HackerTube.dev

Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small

Stanford Graduate School of Business · 216.6K views · 2009-07-28 · 54:11

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

Ed Catmull of Pixar speaks at Stanford's 2007 Entrepreneurship Conference on running a creative company. He argues for surfacing small problems early and building good teams, with stories like the Toy Story 2 crunch.

On Hacker News

Repeatedly called one of the most useful talks on building organizations and managing creative teams.

Recommended by 9 HN people across 10 months · HN mentions 2010–2017

Topics

Management, leadership & organizationsAnimation & visual effectsTech company stories & documentaries
Search by tags
pixared catmullmanagementteam buildingcreativity

What people said

danielvf · 2017-02 · Strong recommendation

Rich Hickey's talk on simplicity is a must watch. [LINK] And one of the most useful talks of all time for building organizations is by Ed Catmull (of Pixar) [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
pooriaazimi · 2012-11 · Strong recommendation

It's "The Pixar Story"[1]. A great documentary, highly recommended. But Pixar wasn't all roses either - during the tight production of Toy Story 2 (because they changed almost all of the story and had to rush it for christmas), a couple (who were both animators) forgot that their 1-year old was in the car (and not in the day care!), and the girl was there for almost 10 hours... She lived, but still a pretty horrible story. The source for this unpleasant anecdote is [2]. It's a long talk by Ed Catmull, but I can't recommend it enough. It's really, really awesome . Success hides problems (Ed Catmull) Want to know why Pixar was awesome for soooo long? It wasn't luck, and it wasn't because they had great animators. It wasn't even (entirely) because they told terrific stories. It was because they constantly learned from their "successes"... Watch (or listen) to Catmull's talk. I guarantee that you won't regret the 55 minutes you spend on it... [1]: [LINK] [2]: [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
henryprecheur · 2011-07 · Strong recommendation

Keep Your Crises Small, [VIDEO] It's a lecture from Ed Catmull. I highly recommend it, many gems from a brilliant developer turned brilliant manager.

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Stanford Graduate School of Business, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources