[Off-Topic] Breaking Bad was a very successful startup

First published on 2014-03-28T09:00:33+00:00

I wrote this article in English right after the last episode of the series aired on TV, in October 2013. Since a few months have passed I imagine everyone has had the chance to watch it all. For me this was one of the best TV series of the last few decades. Comes close to “The Sopranos.”

I won’t review every detail of the series since there are many blogs doing that with more competence than I would. I’ll assume you’ve already watched the series and I’m going to talk about parts of the ending, so go watch it before continuing.

People love the series — they root for Heisenberg even knowing that he commits several crimes. Personally, I think it has nothing to do with the actions, literally, but with the story the author is telling.

This is the story of a very, very successful startup, literally the story of a “garage startup,” but in this case in a van. Walter and Jesse start with an idea, some loose change and a lot of effort and work, cooking methamphetamine in the middle of the desert. But they have a characteristic of great entrepreneurs: even with little money, no resources, Walt doesn’t give up on product quality. Jesse is the metaphor for the amateur entrepreneur, who dropped out of college, trying to hit the lottery without experience, without thinking ahead.

For me the whole idea of Breaking Bad is about entrepreneurship. Walt isn’t only an experienced chemistry teacher with real knowledge and talent; he’s also a great businessman. He proved this many times. One example is understanding that to score high, only growing organically Jesse’s way of street distribution isn’t enough.

Then comes Gus Fring, Los Pollos Hermanos, and the explosion in distribution channels. That’s how you scale a business. Gus is Walt’s “Angel Investor.” And it doesn’t get easier after getting investment, it gets much harder. Jesse quickly tires of working so much in the lab, like every young idealist who doesn’t understand real hard work. But Walt is focused on scoring high, at any cost.

And the show shows how to negotiate with partners you particularly don’t like or trust. And you’re playing a demanding game. Once you have the opportunity, you don’t need to do all the dirty work with your own hands: make big dog eat big dog, play the Cartel against Gus. And if everything goes wrong, you can always blow up the nursing home.

In the process what we see is Jesse’s growth. Walt was a great mentor, and his adventures made him stronger. The ending is also about Jesse understanding what he really is and possibly becoming better — in terms of self-knowledge. Now he’ll be ready to commit, sacrifice, instead of just being an idealist. In the real world we have to commit, we have to make sacrifices, there will be collateral damage — you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Nothing worthwhile is easy, and the process will never be pretty.

And the ending is fantastic because Walt finally admits: when you’re entrepreneuring, you should never do it for others. You should never do it for your family, for your friends, for the good of humanity. It should be for you and only for you alone. If you’re not doing it for you, it’s wrong. That’s the most basic concept of entrepreneurship. Benefiting (or harming) others is always a side effect of actions taken with the sole intent of self-benefit. Unless you’re doing it for yourself, if things go wrong you’ll always use others as the easy way out, the excuse. “It went wrong, but I did it with good intentions.” Good intentions don’t matter — results matter. If you do everything for yourself, it’ll always be your only responsibility. No excuses.

And being successful isn’t reduced to glory and fame. As Breaking Bad shows, when your business grows, the competition becomes more aggressive, attacks become more violent, and everyone wants their piece of the pie. It’s only up to you to defend your own territory. And many times you can’t defend yourself alone. Sometimes you need good mercenaries and always a good lawyer, like Mike Ehrmantraut and Saul Goodman, to cover your steps. You need cold-blooded partners to do the deals you can’t do all the time.

Marie represents the worst, most rotten and most degrading thing in the world: mediocre normality. People so intertwined in the status quo, as tedious as their own existence, who have a deadly envy for the people who don’t follow their tiny and insignificant version of “truth,” the path of “being normal.” People full of prejudices, so full of themselves that they will judge everything and everyone all the time. You should keep yourself as far as possible from this rotten type.

Skyler was the same as Marie, but being so close to Walt she fights against herself, she suffers to get out of the box, to get used to taking risks, to think in different ways. She goes through all the common stages of transition: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. In the end we see that she finally understood.

Walt wasn’t the villain — he was a man doing what he knew how to do best. Someone who valued what he did so much that he would never let anything or anyone stop him. And that’s “grit,” something that anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur needs to have, at that same level. Reaching goals no matter what has to be done.

Walt is the best example of an entrepreneur, he’s really like Tony Soprano. The Mafia is the best MBA.