker; that role belongs to John Lasseter, whom he calls:

“the most brilliant director working in animation today.”

What he did instead was create an environment where Pixar’s creative, technical, and production teams could collaborate as peers:

“We figured out a way to have all those people work together as peers. That’s a really unique thing in the industry.”

The difficulty was merging Hollywood and Silicon Valley cultures, which he describes as “really different.” Pixar succeeded where others failed:

“I think Pixar is the only place in the world that can hire the best from both of these areas.”

Sillywood and Why Most Tech-Entertainment Hybrids Failed

When asked about the term Sillywood, Jobs answers plainly:

“Sillywood was a term… for companies that could raise investment, but they never produced any products.”

He adds sharply:

“Pixar is the only company I know where Silicon Valley and Hollywood have met where there’s actually been any offspring that have been successful.”

The Partnership With Disney

Jobs says Pixar’s relationship with Disney turned out far better than expected:

“It’s turned out to be far more successful and far more fun than we ever imagined.”

He emphasizes Disney’s strong creative teams and marketing capabilities, and notes that Pixar has a three-picture deal. When it ends, they’ll need to decide whether to stay with Disney, partner with another studio, or take on more responsibilities themselves.

Leaving the Commercials Business

Jobs outlines how early computer animation was financed: commercials, flying logos, and special effects. Pixar won awards, but the economics were broken:

“It’s all work for hire. You don’t share in any of the upside of what you create.”

Margins shrank as competition increased, and Pixar eventually pulled out of commercials:

“We loved the commercials business… but we had 25 incredibly talented people doing work for hire when we have all these other opportunities where we own a piece of what we create.”

The Inverted Power Structure: Why the CEO Works for the Talent

One of the most revealing sections of the interview is Jobs’ description of how power works in a company full of elite talent.

He explains:

“If you don’t treat them right, they can go get another job in 10 minutes.”

This reality inverts the hierarchy:

“The CEO is actually at the bottom. I sort of feel like I work for most of these people because they’re the ones that are doing all the brilliant work.”

Management’s role, therefore, is to remove obstacles, assemble great teams, keep quality high, and protect the environment where creative and technical excellence can flourish.

He gives a concrete example: in the year of the interview, Pixar grew from ~175 to ~300 employees. The challenge was to maintain standards:

“One of our major challenges was not to lower the quality bar one iota… and we managed to accomplish that.”

Learning Feature Filmmaking From Disney

Jobs contrasts live-action and animation. Live-action shoots excess footage and shapes the story in editing. Animation cannot afford that:

“You don’t want to animate even ten percent more than what you need.”

Disney pioneered the idea of editing the film before animation — a process Pixar learned through collaboration:

“The wisdom and experience… was not available at any price to anybody else.”

Why Pixar Uses No Employment Contracts

Pixar uses stock options instead of contracts. Jobs explains the difference between Hollywood and Silicon Valley:

“Hollywood uses the stick, which is the contract, and Silicon Valley uses the carrot, which is the stock option.”

And Pixar chose the Silicon Valley path because it forces management to continually improve:

“Every single day, we worry about how can we make Pixar a better company so that nobody will ever want to leave.”

Contracts, he says, enable complacency:

“When you sign a contract… you put them in the drawer.”

Technology Fades; Stories Last

Jobs draws a stark contrast between the short lifespan of technology and the longevity of stories. Old Apple hardware already disappears, but Snow White (1937) still sells tens of millions of copies:

“They re-released it on video and sold 28 million copies… making around a quarter billion dollars of profit 60 years after its initial release.”

Watching his young son rediscover the film made it clear to him:

“These stories renew themselves with each generation of young children.”

And he predicts the same for Toy Story:

“Not because of the computer graphics, but because of the story… about friendship.”

The Future of Computer Animation

Jobs notes a remarkable stability in rendering times:

“Luxo Jr. took about three hours on average to render each frame.”

Ten years later, for Toy Story:

“Computers are a hundred times faster, and yet… it took three hours on average to render each frame.”

For their second feature (codenamed Bugs):

“We’re throwing between five and ten times more computer power at it… and it’ll still take three hours to render each frame.”

As Jobs summarized:

“No amount of technology can turn a bad story into a good story… It’s the story, stupid.”

Conclusion

Watching this long-lost 1996 interview today, almost thirty years later, offers a rare window into Steve Jobs at a pivotal moment—between NeXT and his return to Apple, between Pixar’s first success and its transformation into a world-class studio. What stands out is not nostalgia, but clarity. Jobs speaks about culture, talent, ownership, risk, and storytelling with the same precision he applied to products throughout his career.

He never romanticizes technology. He never overstates Pixar’s achievements. Instead, he returns again and again to the fundamentals reflected in his own words:
that great people need support,
that environments matter more than org charts,
that technology is only a tool,
and that stories endure long after the hardware that made them is forgotten.