This Week in Startups - Streaming news! Breaking down WeCrashed E1-3 & The Dropout E5 with Lon Harris | E1417

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Lon Harris joins Molly and Jason to talk WeCrashed, The Dropout and Super Pumped! First, they play a round of "Boff, Marry, Kill" between the three shows (1:16), before breaking down the first three episodes of WeCrashed (16:15) and the two lead performances (24:25). They finish with a quick chat on The Dropout and examine the potential of a "tech cinematic universe" (34:15).

Hey, everybody, it's Thursday. So we have my friend Lon Harris back to talk about the three big shows. The dropout, we crashed, and super pumped. Lon, it's going to be an amazing episode. You're going to tell us what to think of these shows, and it will be very spoiler-heavy. So stick with us. It's going to be an amazing episode.

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using offer code twist and vanta compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business vanta makes it easy for companies to get a stock to report fast twist listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at vanta.com slash twist okay everybody welcome to thursdays here at this week in startups and we've started a new tradition since there are so many tv shows about tech startups that we thought we would just do our own version of recapping them. With me is Molly Wood, of course, my co-host here at this week at startups and my pal Lon Harris, who writes the inside.com slash streaming newsletter. He's a writer for screen junkies. And he's the host of binge boys. Welcome back to the program, Lon Harris.

That's for having me, Jason. Great to be. That's great to have you. You did a great job last week. We're going to talk just for like 20 minutes about these TV shows. And of course, it winds up being like an hour. We've got a lot to say. Listen. And a segment. It winds up being an hour and a recurring weekly. Well, it should be. It should be.

And we now have three shows that are on at this very moment the same time. This feels like I went back in 10 years ago to this very podcast when I was, we were talking Lon about we work, Uber. And of course, there are no. Yeah. Is it, let me just start with a simple question for you, Lon. Are these shows coming too soon after the events that happened? I mean, I think that, you know, there's always a balance.

Like, there are those stories where you've got a ticking clock. The level of interest is only going to last so long. And if you don't strike while the iron's hot, you're Joe versus Carol. I mean, I think of that as the cautionary tale. Peacock has that Tiger King scripted series right now with John Cameron Mitchell and Kate kid and nobody cares because Tiger King's over. They miss their cultural moment. So I think everybody's in that, like, you don't want to be the Adam McKay Theranos

project, which is still in development now because, well, we're all, we're all in on the dropout. Maybe that's going to be it for people's interest in this story. And now you're late. So, you know, I think you might be right that we're fresh on the heels of a lot of this and we don't know maybe necessarily what all these stories are going to. come to represent to us down the road, but you don't want to wait too long in risk people just losing interest in

WeWork and Adam Newman is a story. And then they're like, oh, I don't care about this. I've heard about this. Yeah, timing really is everything here. I mean, the Uber, that's the farthest in the past, right? Like in terms of the, is it? In terms of the CEO ousting? In terms of timing.

Yeah. In terms of timing? Yeah, 2008, 2009. Yeah. All of these were kind of living in the late aughts in the early teens. And we'll talk about We Crash. That to me feels like it's kind of a whole rush of 2010 nostalgia. Like I feel like we haven't gotten a lot of cultural.

It's so recent. We haven't got a lot of cultural 2010 nostalgia. But there's a scene in We Crash where they're like, they're at a silent disco and they're dancing to naked and famous in M83. And just the way it comes on at one point. Yeah. And everybody's dressed in like rave gear. And like, it's like, oh my God.

This is this is the first time I've seen them really. recreate this was 2010 in a show. Yeah. Which is, to me, too soon. Right. It feels weird to see recreations of the recent past, but especially as you get older and time compresses, it feels more that way. What has it been traditionally? Are there other business or, you know, crime kind of shows come to mind? What is the normal overhang for them? I'm curious, because this is within a couple of years of the ending of the the story.

Because we're talking about a year or two after. If you think back to the TV movie era, it was like fresh on the heels, you know? Like Amy Fisher would happen. And then the next year, every network has the Amy Fisher movie. Right. So we're almost like Pete TV is taking more time and like. But they just did the OJ trial and the Monica Lewinsky story. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I enjoyed both. I'd be totally honest. I thought both of those were entertaining to watch as somebody from the I don't know if did you guys catch those. I love that OJ Simpson.

The O.J. Simpson one, yeah. That one was incredible. He heard the most about. Yeah. So let's get into it. I love that one too where they kind of, they use OJ as the jumping off point, but it was really like that whole moment in like tabloid and celebrity culture and how

that directly led into the modern era. And like so many ways. It was really fascinating. Like even like this was the birth of the Kardashians. Like this was when we first heard that name and who these people were like, all these different threads of. Like, this is where 2020 or 2015 media started. Yeah, it's a really amazing show for just the other thing that we talked about this on the last episode, last Thursday, you can look it up.

We talked about just these incredible actors. And all of these shows have, you know, great actors across the board. I don't know about great performances because obviously I think material direction and editing impact performance. It's correct, Lon? Oh, of course. I mean, it's all, it's all layered on top of one another. You're just trying to pick things apart, but it's all, it's a group project. And it's even an amazing actor with a bad script, can an amazing actor with a bad script or a bad direction still make something that is compelling?

Or is it just kind of very hard? It's hard. I mean, I think that we've definitely seen great performances in subpar, projects or people who are giving 110% when maybe the material didn't call. A great example I always think back up that's popular among nerd culture is, you remember that 80s Masters of the Universe, He Man movie with Dolph Lundgren? Yeah, I think I do.

This is not a good movie. But Frank Langella as Skeletor, he is playing it like this is Shakespeare, like he's doing Lear in the park. Right. He's not acting. And I mean, even more, I don't think this is a terrible.

terrible movie. But even in that Spider-Man movie last year, William Defoe is not showing up to be in a Spider-Man movie. He's showing up with the same seriousness of purpose he had playing Van Gogh or playing in Florida Project or like, it's acting to him. It's Shakespeare in the park.

