Todd Carter

"We walked the Robertson Stephens team through the details of Pixar’s vision, business plan, and risks. We told them we were aiming to change entertainment history in a way few companies had ever had a chance to do, and we described the four pillars it would take to make it work: raise the money to finance our films, expand the studio to handle more productions, make Pixar a worldwide brand, and increase our share of film profits. But there were risks. Big ones. Wall Street would have to understand that. “Thank you,” Brian said sincerely. “This has been immensely helpful. Give us a couple of days. We’ll be back to you.” Later that day I received a call from Todd Carter. He thanked me for the meeting and wanted to explain the process by which they would make their decision. “The decision is made by our Commitment Committee,” he said. “That comprises all our top people and they make the final decision on every deal.” “Any idea how it looks for Pixar?” I asked him. “I wish I could say,” Todd replied. “You’re very aware of the challenges in Pixar’s business model. We’re excited about Pixar, we love the vision, but we have to be certain our investors can tolerate the risks. My personal recommendation is that we go for it, but it isn’t my decision. I think it’ll be close.” There wasn’t much there to make me feel comfortable. I could only sit and wait. It was hard to be patient, though. I hadn’t expressed it to Todd, but by this point I was flat out of options. If Robertson Stephens’s committee voted thumbs down, our chances of an IPO anytime in the near future would truly evaporate. Two days later Brian Bean called. “Our Commitment Committee made its decision,” he started. I held my breath. “We’re in,” Brian told me. “We think our investors will go for this. We know we have to get them on board for the long term, but there’s enough that’s exciting here that we think they will. We’d be honored to be the lead banker for Pixar’s IPO.” I put down the phone with a lump in my throat. Lightning had struck. This was huge. My first call was to Steve."

"We could see our symbol PIXR for the first time. We were live. Pixar was a public company. But the trading did not begin at $22. That was the price the first investors paid to Pixar to acquire the stock. It immediately jumped up into the high thirties. Demand was off the charts. We all stared at it, partly beaming, partly in disbelief. Todd Carter broke the silence. He turned to Steve. “Congratulations, Steve,” he said. “You’re a billionaire.” At the end of the first day’s trading, Pixar’s stock was at $39. That gave Pixar a market value of close to $1.5 billion and did indeed make Steve a billionaire. I later heard that while I was glued to the computer screen watching Pixar’s trades, Steve had stepped into a nearby office and made a phone call to his friend Larry Ellison, the founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation. All he apparently said was “Larry, I made it.”"