What to Watch: 3 HBO Documentaries for Entrepreneurs
You don't have to be embarrassed about it: we all know you only signed up for HBO to watch the final season of Game of Thrones. It wasn't to expand your mind, to garner a better understanding of the world through pop culture, or even to watch any of the other awesome TV shows steaming on HBO (Entourage being a favorite and guilty pleasure of mine). It was to keep up with the high-stakes battle between fire dragon and ice dragon for the fate of Westeros. And with a reported 16 million people having viewed the final episode of its penultimate season, you can rest easy knowing you're in pretty good company in doing so.
(c/o Wikipedia)
But, hey, since you're paying the monthly fee anyway, here are 3 documentaries streaming right now (as of April 3rd, anyway...) that actually might teach you something about what it is to be a public figure in today's business landscape.
1) The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley
The story:
The tension-packed Icarian tale of Elizabeth Holmes, the world's youngest self-made billionaire turned Silicon Valley black hat facing multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy, to me, boils down to the idea of the audacious promise. The powerful, upstart CEO leveraging industry-defining technology to disrupt a entrenched oligopoly tells a compelling story, but only when the tech actually works.
Holmes's story is one where the product couldn't keep up with big promises of its leadership, and it transformed a national success story into a swan song.
The lesson:
I found it intriguing to compare Holmes's story with that of Steve Jobs and of Henry Ford. In the case of all 3 CEOs, the technology of the day could not keep pace with the vision of where s/he knew the industry would inevitably grow. Throughout each, their own personal ambitions remained steadfast; employees were overworked, berated and marginalized; resources were spent at unprecedented rates; scientific laws were bullishly ignored in favor of a desperate, compulsive drive to bend reality to fit their higher purpose.
However, in the end, Jobs created the Apple II and Ford created the V-8 engine. For no other reason than because her Edison machines didn't ultimately work, Holmes story involves delay tactics, drawn out court battles and no small amount of browbeating employees as they realized the futility of Theranos and one by one jumped ship. As such, her entire story was re-recorded in the public mind as a staggering failure due to hubris and too little appreciation for the well-known way of doing things.
When to watch it:
High production value makes this a kick back and be entertained kind of movie. The story is dense and will likely results in its own side trips to Google & Wikipedia, so watch it on a night when you want to be absorbed in a dramatic tale of how huge sums of money can elevate a 30-year old woman to a messiah-like stature, only to ruin her just as quickly.
119 minutes | 77% score on RottenTomatoes
2) Becoming Warren Buffet
The story:
This HBO original documentary lies somewhere between biography and autobiography: telling the story of Warren Buffett in his own words and in the words of those who knew him best. As Warren was alive during the filming of the movie, the audience is treated to a message crafted by and vouched for by the Oracle of Omaha himself. How exactly did one man come to accumulate and then give away more than 3 billion dollars in a single lifetime? Give HBO 90 minutes of your time and you'll find a satisfyingly complete accounting.
The lesson:
There is a lot that is to be admired about Warren Buffett's story: the frugal tendencies that allow him to generate massive wealth early in his career, his relationship with his business partners & shareholders, his grandfatherly humility & good-nature, his oceanic knowledge base of investing wisdom & willingness to share it with others... Buffett is one of the most clear examples of a CEO who found wild success by operating on sound, conservative principles, and never allowing greed or fear to distract him from his true north. A how-to-do-it-in-my-generation kind of story.
And whether you're hearing them for the 1st time or the 1,000th, you can go into the movie confident in knowing his nuggets of wisdom are peppered throughout:
- "I live by two simple rules of investing. Rule number 1: never lose money. Rule number 2: never forget rule number 1"
- "Many people would see this as totally unproductive, but many of my best business solutions and money problem answers have come from periods of just sitting and thinking."
- "I then want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front page of their local paper, to be read by their spouses, children and friends, with the reporting being done by an informed and critical reporter. If they follow this test, they need not fear my other message to them: lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless."
When to watch it:
This is a "soft" movie made to elevate and cement the well-earned legacy of an American businessman: there is no critical analysis of his many high-level business decisions, little justification for his views of the world outside of his own reputation, and not much in the way of what his critics and rivals thought of him. Which is fine if you already know, like and trust Buffett, and frankly most of the world already does.
So my advice is to save this one for a night when the grind has been getting you down and you need to be reminded how much good one visionary can have on the landscape of business.
95 minutes | 85% score on RottenTomatoes
3) Leaving Neverland
The story:
Few world entertainers will ever reach the industry-defining, raving fanfare status of Michael Jackson, and as history points out it was precisely this celebrity status which afforded The King of Pop a nearly limitless capacity to groom and sexually exploit young boys in the early and mid 1990s. Leaving Neverland is the long-overdue personal accounting of two principle accusers who helped Jackson escape criminal conviction during his lifetime, and are only just now ready to share their pain and their truth to a world now far less under his spell.
The lesson:
Beware the pitfalls of going against public opinion.
We all knew the story on the outside but chose to watch it anyway to see what it felt like from within. In addition to the obvious voyeuristic curiosity regarding the specific nature of the abuse Jackson inflicted on the two principle narrators, we are given the opportunity to explore an extreme case study in the "what is beautiful, is good" fallacy ever at play in our social-media drugged social consciousness.
At the height of his popularity as a singer & entertainer, Jackson was untouchable: in an economic sense, in the media, in the courtroom, and in the court of public opinion. The fact that he used that power to exploit innocence is not the sum of his story, but that he actively leveraged the goodwill he had with the public to suppress his victims from coming forward until 4 years after his death.
Ancient philosopher & Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius penned in his book Meditations "that which is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee either," asserting that a thing which harms society as a whole cannot (or, perhaps, merely should not) benefit people in power. Jackson's tale is but one loud example of many in our time (see Jared Fogle, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein...) which remind us that it has never been easier for those at the top to lose their moral compass on the ascent; that often times, once a person has achieved a certain level of success, they transcend social contract and knowingly abuse the weak, shielded in the armor of their own wealth and star power. Jackson's legal team, in fact, succeeded in continuously exonerating him of wrong-doing in a legal sense, and MJ did not have to live to see his reputation destroyed when the last of the facts came out.
Be careful of how high you rise, and be aware of how you leverage what society gives to you.
When to watch it:
It's a 4-hour mini-series (with, in my opinion, a bit too much filler exploring supporting characters' story profiles) so watch this when you want to spread the content out across a few nights' worth of watching.
I chose to pick on HBO mostly because of the GoT hype, but there are plenty of other examples on Neflix, Hulu, Prime Video and the like...
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