TV series about startup failures

The Dropout (2022)

Documents the disgraced biotechnology company Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. At 19, after dropping out of Stanford, she claimed to revolutionize laboratories through blood tests that could be performed rapidly while using tiny amounts of blood.

Holmes made false statements to investors and showed them fake demonstrations of the medical testing device to persuade them to invest in her company, breaching the principles of honesty and integrity.

The show touches on experiences that motivated Holmes’s deceptions and lies, from the beginning to her exposure as a fraud.

In the end, millions of people’s health and lives were put in danger due to inaccurate blood test results, 700 million dollars of investors’ money was lost, and 800 people lost their jobs.

Holmes was sentenced to 11+ years (135 months) in prison. Sunny Balwani, who spent six years as Theranos’s chief operating officer and was Holmes’s ex-romantic partner, has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for his role in the now-defunct blood-testing firm.

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (2022)

This series documents Uber’s founder Travis Kalanick‘s rise and fall, the corruption in his empire, and the myriad of scandals, including allegations of data privacy scandals, workplace discrimination, and sexual harassment. It also captures the arrogance of the company executives very well.

During his ride-hailing company’s meteoric rise, he came to personify the aggressive, risk-taking nature of a new generation of tech start-ups intent on “disrupting” other industries like taxis, hotels, and food delivery. Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers, and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion.

CEO Travis Kalanick ultimately stepped down from the company’s board of directors, severing his last tie with the business in a boardroom coup after tense internal and external battles.

Uber has turned Kalanick into a billionaire. He runs a venture fund and a start-up that operates “dark kitchens”—cooking facilities that prepare food for delivery.

WeCrashed (2022)

Documents the greed-filled rise and inevitable fall of WeWork, a coworking space company and one of the world’s most valuable startups whose valuation reached $47 billion in 2019 before crashing due to financial revelations.

Behind the crash are the narcissists, real-life married couple Adam and Rebekah Neumann, whose chaotic love made it all possible.

Adam Neumann announced in 2019 that he was stepping down as CEO. In retrospect, Neumann’s knack for amassing billions of dollars in venture capital with no viable business model was one of the greatest scams of the twenty-first century.

Though Adam and Rebekah Neumann’s well-documented megalomania is now primarily recognized as the stuff of nightmares, it worked wonders on investors with too much cash. So, if it was all a scam, its most prominent victims were the ultra-wealthy.

Neumann received $245m in company stock and $200m in cash, part of an enormous exit package from the office rental company he led to dizzy heights before its equally dramatic fall and the layoff of 2,400 employees globally.

Halt and Catch Fire (2014)

It's the early 1980s, and the spirit of innovation in personal computing is about to catch fire. Hot on the trail is a renegade trio – a visionary, an engineer, and a prodigy – who risk everything to realize their vision of building a computer that can change the future.

Taking place over more than ten years, Halt and Catch Fire depicts a fictionalized insider's view of the personal computer revolution of the 1980s and the early days of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s.

The series began in 1983, just as IBM was cornering the personal computer market with the IBM PC. Entrepreneur Joe MacMillan joins Cardiff Electric, a fictional Dallas-based mainframe software company, and has a vision of building a revolutionary computer to challenge IBM.

In steps, Joe MacMillan is a former IBM executive now working for Cardiff Electric. MacMillan plans to reverse-engineer IBM's technology, putting Cardiff in the thick of the personal computer race. He enlists the help of engineer Gordon Clark, who dreams of creating a revolutionary computer, and Cameron Howe, a volatile prodigy who puts her future on the line to join MacMillan's rogue project.

General Magic (2018, Documentary)

After watching all this greed and fraud in modern startups with unrealistic valuations and investments, I can’t help but think of General Magic and extraordinary people in the 90s with a passion for inventing the future by making products and creating amazing things.

The ideas that dominate the tech industry and our day-to-day lives were born at a secretive Silicon Valley start-up named “General Magic” which spun out of Apple in 1990 to create the first handheld personal communicator (or “smartphone”).

They didn’t care about money, salary, or fame. They worked tirelessly, sat on the floors, made products, and created innovations that are the foundation of everything we take for granted today.

This is the story of one of history’s most talented technology teams. From the first smartphones to social media, e-commerce, eBay, and even emojis, the ideas that now dominate the tech industry and our day-to-day lives were born at General Magic, a 1989 Silicon Valley startup that you've never heard of.

The award-winning documentary tells how a great vision and an epic failure can change the world—featuring members of the original 1984 Macintosh team and the creators of the iPhone, Android, and eBay. These designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs saw the future decades before it happened.

The film captures the spirit of those of us who dare to dream big and the life-changing consequences when we fail, fail again, fail better, and ultimately succeed.

General Magic is available to rent or purchase with an English-subtitled version available worldwide on Vimeo: vimeo.com/ondemand/generalmagic

We all started in the same place
you are in today.
Everyone has the same self
doubts, and no one’s perfect.
And when you meet your heroes
and when you work with them
and they treat you as a peer,
learn from it.
Keep moving. If you’re
dreaming the right dream,
you’re on the right path.
I’ve been there before,
it’s tough; keep going.
These people helped me
to become the person I am.
How can we take this same idea
of bold, dramatic change
to help create a better society?
We are going to have
to invent those things
and do it in all of these other domains that are
being touched or revolutionized by technology.
It may seem daunting, it may seem difficult,
it may seem impossible,
but if you just find the right people
and keep seeking out
knowledge and advice
keep staying open
to make a better world
regardless of where you come from,
great things can happen.

— Tony Fadell, co-creator of the iPod & iPhone