Television series

Super Pumped

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber is a fast, brutal chronicle of Travis Kalanick's rise and fall, built like a boardroom thriller with the energy of a bar fight. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Kalanick as pure appetite—charming, terrifying, self-destructive—while Kyle Chandler's mentor watches the myth curdle. It's for anyone who loves watching ambition eat itself in real time, with wit sharp enough to sting.

TVMaze rating5.2

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WeCrashed2022

Same anthology format, same species of founder—a self-mythologizing visionary who confuses conviction for genius. Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway make WeWork's collapse feel like a fever dream you can't look away from.

But Leto's performance is a big, strange swing that some viewers find mesmerising and others find simply too much.

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The Dropout2022

Amanda Seyfried is extraordinary as Elizabeth Holmes, and the show shares the same fascination with charisma curdling into fraud—watch how easily smart, ambitious people talk themselves into believing their own lie.

But It's slower and sadder than Super Pumped's testosterone sprint; there's less swagger here and considerably more quiet dread.

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Succession2018

The definitive boardroom drama—if you loved watching powerful men mistake cruelty for strategy, this is the masterclass, funnier and crueller than anything Uber's executives ever managed.

But Four seasons is a real commitment, and almost nobody in it is even trying to be likeable.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Citizen Kane1941

Both are studies of a magnetic, self-mythologizing founder undone by the very people who once enabled him, told through the wounded insiders who knew him best.

The original story of a driven man building an empire on charm and ruthlessness, told entirely through the people who watched him from the inside as he fell.

But It's a stately black-and-white classic; if you need modern pacing or profanity, the shock value has aged into reverence.

Citizen Kane poster
More like this (8)

Billions2016

Same network, same appetite for alpha-male mythology and boardroom knife fights, stretched across seven seasons of hedge fund warfare between a prosecutor and a billionaire.

But It's a long haul, and it leans harder into wish-fulfilment wealth-porn than Super Pumped ever bothers to.

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The Social Network2010

The film that basically invented this genre—the tech founder as tragic antihero, friendship curdling into betrayal, dialogue that crackles like a duel between geniuses.

But Two hours means far less room to breathe than a full season; you get the myth, not the mess.

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Silicon Valley2014

The comic mirror image—same startup culture, same absurd egos, but played entirely for laughs. It's the funniest possible rebuttal to everything Super Pumped takes so seriously.

But If you want your tech satire with teeth and real consequence, the jokes might feel like they're letting everyone off easy.

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Industry2020

Same hunger, same young people convincing themselves that burnout is passion, transplanted to a London investment bank—nastier, sexier, and just as fascinated by how ambition curdles.

But It's more ensemble soap than character study, and less concerned with any real-world reckoning.

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Inventing Anna2022

Another based-on-a-true-hustler drama about someone who talked their way into money and power on pure nerve, told with the same brisk, tabloid energy.

But It's frothier and more style-over-substance, closer to a caper than a genuine reckoning with harm.

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The Big Short2015

For when you want the wider picture: same era, same culture of impunity, but zoomed out to the financial crisis that made moves like Kalanick's possible in the first place.

But It's more about systems than personalities, so if you came for a character study, this might feel colder.

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Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room2005

Swap the dramatization for real footage: the same anatomy of hubris and groupthink, minus Joseph Gordon-Levitt's swagger and with actual consequences on screen.

The real-life documentary blueprint for this whole genre—charismatic executives, a culture that punished doubt, and a collapse that ruined people who never got a vote in the boardroom.

But No stars, no reenactments to soften it—just interviews and financial detail, which can feel dry after a glossy drama.

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Vinyl2016

Both follow a magnetic founder whose genius is inseparable from his self-destruction, just trading venture capital pitch decks for record contracts and rock-and-roll excess.

Same DNA—an industry built on charisma and self-belief, a founder chasing his own myth—except soaked in seventies cocaine and CBGB sleaze instead of Silicon Valley bro culture.

But It's messier and more indulgent than Super Pumped, cancelled after one wild, uneven season that never quite finds its footing.

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Recommended by

The Dropout, Halt and Catch Fire, WeCrashed