Movies like The Startup Kids (2012)
The best movies like The Startup Kids (2012) are The Patent Scam (2017), General Magic (2019) and 8 Bit Generation: The Commodore Wars (2016). If The Startup Kids hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedTPB AFK: The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard (2013)7.2/10 from 368 votes
- NewestFinding Satoshi (2026)Released 2026
The Patent Scam (2017)
The corruption runs deeper than you'd ever imagine. A multi-billion dollar industry you've never heard of. This is the world Patent Trolls thrive in: A world created for them by our own U. S. Patent system. You can be sued for clicking on a hyperlink, using your own scanner, or sharing your Wi-Fi! It sounds insane, but the reality is even crazier. Patent Trolls look for obvious ideas, patent them, and then sue anyone they claim is infringing on their idea. People's lives and businesses are being destroyed.. and they have no way out. “The Patent Scam” exposes the underbelly of this system, and the people that commit this practice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
General Magic (2019)
A tale of how the great vision and epic failure of General Magic, the "greatest dead company in Silicon Valley", changed the lives of billions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like this8 Bit Generation: The Commodore Wars (2016)
The rise and fall of Commodore computers in the 70s and 80s as described by the people who created the companies and technologies.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Startup.com (2001)
Friends since high school, 20-somethings Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman have an idea: a Web site for people to conduct business with municipal governments. This documentary tracks the rise and fall of govWorks.com from May of 1999 to December of 2000, and the trials the business brings to the relationship of these best friends. Kaleil raises the money, Tom's the technical chief. A third partner wants a buy out; girlfriends come and go; Tom's daughter needs attention. And always the need for cash and for improving the site. Venture capital comes in by the millions. Kaleil is on C-SPAN, CNN, and magazine covers. Will the business or the friendship crash first?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Downloaded (2013)
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSomething Ventured (2011)
Apple. Intel. Genentech. Atari. Google. Cisco. Stratospheric successes with high stakes all around. Behind some of the world's most revolutionary companies are a handful of men who (through timing, foresight, a keen ability to size up other people, and a lot of luck) saw opportunity where others did not: these are the original venture capitalists. All were backing and building companies before the term 'venture capital' had been coined: companies that led to the birth of biotechnology and the spectacular growth in microprocessors, personal computers and the web. SOMETHING VENTURED uncovers the ups and downs of the building of some of the greatest companies of the twentieth century, and the hidden dramas behind some of the most famous names in business.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Code Rush (2000)
Life on the edge in Silicon Valley - home of high tech, high anxiety, and high stakes. Take a revealing look at Netscape Communications engineers as they set out boldly and brazenly to save their company. A virtual panorama of human drama and techno-thrills, Code Rush puts you at the center of the high-intensity clash of science, engineering, and commerce.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Vitalik: An Ethereum Story (2024)
Chronicles tech visionary Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum's community of builders as they fight for an open internet accessible to all.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996)
It happened more or less by accident; the people who made it happen were amateurs; and for the most part they still are. From his own Silicon Valley garage, author Bob Cringley puts PC bigshots and nerds on the spot, and tells their incredible true stories. Like the industry itself, the series is informative, funny and brash.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Silicon Cowboys (2016)
Launched in 1982 by three friends in a Houston diner, Compaq Computer set out to build a portable PC to take on IBM, the world’s most powerful tech company. Many had tried cloning the industry leader’s code, only to be trounced by IBM and its high-priced lawyers. Explore the remarkable David vs. Goliath story, and eventual demise, of Compaq, an unlikely upstart who altered the future of computing and helped shape the world as we know it today.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGeneration Startup (2016)
Generation Startup takes us to the front lines of entrepreneurship in America, capturing the struggles and triumphs of six recent college graduates who put everything on the line to build startups in Detroit. Shot over 17 months, it's an honest, in-the-trenches look at what it takes to launch a startup. Directed by Academy Award winner Cynthia Wade and award-winning filmmaker Cheryl Miller Houser, the film celebrates risk-taking, urban revitalization, and diversity while delivering a vital call-to-action-with entrepreneurship at a record low, the country's economic future is at stake.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Google and the World Brain (2013)
The most ambitious project ever conceived on the Internet: Google's master plan to scan every book in the world and the people trying to stop them. Google says they are building a library for mankind, but some say they also have other intentions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook (2012)
In the hands of Mark Zuckerberg, an unassuming student site is transformed into a social medium that spreads like wildfire around the world. Facebook is now a high-tech profit machine with high expectations. At the same time, some are worried about a new IT bubble.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (2012)