I mean, literally, he's He actually does the same thing in Aquaman too. Like, he just brings all this gravitas to Aquaman and you're like, that guy. And you'll see Brian Cox, too. You'll see Brian Cox show up in like a silly thing or in a horror movie and like,

it just happened for me. Brian Cox showed up and I was like, oh my God, this is incredible. And did you read his autobiography? I haven't read the whole thing. I read those excerpts that they published where he's... Oh, just listen to the audio book.

He reads the audio book. Of course, yeah. It is phenomenal. And it's literally 3% about secession and 97% about theater in the 60s, 80s, 80s. I mean, he's had this long... Movies into the 90s and just the stage acting in the UK.

Unbelievable. People forget how often they saw him in the, in like, the 90s in films because he wasn't a household name yet. Man Hunter. Yeah. The original lector. He's the, he's the uncle who adopts young William Wallace and raises him in Braveheart. But, like, people don't remember that, like, where they're like, he's got to teach him Latin. And that's right.

But he wasn't famous yet. So he's so good. Did you ever see Man Hunter, Molly? No. Okay. So there was before. Silence of the Lambs, they did Manhunter

and it is the most amazing I think it's for me the best or you know tied for best kind of electric well it's director Michael man and it's

Michael man they red did it it's Red Dragon the novel so Brett Ratner remade the movie years later with Ed Norton but this was the original version with William Peterson

so good so good okay there's all your preamble. That took 10 minutes just first to get warmed up. I mean, this is why we are living in the age of streaming. It wasn't Michael Mann's first movie.

I saw that in the comments. I believe Michael Mann had already made a few films. In Miami Vice, he was already coming off of Miami Vice. Right. I mean, the washed out scenes of, you know, the detectives and what just an incredible cast. If you haven't seen Manhunter, that's my gift to you.

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Well done, O-D-O-D-W. All right, there's three shows. I want to start with a classic F-Mary Kill. Yep. We have recrashed. We have the dropout, and we have Super Pumped. Who are we going to kill? Molly?

I mean, I don't think this is going to come as a surprise. I'm going to kill Super Pumped. Same for me, Lon. Yeah, I didn't. Super Pump feels the most overblown and kind of cartoonish to me. And it also, it's the one that's about startups exclusively in that world instead of being more about the people and the characters and the world and the, you know, the personalities.

And I'm more interested in that stuff. Of course. Yeah. So I think now it comes to, I guess, which one are we going to have for Mary? I don't know how to play this game. We say Bob in my family when my niece is around. We say Mary Boff Kill. Okay, let's do that.

So is it Boff Mary? Now we're down to Boff or Mary. Right. So Mary is the one you really love and boff is the one. You're kind of... Like you're enjoying it, but you could take it or leave it. Yeah. I think I'm going to...

I mean, this is tough because I really... This is harder than I thought it was a movie. I'm going to marry both. I'm going to marry both. I think both of these are pretty strong. I'm going to live an alternative open lifestyle. Polyamory is the jam right now. I'm going polyamory.

I'm marrying both. That's it. I'm trying to think of the one that I, the one that I, might stop watching given, like if I knew we weren't going to talk about this again. I can't stop watching either. It's just too hard for me. No, I'm going to see both of these through to the end now. I'm hooked in enough to want to watch them.

If you could only watch one. I may end up finishing Super Punk too, but I'm definitely going to finish these two. I might want to have gone back to Super Bowl. I feel like if I were going to stop watching one, because I am a little ruthless about TV, I'm sort of surprised to say that it now might be. the dropout? It could just because it's farther along in the story, right? That's all the way up to five episodes,

farther along in the story. Now I know how it's going to play out. We've had a big emotion, you know, like the thing. Yeah, she's had her transformation. She's all the way transformed. It might be like a little less interesting to see the kind of the crash from here, but we work is still building and also the two of them together. Like, it's just so compelling.

I think one of the, The rewatchableness of the shows is also a factor in the marrying, if I'm correct. So if it is rewatchable, which one is more rewatchable? For me, I'm thinking, this is a hard one too because I am so drawn to the Balwani character with Elizabeth Holmes. He started to really come into his own. But, you know, Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway, I feel like I'm going to watch WeWork again someday. We crashed. I don't know.

This is two, we crashed rather. Yeah. All right, let's just get to it. All right. Anyway, none of us can't talk about them.

Yeah, no, they're both, it tells you that we do have at least one clear answer here, which is super pumped is not watchable long term. It's just not. It is completely lacking in subtlety in the ways that the other two, and its biggest problem is that these other two came out at the same time to show us how it should be actually done.

It is very weird that these, all three of these landed in the same month, essentially. Okay. Yeah. It's also, Super Pump is the one that we know is coming back. That's also it for like both the dropout and we crash purely limited series. They're going to end and that's the end.

Super Pump is an anthology. Every season it's going to come back and be the story of a different business, you know, rise and fall. So the season two. I think it's going to get canceled. They already picked it up. Season two is going to be Zuckerberg and yeah, Cheryl Sandberg. The late and they. And what's interesting about that is that they essentially.

seem to have commissioned a book from Mike Isaac. Right. Because Chira Frankel and Cecilia Kang, of course, wrote that incredible Facebook book that just came out, whose name I can't remember, but I have it on my Kindle. That is, among other things, about that relationship. And then Mike, who is their teammate at the New York Times, has apparently already been commissioned to write the same book.

