Episode 32: Startup Movies
What’s the best kind of learning? If your answer was The kind that’s fun, then you’ll want to join Doug and Glenn as they talk about notable, and since they’re movies and streamers, somewhat fun shows that have taken on the Startup genre, putting entrepreneurs in the hero seat. Movies like Tesla – no, not about the car, about the man – the inventor of A/C current. The Founder featuring the character of Roy Kroc. The Social Network. The Steve Jobs movie. Startup, the streaming series with Martin Freeman. The 2022 biopic, Elvis and even Michael J. Fox’s The Secret of My Success. Some of the lessons / fun(!) from these movies: It’s not enough to have the idea, you have to rally people to your cause and execute. (Tesla) It’s important to know which business you’re in. (McDonalds) Make sure you know with whom you’re getting into bed with before you do so. (Startup) Trust but verify. (Elvis) You have to collaborate – fill in the skill gaps – to succeed. (Tesla, again) So, grab your popcorn and [soda] pop and join us! Afterall, you’ve had a hard day. So sit back, listen and enjoy as Doug and Glenn play Roger & Ebert in this unusual episode of Conversations on Startups.
Transcript
Glenn Suart 0:00
And these three people end up starting up a business but one of the partners turns out to be not so nice and there’s an FBI… guy who’s not so nice involved. And it’s… it’s the challenge of – on the dark side – you start a business but you get into bed with the wrong people, and what that does to the business…
Doug Ross 0:34
Welcome to Conversations on Startups, a podcast brought to you by Douglas Ross, author of the book, Spark Click Go: How to Bring Your Creative Business Idea to Life, and Glenn Suart, of Today’s Great Idea, a radio series featuring over 300 origin stories of businesses, brands and inventions that have changed the culture. Welcome to today’s conversation.
Doug Ross 0:56
Oh, hey, Glenn, how ya doing?
Glenn Suart 0:59
I am doing great, Doug. How are you doing?
Doug Ross 1:01
Doing well, thank you. Excited to talk about inspirational movies or streaming series about startups. That’s our topic today. [Absolutely] Yeah, I think it’s a… an interesting one. Lots to be learned. Maybe some of these things are cautionary tales, as well. What do you think? There’s a lot to choose from aren’t there? Do you have some favorites here?
Glenn Suart 1:25
I definitely have some favorites. And even if I go back to the mid 80s… a lot of these movies about business or startups have been sugar coated, type of thing, but they’re kind of fun. You know, I remember actually, the Michael J. Fox movie from the mid 80s. He did it after Back to the Future, I think, The Secret of My Success. He goes from the mailroom to superstar in a very short period of time. It was quite pleasant I remember thinking, and it was like, oh, yeah, that’s a great way to be in business! Not at all realistic, but at least inspired people to think about, oh, Maybe I should try a business. Those are the some movies that I enjoyed. I’ve got some other ones to go over. But what about you? Is there one that’s top of mind for you that you think about?
Doug Ross 2:10
Well, I think it might be the opposite of sugar coated because there’s, what would I call it, not quite intrigue but there is a lot of betrayal, I would say in there. So it’s the darker side and what happens with founders and all of the tension that can come up between founders, and that’s The Social Network.
Glenn Suart 2:32
Oh, yes. That’s a very well done movie. Aaron Sorkin is fantastic. The writer. He captures a lot of the challenges and some of the subject matter. And of course, you can’t do too much with a story sometimes in two hours or so, but he can. It’s a very good story.
Doug Ross 2:48
Yeah, I think so. It’s not all cautionary tale. That’s one aspect that I pulled out of it. We could pull out a lot more than that. There’s a couple others that I’ve watched recently, and I suppose we can circle back to these, but one I watched very recently is, Tesla. Have you seen this one?
Glenn Suart 3:06
No, I have not.
Doug Ross 3:07
Okay. This is Ethan Hawke. [… Hewson], I believe is her last name. [Eve] She’s the daughter of Bono. And there’s a few other people in that. Jim Gaffigan, strangely enough. And that’s an interesting one, too, because Tesla, as we have come to know, was quite an inventor. But is that enough to become a successful business person, just having a good idea? And I think that’s what’s explored in that one. We Crashed is another one that I’ve watched recently. This is a streaming series. [Yep] It’s maybe eight or nine episodes, something like that. Adam Neumann, he’s played by Jared Leto and his wife is played by Anne Hathaway. It’s on Apple TV I’m pretty sure. So that’s an interesting one, too. There’s also The Dropout, which is about Elizabeth Holmes. There’s quite a few out there, you know, I think back to Steve Jobs that was based on the book by Walter Isaacson. But I’m sure we can only touch on a few of these.
Glenn Suart 4:10
[Of course] What resonated with you with some of those ones you just talked about? Why was it inspirational or interesting?
