Ed Catmull
Co-Founder, Pixar. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
scientistfounderexecutiveauthor@edcatmull ↗edcatmull.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Ed Catmull is a computer scientist and co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios. He served as president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios and co-authored the book Creativity, Inc.
2shows
3appearances
64statements
12resolved
11supported
1contradicted
92%fully supported
5said about them ↓ Everything Ed Catmull said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Jobs Secretly Previewed the First iPhone While Disclosing His Terminal Cancer
“It's actually when he showed us the first iPhone when it was a secret. And we're on this bridge between the one building and there's a bridge over that goes between another tall building next to it. And the secret lab is where they're designing it. And he told…”
Catmull: Disney never inspected Pixar's processes despite contractual rights
“That contract gave them the right To look at everything we did and all of our processes. As we started to become successful, nobody from Disney ever came and said, what are you guys doing?”
Catmull: Pixar completed 21 of 22 films started; Disney completed 10 of 11
“Before I left, we completed 21 of the 22 films we started. So, but it's just bizarre in that world, and at Disney we completed, by the time I left, 10 of the 11 that we'd started.”
Catmull: Disney theme parks prevented company from being broken up
“The thing that actually, in my opinion, that kept Disney together from, kept them being broken up, was the theme parks itself.”
Catmull: George Lucas was first since Walt Disney to embrace film tech
“The first person since Walt Disney to believe that technology was going to have an impact was George Lucas.”
Catmull: Assuming you are wrong half the time accelerates mistake correction
“If I know that I'm wrong half the time, that I catch it earlier. I special, I spend less time on the wrong decision. So it looks like the ratio is different. The reality is, I'm just wrong half the time. I think it's important to think that way, and that allow…”
Catmull: Isolating individual credit for team success is a destructive trap
“Asking the question might have been a natural thing, to ask. But trying to answer it is an act of separation. That's the problem with it. Because I'm trying to say, how am I separate from others? And really, I never was. It's like none of this would have happe…”
Catmull: Filmmakers Have a Vested Interest in Competitors' Success
“To some extent, the entertainment industry is, is a different kind of competitive landscape. If you've got a movie out in the theaters, then you would actually like all the other films not to be there because you want everybody to come to yours. But if you don…”
Catmull: Pixar's precursor likely would have merged into ILM without Lucas's divorce
“We probably would have ended up as part of ILM.”
Catmull: Media stories on Steve Jobs focused on early bad behavior for drama
“So when the stories were written about him, they're about the early public stories, because frankly, it's kind of sexy to talk about bad behavior or various things like that.”
Catmull: George Lucas was first credible film figure to fund computer graphics
“George was the first person with credibility in the industry who thought this was going to be important, and he was willing to fund it.”
Catmull: Leaders harm organizations by believing they must always know the answers
“The most damaging thing is if the leader thinks their job is to be right and to know the answer, well, you're kind of shutting things off when you think that way.”
Ed Catmull: Smart teams with the right trajectory outperform experience
“Don't assume that you have to have all this experience to get something done. If you get some smart people who are in the right arc, they can do more than you expect.”
Catmull: 'Toy Story' subject was chosen due to computer graphics limits
“The film focused on toys because toys are all on flat surfaces and they're made of plastic. So it's easier to do. So some of what drove the topic was the limitations of what could even be done with computers at the time.”
Catmull: True partnership in negotiations requires funding half the costs
“Steve realized that it wasn't a matter of getting a good deal over somebody else. You actually need to think of them as equal partners. So in order to do that, We have to be able to put up half the money for the films so that we can genuinely say, coming into …”
Catmull: Authority figures speaking first distorts group discussion and sets agendas
“Because if a person with authority starts the room, then everybody sort of lines up behind that. The agenda's been set. If the person with power doesn't say anything, then entering the discussion has an entirely different dynamic.”
Catmull: Pixar's Braintrust could suggest ideas but never override directors
“What they were supposed to do was to point out the problems, discuss it, make suggestions, but they couldn't tell people how to solve the problem. They couldn't override the director, and all this frankly was just to get it so that the director was free to lis…”
Catmull: Detaching contributors from their ideas makes creative feedback work
“For me, the magic means that people throw out ideas and they're not attached to them. If they help and they're accepted, good. If they don't help and they're not used, that's okay too, because you're not attached to them. And what we're trying to do is to figu…”
Catmull: Organizational Nimbleness Should Not Be Standardized Across Teams
“In the case of nimbleness, it turns out that different groups have different notions of how to be nimble. And I like the fact that they've got their own approaches to it because they're going to bring something to the table. Without a notion that is always goi…”
Catmull: Disney and Pixar barred shared production work to prevent internal competition
“You could not do production work for the other. But on the other side, you could beg, borrow, and steal ideas from each other. Because we did not want them to be an existential threat to each other. We wanted them to have a good relationship and want the other…”
Catmull: Fast-changing creative industries require autonomous studios rather than centralized mergers
“An industry that's changing quickly, as this one is, we're far better off if the individual studios can actually bring their own view to it and move quickly and not become ponderous because we've merged everything together.”
Ed Catmull: Creative processes have no permanent recipe or stable equilibrium
“There isn't the recipe. There isn't that sweet spot and you get there and you've made it. This stuff is fundamentally unstable. There is no stable point. You have to keep doing this over and over again, and it's always different. You go down a path and you rea…”
Braintrust Discussions Must Focus on the Problem, Not Egos
“Well, one of them is the discussion is always about the topic. It isn't about who's right.”
Ego-Free Creative Flow Happens Only Once or Twice Per Pixar Film
“And once or twice per film, then magic happens. By magic, I mean that ego has left the room. You have these intense discussions, and somebody can say something, and it doesn't work, and they're not thinking about, my idea wasn't there. They're always back on t…”
The other half of the tape: Ed Catmull's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 2 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most David Senra 3
Statements about Ed Catmull, by other people (2)
Hoffman: Early computing revolution deeply parallels today's AI revolution
“There are deep parallels between the huge advances in computing underway at this point in Ed's story and the seismic impacts of the current AI revolution. Like AI, the computational wave that Ed was immersing himself in was going to inform sweeping changes in …”
George Lucas spun off Pixar due to his 1983 divorce settlement
“Meanwhile, Lucasfilm was put under financial strain by George's 1983 divorce settlement. Although Ed's computer graphics division was making huge strides in technology, it wasn't making money for its parent company, so George made the decision to spin it off.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
David Senra 3
2026 2 mentions in 1 episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ed's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DAVID SENRALEDGER | Co-Founder, Pixar | 1 | 37 | 100% 6/6 | full record on David Senra → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Co-Founder, Pixar | 2 | 27 | 83% 5/6 | full record on Masters of Scale → |