“To infinity and beyond!” wasn’t just the catchphrase of Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear—it was the turning point that turned Steve Jobs into a billionaire.
After a power struggle that forced Jobs out of Apple in 1985, Jobs bought Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division the next year for $10 million. The seller was George Lucas, fresh off creating the Star Wars empire. That small acquisition would soon be renamed Pixar—and would change both Hollywood and Jobs’ fortune forever.
The company got off to a rocky start, with Jobs questioning whether to sell it multiple times, thanks in part to having to personally cover its monthly cash shortfall. But by 1995, Jobs believed Pixar was ready for primetime. In a week’s span in November, it would release its first major film, Toy Story, as well as launch an IPO.
Lawrence Levy, the company’s then-CFO, wrote that it reminded him of the 100-meter sprint in the Olympic Games: a lifetime of training that comes down to a snapshot performance.
“If the world fell in love with Toy Story, Pixar would have a chance to usher in a new era of animated entertainment,” he said in his book, To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey With Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History.
“If it didn’t, Pixar might be written off as another company that tried but never quite hit the mark.”
The IPO that made Jobs a billionaire
As the 80% owner of Pixar, the IPO stakes were even higher for Jobs. If everything went well, he was hoping to finally see some return on his Pixar investment. If everything went south, it might have shut the door on any future collaboration with Disney and led to the waste of a decade of his entrepreneurial life.
Luckily, all expectations were shattered. Pixar’s initial stock price was predicted to reach between $12 and $14, but at the end of the first day of trading, it was worth 175% more, at $39 a share. This was thanks largely to Toy Story, with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as lead voices, nearly doubling its box office expectations. Jobs’ stake sent his net worth soaring to over $1 billion.
Jobs would later rejoin Apple in 1997, but he remained involved in Pixar as it churned out hit after hit, including Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille—each bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. Disney fully acquired Pixar for about $7.4 billion in stock in 2006. Jobs’ stake was worth about $4.6 billion.
Overall, Jobs’ willingness to follow his instincts with Pixar proves the age-old advice that one key to success is finding your passion—and putting all of your energy into it.
“No matter what you do next, the world needs your energy, your passion, your impatience with progress,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in 2015. “History rarely yields to one person, but think and never forget what happens when it does.”
Finding fortune beyond their main companies
Jobs isn’t alone in being a business leader who gained significant wealth outside of what they’re primarily known for. Elon Musk has a similar story.
While the world’s richest person is known today for being the leader of Tesla and SpaceX, that’s not how he first amassed his fortune. Musk sold his first company, Zip2, to AltaVista for more than $300 million. He also made millions through the creation of PayPal, which formed from a merger of Musk’s online financial services company, X.com, with software company Confinity, cofounded by billionaire Peter Thiel.
Similarly, billionaire Richard Branson did not make all his money from being focused on his air and space companies, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Galactic. The 75-year-old British serial entrepreneur actually became a billionaire in part thanks to his chain of record stores called Virgin Records. It launched in 1971 and later expanded into a music label that featured artists like the Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson. Branson later sold Virgin Records in 1992 to British conglomerate Thorn EMI for $1 billion.
