
Breaking Bad is the Ultimate Startup - spinn
https://www.actionmint.com/daily-mint/start-up/breaking-bad-is-the-ultimate-startup
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untog
Does that mean Walter White is the Ultimate Startup CEO? A man so driven by
his ego that he puts his entire family in mortal danger, blackmails former
business partners, alienates his co-founder and ends up dying alone as a
result of his own hubris?

Actually that might be accurate.

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bly
Spoiler alert?

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untog
If you haven't seen Breaking Bad then you really need to avoid any discussion
topics about it. The ending has been widely discussed pretty much everywhere
(including other places in this discussion, though comically not in the
article itself)

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beat
Now how about something about their relationship with the venture capitalist,
Gustavo Fring? The efforts they had to go to in order to convince him that
they were personally trustworthy, his nefarious plans to steal their IP and
put them out of business, etc?

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kevinmchugh
Fring acqui-hired Walt. He built a business for distribution and sales, then
acquired the competing company for their brand and talent. (Fring ostensibly
had a cook pre-walt, but it's never addressed). He gave Walt a salary instead
of ownership. He saw that Walt was a bad cultural fit, and intended to replace
him with Gale. Once Fring was gone, Walt and Jesse went back into business,
selling their product to Declan, who only had a distribution and sales
organization, and, unlike Fring, was not focused on vertical integration.

The metaphor doesn't work around equity, non-competes, etc., unless you know a
start-up that uses violence instead of legal documents and arbitration.

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itsybitsycoder
Fring's cook pre-Walt was Gale. When Gale saw the quality of Walt's cook he
told Fring there was no way they could compete with that level of expertise.

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camus2
The only thing one can learn from Breaking Bad is you eventually get killed
dealing illegal drugs, and put your family in danger.

There is nothing romantic in BB,it's a gruesome description of a world you
might want to avoid at all cost.

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jmduke
At risk of derailing the original article, this is a really interesting point.
Both Breaking Bad and Mad Men are shows that go at lengths to depict how
flawed, unhappy, and usually outright immoral their protagonists are, but both
Walter White and Don Draper are the target of a lot of escapist fantasies.
(Try searching on Twitter for #TeamWalt.)

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shashashasha
It reminds me of this essay, on Breaking Bad and culture:

"But despite these cautionary endings, they don’t sell Scarface and Godfather
t-shirts at every tourist shop in Manhattan because people like to remind
themselves about the dangers of hubris. Stories and the characters in them are
more than lessons, and a narrative’s most ideologically weighty elements don’t
map onto a seventh grade worksheet about major themes. Long after we’re done
watching we hold moments with us: shot angles and character dynamics, snippets
of dialog and unquestioned premises. The point of critically examining
cultural objects like Breaking Bad isn’t to place them in categories good or
bad, to predict the ending, or even to decode what’s “really” happening; the
point is to pay attention to our attention, to look at how it’s being held, on
what, and how someone’s making money on it. If pop criticism is to be good for
anything, it’s that."

[http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/walter-white-
supremacy/](http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/walter-white-supremacy/)

~~~
001sky
+1 As a general point, illegal activity has entertainment value. Goes for all
sorts, especially killing and violence.

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chasing
"Glurge" isn't the right word... But there's got to be some term for this
genre of syrupy and mostly content-free articles about start-ups.

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rusabd
Keep in mind that BB is ultimately a fiction. The bad traits WW poses does not
necessary means if you follow that path you will do exactly the same bad
things.

I see this story as cautionary tale for underdogs to not try to break free out
of grips of existing "natural" state. Try and pay for the consequences. Just
get second job and try to be happy

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gpcz
While there is some overlap in terms of the mechanics, I would personally
refrain from taking this analogy too far. The point behind capitalism is the
assumption that people are motivated by money but that the profit motive can
be channeled toward ultimately being good for the public. Walt and Jesse's
meth empire caused tons of addictions, murders/deaths (both on and off-
screen), broke up families, required dishonesty at multiple levels, and was
ultimately motivated by ego more than money. Some characters (Gale) also tried
to rationalize the damage their product was doing to the world with flimsy
arguments about "consenting adults wanting what they want" when each
contributor made the choice to get into a business with horrifying societal
consequences.

Capitalism has holes in it, and it's up to everyone to make sure they are
doing things that are good for the world.

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beat
Saying capitalism has a moral component is like saying thermodynamics has a
moral component.

Sadly, confusing beauty with morality has been a failing of Western thought
since at least Aristotle. Just because capitalism is elegant doesn't mean it's
"good" in a moral sense (or "evil" in a moral sense either).

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gpcz
I suspect that we agree more than disagree. What I meant was that we implement
capitalism to generally get abundance of things like food and medicine that we
consider good for society (to the point of calling them "goods"), but that
individuals need to constantly examine and take responsibility for the
morality of their actions under the system.

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beat
I don't think we "implement" capitalism. It just happens, like thermodynamics.
The most brutal communist systems of the 20th century had thriving black
markets. In America, we ban drugs, and marijuana becomes the biggest cash crop
in several states. Capitalism happens as long as two parties can barter in a
satisfactory way.

That's why I react so negatively to associating capitalism with morality. It
beocmes an excuse.

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dublinben
Capitalism and markets are not the same thing. Capitalism is an economic
system in which the means of production are privately owned. A market is just
any exchange of goods between buyers and sellers.

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benologist
Yay another startup whose genius marketing plan is write startup-articles for
HN.

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codeonfire
Breaking bad had a lot to say about work in general. You have to fight for
your income and to be free from enslavement by your fellow man. Also it shows
the downside of being highly and uniquely skilled.

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thearn4
Meh, feels like a bit of a stetch. But still a better analogy then those
consultants who try stretch and apply "The Art Of War" to everything in the
business world.

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mistercow
The Onion pretty much covered this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvGCYyZPYPg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvGCYyZPYPg)

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georgemcbay
Kinda glossed over the part where he died alone, hated by everyone he ever
loved.

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neakor
Oh… how I miss that show :(

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leerodgers
Great show, but this is a bit of a stretch.

