TV series about startup failures

https://www.1984.design/c/discussions/tv-series-about-startup-failures-portraying-their-greedy-founders-and-the-damages-of-the-current-startup-ecosystem

by kaizenb • 3 years ago

215 156 3 years ago

1984.design

boraoztunc3• 3 years ago

Have you watched any similar shows? Let me know.

nicgrev1034• 3 years ago

'Halt and Catch Fire' (Fictional but good) 'Sillicon Valley' (Fictional and comedy but also good) 'The Playlist' (About Spotify, which isn't failure)

survivorBias• 3 years ago

Silcon valley was brilliant, although they blended the stories of several companys fatal errors into one company, turning it into a Hans in Luck

kgwxd• 3 years ago

HCF uses the same technique

gibspaulding• 3 years ago

Silicone Valley is one of my favorite series I've seen. I just finished rewatching the final series since all the AI conversation lately had me thinking about it.

I'll have to check out this Halt and Catch Fire everyone is talking about!

boraoztunc3• 3 years ago

Halt and Catch Fire was a great show! Leaving this gem here: https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/

mskalski3• 3 years ago

I love this show, re watched it recently, but did not know this site. Thank you for sharing!

megax2• 3 years ago

HCF was a great show, and one of the only shows that goes as far back as the BBS days before the Web “caught on”. The cast is pretty good. Highly recommend watching.

SideburnsOfDoom5• 3 years ago

HaCF has an amazing line in it: "Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets us to the thing." (1)

I still think abut it frequently. It's true. It's a statement about systems - often the utility is what they enable, not thing "thing in itself".

Even deep into software development, this is true. e.. I really appreciate git and github, but I don't need to focus on becoming a "git maestro" , I just need to get by in git, because git for me "isn't the thing", it's just "the thing that gets me to the thing".

Likewise, we can make software for people who are clever, even brilliant in what they do but who don't care abut the details of that software because for them it's not "the thing".

1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeY_5n75zPM

jeremycarter• 3 years ago

I use that quote similarly. It's about knowing where you stand, where the value is, and of course not chasing the shiny new thing.... Perhaps Its pragmatic humility. That's how I see it.

rurp• 3 years ago

Same here, I think about that line often. It applies to a lot of different scenarios in tech.

The most common one is probably pointless redesigns. Outside of games, users usually aren't pulling up a particular app for the pleasure of using it, they just want to use it to accomplish some other goal with as little trouble as possible.

lotsofpulp6• 3 years ago

About Spotify, which isn't failure

I feel like Spotify’s value is mainly to the big 3 music publishers to gain negotiating power against Apple/Alphabet/Amazon. It has existed since 2006, and still losing money. And lots of it.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...

capableweb5• 3 years ago

Well, that's the typical startup trajectory, isn't it? As long as the revenue goes up year-by-year (which seems to be true for Spotify), investors are happy to subsidize the net losses, then once they have cornered the market, they can get rid of as much costs as possible and raise prices as much as possible.

It's a fucked up system, but it seems most companies go through this.

mskalski3• 3 years ago

Re watched recently HaCF, supplementing it now with book "The soul of the new machine" which also enjoy. The book also appeared in last episode.

ghaff11• 3 years ago

Soul of a New Machine is one of the best books chronicling product development. (Showstopper about Windows NT is another good one.)

There were a lot of parallel threads in the early 80s that didn't really intersect a lot. You had the PC/BBS world, the ARPANET/Internet, and the minicomputer & mainframe worlds.

I knew a lot of the people in Soul of a New Machine and actually dotted-lined into Tom West for a while. (Later on when Data General was coming out with big Unix servers.)

I don't think I quite made it to the end of HaCF as it's not available (legally) on non-premium subscriptions. I'll have to hunt it down.

prepend5• 3 years ago

About Spotify, which isn't failure

Is that true? They are still losing money after, what, 10 years?

I like Spotify but I don’t think they are out of the woods yet.

Just like I wouldn’t call WeWork (isn’t a failure) in 2018.

nicgrev1034• 3 years ago

I guess I meant all the other suggestions documented failures or at least 'falls'. Spotify may not make money but it is still running and hasn't suffered a fall to the same extent as the other real life examples.

heyjamesknight• 3 years ago

There are degrees of failure. WeWork has raised $23B and they’re currently worth $350M.

Losing $22B is a pretty insane failure.

rg111• 3 years ago

I really loved Halt and Catch Fire. It's among the greatest shows I have watched in any genre.

