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TV series about startup failures

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Re: TV series about startup failures

#131

Post by rgoldste »

greggsy wrote: post #122
lpolovets wrote: post #85

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…

How does it compare to Nathan For You?

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

Re: TV series about startup failures

#133

Post by rmason »

lpolovets wrote: post #85

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…

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.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#134

Post by ghaff »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #130
ghaff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a discussion earlier about innovations in tech in the past 10-15 years. It's tempting to identify the iPhone (and smartphones broadly) and that's not totally wrong. Yes, it replaces a bunch of discrete devices from times past reasonably well for most purposes: telephone, still camera, video camera, iPod/Walkman, voice recorder, GPS, etc. But that's not really what makes a modern smartphone so transformative…

I don't feel that this is a reply to the parent comment at all?

>Now we call that thing "the internet", "the huge software industry", "being online all the time", "social media" etc, but then they were not sure what it would look like.

It seems like very much a comment about the broader ecosystem being a bigger factor than an individual device.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#135

Post by vidarh »

tptacek wrote: post #127
nicgrev103 wrote: post #3

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

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.

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".

Re: TV series about startup failures

#136

Post by conradfr »

tpmx wrote: post #72
parpfish wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe you need some kind of straight character to drive the story. He's Ted in How I Met Your Mother and people said the same thing about him.

Also he looks like a good blend of Mark Zuckerberg / Jesse Eisenberg.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#137

Post by jimmygrapes »

spitfire wrote: post #98
tpmx wrote: 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)]

Uhm have you forgotten the incredible talents of Russ hanneman? (Chris Diamantopoulos)

If you liked him in SV, you should definitely check out Mrs. Davis (I can't even begin to describe the plot because it's fairly schizophrenic), where he plays an Australian version of Russ who dedicates his energy to combating an omniscient and omnipresent AI. He's a treasure.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#138

Post by throwaway675309 »

I_am_tiberius wrote: post #124
r0fl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

I guess this is written by chatGPT.

It looks like a garden-variety middle school student's five paragraph MLA formatted essay and the concluding paragraph contains the word "overall". I wish we could ban this type of GPT garbage.

Re: TV series about startup failures

#139

Post by beezlewax »

lpolovets wrote: post #85

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…

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