There's a beautiful coffee table book "The Pixar Story" that talks about the cash Jobs put into Pixar.

The book claims Jobs purchased Pixar for $5M and immediately invested another $5M. When he purchased the company he was also running NeXT. Pixar, like NeXT, was a computer company selling computer hardware. Both companies we're struggling and taking up a lot of Job's cash.

The story goes that Pixar started to produce more 3D animated shorts, these impressed Katzenberg at Disney who agreed to part fund Toy Story. Only to even get to that point, 6 years after Jobs purchased the company, he'd had to invest a total of $60M into Pixar. He was investing close to $1M a month.

Between Pixar and NeXT jobs was nearly broke. Although I suspect his "nearly broke" is a much bigger bank account thank my "nearly broke".

Not sure how true the story is. But that's how "The Pixar Story" tells it.

I watched the Pixar Story DVD and when they mentioned that Jobs was writing a million dollar personal check every month to keep the company afloat my opinion on his running the company changed instantly. Most opinions of his role as CEO are really dismissive of him and give all the credit to Lasseter (who does deserve a lot of credit). But Lasseter, beyond working in the company, has no real skin in the game. He doesn't have to justify to himself that this investment may not work out, and continue giving it money...for 10 years. And if Pixar failed its not his bank account that would look like a crater.

So when someone opines that Steve didn't really influence Pixar, I casually mention that $100 million over 10 years gets you a lot of influence. And then ask them to read the pixar story.