YouSaid · the spoken record

Lawrence Levy

lines on the record: 86
first: 2016-11-12
most recent: 2016-11-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Technology and entertainment, and he was brilliant, so he put those things together in a way, I'm not sure, you know, anybody else could have”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was there. We did it together. I mean, we imagine, I mean, I'm saying we need to go into the entertainment industry and you've got the two business guys running the company that don't know anything about that industry. And so we literally learned it and pieced it together. And so I think when he went back to Apple, he was the only CEO that had great sort of mastery over both industries of technolog”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, all these changes, this arc of this, I'm thinking, you know, had to be important. I know it was important and gave him a level of confidence and knowledge of the entertainment industry that mattered a lot when it came to going, you know, taking on the challenge at Apple.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And his relationship with the company had changed into really beloved patriarch of soil or guardian. He gave all the employees.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is when a billion dollars. I know that's right. You know, when I came out, first came out to Silicon Valley, we used to talk about millionaires. Right. You know, now it's like there's a billionaire, right, to even to count.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think so. I think a couple of years before I came, Hetty had the opportunity to sell out the company just to cut those losses, he would have. I just don't think that opportunity came along. And I don't think he wanted to close it down. You know, that just wasn't his nature. And so he hung in there. And that's a great credit and a tribute to him as well. And so it was rare, but he still had $50 million in there. And he also had, you know, sort of a toxic relationship with Pixar. And so... You spoil forward a few years and this is really the arc of historian the book and then all those things have changed. He's had this huge comeback with the Pixar IPO and with Toy Story. His 50 million losses converted into now a billion dollars of wealth.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was crazy. In those days, I ventured to guess only Steve. Steve would be the only founder to do that. But, you know, that was Steve. I mean, Steve didn't do many things, but what he did do, he did with... Sort of passionate intensity that was like second to none. Did he have any”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the setup. You know, it all sounded as though he started Apple. He goes back to Apple. And I was like, wait a minute, the stuff that happened to the Pixar is really important to this story. And, you know, because look, when I met Stephen in 1994, right, he hadn't had a hit in 10 years. At Apple. So Lisa was.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this was one of their inspirations for writing the book. Actually, I long known that this is a great story. I told it to people privately and publicly, and I always had fantastic reaction. And people were always like, you know, you should write this into a book. People don't know this story. And it took me a long time to get inspired to do that. But one of the inspirations came in the aftermath of Steve's death when we have this endless amount of material. Documentaries, movies, books, you know, on him. And, you know, I began to feel that Pixar and what happened then was an afterthought in all of that. It really was.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Disney was always going to do the marketing, but that Pixar regained sort of control over the creative side, the sequels and those things”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when we Depending how it worked out, but 10 12% of the profits from the films under the new agreement it was going to be 50%. And you were putting up half the finances and we were putting up half the financing.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, from a box office point of view, it was unbelievably successful. It did like 190 million dollars in the domestic box office. It did well internationally as the biggest film of the year, so from that perspective, it couldn't have been better. Doesn't mean it made Pixar a lot of money because it was still under the original agreement with Disney.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Toy Story, Pixar had success. And that means that in that, you know, that is going to get attention. And so then Disney, you know, it was Michael Eisner at the time is sort of going to start to think about, okay, Pixar is willing to invest on its own films, right? And so instead of Disney investing 100%, you know, maybe Pixar is willing to invest 50%. That's of interest. Secondly, I'd want to keep closer attention to these guys because now they're successful. I don't want to risk losing them. And so that opened the door for negotiation. Now that said, as I recount in the book, that negotiation was pretty rocky. But it opened the door.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They absolutely could have. And we learned that there are two things that talk in Hollywood. One is success. So, you have a success, you have a celebrity of any kind, you have some clout. And the second thing that talks is money. And so all of a sudden from the IPO Pixel had money.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was them or nobody? Yeah, them or nobody. So it was like Pixar was not even allowed to work on other film projects. And I was asking the lawyer, Sam Frister about that. And he's saying, yeah, because Pixar's working and other things, they could take their better people and put them on other things. And Disney wanted to make sure has access to their best people. And I was like, but that ties up a whole company. We could hire a thousand animators and they can only work for Disney. But my protests were for Nord. It was what it was.