#317 Ed Catmull (Founder of Pixar)

**David Senra** (0:00)
So the three founders I talk about most in this episode, Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs and George Lucas, all shared the same obsession for the quality of the products that they were making. And one of the most unique things about this podcast is that I know the founder of every single company that advertises on founders. All of them listen to founders, so that makes building a relationship a lot easier. And so 8 Sleep is one of the supporters of this episode. And the founder, Matteo and I live in the same city. A few months after I started to use 8 Sleep, I randomly ran into Matteo at a restaurant. I was sitting with some founder friends of mine. I went over to say hi. When I got back to my table, one of my friends asked me who I was talking to. And I was like, oh, that's Matteo, the founder of 8 Sleep. And my friend replied that he looks like he gets good sleep. Matteo is living and breathing his product. And you see this because there's nothing in the same class as 8 Sleep. I had never had the ability to change the temperature of my bed before I had an 8 Sleep. I had no idea how much that one feature would improve the quality of my sleep. I keep my 8 Sleep ice cold. I make sure it's cold before I get into bed. So I fall asleep faster and I wake up less during the night. That feature alone, in my opinion, is worth 10 times the price. In past episodes, founders like Jeff Bezos and James Dyson have talked about the importance of getting good sleep. Other founders like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have also talked about the fact that they love their 8 Sleep. There are very few no-brainer investments in life, and I believe that an 8 Sleep is one of them. You can get your own 8 Sleep by going to 8sleep.com forward slash founders, and you'll get $150 off. That is 8sleep.com forward slash founders, and I also leave the link down below. I want to tell you about something very special, something that may only happen one time ever. I am doing a live show in New York City on October 19th with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders on his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs from mine. We're going to be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and then doing a live Q&A. If this is something you'd be interested in attending, make sure you move quickly. There's a lot of founders and Invest Like The Best listeners in New York. I've already talked to a bunch of people that actually bought tickets and are flying in from other states and other countries for this. We just got our first sales update from the venue. We've already sold a few hundred tickets and we haven't even talked about it on this podcast yet, our Patrick's Podcast, so again, move quickly, do not dilly-dally. I will leave the link down below.
My professional life seemed destined to have one foot in Silicon Valley and the other in Hollywood.
I first got into the film business in 1979 When flushed from the success of Star Wars, George Lucas hired me to help him bring high technology into the film industry.
Our offices were located about an hour's drive from Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley. That proximity gave me a front row seat from which to observe the many emerging hardware and software companies.
I couldn't have arrived at a more dynamic and volatile time.
I watched as many startups burned bright with success and then flamed out. My mandate at Lucasfilm to merge moviemaking with technology meant that I rubbed shoulders with the leaders of places like Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics.
I watched these guys closely, hoping to learn from the trajectories their companies followed.
Gradually, a pattern emerged.
Someone had a creative idea, obtained funding, brought on a lot of smart people, and developed and sold a product that got a boatload of attention. That initial success begat more success, lowering the best engineers and attracting customers.
As these companies grew, much was written about their paradigm shifting approaches and their CEOs landed on the cover of magazines.
But then those companies did something stupid, not just stupid in retrospect, but obvious at the time stupid.
I wanted to understand why. What was causing smart people to make decisions that sent their companies off the rails?
I didn't doubt that they believed they were doing the right thing, but something was blinding them and keeping them from seeing the problems that threatened to upend them.