a16z Podcast: The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!

Nov 9, 2016

Lawrence Levy, former CFO of Pixar and author of "To Pixar and Beyond," shares his remarkable journey working with Steve Jobs. He details Pixar's transformation from a struggling company to an animation powerhouse, highlighting the balance between creativity and business strategy. Levy discusses navigating Pixar's groundbreaking IPO, emphasizing the need for financial transparency while fostering innovation. He reflects on corporate culture's evolution towards a more humanistic approach, blending performance with personal well-being in creative industries.

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Intro

00:00 • 2min

The Early Struggles of Pixar

01:46 • 10min

The Pivotal Partnership: Reflections on a Journey with Steve Jobs

11:44 • 2min

Navigating Pixar's IPO Journey

13:29 • 11min

Balancing Performance and Personal Narrative

24:10 • 4min

The Evolution of Corporate Culture: From Acquisition to Humanity

28:02 • 2min

You've heard a version of this story before: Steve Jobs calls some executive out of the blue to come work for him. Only this time the story turns out great ... and the company wasn't Apple. This episode of the a16z Podcast shares some of the journey that former CFO Lawrence Levy went on with Steve Jobs as they took Pixar -- a company then on the verge of failure -- to its IPO and subsequent greatest hits.

It's sort of an adventure story but is really more of a quest for product-market fit. How did they figure out a model for such an old-but-new business (i.e., animation and entertainment)? How did they take an improbable plan and figure out how to make it work -- both qualitatively and quantitatively? How did they then navigate and straddle the diverse worlds of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street? And finally, how did they price their IPO, which was also a symbol of Steve Jobs' comeback story ... a narrative that's sometimes lost in the Apple story.

From the business of creativity to corporate culture, Levy -- former CFO of Pixar, board member, and author of the new book To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History -- shares his (and Jobs' untold) story. But it isn't just a story about finding the right model and numbers to build, explain, and measure the business; it's also, partly, about how to get the measure of one's humanity, too.

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