Doug Ross 4:16
Let’s talk about the Tesla movie as an example. What I thought was really interesting here was a battle between two systems. And… it’s like the Betamax / VHS, and they’re happening at more or less the same time and which of these technological standards is going to prevail in the end? So I find that interesting, right off the bat, because we’ve got a battle between at least two groups and there are investors there, there are founders. There’s lots of people with lots at stake in these sorts of things.
Glenn Suart 4:48
And just to be clear, that’s the battle between AC and DC current, is that correct?
Doug Ross 4:54
Yeah, exactly. [The] alternating current versus the direct current which was… the direct current was at Edison’s idea [right] and the alternating current was Tesla’s idea. And this got pretty macabre. Is that the right word?
Glenn Suart 5:10
Yeah. Macabre, yeah.
Doug Ross 5:12
With Edison, like they got into which power should we use… which power type should we use when we are using capital punishment. So they made a spectacle out of this thing. And then we got into Edison suggesting that Tesla’s alternating current is very dangerous. See, just a low amount of that current – low voltage, or amperage- is enough to kill this guy. And with direct current, that wouldn’t happen. I just… can you imagine having such a battle?
Glenn Suart 5:45
No, it is fascinating. And I think when you said the word Tesla, of course, a lot of people were thinking about the Tesla car company, not realizing it is about what that company is named after, is Nikolai Tesla. [Yeah, yeah, absolutely]. And he’s a fascinating guy. And that’s exactly right. Right there… he spent – with the backing, I think of George Westinghouse – the equivalent of billions of dollars to do what he needed to do. And, and the other guys, as you said, they were spending billions of dollars, certain things happened and… could it be right, maybe? But it certainly was a very interesting time. So that would be a great movie, I’m looking forward to looking at that one.
Doug Ross 6:22
And I have to say, it takes a few chances, the movie itself. So for example, the woman that’s playing the daughter of JP Morgan, Anne Morgan – this is real life daughter of Bono from U2 – and she’s quite good in it. But very early on, she breaks the fourth wall, and she starts talking to the audience, and she’s in current day. So she comes out of her character as well, even though… so I think she remains dressed in… in her period dress… she starts doing Google searches, and talking about these big names: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and all of these sorts of things. So it takes a few chances. It’s interesting to me that you asked me the question, What did I find interesting? So Tesla has this better system, okay, but he doesn’t have the ability to work well with investors. He doesn’t have the ability to get people to rally behind him or enough people. [Yep] He did have Westinghouse, you’re right. That was part of what he could do. But you really, as an entrepreneur to be successful, yeah, product development’s important, but you[‘ve] got to attract people to your cause. And Edison was better at doing this. He got them to work for him. Sometimes he exploited the people that he brought to work for him. Actually, Tesla worked for Edison for a period of time, not a very long period of time, and who knows, maybe Edison was trying to get out of him whatever he could. But Edison had enough of the… I don’t want to quite say cutthroat but maybe that’s right…he was willing to really do some tough things to prevail. And he had a real systematic approach. So he was an inventor – a trial by error guy – he was persistent – but he had that ability to rally and keep investors and get people over to his cause. So interesting in this whole thing, I found out that the movie Tesla did not do that well, commercially. [Yes.] Just like some of Tesla’s inventions. This guy was a way ahead of his time – wireless communications – he was too much out into the future, not enough about how do we execute on this thing to really bring it into reality today.
Glenn Suart ~8:17
No, I think it’s an excellent point you make that he wasn’t quite the businessman, he was more the inventor… like…as you say. And that is critical… that if you don’t have the skill sets to do certain things, you'[ve] got to surround yourself with people who do. And Edison was more of a one… he had everything going for him. Whereas as you say, Tesla was more of the inventor guy. That was his problem.
Din 8:59
You’re listening to Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn, thanks for joining us. Let’s get back to the show.
Glenn Suart 9:08
The movie I like – we may have talked… talked about it before it, probably did… is the founder, about Ray Kroc… and Michael Keaton.
Doug Ross 9:16
We did talk about Ray Kroc, not necessarily a movie, but yeah, a little bit about Ray, yeah, tell me more about the movie.