Because Showtime wants to make more seasons of this, yeah. Which is fine. is it it doesn't sound fun sounds like uh i think the name of that book is an ugly truth inside fissues yeah thank you very much but that's the whole i mean they want to develop these shows from podcasts for that exact reason because they want to like pump multiple they're doing the same thing there's the slate slowburn podcast uh and they've adapted the first season of that as gaslit this new show for stars which is about the watergate scandal yeah yeah and so but that that's the same thing. Like, they're hoping, oh, we can make every season of slow burn into a, you know,

spin-off series and like, it's all franchising. Everybody wants the franchise. The bag one is being done with Ben Stiller and. Oh, Rachel Maddo. Yeah, yeah. So Rachel Maddow is taking some sort of a break to go do this with Ben Stiller. Okay, so let's get started. Lido Hathaway, this is the easiest place to start for sure. And we have three episodes. We have not talked about the show yet. Nick is doing what my son did right now, by the way, which is be like, I can't believe you called him Lido. It is Letto.

Leto, I'm sorry. Gerald Lotto. And I was like, did everybody know this to that extent? He was so adamant about it. But apparently we're all supposed to know. It's Lotto. Duke Lito is Dune. Jared Letto is the...

Letto. Leto. I knew that. Anyway, I'm just a little tired. All right. Lito. Where do we start with this? I mean, I watched these...

After the first episode, I literally took out my checkbook. I wrote Adam Newman's next company in the line and I put a million dollars. And I just left the date field open and signed it. And I just put it on my poster board because I was like, and I'm not joking. I mean, watching his relentlessness to make something out of nothing to me was, I mean, I fell in love with Adam Newman. I literally want to throw money on him. I like so totally thought when he first started talking and he shows up and he's so made up and he's got the accent. And I was like, this is going to be another cartoon.

And it's just going to be cringe or rama ding dong. And I did what I always did when I'm trying to avoid full attention. I pulled out my knitting. I was like, ugh. And then five minutes later I put it down and was like, what's that guy selling? It is phenomenal. And as it goes on, like in that first episode, I actually felt the like startup thrill. you know, as they're built, like, I was just like, I had goosebumps.

I was all excited about it. I am completely buying these characters. Like Anne Hathaway's character is just, I mean, they're both, she's sort of more awful than he actually ends up seeming. He doesn't even seem that awful. I don't, I'm totally with you. Like, I'm just like, I'm buying what these people are selling. They're doing it.

They're phenomenal performances. Yeah, I think Jared Letto, he gets a lot of, he gets a lot of crap. And I think that he's often miscast or, misused like that that Gucci movie. I don't know what to, I don't even know what to make of what he's doing. It's a crazy performance. He's doing this wild accent.

It doesn't seem remotely realistic. But when he's like well used and put in the right role, he can be really terrific. And I think that's, that is this. Like the voice does take a little bit of getting used to. But yeah, I think he's,

he's fantastic of this. And he's the right guy for this role. He can channel that, that manic energy, that ashen, that enthusiasm that sort of like, it doesn't seem, he doesn't seem crazy, but he seems like,

this guy's working on, on these levels that I can't even get to. We just got a force of nature. And I think he's really effective at coming in. And you have to believe the actor, when everybody else is reacting like, well, this guy's a force of nature,

just let him do it. You have to believe that from the performance. And I think he sells it. That, oh, everybody around this guy would believe in him and would give them their money and let him go. Which means we have to talk about Anne Hathaway next.

She gives, I don't know if this is the best, I don't know her whole career, but this to me seems like a peak performance for her. The character, the character Rebecca Newman, is layered, interesting, bitter, but also wants power and hokey. Like, I feel like I've met this person before in my life. Yeah. But I could also see people not liking this performance because it could seem stereotypical of a wacky yoga person. What did you think of Rebecca Newman over this three episode arc? I mean, you live in Los Angeles. You meet a lot of variations of this person.

And I'm like, you could tell, I think that it's a pretty lived in natural performance because right away, I was reminded of the people that I knew. who were like, like, oh, I get exactly what type of person, Rebecca. At that point, Rebecca Paltrow. I didn't know that, by the way, before this show. Oh, really? That she was a, we were to know about the Paltrow family connection. Oh, I know about that. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's a fun thing that they play around with a lot that Rebecca Nuvitt's father is Bob Paltrow, the brother of Bruce Paltrow, who is the father of actress, Gwyneth. So it's her cousin. Her first cousin. Yeah. And like that, they play that. I don't know if this is realistic or not, but they, They play this as this has been a thing her whole life.

And she's felt like she's in the shadow of this international superstar. Because she's also an actor and wants to be an actor. Right. Or she wanted to be an actor and it's always going to naturally, like even when she tells her father, she wants to be an actor, goes, oh, like Gweny. You know, she's like, well, so immediately going to be compared to at that point, already Oscar winner, Gwyneth Paltrow, because she won for Shakespeare in love back in the 90s. Yes.

I mean, I thought that this, when I saw the previews that see. to rely heavily on their relationship and like what kind of person she was and does she have any depth and what are her goals and dreams and her crying about it and stuff. Again, I keep going back to like, I thought this was going to be a caricature of both of them because I think I think of both of them as caricatures in the real world. And now the show has come along and made them these very big characters, right? It's not trying to tone them down in the slightest, but it's made them big and also real. Yeah. And I think that's really an accomplishment.

It's a really hard needle to thread that it doesn't. We crash. They've got the craziest antics. Like, I think you could argue Elizabeth Holmes may be the largest fraud, but it's hard to make the case that that story is just a zanier, bigger scale story than we work. And so they had all this material, and yet they managed to still find the humanity in it. And not only from Adam and Rebecca, there's a great sequence. right at the end of the third episode Summer Camp of We Crash, where you're just following

a lot of that story you follow from the head of Coms. It's like a bottle episode. It's all happening at this event and there's this journalist there and all of these sort of scandalous things are happening that the journalist is writing about. They keep telling the director of comms,

you've got to take care of this. And then by the end of the episode, we've sort of been following it from her perspective. And it's a dialogue free scene, but just of her leaving and getting into a lift and taking off from the suburb camp. And it's really potent how they sort of drive that home. They do it as well from the perspective of like a young we work employee.