Highly recommend.

jdjdjdjdjd• 3 years ago

Such a great show.

tptacek2• 3 years ago

There is more SFBA startup reality in Silicon Valley than there is in a lot of these docudramas about startup flameouts; even The Dropout, which is the best of them, is much worse than Carreyrou's book. Honestly, Silicon Valley has so much verisimilitude that it suffers from it; towards the end, it starts to veer into fan service.

vidarh• 3 years ago

Having done a few startups (only one of which was based in Silicon Valley; incidentally, Arrington was involved in that one, while getting Techcrunch off the ground in his bedroom next to the offices we first started in...), I really wonder how much of the fun of Silicon Valley is lost on people who haven't experienced it. I regularly caught myself thinking I know a guy like X, or "I remember when this happened to us".

winternett• 3 years ago

Silicon Valley was the best in my opinion... Having worked for a startup in the 90s, it nailed the pain points perfectly, as well as the passive aggressive management styles and office culture underlying the entire industry. Mike Judge is a unique cultural comedy documentarian of the highest order, I like most of the stuff he does like Office Space and Idiocracy as well.

BMc2020• 3 years ago

hey the kid from third rock, aka the kid from inception is..looking kinda middle aged. I feel old now.

epolanski2• 3 years ago

You can always look at Will Smith or Nicholas Cage and pretend we age extremely slowly.

sschueller• 3 years ago

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

toyg3• 3 years ago

You mean the kid from Nolan's Batman

I_am_tiberius2• 3 years ago

I wished there was some sort of prequel to Silicon Valley, e.g. the Aviato story.

Theitheave42• 3 years ago

I’d watch the fuck out of that. SV was such a good show - miss watching it weekly while it aired.

LeonM• 3 years ago

Too bad that TJ Miller (Elrich Bachman) probably won't be associated with it.

toyg3• 3 years ago

I can actually see a humbled TJ Miller taking a SV spinoff job to relaunch his career, at some point. A prequel would be challenging though, because of aging.

tpmx3• 3 years ago

Pretty much the entire cast was great, but the standouts were, IMO:

TJ Miller (Erlich)

Martin Starr (Gilfoyle)

Zach Woods (Jared)

Kumail Nanjiani (Dinesh)

(in roughly this order)

[Honorary mention: Henry Phillips (John, the datacenter guy)]

jsemrau• 3 years ago

TJ Miller made Silicon Valley outstanding. Without him it wasn't the same.

postsantum• 3 years ago

Or a spinoff about the dark side of Jared, exploring his hidden personalities

r0fl2• 3 years ago

Title: Aviato: The Rise of the Disruptive Startup

Aviato is a prequel to the HBO hit TV show, Silicon Valley. The story follows the journey of a young entrepreneur, named Nelson "Nate" Chatwin, who wants to make a name for himself in the world of tech. He dreams of building a company that will disrupt the airline industry and make air travel more accessible to everyone.

The story is set in the late 1990s, when the internet was still in its early stages and startups were popping up all over Silicon Valley. Nate is working as a software engineer at a startup, but he is restless and wants to do something more. One day, while sitting in a coffee shop, he overhears a conversation between two pilots about the challenges of booking flights. That's when he has a Eureka moment and comes up with the idea for Aviato - an online platform that connects travelers with affordable flights.

Nate starts working on Aviato in his spare time, but he soon realizes that he needs more help to bring his vision to life. He recruits a group of talented engineers and business-minded individuals to join his team. Together, they work tirelessly to build the Aviato platform from scratch. They encounter numerous challenges along the way, from funding issues to technical glitches, but they never lose sight of their goal.

As Aviato gains popularity and investors start pouring in, the team faces new challenges. Nate struggles to balance his work and personal life, as his marriage falls apart due to his obsession with the company. The team also faces pressure from rival startups and industry giants, who are threatened by Aviato's disruptive business model.

Throughout the series, we see the rise of Aviato and how it becomes one of the most successful startups in Silicon Valley. We also see the personal and professional sacrifices that Nate and his team make along the way. The series ends with Aviato's launch and its early success, setting the stage for the events that unfold in the original Silicon Valley series.

Overall, Aviato is a compelling story about the power of innovation, the challenges of entrepreneurship, and the human cost of building a successful startup. It's a must-watch for fans of Silicon Valley and anyone interested in the tech industry.

I_am_tiberius2• 3 years ago

I guess this is written by chatGPT.

babayega2• 3 years ago

One of the funny/sad consequences of watching Silicon Valley, is that a lot of my friends (in my African country where only 4% has electricity) think that the startup need to expand no matter what, even if it has no viable business model, you can run a "budgetivore" business for many years like Linkedin/Amazon and in the end you will find a business model.

So imagine. Instead of building good and sound startups that can be champions in the country/region, they waste the meager resources available in the country on fake startups/crypto-scams.