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Question You usually find out. Yeah, usually they find out. And probably it probably turns out to be a good thing that I went in naive because if I had known what I learned later about it, I kind of imagined I would have taken that job. But it just turned out when I did understand it that Disney had effectively tied Pixar up for what three films, which could have been 12, 14 years, and with almost no chance of sort of making money on those films that would be anything like what you would need to grow a business. So go over some of the...”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Its It's its own language, everything, because I didn't know that at that moment, right? So I just thought, hey, you know, I can't, I don't understand everything that says, I'll figure it out later, kind of everything. That's what I said to myself. How bad can it be?”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, the darkest day in my career, that's for sure. So, you know, Disney Pixar had entered an agreement in 1991, a few years before I came for the making of Toy Story. And you would have thought that me, you know, well-trained and experienced lawyer would sort of understand what that was all about. And I certainly had a chance to look at it. But it was written in this sort of arcane language of entertainment law, which is different from...”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the opening weekend, you know, it turns out to be $38 million. Just far beyond anybody's wallet. Far beyond anybody's, you know, by today's standards, that's not even that huge. But in that time, for that film, it was like Grand Slam home run in the bottom of the ninth. I mean, it just couldn't have been better. We would just giddy from it.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And my take at the time was in the word you said, which is layered out, just layered out, right? Put it out there, and then investors or investment banks, they'll decide. I don't have to decide for them. I just have to lay it out. Steve presented a grand vision for what Pixar could be. I would lay out all of these details. Together, we presented this vision and this possibility. And then it was sort of up to investors to decide. And fortunately, some decided to go along for that.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, it was, you know, and so the idea for the IPO essentially comes about from, do you want to, it sort of all flows from this strategy. So you want to build an independent animation film company. That means you have to finance your own films. Those films cost a lot. So it could be, you know, the time, $75 million, $100 million. So how are you going to get that kind of money, right? And so no lender is going to provide that kind of money, you know, for that kind of product. So you've got to go to the equity market, capital markets. And so, but the business model of Pixar had none of the characteristics that investors and investment banks. So it wasn't steady.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a good example of an independent animated feature film. But you sort of looking at it qualitatively and quantitatively, that was the only shot. And you're exactly right that in order to make that work, those”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's been around for two years. Teamboat Willie for two generations, right? 1939, Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the first animated feature film. So it's like every studio had an opportunity to get into that business and none of them are in it. It turned out that even Disney couldn't make it work because, you know, he has a good run from 1939 to like 1945. He's got Bambi and Snow White and Dumbo and all these beloved films. But he couldn't keep that engine running financially. So he diversifies, right? He diversifies. He goes into 1955, he goes into theme parks, early 1950s, he goes into television with the wonderful world of Walt Disney. He goes into distribution. He sets up Buena Vista distribution. He's trying to diversify away from an animation because live-action film. He goes in a live action film, Mary Poppins and this and that. So he built this diversified media company. And so I'm looking around and not this.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, and it's worse than that in a sense, because if you looked at the Disney model, which I did, and I was like, why aren't there more independent animated feature forms? It's not like animated feature films is a new product.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, decide is probably a bit of an overstatement. It was a strategy by default in a way. So you look around the company and this isn't going to work. This isn't going to work. This isn't going to work. So then you look at this animated feature film thing. And so I started to learn about that. And I'm like, well, this is the worst possible business strategy. So you specifically”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“None of them could scale. They were amazing. The hardware had already been closed down, but the anime commercials, the anime short films, the renderman software, they couldn't scale. And the reason was because they're too high-end. There was like how many people in the world at that point in time were going to pay this very large amount for this unbelievable software to render unbelievably high quality image, you know, just studios, you know, 30 to 50 studios, not enough to build a business.