I don't even think you learn her name, but you're just like track enough of her POV through the weeks or months that she's working there to get a sense of all these different perspectives. And it's really well done. And they do. They find the real human stories underneath all this craziness that was happening. All right. I want to quickly explain to you one crucial type of insurance that every startup needs to

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I thought that was very powerful moment too as well. This young woman comes ostensibly her first job or, you know, she's very early in her career. Right. And all of a sudden, she's indoctrinated to doing shots constantly. And then she's got a romantic relationship at work. and they're having sex in the closet, and it's called the something closet. I can't remember. The F closet.

The F closet. And all of a sudden, we're just like, we're calling it the boff closet. We're going to the boff closet. And you're just like, oh my God, that's going to stick.

And, you know, of course, this comes to a head with, you know, millennials and Rebecca basically saying she's dedicated and women should be dedicated

to their husbands and be the women behind the men. And her, you know, character now becomes an equally driving force in this story, which I think is absolutely the case that she was an integral part of WeWork because Adam Newman is driven because of this woman's love, pressure, mentorship, whatever weird deranged thing they have going on in that marriage.

and it harkened back to another film, which I want to see if long can guess, where a mercurial guy wants to create something in the world, and there is a woman behind him who is kind of whispering in his ear. And it's a Paul Thomas Anderson film. Oh, okay. I thought you were just playing directly into Macbeth there. No, no.

It should be. You remember Amy Adams? Oh, sure, in the master. In the master? In the master? Yes, with her and Lawrence Dodd and how she's kind of the brains behind this, what was supposed to be sort of scienceology. Yeah. Amazing performance of essentially Elron Hubbard.

They don't say it explicitly because I guess they didn't want to get sued. Right. That's PT Anders's thing. He does it in licorice pizza too. There's a lot. He calls him Jack Holden, but it's supposed to be William Hold. Ah. So in this, in the master, you know, she is driving him to create Scientology.

and it's their marriage and sex and drive. And there's even this scene in, we were, I don't want to get graphic here, but it's a little much that scene. There's a scene where she's like, you're the guy, you're the guy.

Tell me you're the guy. And she's kind of performing an act and sexual act and trying to get him pumped up and like, it's like, whoa. That's exact same scene is in the master. Do you remember that one? I do. I do.

And did they not, when a writer does something, like that. Number one, how do they know that that existed? That must be something that was made by the writers. That was an intimate moment between the two of them. That feels like a detail that you would just add in as a writer. There's no way you, you know, nobody was in the room. Pretty sure. In the book, like, Nick can confirm, but I don't think that was in the book. Yeah. So I'm like, how would they ever know that moment?

It feels like a very writerly detail. That's a dramatization situation. Because you're kind of trying to, like, how do you express that? That's like an abstract kind of idea to try to get across in your writing that like this guy you know like she is kind of the power behind this like he's she's speaking through him in some ways and it's always because of you know as a woman she probably couldn't raise this kind of money or she might not have felt like she was in a position to start her own company and so she's sort of making this work through him and how do you show that you know like how do you in a scene pack that in the drama that's exactly that's exactly what i was thinking i was thinking the writers were doing, but does a writer know that people who've seen The Master are going to put those two things together and it's an Easter egg?

Or do you think they wrote it as like an inside reference or they just didn't know? How could you not know the writers? I don't think, I think whoever wrote that episode of We Crash has probably seen The Master. That's not. That's a trope. I mean, I think we've seen that in other, a woman sort of getting what she wants or motivating or getting her message across to a man by using sexuality is not. That's not PTA didn't come up with that. So I think that, you know, that's a trope that it just, it gets filtered through in a lot of different ways. And I think, yeah, like, if you want to show that, well, you know, she's in some ways maybe a little smarter than him, really savier than him.

Much savagher, much smarter. And she knows how to, like, get this guy to do what she wants or she knows how to, like, work him. And that's one of her strategies. She's like a Schengali in the same way. Svengall. Schengali, like, what's his name is? Balwani is in or he starts as

Yes, I mean, right. I was going to draw that same comparison though because both Balwani and Rebecca are portrayed as people who are sort of without their own direction. You know, Balwani is like, he's rich, but he doesn't really have a job.

And he's sort of like, always trying to like get in on what she's doing. And then Rebecca, like, wants to be an actress and has that sort of emotional scene where she's like, I can't go back to being nothing because turns out yoga is not my thing. And they're both sort of like seekers who find their direction in what their partners doing, but also become manipulators of that direction, which is kind of interesting

comparison. Yeah. I mean, I think that's not only gender roles. It's a, no, it's not. And I mean, I think that's kind of a thread that runs through a lot of these, all three of these shows, really, is like the founders in some ways inspire all these people or get what they want out of all these people because they see themselves, they're always reflecting people back at them. They want to see themselves of these, you know, like, I'm part of this person, this exciting project. They're like, you know, like, and so I think that, yeah, that's definitely in play for both Rebecca Newman and Sunny Balwani and a lot of these other characters, how they feel about these companies is often how they feel about these founders or their relationship with the family.

Right. And neither of them are normal in their own right, either Balwani or Rebecca Newman. You know, it's like it's because they've obviously got their own. massive issues, but it is, they do a good job of giving them a little bit. I feel like Balwani is out of nuance by episode five of the dropout, and maybe that's one of the reasons why I'm sort of like, okay, like, I know where this is going to go and like it's fine. Whereas I think Rebecca Newman actually still has it in WeWork, which again, did not expect based on the stories about,

I just didn't expect either of them to be such complex characters based on the bonkersness of the stories about them. Ultimately, when you look at, look at the business of, or the entrepreneur Adam Newman, it's really the perfect case of what gets you here does not get you there. The first stage of a company, when I was looking at it through the eyes of, you know, a CEO founder myself and also a capital allocator and watching, you know, 300 investments go through some versions of these things, he's that perfect first stage manifests something from nothing. And when he gets green desk up and running and he convinces

people to, you know, he has that scene where he's convincing the first person to buy a desk. And he's like, you're going to meet your partner here. You're going to do this here. You're going to do shots here. You're going to drink. You're going to meet your wife here. That kind of manic energy to just manifest something in the world. And his salesmanship is amazing.