Sad.

epolanski2• 3 years ago

That's not what your African friends think, that's literally a very huge part of the startup ecosystem anywhere.

I have worked in few startup incubators, and most of the companies I've seen are merely interested in getting a good evaluation and getting bought from someone else.

The amount of startups I've seen with the interest of actually making any "profit" is very low.

I think this is also a reflection of several changes in how stock markets have changed in the last decade where the name of the game hasn't been anymore about making a successful product that makes money and possibly pays dividends but the chase for endless and endless growth of stock price.

There are companies out there that literally have the stock of their price in the hall of their offices, imagine that and not customer satisfaction/retention/profits or anything else being the biggest indicator of a company's success.

It's a sad reality.

I myself am interested in creating a new business in the tech world, one that makes honest good money but is not seeking a 100M/1B valuation and I feel such a unicorn.

zx8080• 3 years ago

Isn't is because of a "free money" thing?

SV_BubbleTime4• 3 years ago

The era of Free Money couldn’t end fast enough. We’re likely in for some hard times, but it wasn’t sustainable, and we had a 10 year period with almost zero innovation.

I hope it works out, because seriously the last decade plus shouldn’t have gone down the way it did.

throwawaysleep• 3 years ago

I have worked in few startup incubators, and most of the companies I've seen are merely interested in getting a good evaluation and getting bought from someone else.

Startup incubators seem like they would be biased towards those looking for an easy pre-paved path. I participated for one in university and less than half of that cohort was interested in ever making money or getting traction at all, including myself.

We were there to polish our resumes for job hunting upon graduation.

My team didn't make a single sales call or engage with a single customer. The program managers brought us an extremely large potential government contract (15 million) and we turned them down as it was after the program ended and we were planning to be job hunting.

throwawayxxdd• 3 years ago

no startup can compete against an america company backed by endless cheap money. Not that founders dont want to turn a profit its just a cruel game and its the way its until cheap money ends in USA(it never happens bcz no gov wants recession on their watch).

allendoerfer• 3 years ago

Cheap money has ended, hasn‘t it?

kerkeslager• 3 years ago

One of the funny/sad consequences of watching Silicon Valley, is that a lot of my friends (in my African country where only 4% has electricity) think that the startup need to expand no matter what, even if it has no viable business model, you can run a "budgetivore" business for many years like Linkedin/Amazon and in the end you will find a business model.
So imagine. Instead of building good and sound startups that can be champions in the country/region, they waste the meager resources available in the country on fake startups/crypto-scams.

So is the problem here just that your country has fewer resources?

There are plenty of rich people in developed countries who could be champions of the country/region but waste the resource available on sociopathic business models which are absolutely as predatory as crypto scams, all while dodging taxes, drawing on corporate welfare, and creating lower-paying jobs that displace higher-paying jobs.

Nobody likes a crypto scammer, but I'd argue that the average large-scale landlord in the US does far more damage.

nologic01• 3 years ago

Its a world out of balance. Problems fester if there is no money in solving them, which seems to be the case for vast parts of our experience. Yet talented and eager people are unemployed, or their efforts are thrown away in endless churn.

Its a systemic failure of the organizational networks and legal structures that should bring people together, with the right incentives, to develop lasting solutions. People dont need billions to get incentivised. There is nothing wrong with building a small company that fits a niche. The unicorn mania is deeply sick.

There is so much knowledge nowadays, so much talent - before we even get to augmented powes using tech - that the situation will start bordering on the insane.

The challenge is that financial-economic systems are so tightly tied to power that they cant evolve. What is clearly needed in many parts of the world, and definitely in silicon valley, is to dismantle the adulation of super-sized entities, ultra rich etc. and encourage a strong middle class and SME enterprize. This was always the backbone of stable and prospering societies.

anonzzzies2• 3 years ago

This needs to be made. I am often contemplating writing down my startup story which almost killed me (ambulances with sirens, multiple times) and then failed. I really think people should document the actual stories.

Also kitchen nightmares/hotel hell for companies. It would be a hit, but without the woke American additions; just go full Ramsey UK style.

megax2• 3 years ago

I’m intrigued. Would you mind sharing a TL;DR?

anonzzzies2• 3 years ago

I had a company that went from nothing to marketleader and then back to nothing; the stress made me end up in hospital several times, the last time impacted my health enough to retire at 32. It was 10 years journey so I easily can write a book about it.

capableweb5• 3 years ago

Also kitchen nightmares/hotel hell for companies. It would be a hit, but without the woke American additions; just go full Ramsey UK style.

