The key was a divorce at the right time

When you think about Steve Jobs as a billionairethe most logical thing is to link that wealth with Apple. However, what really catapulted that category of Milmillonario It wasn’t the iPhonethe Mac or the iPod. It was a small animation company called Pixar. And, curiously, Pixar only existed as an independent company because George Lucas divorced his wife. The flutter of a butterfly, in animation version.

George Lucas and his divorce

In the late 70s, George Lucas was already one of Hollywood’s most successful directors. In full Star Wars ProductionLucas had founded Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the study of special effects that marked a trend for innovations in special effects and animation that applied in the productions of the Lucas saga.

In 1980, Lucas hired two computer experts: Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith. Together they founded the computer graphics division within ILM, and from that department they began to develop Pioneer tools on CGI (Computer-Genered Imagery).

Later John Lasseter would join, a young animator expelled from Disney for betting too soon for digital animation. Among the three engineers laid the foundations of what would later be Pixar. But, at that time, they were only a small technical division within the study.

In parallel, George Lucas’s personal life staggered. His marriage to Mountain Marcia Lucas – who won an Oscar For your work at Star Wars– He collapsed, and ended up divorcing in 1983. The divorce process was complex and Lucas had to pay his ex -wife 50 million dollars. And that forced Lucas to Sell assets To deal with payments.

To avoid getting rid of the entire production study, it fractioned it by departments and, one of those departments was precisely the division of computer graphics in which Catmull, Smith and Lasseter worked.

Steve Jobs enters the scene

In 1985, Steve Jobs had been fired from Apple, the company he founded, and was looking for new projects to invest. When he learned that George Lucas wanted to part with his computer division, he saw an opportunity.

Lucas requested 30 million dollars for that department. But Jobs negotiated until you reduce the purchase to about 5 million. Lucas rejected the offer for being too low. Disney also made an offer, but it was even lower.

Finally, Steve Jobs made an offer again for the CGI division of Lucasfilm, although this time it would be for an investment of 10 million dollars: 5 million to take the technology they had developed and another 5 million to capitalize on the new company. Thus Pixar was bornwith an initial team of 40 people, including Catmull, Smith and Lasseter.

Toy Story changed the game

For almost a decade, Pixar did not produce films. Sold hardware and software specialized in graphics and computer -generated effects, such as the Pixar Image Computeraimed at very niche markets in the medical and graphic industry. That specialization made Pixar was not profitable And Jobs was about to close The company several times.

Salvation came in the form of an alliance with Disney. Pixar agreed to produce three animated films generated entirely by computer. The first one was Toy Story (1995), which revolutionized the industry and was a criticism and box office raising 360 million dollars worldwide.

To take advantage of the moment, Pixar went over the same month of the premiere. On their first day, the shares shot up to $ 39. And that made Steve Jobs a billionaire in the spot. It was his first great business victory after his departure from Apple.

Thanks to Pixar’s success, Jobs recovered his reputation as a technological visionary. That gave him confidence and merits to return to his charge as CEO of Apple in 1997. But his adventure with Pixar had not finished.

For years, Pixar continued to operate as an independent study, although His films They were distributed under the umbrella and Marketing of Disney chaining successes as looking for Nemo or Cars.

In 2006, the Mickey Mouse company bought Pixar for 7,400 million dollars in shares. Pixar’s purchase operation provided Jobs 138 million shares, which meant 7% of Disney’s shares, becoming the main private shareholder of Disney and allowed him to occupy a seat on his board of directors. That percentage of shares would currently be valued at about 15,577 million dollars. Not bad to have been an investment of 10 million.

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Image | Flickr (David Geller), Wikimedia Commons (Achanhk, Coolcaesar)