But then you see that he never shifts gear. And we're only three episodes into it. But by the time summer camp happens, and I remember when summer camp happened, I had multiple people tell me in the industry, like, oh, my God. They basically ran, you know, a drug-filled, insane, sex-filled version of Burning Man in upstate New York. And people were like, it was awesome. But it was like part of the company, so it was a little bit weird. So I was getting all these reports back back then.

And what gets you to, you know, raise that first round, to get that product market fit, that raw energy, enthusiasm, blind faith in your ability? Well, then you have to shift gears. and that's when you have to be like, you know what, we probably shouldn't be drinking at work and maybe we should pay people more and maybe we should bring in some adults to run the place

instead of just having a bunch of kids here and you have to have some professional management because once you get to the first second location, you got big, big problems. You can't be running a court. There's no world in which you can have a corporate version of Burning Man. It does not exist. No.

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uh, super pumped, it's kind of critique of T-K and Uber and how he ran it was like, it was so aggressive. And he was, he had this wartime posture and he was really like, bending the rules are breaking the rules to go after his competitors. Reinterpreting is what we like to use. The other two, WeCraft and Dropout, their critiques are really more like, these founders didn't really understand the nuts and bolts of what they were doing. They were the idea people. They were the salespeople.

And then once the rubber really hit the road, they were totally reliant on these people they brought in who actually knew what to do to make the company. And I think that, I don't, I'm not saying that's necessarily all true, but it's kind of an interesting, like, they're all kind of condemning their founders in some ways, but it's a very different critique. Like, we crashed obviously as this notion of Newman is this brilliant salesman, you know, this like Jordan Belfort-esque put him in front of people and he'll sell them whatever.

Right. Like, genius at it. But otherwise, he, you know, he doesn't really get how to put the wallpaper up or have that we need the desks to go here or the bathrooms to go there. Like, that was all coming from Miguel. and all these other people around him. And, you know, I think that it's an interesting thing that runs through the whole kind of... It's an interesting question, too, when you, you know, you bring up the idea of capital allocators.

Like, certainly all, every question that I ever got asked as a reporter, and now even I did a CBS thing, you know, since joining launch about the Theranos trial, where they're like, what does this say about Silicon Valley and its relationship with founders? I mean, those are the eternal questions that come up as a result of these stories, which is, you know, not. surprising. But also it does make you wonder, like, should there be, should this change our lens at all? La la la la la la la, not listening. Exactly. I don't have not listening to this.

Because I also am pretty sure I would have given Ed Newman money and maybe so wouldn't. I'm shocked to even say that because the show sold the concept of we work better than like the story's ever did. I literally was talking to one of the principles in one of these yesterday. And I would say which show or which principle. Believe enough to the imagination, but I know people at all of these who were investors at all of them. And he said to me, when I told him, like, you know, one of my observations, this person said

to me like, yeah, that's exactly accurate. And then we got into a discussion of governance. And what happened here that people don't know is there was a collective moment 10 years ago in which governance in our industry. So to your point, Molly, should something change? Something did change. We went from VCs having too much power where they could just fire somebody. And they tell this in Super Pump, right?

They're going to remove you. You're going to lose your company. They tell it with Balwani, Ian Gibbons, I think is the name of the scientist. Yeah, he was the canvas. Yeah. And they start saying it there where like, and then the William H. Macy character says it over and over again. They're going to remove you. Yeah.

So there was this fear. in the 2000s that you would get removed. Where did that come from? CEOs would get removed. And then Founders Fund was formed as the antithesis of Sequoia and other firms that we were going to be the founder-friendly firm. And they literally put it in the name. People don't know this backstory. That's where Founders Fund came from. And Founders Fund was founded by Sean Parker, who was at a company called Plaxo. Plaxo famously, he had, you know, Sean Parker was a unique character in all the world, he's a friend of mine. And they ousted him, I believe,

from Plaxo. And I believe that was Sequoia. And there was this whole back and forth founders fund Sequoia were in this big beef 20 years ago about this very issue. And then super voting shares started to become prevalent and Facebook was one of the first to get them.

And that's why Zuckerberg is in control of that company. Who was the original investor in Facebook? Peter Thiel. Yeah. who was backed by Sequoia Sequoia backed Peter Thiel

for PayPal. So all of this goes back to that origin story. So when they do the anthology Mike Isaac will take this video like he took my interview with TK, redo it and sell it. It's fine with me. I don't care. So what you're saying is the thing that changed is that the Adam Neumans and Elizabeth Holmes's

and TKs of the world got more power to just run rampant. Basically, the boards were There's ceremonial. Anthony Edwards to come in and be like, get out of it. Super pumped about that. The boards became ceremonial as opposed to fiduciaries. Yeah.

What is the point of a board meeting to discuss buying Instagram or WhatsApp if Zuckerberg just did it unilaterally? In both of those cases, he just informed the boards he was doing this. You know, Peter Thiel on the board of Facebook, Mark Andreessen, they literally have no say in anything. If they vote, he just goes, okay, great, your votes count. It's like one, one thousandth of mine. So who cares what you say? They became ceremonial. And that's what we're seeing in this moment over the last 10 years is founders may be having too much control.

And what happens when a founder who has no experience like Elizabeth Holmes or is unqualified to run an at scale operational business like Adam Newman or is super aggressive and wants to win very badly and is highly effective, TK. We're looking at those three different scenarios of founders. They're not the same founder. Yeah. You know, like two of them are unqualified. One of them's hyperqualified. You know, and then, but this is what happens when there's no reins or checks and balances. And that's what, you know, we've talked about a lot on VC Sunday school, Molly.

So why do these boards exist and what is good at governance? And I'm sure we'll talk about it more in relation to all this. But this is why governance is becoming more important, especially when people put a lot of money behind people with last experience. It is really interesting, though, because what you're describing is that we, we had these experiences with these three founders. Yep. And many more.