Glenn Suart 9:22
It’s a fascinating movie. And again, frankly, did not do well, per se, but it’s an excellent… it brings the whole story together in a very… two hours, you get the gist of it. And you realize that Ray Kroc was not necessarily a nice guy at all. He took advantage of the McDonald brothers and it’s really entertaining but there’s elements… what I liked about the movie was, he was inspired. He was a milkshake mixture salesman and he sees this restaurant with the lineups around the block, [and] he’s going, Wow. He convinces the brothers to, you know, give rights to, you know, open a couple and then… because the brothers are happy just running a couple of these restaurants. But he takes it to another level and then he buys the brothers out. Well, there’s a lot of difficulty that we’re dealing with… and the brothers come across as nice guys who are being taken advantage of. But the other elements of what I liked was the… it described why McDonald’s was so revolutionary. And there’s two things about it that people forget. One is the very manufacturing process kind of approach that was not that way before at the time. He demonstrates that really well with a great scene on a tennis court, it’s just fabulous. And then the other thing, of course, about McDonald’s, that people don’t realize is… it’s not a company… a food company, really, it’s a real estate company. What I mean by that is that they purposely own the real estate underneath each of their restaurants as best they can. And that’s where the value is, in a lot of ways. And if the restaurant fails, well, they can get some more people in because they own the building. It’s really a fascinating story about understanding what business you’re in. So I highly, highly recommend it. It’s a quite a well done movie.
Doug Ross 11:05
Hey podcast listeners, we’re gonna take a short break now. If you’re enjoying the show, feel free to invite your friends, remember to subscribe, and if you want to help spread the word leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Each episode of Conversations on Startups focuses on a single topic. If you want to comment on something you’ve heard on the podcast, or suggest a topic for us to cover in a future episode, send an email to: go@todaysgreatidea.com or douglas@sparkclickgo.com. Glenn and I appreciate you and hope you find our uncut and unrehearsed stories, perspectives, and tips helpful. Speaking of helpful stuff, let’s pick up where we left off.
Doug Ross 11:51
Well, you mentioned that… a couple of things come to mind… that story parallels the one of Howard Schultz, that you told recently, and Starbucks. I guess Starbucks is the modern day version of that. Wasn’t he selling some equipment into a family owned business in Seattle?
Glenn Suart 12:09
Yep, that’s right.
Doug Ross 12:09
And what I find interesting here is when we see these, in some way, they’re celebrated…they’re certainly… they’re famous or infamous founders, they have the vision, and it’s the case as well in The Social Network movie and you’ve got early days of Facebook, and so on. Just envisioning how can we bring the internet to really create this social network? So there’s a vision there, and somebody who’s willing to stick with it, push it, see what sort of works and continue to drive to build this thing. And we know that Zuckerberg has continued on for these many years now. He’s got a long term sort of commitment and view of this business and he’s taking it to even more bizarre – I hope, maybe we’ll see it as bizarre I’m not sure… the metaverse going forward – but you have this visionary [founder]. These people have in common a pioneering attitude, there’s a new way to do something. They commit to it, they work on it, and they build it into something that becomes valuable. And then other people like the Winklevoss, did I say that right, the Winklevoss…?
Glenn Suart ~12:48
The Winklevoss twins. Right. Yeah
Doug Ross 12:50
Yeah. They say, Well, you know, that was our our idea and yeah, you know, look at it, it’s worth $500 million now or a billion. Certainly, we are owed most of that, because it was our idea. And I think we’ve constantly said on this program, that it’s not enough to just have that idea, it’s the execution of it [the idea, that matters]. It’s the bringing the people and the money and everything else together. And making sure that you’re getting customers to really love this thing that creates the value over time. And I see that in a number of these different shows that we’ve just talked about, including The Founder that you just described with Ray Kroc.
Glenn Suart 14:01
Yep, there’s two other movies, I want to mention that I… that talk about the dark side of business, and of course, that’s more dramatic and more interesting but they generally do very well. They’re good, interesting movies themselves, or TV series in one case, but what they do is they spotlight some of the downfalls, which is useful to think about. The first one is a little known one on Crackle in the States, but I think it’s on Netflix in Canada, and it’s called Startup, and it stars Martin Freeman, and it’s set in Florida. And these three people end up starting up a business but one of the partners turns out to be not so nice and there’s an FBI… guy who’s not so nice involved. And it’s… it’s the challenge of – on the dark side – you start a business but you get into bed with the wrong people, and what that does to the business… and what it does to the personalities. That happens unfortunately, more than you expect. You know, you start out well, and things don’t… [go well, they] go downhill. The other one exactly this is… that’s a TV series.
Doug Ross 15:07
And that one is sorry, Glenn, you said that was on Netflix in Canada, right? I think you just faded out.
Glenn Suart 15:13
Oh, sorry. Netflix in Canada. I think Crackle in the US but maybe on Hulu, I’m not sure now.
Doug Ross 15:18
Okay.
Glenn Suart 15:18
That was about 2017. When that was done. Two or three seasons of it. The other one that’s interesting is more recent, is the Elvis movie that just came out with by Baz Luhrmann, you know, showcases the, you know, Elvis doing very well and his partnership with Colonel Tom Parker, who is the impresario who helped promote him. And some of the really interesting business elements were… that I took away from it of course is that obviously Elvis is a good entertainer but Colonel Tom Parker was a great promoter. Specifically, he not only promoted the heck out of Elvis, and merchandised him well at the beginning, but also merchandised against him. So that as much as [he] licensed, I Love Elvis, buttons and hats, etc he also made sure that they put out I Hate Elvis, because he make a cut on that as well.