That's a great idea, would love that. What founder with experience has a good enough style/personality for this to work? Jobs sounds like he would be perfect for this, he loved berating people. But who could do the job today? Most founders today are too vanilla for it be interesting, at least their public persona.

mnky9800n2• 3 years ago

Just have Gordon Ramsay do it anyways.

bee_rider3• 3 years ago

I think it has to be somebody British. Somehow a British accent is associated with a particular sort of nitpicky but fundamentalist right perfectionism, and also non-threatening enough that it isn’t too awkward to watch harsh criticism occur.

Like imagine if The Weakest Link lady had had a midwestern accent or something, it wouldn’t have become a thing.

doubtfuluser• 3 years ago

On „General Magic“, recently read „Build“ by Tony Fadell. I can recommend that for people interested in building startups. Will also give a bit more background on General Magic

boraoztunc3• 3 years ago

"The reason you should care about the story of General Magic is because it involves something fundamental, and that is, failure is not the end, failure is actually the beginning."

blantonl2• 3 years ago

The "problem" is we really are in an technology revolution similar to the industrial revolution 200-300 years ago. For every 100 tech startup businesses that don't generate a penny of profit and are propped up by hyper valuations and stock prices, there are companies like Facebook and Google and Apple that absolutely print money in profits.

That in turn covers the outlay by venture money. All those companies that burn money in fire pits are essentially subsidized by the staggering amount of money that some new companies only recently formed in the past 20 years are printing.

Spray and pray and see what sticks for investors will work in this type of rapid revolutionary environment.

lotsofpulp6• 3 years ago

All the companies that have stellar net incomes and profit margins are more than 20 years old, except Meta which is about to turn 20 in a couple years.

The crop that came after that (Uber/Airbnb/Snap/etc) do not show the same, except maybe Bytedance, but their numbers are not public.

dghlsakjg2• 3 years ago

That might be a side effect of destroying competition and vc exit strategy through acquisition.

YouTube, instagram, Slack, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, etc. all second generation software that companies that were acquired by bigger companies as exits, or to squelch competition.

mnky9800n2• 3 years ago

What technology has come out in the last decade that isn't an increment or miniaturization?

prepend5• 3 years ago

The revolution we Ade still in is the transistor and it started 60 years ago and probably has 40 years left to go.

blantonl2• 3 years ago

I would argue that the mobile communications device called the "iPhone" is one of the most significant technology innovations developed in the past 100 years.

Love it, hate it, whatever, but it completely revolutionized what is practically access to "everything". You will be hard pressed to find an American consumer, from the richest guy to homeless people on the street that don't have a mobile communications device on their person with a touch screen and instant access to the collective works of the world.

The iPhone by itself as a stand alone business would be larger than Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds among other revolutionary businesses.

mellosouls• 3 years ago

GPT!

We are in a transformative moment right now with GPT3 onwards, as great as anything in the computer era.

russ• 3 years ago

Might be just over a decade, but how about the Oculus Rift DK1?

MajimasEyepatch• 3 years ago

mRNA vaccines are a huge deal. I don’t think it would be fair to call them incremental.

badpun• 3 years ago

Fracking? Might be slightly older than last decade though.

Mistletoe• 3 years ago

What if we have exited that tech revolution era already? I don’t recall a lot of successful tech innovation or revolution in the last decade but I recall a lot of scams.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/froth.asp

And now we are about to get AI froth that will follow the same Gartner hype cycle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

I wonder where you guys would place us now? I’d say Peak of Inflated Expectations since every other story on HN is about AI or large language models.

SV_BubbleTime4• 3 years ago

Isn’t a number of scams almost tied to the era of free money as well?

ipython• 3 years ago

It’s older from the first dot com bust, but I would highly recommend startup dot com as well.

alfiedotwtf• 3 years ago

For anyone who wants to see how crazy it can get, there's a documentary called Riot On! from 2004 that follows a company that "needed to grow" because of hot money - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427783/

Highly recommend.

beejiu• 3 years ago

Startup.com is also a good watch (although more dated) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fd8pdniJZk

wslh2• 3 years ago

"The Aviator" [1] about Howard Hughes? Love to also talk about real startups movies without failure as a main theme. For example, "The Social Network" (includes Winklevoss and Eduardo Saverin "failures"). We have other non-fictional ones such as "The Founder" [2] about McDonalds. Classic: "Pirates of Silicon Valley". Ford v Ferrari (amazing if you have not seen it) [3].

And what about "Citizen Kane" [4]? The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg's biography. Have not watched entirely the last ones about Steve Jobs, I don't think they captured the real character and complex personality.