Countless others. People were harmed or people lost a lot of money or, you know, businesses had to change dramatically. Or made a lot of money. And that our response or both, right? All those things are true all the same time. And so making a lot of money is excusing a lot of these sins. But what you're saying is like now we're in a situation where as that was happening,

then founders got a whole bunch more power. So probably is just going to happen all over again. Well, that was, I would say that was Pete, on some level of people. That was Pete giving away of power. Yeah.

And now I think what we'll see is some return to normalcy. Right. I think we'll see the pendulum kind of maybe go back to the middle a little bit. And maybe it will forever, and it will never be as crazy as it was with VCs being able to just boost founders who own five or 10%. And founders felt like they were,

you know, there at the, uh, behest of whatever the VCs wanted. but I don't think it's going to be founders can do whatever they want and the board is ceremonial so we'll start to see a little bit of that

Is this crypto and web three next? I mean in 2020 are we watching the shows about like the board ape rise and fall and like that's what's coming down the road yeah those will be a hundred times more insane because those people will be going Vegas party blowout sequences

are going to be more like money laundering and yes you know people from terrorist organizations or organized crime, buying these things, flipping stuff. It's going to be... I should start developing some ideas. Chinese government, Russian government, money, dark money pools, and all that kind of gnarly stuff.

Because when you run money as the operating system with these things and it's dark money, you know, all kinds of... A whole other level of things happens. That doesn't exist here. That NFT series is going to have to go to Showtime. You're not even going to be able to put that on regular TV. Somebody picked up a version of this, I thought, with that Silkware. roadbook that Nick Bilton.

Yeah, that's something that's optioned. Yeah, well, that you could, right. I could see that like the early, you know, like the dark web stuff and like how that sort of. Yeah. So that's its own kind of story. I just feel like to me, this feels like, yeah, the current era of tech that's going to inspire the shows in 10 years is all going to be. 100%. And then that's going to be, that is going to fall into the super pumped category of storytelling where it's a little bit tricky because it probably won't be that.

I mean, there are some personalities here. don't get me wrong. Like, AirPods, AirPod. Where are my airport? I can't be a wrap on the dropout. Let's wrap on the episode. Episode five, Flower of Life. With the, I'll just read the description.

With the Walgreens deadline, looming Elizabeth and sending scramble to find solutions to their technology failures, Ian is drawing into Elizabeth's lawsuit against Richard. Felt like another great episode to me. I was riveted by the whole thing. What did you guys think? Yeah, I think Stephen Fry gets his,

I think obviously Amanda Safefried fantastic, killing it, watching her sort of development over the course of series. I also feel like Stephen Fry is doing incredible work here. Probably, I feel like he's getting his supporting actor Emmy nod for this.

I mean, he's got to. He is absolutely got to. He was really fantastic. It felt to me like this episode is like the emotional climax. I don't want to give too much away for people. For anybody who's listening now,

and I'm going to give a little warning at the top of the show, spoiler heavy. We're going to talk about everything when we do these. So you can save the show and come back to it after you watch the episode. But yes, you can talk about everything. Okay.

All right. Well, it is the emotional climax. And it is the part where like some avoidance comes in because you know, if you were familiar with this story, you know that this person died in real life. He kills himself. Yeah. He kills himself. And the show, you know, more even than like the books have danced around it. Some of the legal cases have danced around it.

The show like draws a one to one. Like, Theranos killed this guy. and the pressure of the lawsuit in time. Knowing that, well, he would either have, if he testified, Theranos would come after him for violating his, his NDA, but if he didn't, he would be perjuring. You know, he felt like he was completely trapped in this sort of situation. And I don't think he was trapped in the situation.

When I was thinking through it, I was like, I don't think this is the end of his career if he testified against them because he would be forced to do so. And I think he would find another job. So I felt that was a little. unbelievable and a bit of a construct. And that's why I think, like, maybe we don't know exactly what happened. And maybe the show is making a jump that maybe the reason other people weren't willing to

make the jump of the one-to-one, Molly, that Elizabeth killed him by these lawsuits. It's because they don't actually know. And that maybe the person did have an alcohol problem. It's unclear. But the show makes it one-to-one cause and effect. If not for these lawsuits, which are based upon Elizabeth Lawyer, on the patents, he would not have felt the pressure and they build it up. Yeah.

And to be clear, that's all. Like, I was surprised at the degree to which the show was like, this is the deal. Like, this is the progression and it's incontrovertible. They're making it a narrative. Like, this is over time. This is what drove him to this point. Exactly. Yeah.

And then at that point, I think because it's the emotional climax and this happens and they have made this narrative so plain, this is also the episode in which all of your sympathy, all of your sense of nuance that you might have built up about Sunny and Elizabeth is like gone. Yes. It's gone. I mean, yeah, I think we got that scene of her sort of transitioning fully into the dark side where she adopts the voice that we're all familiar with.

And she, you know, she makes this formal decision to, we're going to break apart the Siemens machine and we're going to figure out how that works and basically steal their technology to fake our technology. And so I think once we cleared that hurdle, yeah, that's it. Now the transition is over and we're fully into being a fraud. So yeah, we definitely see that. By the way, from my understanding of it and I've had John Carrey Rue on this program early on, and the John Carrieroo, Wall Street Journal, investigative journalist shows up in this episode

and he's great as well. And I thought that was played perfectly. I'm not sure by who, but it was very well done. And that is really, I think that the next part of this is the unraveling of it. So this is kind of the peak of Elizabeth's story in terms of turning to the dark side, Balwani being kind of her, the emperor in this, kind of pushing her along to do this, where it's like, I already broke the machine open. I did it already.

