"I prefer the term 'entrepreneur.'" Give me stories about entrepreneurialism.
July 6, 2011 9:47 PM   Subscribe

I've finished watching the HBO series "How to Make It in America." Any other shows, movies, books, fiction or nonfiction, like it? You can interpret that pretty broadly, but, basically, one or two guys (or girls) trying to "make it" (in the big city, or not) by tackling something that's kind of out of their league, which is to create a business from scratch.

It's the ins and outs of starting up a business that interest me (not that the show necessarily covers this in detail), particularly as it relates to non-tech startups, but as I said, you can interpret this question pretty broadly. It might not even be business-related, what I'm looking for.

One example that clicks with me is the book Momofuku: one guy, with the help of some others, jumping into something that's frankly over his head, at least at the beginning, and building something for himself from the ground up.

The Social Network and There Will Be Blood are both great movies, but what would be even better (for the purposes of what I'm looking for here) would be greater detail about the actual building process.

And you can define "business" broadly: could be a book, blog, music album, etc. Actually, the story of Basquiat or Andy Warhol climbing the art world ladder is something I've found interesting.
posted by Busoni to Society & Culture (7 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Microserfs comes to mind. So does The Secret to My Success.
posted by Jagz-Mario at 9:56 PM on July 6, 2011


The Hotel Inspector.
posted by dydecker at 10:27 PM on July 6, 2011


I randomly caught the movie August the other night, which is an odd movie about a startup after the dot-com bubble burst but -- literally -- right before 9/11 (hence the title).

An few docs on the big biz side: The Pixar Story. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 10:28 PM on July 6, 2011


OHHHH, and here is one that is somewhat broadly interpreted: "Herb and Dorothy".

It is the story of this couple that builds this massive art collection, but they are total outsiders in the art world. They decided they wanted to start a collection, and identified a genre that they liked and could afford (and with pieces they could fit in the back of a cab), and over time they found a way to build up this "empire" almost from scratch and completely outside the traditional world of art collectors. I just stumbled upon it on Netflix and was totally captivated.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 10:33 PM on July 6, 2011


The first thing I thought of here was The Apprentice (UK).

I can really recommend War Paint, a book about Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden and how they both built up cosmetic empires from humble beginnings. It might be more autobiographical/social history than what you want but it's still fascinating. Of course both are still enormous business concerns now.
posted by mippy at 4:04 AM on July 7, 2011


Flight of the Conchords
posted by mmmbacon at 7:03 AM on July 7, 2011


Response by poster: Ha, Party Down and Conchords are both excellent shows. I guess I should have clarified that I'm looking for stuff that's more or less rooted in reality, though. I guess the Soup 'r Crackers (if that's what it was?) was rooted more in reality than the Conchords, but some focus and details about that process would be nice.
posted by Busoni at 7:51 AM on July 7, 2011


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