The activities and character of Steve Jobs certainly evoke sympathy in me; however, he is unlikely to be in my top three idols. If I were to write about my idols, they would primarily be Hawking and Mercury. However, there is one significant reason why I decided to write specifically about Jobs.
Everyone knows Jobs primarily for the successes of Apple, and some also know him for NeXT, the company he founded after he was forced to leave the board of Apple in 1985. NeXT, by the way, also specialized in information technology, specifically in developing software for computers.
However, this is not about Apple or even NeXT, but about Pixar. Yes, that Pixar, whose logo features a hopping lamp and whose animated films are well-known: Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Up, Inside Out, The Incredibles, Soul, and many other iconic animated films. None of these might have existed if it weren't for Steve Jobs. He was the owner of the company for a long time, and under his leadership, the company produced its very first masterpieces and built all its working processes.
Pixar was founded in 1979 by George Lucas, the director of the film "Star Wars." The company specialized not in producing animated films but rather in creating software for movie studios. Soon, George Lucas was forced to put the company up for sale; possibly, his divorce from his wife also influenced this decision. In any case, in 1986, Steve Jobs bought the company and became its owner. For the first few years, the company continued to sell software and computers, but this was not a profitable business, and soon something had to change. The company began working on producing its own animated films. Of course, they didn't create an entire film from scratch because they lacked such experience. They entered into lucrative contracts with Disney and essentially did a significant portion of the work for that company.
Their very first project, "Toy Story," brought in $373 million with a budget of only $30 million. And this was back in 1995. At that time, this was a large sum for movie studios. After just the first project, Pixar made a name for itself, and since then, they built a more equal partnership with Disney, rather than the relationship of an experienced giant and a small upstart.
Nevertheless, in the first half of 2006, Pixar and Disney announced their merger and successfully completed it. Essentially, Disney acquired Pixar; however, unlike other similar deals where giants absorb smaller companies, Disney made Pixar a fully independent company, even while being part of its larger project. This was one of Steve Jobs' requirements during the merger. Moreover, Pixar executives Ed Catmull and John Lasseter not only continued to work with the Pixar division within Disney but also brought some of the organizational practices they used at Pixar into the Disney company itself.
When Steve Jobs learned about his terminal illness, he had three major goals and desires. One was related to the launch of the iPhone, which Jobs believed would secure a brilliant future for Apple. The second was to ensure success for Pixar. The third, and most important task, was to guide his three children on the right path. As we can judge from his public activities, he excelled in the first two, and I have no doubt that he succeeded in the third as well.
