I have recently watched a few dramas that explore the topic of startup failures. This series expose the negative consequences of flawed business models, as well as the unethical behaviors of some startup founders, shedding light on the challenges that entrepreneurs face in the current startup ecosystem, and highlighting the importance of ethical leadership and sustainability in business.
Documents the disgraced biotechnology company Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes. At the age of 19, after dropping out of Stanford, she claimed to revolutionize laboratories through blood tests that could be performed rapidly while using very small amounts of blood.
Holmes provided false statements to investors and showed them fake demonstrations of the medical testing device to persuade them to invest in her company, breaching the principle of honesty and the standard of integrity.
The show touches on experiences that motivated Holmes’s deceptions and lies, starting from the beginning and all the way to her exposure as a fraud.
In the end, millions of people’s health and lives were put in danger due to inaccurate blood test results, 700 million dollars of investors’ money was lost, and 800 people lost their jobs.
Holmes’s sentenced to 11+ years (135 months) in prison. Sunny Balwani, who spent six years as Theranos’s chief operating officer and ex-romantic partner of Holmes, has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison over his role in the now-defunct blood-testing firm.
Documents the rise and fall of Travis Kalanick, the corruption in his Uber empire, and the myriad of scandals that included allegations of [data privacy scandals](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/uber-secret-program-greyball-resignation-ed-baker#:~:text=The program helped Uber drivers avoid being ticketed.&text=Greyball used geolocation data%2C credit,operations%2C according to the Times.), workplace discrimination, and sexual harassment, and captures the arrogance of the company executives very well.
During his ride-hailing company’s meteoric rise, he came to personify the aggressive, risk-taking nature of a new generation of tech start-ups intent on “disrupting” other industries like taxis, hotels, and food delivery. Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion.
CEO Travis Kalanick, who is ultimately stepped down from the company’s board of directors, severing his last tie with the business in a boardroom coup after tense internal and external battles.
Uber has turned Kalanick into a billionaire, he currently runs a venture fund and a start-up that operates “dark kitchens” — cooking facilities that prepare food for delivery.
Documents the greed-filled rise and inevitable fall of WeWork, a coworking space company and one of the world’s most valuable startups whose valuation reached $47 billion in 2019 before crashing as a result of financial revelations.