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Lawrence Levy

Co-Founder, Juniper Foundation · 1 appearance on the record.

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executiveauthorfounderlawrencelevy.com ↗

Recruited by Steve Jobs in 1994, Levy served as CFO, member of the Office of the President, and board member at Pixar, orchestrating its 1995 IPO and sale to Disney. He later co-founded the meditation non-profit Juniper Foundation and authored the memoir To Pixar and Beyond.

18statements → 11claims → 5claims resolved → 40%fully supported → 4.06/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 2said about them ↓

2 supported 3 partly supported 0 contradicted 6 not checkable as stated how the 11 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

11 assertions · 2 opinions · 3 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 11 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, and 6 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Lawrence argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Pixar's 1991 Disney deal tied up studio profits for 12–15 years
“They had committed to that in a 1991 contract that they went into with Disney. That was a little bit of a Hail Mary in a way, because otherwise Pixar was perilously close to going out of business. Disney came along and said that they would basically front the …”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:56 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!

How they sound: speaking style how? →

246 words/min while actually speaking · 6.5 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Lawrence Levy: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 3 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 4,175 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Lawrence Levy is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

Everything Lawrence Levy said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Levy argued with Steve Jobs to underprice Pixar's IPO
“Well, I would say that the pricing of an IPO on the financial side of a company is one of the most important decisions that it will make. And this was also a point of contention between Steve and I about how to price it. I, my thinking about it was that it's i…”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 18:11 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Supported
Pixar's 1991 Disney deal tied up studio profits for 12–15 years
“They had committed to that in a 1991 contract that they went into with Disney. That was a little bit of a Hail Mary in a way, because otherwise Pixar was perilously close to going out of business. Disney came along and said that they would basically front the …”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:56 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Opinion
Levy: Live action film production is a terrible business
“We learned all about the live action film business, but the live action film business is also a terrible business.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:14 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Partly supported
Levy: Jobs had four hardware marketplace failures before Pixar
“Steve had had a series of failures leading up to Pixar. Before he left Apple, there was the Apple Leaser, and there was the Apple Macintosh. After he left Apple, there was the Pixar imaging computer, and then there was the next computer. So those were four pie…”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:25 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Opinion
Levy: Pixar had to insulate itself from studio pressures to innovate
“Sometimes creativity in Hollywood isn't all it's cracked up to be. The big studios have so many pressures. Some of our thinking back then is we have to protect Pixar from those, some of those kinds of pressures in order for it to continue to innovate and do or…”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 21:01 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Disclosure
Levy: Pixar's top decision was refusing executive interference with creatives
“So the most important decision that we made at Pixel was basically to trust the creatives and not interfere with what they're doing.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 23:00 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Insight
Levy: Business leaders can succeed without being jerks, though it is harder
“You don't have to be a jerk to succeed, but it's harder, because you can be a jerk and succeed.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 29:05 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Partly supported
Levy: Pixar did not view itself as an entertainment company in 1994
“If you did research at that time, which I did, you would have discovered they were really a graphics company. So Pixar had really set out to change the world of high-end computer graphics, and they made an imaging computer. They'd made some short films that ha…”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:00 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Partly supported
Levy: Disney was sole historical success in feature animation
“Because only one company in history had ever done it. That was Disney, and they had only succeeded at it for a few years, from 1939, when they released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:02 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Disclosure
Levy: I fought building Pixar into an independent studio
“So the notion that you could build an independent, standalone animated feature film company was one that I basically fought every step of the way because it seemed impossible.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:45 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levy: Jobs and Pixar leadership never fought despite frequent disagreement
“It is, because we never fought, but we didn't always agree. There was this healthy... Debate, I would call it. One pushing the other, always pushing the other you know.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:24 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levy: Jobs rushed Pixar to IPO as symbol of his comeback
“I think when Steve began to see that an IPO was possible for Pixar, he couldn't get there fast enough. Because that IPO was really the symbol of his comeback. He was rushing toward that faster than I was.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:54 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levy: Animated story mistakes cost Pixar $5M to $10M to fix
“They come to you and say, we made a mistake in the story, right? You can't fix that. Like the next day. That's usually a five or ten million dollar mistake.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 22:52 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Insight
Levy: Executive challenge is accurately assessing talent, not having creative answers
“Not everybody in a startup company, you don't have to have John Lassar, but you have to be very discerning about the level of talent that you have. And I think that's the challenge for executives, not to think that they know, but to be able to Make a real asse…”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 24:08 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Steve Jobs cold-called Lawrence Levy in 1994 after seeing his photo
“Imagine that I'm sitting in my office at the company I was at then, which was Electronics for Imaging, and I was sitting at my desk, and the phone rings, and I pick up the phone, and on the other end of the phone, I hear this voice that says, Hi, this is Steve…”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 0:57 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Supported
Levy: Rendering a single frame of animation took a day
“At that time, just to render a single frame could take a day.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:10 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levy: Netscape and Pixar were the two hottest IPOs of 1995
“Netscape and Pixar were the two hottest IPOs of that year in 1995, but Netscape went first.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 18:55 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levy: Pixar's IPO business plan took a full decade to execute
“The plan that we've talked about, that we put in place, The last Pixar, 10 years. It took 10 years to execute, and we just sort of, you know, kept going steadfastly, went at it.”
Lawrence Levy Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 20:29 a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond!

The other half of the tape: Lawrence Levy's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode on the a16z Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Sonal Chokshi 2

Every mention by year

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0011212019episodesmentions
0112019episodes it came up in
0010.5212019episodesmentions per episode
2019 2 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | The Business of Creativity -- Pixar CFO, IPO, and Beyond! Jan 2, 2019 19m
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