[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. A few months have passed, so I imagine everyone has had the chance to watch the whole thing by now. For me, this was one of the best TV dramas of the last few decades. It comes along with The Sopranos.

I won’t review every detail of the series, since there are plenty of other blogs doing that with more competency than I would. I’ll assume you’ve watched the series, and I’m going to spoil parts of the finale, so go watch it before you keep reading.

People love the series, and they root for Heisenberg even knowing he commits plenty of crimes. Personally, I think what grabs people is the story the author is telling, far more than the crimes themselves.

This is the story of a very, very successful startup, literally the classic “garage startup”, except in this case inside a van. Walter and Jesse start with an idea, a few bucks, and a lot of work, cooking meth in the middle of the desert. Even with almost no money and no resources, Walt is adamant about the quality of the product, and that’s a mark of great entrepreneurs. Jesse is the metaphor for the wannabe entrepreneur, a dropout trying to hit the jackpot without experience and without thinking ahead.

For me, the whole idea of Breaking Bad revolves around entrepreneurship. Walt is not only a seasoned chemistry teacher, with real knowledge and talent; he’s also a great businessman, and he proved it many times. One example is understanding that, to score big, growing organically by selling on the streets Jesse’s way just isn’t enough.

Then come Gus Fring and Los Pollos Hermanos, with the explosion in distribution channels. That’s how you scale a business. Gus is Walt’s “angel investor”, and once the money is in, the pressure only goes up. Jesse quickly gets fed up with working so hard in the lab, like every young idealist who doesn’t yet understand what real hard work is. Walt, on the other hand, is focused on scoring big at any cost.

The show also demonstrates how to negotiate with partners you don’t particularly like or trust, in a very demanding game. Once you get the opportunity, you don’t have to do all the dirty work with your own hands: make big dog eat big dog, turn 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 growing up. Walt was a great mentor, and their adventures made him stronger. The finale is also about Jesse understanding what he really is and maybe becoming a better person, in terms of self-awareness. Now he’s ready to commit and sacrifice, instead of being just an idealist.

In the real world, you have to commit and make sacrifices. There will be collateral damage, because you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Nothing worthwhile is easy, and the process is never going to be pretty.

The finale is great because Walt finally admits it: when you’re building an enterprise, you do it for yourself. Not for your family, not for your friends, not for the good of mankind. It’s for you and you alone. If you’re not doing it for yourself, you’re doing it wrong, and that’s the most basic core concept of entrepreneurship.

Benefiting (or hurting) others is always a side effect of actions you take with the single goal of benefiting yourself. As long as you’re not doing it for yourself, you’ll always use others as the easy way out, the excuse. “I screwed up, but I did it with good intentions.” Good intentions don’t matter, results do. If you do everything for yourself, the responsibility is always your own. No excuses.

Being successful is much more than glory and fame. As Breaking Bad shows, when your business grows, the competition gets harsher, the attacks get more violent, and everybody wants a piece of your pie. Defending your own territory is up to you, and you can’t always do it alone.

Sometimes you need good mercenaries and always a good lawyer, like Mike Ehrmantraut and Saul Goodman, to cover your tracks. It’s the cold-blooded partners who handle the deals you can’t touch all the time.

Marie represents the worst and most degrading thing in the world: mediocre normality. People so entrenched in the status quo, so bored by their own existence, that they’re mortally jealous of anyone who won’t follow their tiny version of “truth”, the path of “being normal”. People full of prejudice and full of themselves, who judge everything and everyone all the time. The best thing to do is stay as far away from that rotten kind as possible.

Skyler starts out 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 differently. She goes through all the common stages of transition: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In the end, we see that she finally understood.

Walt was not the villain, he was a man doing what he does best. Someone who values his own work so much that he won’t let anything or anyone stop him. That’s “drive”, and it’s the level of drive anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur needs to have. Reaching the goal, whatever it takes.

Walt is the ultimate entrepreneur role model, really a lot like Tony Soprano. The Mafia is the best MBA in the world.