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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

Actually, I'd like to see a documentary on the 1000s of people who took risks and failed. It's easy to "ooh and ahh" at success. How about all the ones that didn't make it and still get up each morning and try again. Many people have good ideas and try hard, they just didn't get lucky at the right time.

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While I would also love to see a documentary about that.

Just because Tesla is still alive today, doesn't mean he was lucky. When you look at all the events that took place in between 2002-2008: + Having to sell cars during the 2008 depression + extreme difficulty finding investment + millions in sunk costs on inventory which they threw out (under the first CEO) + going through a divorce war during the IPO. + hiring a designer which started a competing company These events don't seem very lucky.

Startup.com is a good one. It's about a dot com that failed back in the 2000 internet bubble.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/

Also, "We Live In Public" is a good one too.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/

We Live in Public is a great story of what happens when someone without any real interest in building a company, but with a massive ego, gets access to capital. Great, chilling film.

Thanks for the suggestions - "we live in public" is on netflix instant so will watch it sometime this week:

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/We_Live_in_Public/70112751

Same. Not to mention the fact that you aren't even seeing the real story anyway. There are always different versions of events and interpretations of why things happened a certain way.

There was a story a while back about one of the founders and/or creators of Tesla, and how he was pushed out and mistreated by Tesla management. Although we all like to root for Tesla, for me that story casts the company in a different light.

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