He's like, you're halfway there. Thanks for the permission. I, you know, preceded your fraud. I do think one thing that's interesting that they're doing very specifically the show is that they're showing like how like how influenced how how malleable Elizabeth Holmes was and how easily manipulated she was by older people in her life that she looked up to not only sunny but there's that that crucial scene with her mom where she's what would you do floating the idea of I want to quit I don't want to do this anymore I can't do and her mom is like no you have you

have to and basically like I won't be proud of you anymore if you stop doing this and so You know, it's interesting. They keep drawing those parallels to like, she kind of saw that she was going too far, but she was listening to all of these mentors or all of these authority figures or what she saw as authority figures in her life. And there is a way to have, there is a way to see that sympathetically, right? Because you're like, she is sort of pushed around by these people or she, what you realize is how freaking young she is.

Right. Like, yes. I think that's what they're kind of driving home in those moments. Exactly. Like she's just. She's a person in her early 20s, you know, this is her first real job. real job. She didn't even finish. She barely went through any college, any of the part where you just like even have the

moment of like moldy dishes in the sink and you're like, oh, wow, I really have to get my shit together. Right. She doesn't have any of that development. She clearly has these parents and this is why I love the kind of recurring character of the mom and how awful she is. Yeah, Elizabeth Marvel is the mom and she's really, she's doing a great job. She's doing a great job. And you can sort of see why this girl would be like, oh, I got nothing without the approval of these people. Basically, she floats the idea of leaving the mob. She floats the idea of leaving

the Jedi order or, you know, leaving the galaxy and just, you know, going and being a hermit somewhere and people are like, no, that's not possible. Balwan is like, what do you mean? Like, we just quit. Like, no. She's like, literally basically, like, we should just shut down there and it's $150 million in.

Yeah. I don't know if that actually happened or not, but I thought that was a nice editorial flare or device that she actually looked for a way. out. And I was like, you know what, I'm in too deep. I do think to Molly's point, I think that's an attempt to keep some shred of humanity. So we can keep viewing her as like, she's not a monster. She wasn't out here trying to kill people. She just felt trap. Like, this kept snowballing, almost like a character in like a film noir.

Like you tell one lie, double indemnity, you know, one lie turns into two lies. And now all of a sudden you're buried and you have to keep digging yourself in deeper and there's no way out. Yeah. It is a fantastic episode, I think. But I'm wondering if this is the peak of the show or not, because I guess it's going to end with the trial and the guilty, right? And then they will have absolutely, there should be a follow-up to this in five or ten years

when we see what happens. And then what I'm wondering about with all these anthology shows is the crossover. And I realize this has universe potential, because in WeWork, when the Lyft shows up to pick her up, I did think about that too I was like, okay, so now we go to the LIF founder's story and we like cut to like the founding of Ler

or like Bill Gurley you know and benchmark were all, well, not Bill Gurley, but benchmark was also an investor in WeWork. So you could start to see these stories cross over, which is what I think the Brian Coppillman anthology, Mike Isaacson's story is going to try to ado is when they tell the

Facebook story, they could have a meeting, they could have those people show up I think that's the smart way to do it. They probably will try to have some kind of crossover or keep it consistent. Listen, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but they're going to need new writers if they want to try to achieve the subtlety of a multiverse within this showtime situation. I just want to see absolutely there's a famous story of Adam Newman pitching Elon about We Work on Mars. And if that makes it into the show, that'll be next level.

But what I want to see is Rebecca. I don't know if I've seen the casting note. I don't know if they cast an E-line. I asked Miguel McElvey about that, actually. Like, he was giving me the sort of We Everywhere pitch. And I said, I was like, you mean like, what? I was like, where does this go? We Mars?

And he's like, actually, we have a picture in the office of like the surface of Mars. Which, by the way, side note of when we look at these and it's people that you know, when we look at these shows in the real world universe, like, if Bill Gurley, is getting the derpy-durp treatment by super pumped, poor Miguel McElvey has got to be horrified at his portrayal here because he is such a sharp guy. He really, and they nod to this, but had a lot of these business ideas,

and he is being portrayed as just like the biggest doofus. Yeah, just like, I do think that's interesting. He's such like a follower. Like when they first introduced that character, you don't think this is going to be the co-founder of WeWork. It's kind of just like this dufus that he's sort of like, keeps around to do the hard stuff. Yeah.

Or menial stuff, whatever it is. Yeah. It did not feel on track. But the quote was, Adam Newman once argued to Elon Musk that getting to Mars would be easy, but building community there was the hard part. I mean. No, I think getting to Mars is actually the hard part.

Like, defeating gravity. If they didn't write that scene in, they're going to be kicking themselves because what a fun scene to write in. I'm lighting a candle that they can figure out I want to see the dinner party where Rebecca Newman gets sat next to Balwani and it's just like a dinner party in Silicon Valley with eight people

and they just happen to be at other end of the table and maybe they talk, maybe they don't but that's my crossover universe. So to whoever's producing, it's Hulu and then who's doing, are they both Hulu? What's we? No, Apple. We crust is Apple. We're doomed because we have Hulu, Apple and Showtime.

Yeah, everybody wants to have their own startup show at this point. We can fix this. We can fix this. This is a message to Hulu and Apple. You have to be like Marvel and DC would do every 10 years, like a little crossover. Comic book would that have a, you know, different universes collide in a what-if kind of scenario. You have to collide these shows. You have to because they're so well done.

Jared Leto. Yeah. And Amanda Safreid. Opposite Amanda Safefried. Like I want to see that scene. Oh my Lord. If they met it. Just have the meet a cocktail party and have a 15 minute conversation.

The whole thing would blow up. So somebody clip this message and sent to whoever's running Apple TV. And then one of you people from CIA or Endeavor, C.C. It's so easy to do the post credit. You know, like the Nick Fury post credit. Where it's like the next VC and they're in their office and they're like, we work, set up a meeting. And then they're like, oh, who is that?

You know, everyone like that's a guess which VC. Was that benchmark? Mark was at Sequoia. It's like nose up. Antonio's Nutthouse and the Robin Hood guys pitched me as a stinger. Yeah. Tell me again what happens with Robin Hood. You give the trades for free.