Bigger lists tagged startup in IMDB [5] and company [6]. Most of them are based on fiction.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Founder

[3] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_v_Ferrari

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Kane

[5] https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=startup

[6] https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=company

nicgrev1034• 3 years ago

If we are talking just general business movies, some more are: 'The Big Short', 'Wolf of Wall Street'.

wslh2• 3 years ago

Yes, and I also recommend the new Netflix series "Rough Diamonds" which mixes business and mafia.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15469192/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_8_tt_...

lotsofpulp6• 3 years ago

Wolf of Wall Street is about business? I thought it was just about drugs and partying.

Margin call would be a better example in my opinion.

lpolovets• 3 years ago

The Profit* is pretty interesting. It's like the shows where Gordon Ramsay goes into failing restaurants and tries to turn them around, except here the show's host tries to fix all kinds of local businesses. It's not about tech startups per se, but you still see a lot of common issues through the lens of local businesses: founder disputes, poor unit economics, bad marketing, etc. It's a little cheesy, but pretty good overall!

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Profit_(TV_series)

mianm• 3 years ago

Sounds a bit like the UK series Troubleshooter from the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubleshooter_(TV_series)

Gelob• 3 years ago

I love the profit and Marcus!

greggsy• 3 years ago

How does it compare to Nathan For You?

rgoldste• 3 years ago

It’s serious and actually tries to fix the company.

rmason• 3 years ago

Although it is a bit overly dramatic (which might explain why it's a hit) I've always enjoyed the Bar Rescue series where Jon Taffer tries to fix broken bar businesses. The early episodes got more into the math of what works but Taffer screaming at owners was more popular so you see much less of that in later seasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Rescue

I know a guy that goes in and rescues bars in exchange for a percentage of the increase in value as they're later sold. He swears that the core of what Taffer does is exactly how he operates.

beezlewax• 3 years ago

If you go look at how those restaurants are doing now a huge portion closed soon after they were "turned around"

jnsaff2• 3 years ago

Do also check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_(TV_series) that's a WILD experience. I believe all of it is available on Youtube as well (in glorious 90s quality experience).

nicgrev1034• 3 years ago

'Billion dollar code' is another good one, not so much about a fall though.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

millions of people's health and lives were put in danger due to inaccurate blood test results

A bit of hyperbole there. It was only used in some Walgreen's in Phoenix.

AndrewKemendo2• 3 years ago

I think Halt and Catch fire remains the best show about startup life and the personal story arcs are bang on in my experience

petepete• 3 years ago

It sprang to mind as soon as I saw the title of the post. One of my favourite ever programmes. It was on Prime in the UK but vanished some time ago.

ghaff11• 3 years ago

It seems to have disappeared into an AMC premium subscription.

penguin_booze• 3 years ago

The other day, I was watching the movie, Mr. Jones. It occurred to me then that Vanessa Kirby would be the best person (by appearance, at least) to play Elizabeth Holmes. But I see that ship has sailed.

cookie_monsta• 3 years ago

Jungle Town is a docuseries about a charismatic eco-evangelicist/property developer who charges interns $5000 to help build his sustainable village in the Panama jungle.

The interesting thing about the doco is that the film maker seems to get converted midway. At the start the founder is portrayed as a obvious charlatan but by the end he is presented in a much more favorable light.

userabchn• 3 years ago

Not a TV series, but an interesting documentary about Makani, a failed wind energy startup funded by X: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd_hEja6bzE

atleastoptimal• 3 years ago

Nothing in American culture today is mythologized more than the startup. It represents the acme of all our ambitions, hopes, and trust in the future. In the United States, people don't expect the government to bring them a better world, they expect companies to do that, and the younger, hotter, and cooler those who create the company, the better.

nightski• 3 years ago

Maybe this is a regional thing, especially in SV driven by the VC hype. In general I find America very focused on small business rather than startups. Our economy is really built on small business and the more we forget that the worse things get.

prepend5• 3 years ago

Nothing in American culture today is mythologized more than the startup.

I think sports teams and accomplishments still take this competition by a long shot. There are way more movies, books, time spent mythologizing teams and individuals doing sporting things.

antoniuschan99• 3 years ago

There’s also Valley of the Boom

zamnos4• 3 years ago

For a show on Startups but failure of its CEO but not the company, Superpumped is a great watch. It documents the rise of Uber and the fall of Travis Kalanic. It's based off the book of the same name, although I can't vouch for either's veracity outside of what made headlines.

https://g.co/kgs/vkMuCR

robocat• 3 years ago

There’s also a great doco about Enron - nearly two hours long.

https://watchdocumentaries.com/enron-the-smartest-guys-in-th...

TV series about startup failures

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