Alvy Ray Smith
Smith and Catmull co-founded Pixar in 1986 with financing from Steve Jobs. After the spinout from Lucasfilm of Pixar, he served on the board of directors and was executive vice president. According to the Steve Jobs biography "iCon" by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon, Alvy Ray quit Pixar after a heated argument with Jobs over use of a whiteboard. It was an unwritten rule that none other than Jobs was allowed to use it, a rule Smith decided to break in front of everyone after Jobs went "total street bully" on him and they ended up screaming into each other's face "in full bull rage". Despite being the co-founder of Pixar, Young and Simon claim that the company has largely overlooked his part in company history since his departure. For example, there is no mention of Smith on the Pixar website.
Pixar
In 1985, while still at Lucasfilm, they had made a deal with the Japanese publisher Shogakukan to make a computer animated movie called "Monkey", based on the Monkey King. The project continued some time after they became a separate company in 1986, but in the end it became clear that the technology was simply not there yet. The computers were not powerful enough and the budget would be too high. So it was decided to focus on the computer hardware business some more years while waiting till Moore's law made a computer animated feature possible.