> One of my champions at Xerox PARC was Alan Kay. So I knew Alan Kay, who was by this time a fellow at Apple. And Steve Jobs had expressed some interest in computer graphics, so Alan Kay said let me introduce you to the guys who do it best. So Alan Kay brought Steve up to spend an afternoon with us at Lucasfilm. That’s when we first got to know each other. I had actually had one earlier conversation with Steve at some design conference on the Stanford campus one summer, but that was just a first meeting sort of thing. The first serious meeting with business possibilities was that one at Lucasfilm with Alan Kay.
> Shortly after that, Steve and Apple broke up. And meanwhile, Lucasfilm was trying to sell us. Steve ended up buying us from Lucasfilm for $5 million.
So not only was Jobs alerted to Pixar by an existing contact, in buying it he was to a large extent reusing the business model that had already worked with the Macintosh: take PARC goodies and commercialise them, hiring some of the PARC guys themselves.
http://engineering.stanford.edu/profile/alvy-ray-smith-ms-19...
> One of my champions at Xerox PARC was Alan Kay. So I knew Alan Kay, who was by this time a fellow at Apple. And Steve Jobs had expressed some interest in computer graphics, so Alan Kay said let me introduce you to the guys who do it best. So Alan Kay brought Steve up to spend an afternoon with us at Lucasfilm. That’s when we first got to know each other. I had actually had one earlier conversation with Steve at some design conference on the Stanford campus one summer, but that was just a first meeting sort of thing. The first serious meeting with business possibilities was that one at Lucasfilm with Alan Kay.
> Shortly after that, Steve and Apple broke up. And meanwhile, Lucasfilm was trying to sell us. Steve ended up buying us from Lucasfilm for $5 million.
So not only was Jobs alerted to Pixar by an existing contact, in buying it he was to a large extent reusing the business model that had already worked with the Macintosh: take PARC goodies and commercialise them, hiring some of the PARC guys themselves.