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, entertainment was an afterthought. You know, Piktar was created as a graphics company and it was hardware software. Hardware software. It made a computer called the Pixar Imaging Computer. And so it was in these different things that it was making this render man software, which was rendering these high-end graphics and creating them into computer images. It was doing animated shore films. It was doing commercials. It was doing this sort of thing called, there's a lot of focus on Toy Story. So there was kind of a lot going on. And I realized right away, you know, I had kind of a lot to learn there. And so when I first got there, I was just like, you know, I'm not going to make any decisions. I'm not going to do anything. I literally got a pad of paper and a pen and I asked everybody, can I just follow you around and see what's going on? And I literally did that. You know, I spent a lot of time just, you know, sitting, listening, you know.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's funny, you know, Pixar was at that time in Point Richmond, California, which from the point of view of Silicon Valley was kind of like in the middle of nowhere. And it was in a, it's across the street from an oil refinery, and it's a dumpy building, and there's nothing remarkable or inspiring about it whatsoever. And so I went in there scratching my head. And, you know, I meet Ed Catmull and a couple of other people. John Lasso, John Lassiter, and then they take me to see this sort of footage of Toy Story, which is a year before Toy Story comes out. And it's just a few minutes and it's unfinished and there's no music and the voice isn't final. And so there's all these caveats about what it's going to be. And I'm in a screening room that's full of like couches that look like they've been picked up from the end of a driveway. And I'm like, what's going on here? Then the film begins to roll and I'm kind of like mesmerized by this. I'm looking at this saying to myself somewhere in this building there is.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was extremely concerned. That's why the first chapter in the book is called Why Would You Do That? Because that's what a lot of people told me. It was maybe the lowest point in Steve's career. You know, he'd had a string of basically four failures in the Apple Lisa computer, then the original Apple Macintosh computer that had a very hard time finding a market. The next computer that picks our imaging computer. So there were books being written about him as done. Finished. And so I was very concerned about it.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he cleaved it off because it was very expensive Durant. And so I don't think he wanted to continue the investment in the computer graphics division. And so that's when Edmull and Avi Ray Smith decided to sort of try to take it as a spinoff and they needed an investor to help with that.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eight years later, this is 1994. He's tossed out some years before. He went to do next computer, but two years before, like in 1993, Next had shut down its hardware business. So it was basically rumored to be done. And I thought to myself, okay, he wants some help to turn around next. But then he says the company is called Pixar. And inside, I'm kind of going, what's Pixar? And outwardly, I kind of said, that sounds really cool. I'd love to learn about it. But Pixar was so unknown at that point that, you know, maybe you sort of barely heard.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Phone call So imagine that I'm sitting in my office by that time I was working for a company called Electronics for Imaging that had been one of my clients and I went to work for them and I ended up becoming their CFO and we took that company public. They're still around. It's a great company. And my phone rings and I pick up the phone and I hear on the other end of the line, hi, this is Steve Jobs. I saw your picture in a magazine a couple of years ago. I thought we'd work together someday. I have a little company I want to tell you about. And I immediately thought to myself next, he's talking about next computer. Now this is...”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Legendary law firm. Legendary law firm, and I said to Larry, you know, I just want to come out here and do technology transactions. And he said, you know, we have no one specializing in it. It's growing and growing. I'll let you do it. And that was the start of what became the first and the biggest technology transactions law practice in the legal business.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is going to be a big one. This technology thing is going to go somewhere, even the lore is associated with the protection of software in this kind of stuff, hadn't been sorted out yet. And so... but I'm in the wrong place. You know, where shall I go? And we had never been to California, we never really even heard of Silicon Valley, but that was the place. So I came out to Silicon Valley and I interviewed with the biggest law firm out there and the founding partner of that firm, Larry Suncini, who's featured in the book.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a request in the law firm to represent a software company. And nobody was interested. This is like, you know, in 1987, no one was interested in representing software companies. It didn't mean anything. And my hand shut up. And I was like, this is what I'm going to do. And so I did. This was just a tiny little company. I don't even remember its name. But I could see that by doing this, that this was sort of a land of opportunity.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yes, I was born and raised in London. I moved in my late teens over to the United States, and then I ended up in university. I was at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, where I started business and accounting. Then I'd go into Harvard Law School, and then I start my law practice, and I was practicing on the East Coast, and I was not happy with it. This is sort of in my mid-20s. And I'm like, you know, what do I really want to do? And at that time, I was married. We had a one-year-old baby.”
2016-11-12 · Masters in Business · Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source