Next scene. Yeah. Let's end on this. The best scene from each of these two shows up to date. Or, you know, from the last episodes. The best scene for you. We had the summer camp episode. Okay, for any of the three.

but any of the three we crashed and then from the dropout the last episode number five, the Walgreens episode. What is the best moment or scene for you? I'll kick us off for me

in the dropout. The scene where Elizabeth Holmes puts the mask of herself on and they start dancing when they get back to their apartment was the most arranged serial killer thing I've seen on television

in a long time. I was just like, keep that woman away from any control or power of anything ever again. Like, do not let her near a steering wheel. Do not let her near like the cockpit of a plane. Like, she will crash whatever you put her in front of. And like that mask was so weird looking that I literally felt like a cold chill, like Hannibal Lecter type moment. What moment do you guys have? Just a great moment.

There's a great opening of one of the episodes of, of, of, We Crash. I think it's episode three. I'm pretty sure it's the most recent one. And it's they're playing. It's, it's, uh, MGMT's faded to pretend as the needle drop on this outject. Again, we're in pure early teens, nostalgia territory. And it's just, we're following this young woman and it's her first days of work. And she's hearing Adam Newman on, they have these, uh, TGI Monday parties where they

got it's Monday because they're celebrating the work week and they're drinking. And you just cut. It's very cinematic as you're cutting from taking shots. She's making out with dudes in this closet. She's at her desk falling asleep. He's in Newman's firing T-shirt cannons. It's really well done. And it's so quickly.

And I've been in startup scenarios like that and rooms like that in my day. And it really does capture that really frothy, early enthusiasm when it feels like it's working. When you say rooms, do you mean closets or just rooms? I mean like, like, yeah. A variety of spaces. warehouse type open office spaces. Let's be clear. Just leave it at that.

But like I really, it really captures it. And how quickly this can spiral out of control. That was what that scene did. Yes, it showed the escalation. There's nobody at the helm and how like if you're just focused on scale and excitement and community and not any of the responsibility stuff, how this spirals so quickly I got control. I thought in one sequence to just pack it all in.

And I feel like by the end, you kind of get what's wrong with. work so that later when Rebecca Newman's in this tent and she's being confronted, it doesn't feel like these complaints are coming out of nowhere to us. We're like, oh, of course. Of course we've seen how this went bad. Molly, what are your favorite scene as we ran? Yeah, I, you know what? I'm a little bummed because I agree.

I thought that was so well done in terms of showing the impact of what he was building. So like up to that moment, we've had these and there were a million incredible. I mean, obviously, of course, the scene when he comes in defense or to the yoga teacher and you're like, that's the moment where he goes from sort of cartoon to badass. Like you see his sort of badass potential in that moment like, oh, okay, he actually is not a joke. He is a person who can be taken seriously and has good business instincts. But I loved the broadening of the story in that exact moment through the eyes of that employee where you're just like, this has an impact on other people.

And now we see the impact on those other people in such a like real visceral and also just cool TV kind of way. I will also add in episode two, Anne Hathaway is called on to do what's got to be a tough thing for a good actor, which is to give a very bad acting performance in a checkoff play where she's doing this ridiculous Russian accent.

Occasion of reminders that Anne Hathaway is actually very funny and became famous for doing comedies first before she was famous as a dramatic act. I mean, that whole hilarious subplot of her getting this movie, you know, this theater director in there, promising the space, flaming out, being humiliated, and then being like, I guess we just won't be able to use the space anymore. It's just sort of a, like, there's just good happening in that show. Well, there's peak narcissism that moment, right? Like her narcissism comes through along with

his and narcissism, confidence, fake it to you make it, is one of the aspects of startups that, you know, you do have to contend with. For me, in the we crash, the best moment or another best moment, because I do think the montage, the points you guys point out were great too. But there was a great moment, I think, for Anne Hathaway's character. And I think she's stealing the show where she's dealing with her dad. And the judge forces the dad to say, so that makes you a, you did something fraudulent, so you're a.

And he's just trying to get this guy who's a total fraud. her father's a fraud to just say he's a fraud. And then her dad had poured this incredible bottle of wine with her and said, yeah, I bought it at an auction or something. And then she peels back the label of the same bottle of wine. And her dad was even lying to her at that very point in time about the bottle of fine wine he was serving to his daughter. That's what a fraud he is, is that he has to be a fraud to his daughter. And then her dad and her husband are both frauds. Maybe. And her contending with that and her childhood and her trauma, I think really explained her character in a way that I just did not expect. It was a level of depth to her character that I thought was in a way almost beautiful that you could kind of like have sympathy for her because all she's ever known is a bunch of guys around who are frauds. And she's somehow reliving her relationship with her dad with Adam. And her dad was telling her Adam's a fraud and didn't know what he's doing. And it turns out her dad is the fraud. I didn't

see it coming. I mean, the like fragility that she gets out of this show. Because because there's narcissism and narcissists, sure, they get prickly and crazy when they're challenged. But a lot of times they double down. And there's something about her fragility that is really like, it's really profound. This is a really good show. Whereas Elizabeth Holmes has now evaporated for me. I'm still super interested in Rebecca and Adam. That actor, Peter Jacobson plays Bob Paltrow at this. He was all, He's been, you feed him and he was in house and like he's been an important character actor. The Americans and yeah, he's really, he's also really. Love the Americans.

Okay, listen, we did an hour. Sorry. This week is streaming. You were supposed to be 20, but we geeked out. Lon, you're amazing. Can we get Lon a parting gift? Can we send him an ember mug please, ASAP? Get this kid an ember mug.

He's now part of the crew. We'll see you all next time. Bye bye. Bye. Hey, everyone. Producer Nick here. I want to tell you about the SaaS syndicate. If you're a founder of a SaaS company with a product and market, our investment team wants to talk to you.

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