Doug Ross 16:14
Play[ed] both sides of the market.
Glenn Suart 16:15
Very much. So very clever. Now, it turns out Colonel Tom Parker was not that good a guy and he took 50% (Five O) of all the revenue coming in. That was a problem. And it’s a little known fact until you know the movie, but I knew it beforehand, that Elvis only played three dates outside of the United States and that were… those were in Canada, in Vancouver. And the reason why was because Colonel Tom Parker had been an illegal immigrant from the Netherlands. And he couldn’t get a passport of course… so that… he wouldn’t let Elvis go anywhere. So that’s why Elvis never toured the world. He only played in the United States. And it comes down to a really simple fact that happens too often with creative people. They get into a partnership with someone and they trust the other person because they’re uncomfortable with say… with the numbers, that they don’t double check that their partners are doing the right things they shouldn’t be doing. And so Elvis really just trusted Colonel Tom Parker for the longest period of time and got taken advantage of. If he had checked the numbers and a few other things, he would have gotten rid of him a lot… a lot earlier. The lesson for me out of that movie, in part, is that… trust, but verify. If you’re uncomfortable with numbers, that’s okay, but make sure somebody’s overlooking the numbers that gives you fair [and] confident information. It’s critical to the success of your business. And it’s this vice versa that you’ve got to understand, if you’re the numbers guy and your partner is the creative person, that they are being careful about what they do [creatively] doesn’t put the company in jeopardy. It comes back to being good partners. That’s why this movie was so interesting for me is good partnerships and thinking about trust a lot.
Ben 17:51
You’re listening to Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn, thanks for joining us.
Doug Ross 18:10
Yeah, it’s an all too familiar story in entertainment. Some have worked. Who am I thinking of here… from the 60s… Jersey Boys, Frankie Valli and the four seasons. And that was a successful, very shaky at first and, you know… bands break up and you see all of this, but as far as his… his writing partner went, it was just a 50/50 kind of deal, old style handshake. And that lasted a long time and worked really well. And there’s a few others that are out there. Elton John and Bernie Taupin. That’s been an incredible collaboration. I was just listening to Steven Spielberg give a talk on a podcast. And he was talking about his collaboration with his composer, and just saying how long lasting that had been. What’s the fellas name? John (?) [Williams]… it’s not coming to me right now.
Glenn Suart 19:07
His themes are so good. He’s just fantastic.
Doug Ross 19:10
Yeah, absolutely. So you do have these collaborations. But this story that you talked about, it’s really… to be successful, you’ve got to have all of those elements. And it’s rare that one person has it. And another movie that was made was about Steve Jobs. It was based on the biography of Steve Jobs. And he as a person was a great evangelist. And he had very high standards for design and the elegance and the importance of design – some of these things that are absolutely critical, but he was not the technologist in the… in the room, it was Steve Wozniak, originally. So you need to have these things and it’s extremely, extremely rare that you get this in a single person and so you have to fill in and collaborate and everything… everything else. If I think about… Spielberg actually just as… as an example, he’s a guy who’s technically very capable, he’s obviously got good ideas for movies, he’s got technical skills as a director, he’s got writing skills, other things as well. And he’s obviously got some business skills, he created DreamWorks, right(?) – he was in with a couple of other partners there. He has some of those things all in one person. But still, he collaborated a lot on everything else because producing a movie, just like producing a product and a business, takes a lot of people. And so… it’s rare that you have all those skills. If you don’t have them, make sure you partner up with others that… that can help you. Other shows anything else Glenn before we wrap up this one?
Glenn Suart 20:48
I think those are the ones that jumped out to me. We’ll obviously put the list on the website of those movies and TV shows. I just find it fascinating, you want to be entertained, but also great lessons come out of these shows.
Doug Ross 21:01
Yeah, I think that’s true. So, this has been Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn. I’m coming to you from the US of A today. And Glenn?
Glenn Suart 21:11
I’m in Canada and loving it. And we are very fortunate to live in the countries that we do. Yeah, we do.
Doug Ross 21:18
Absolutely. Shout out to our listeners, and thank you for listening.
Glenn Suart 21:22
Absolutely. Thanks. We’ll talk to you soon.
Doug Ross 21:25
Okay, take care, Glenn.
Doug Ross 21:36
Conversations on Startups is a production of Glenn Suart and Douglas Ross. We hope you’re having fun listening but mostly that you take action on your business idea. For more inspiration visit our websites: todaysgreatidea.com and sparkclickgo.com. Another episode of Conversations on Startups will drop soon, or is already available to binge. Thanks for joining us, and remember to subscribe and invite your friends. See ya next time!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai