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TV series about startup failures

1984.design

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Re: TV series about startup failures

#71
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

While possible, I'm not ready to put all my chips on that particular bet yet.

Hacker news in the iPhone launch was a riot.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#72
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)]

So… every main character except Thomas Middleditch? I think this show exemplified the power of a good ensemble. Any one of the characters would have been annoying by themselves, but put them next to each other and it’s hilarious

I found his efforts on the show to be relatively bland and repetitive. I think this role could have been cast in a better way.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#73

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

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.

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.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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...

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.

Since 2006? That’s a long time to not be profitable, right?

Re: TV series about startup failures

#75

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 bur…

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.

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.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#76

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> 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 intere…

Just have Gordon Ramsay do it anyways.

Just imagine how pissed Gordon Ramsay would be watching people wasting piles of money that could have comfortably started up multiple restaurants

"Yeah, so things started going south a little after we collected 2 mil in our series A.."

Re: TV series about startup failures

#77

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.

> 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 intere…

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.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#78
"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

Re: TV series about startup failures

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since 2006? That’s a long time to not be profitable, right?

Yeah, I agree, I have no idea why people keep investing in companies that don't turn a profit, or companies that seemingly don't care about being profitable. It doesn't seem like most startups are interested in being sustainable, they're just interested in reaching the next funding stage, and eventually getting a big payout.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#80
post #78

"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 Fabelman…

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