Pixar was founded by guys who used to work at Lucasfilm, but left to do their own thing. (And did it well, I might add.)
Ed Catmull, Casey Hoddenfield (sic)and a few others worked down the hall from me at what was then known as Sprockets Systems, now Skywalker Sound and Lucas Digital. Catmull and his co-workers all came from pretty solid family backgrounds. They were intent on producing a solid story with good dialog with the technical aspects taking a backseat. (Of course that backseat was pretty deluxe and top-of-the-line due to the incredible talent involved in the undertaking.)
Ben Burtt, Lucas' Academy Award-winning sound designer recently announced he will be leaving Lucasfilm to go work for Pixar.
That is fascinating to me - I remember reading somewhere an article about the (SmallTalk-based???) sound processing they had, where (back in the 80s even) you could graphically manipulate the sounds on screen, on what at the time must have been fantastically expensive hardware.