Travis Knight is interesting. He's been spoiled all his life, yet he became a highly-competent animator relatively quickly – and this can be verified from other articles. He’s likely highly-intelligent but not extraordinarily so. Some species of smart people pretend to be stupid, though not often this stupid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9jq990b-w / I’ve been watching videos of him for that last few minutes, I wonder if he's something of a Zelig-like figure. Strange specimen, I’d be interested in meeting him.
I agree - he is very interesting. Maybe he just took a long time to find himself. From your comment, I watched a few short interviews and he seems very bright.
The early rap career was kind of cringe-worthy, but he also lived a good deal of his life in public. I bet a lot of people would be in the same boat if they had billionaire fathers who supported their decisions. I found his father's support sweet.
He doesn't sound so stupid to me, especially relative to his age. How smart and wise were you as a teenager? (Not sure how old he is in that video, but he looks something like 18)?
I don't think he's stupid, but he was subconsciously pretending to be. I think maybe wealth can interfere with identity formation. When you can purchase an identity as a kid, you become something of a cypher for awhile. Maybe he was a nerd that tried to purchase cool. I don't know, but it's interesting how someone so smart can lack self awareness (even as a teenager) to the degree displayed in the video.
I've got a lot of respect for the guy. He was the director of animation on two excellent, Pixar-level films. He's obviously super talented.
Seriously ? How taking company from another person , firing him is interesting ? Did you even read the article ?
Typical millionaire/billionaire behavior. Steal the idea or acquire the company -> separate out founder -> fire them ->profit.
If this is interesting I dont know what to say.
>How taking company from another person, firing him is interesting
I'm not an apologist for the top .001%, but Vinton brought this mostly on himself. He tried expanding beyond his business capabilities and failed. It's not like this was a hostile takeover by Knight. The company would have gone bankrupt and had its assets sold off if Knight didn't take over.
Maybe it would have been benevolent to keep Vinton around. But Knight didn't act particularly unethical. It was selfish, but people act in their own interest all the time. And I suppose it was Nepotism, but at least he made his kid start out at the bottom. And clearly his kid has some talent because he's somewhat turned the company around even if it came at the cost of an open and artistic culture.
If you want to paint this story as the sterotypical billionaire being evil then go for it. But I think that shows the shallowness of your thoughts than ours.