In a television interview filmed in 1995, Steve Jobs talks frankly about his early life, competition with Microsoft and his vision for the future, while he was running NeXT, the company he founded after leaving Apple.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFinding Satoshi (2026)
At the center of Bitcoin lies the greatest unsolved mystery of the digital age. Who created it, and who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Finding Satoshi presents the conclusion reached after a four-year, evidence-based investigation, drawing on original reporting and rare access to key figures in crypto to uncover the human ideas, motivations, and philosophy behind the code that reshaped global finance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
We Live in Public (2009)
In 1999, Internet entrepreneur Josh Harris recruits dozens of young men and women who agree to live in underground apartments for weeks at a time while their every movement is broadcast online. Soon, Harris and his girlfriend embark on their own subterranean adventure, with cameras streaming live footage of their meals, arguments, bedroom activities, and bathroom habits. This documentary explores the role of technology in our lives, as it charts the fragile nature of dot-com economy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNetflix vs. the World (2020)
The story of how a tiny, broke Silicon Valley startup slew giants of the movie rental world, warded off Amazon and forced movie making and distribution into the digital age.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ Trivia (2023)
This timely documentary chronicles the tech-fueled rise and Fyre-style fall of HQ Trivia, the revolutionary "game show on your phone" app that went viral, swept the nation, then crashed and burned. The global live-play game sensation drew millions of daily users to its frenetically fun trivia challenges and cash prizes, attracting celebrity fans including Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Neil Patrick Harris, Jimmy Kimmel, and Kelly Clarkson. But its success was undone by corporate clashes, cast changes, and a tragic death. Told through the eyes of former host Scott Rogowsky and other first-person players from inside and outside the company, the film documents the real-life comedy and tragedy that unfolded in front of and behind the cameras.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
CodeGirl (2015)
Join high school-aged girls from around the world as they try to better their community through technology and collaboration in this thrilling, heartfelt documentary. By 2017, the app market will be valued at $77 Billion. Over 80% of these developers are male. The Technovation Challenge aims to change that by empowering girls worldwide to develop apps for an international competition. From rural Moldova to urban Brazil to suburban Massachusetts, CODEGIRL follows teams who dream of holding their own in the world’s fastest-growing industry. The winning team gets $10K to complete and release their app, but every girl discovers something valuable along the way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Easy to Learn, Hard to Master: The Fate of Atari (2017)
Before Google, Yahoo and even Apple, before the Silicon Valley cliché of informal dress code, skateboards running the corridors and wild creativity became commonplace, one company embodied the digital economy lifestyle and business style: the one firm coming out of the Age of Aquarius was Atari. The story of Atari is two-thirds the story of Nolan Bushnell, founder and visionary, and one-third the first and probably biggest boom and bust of the new economy some 20 years before the new economy even existed. Atari was showing that technology is cool, way before the personal computer revolution took place and they were reaching out to an ever-growing audience with something that is still cool today: video games. Atari literally introduced the digital world to the mass consciousness.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Inside the Internet: 50 Years of Life Online (2019)
Explore how in the past five decades, the internet has changed the very fabric of our society, highlighted by interviews with the founders of AOL, Craigslist, Friendster, Match, and Tinder.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Seed (2017)
Fourteen teams of hackers. Three minutes to pitch. One shot to fund their dreams. Immerse yourself in Angelhack, one of most competitive global hackathons.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Deep Web (2015)
Deep Web gives the inside story of one of the most important and riveting digital crime sagas of the century -- the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the 30-year-old entrepreneur convicted of being 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' creator and operator of online black market Silk Road. As the only film with exclusive access to the Ulbricht family, Deep Web explores how the brightest minds and thought leaders behind the Deep Web and Bitcoin are now caught in the crosshairs of the battle for control of a future inextricably linked to technology, with our digital rights hanging in the balance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (2021)
Explore the rise and fall of one of the biggest corporate flameouts and venture capitalist bubbles in recent years – the story of WeWork, and its hippie-messianic leader Adam Neumann.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSilicon Valley (2013)
In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip — an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances. SILICON VALLEY tells the story of the pioneering scientists who transformed rural Santa Clara County into the hub of technological ingenuity we now know as Silicon Valley.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Creepy Line (2018)
An eye-opening documentary, The Creepy Line reveals the stunning degree to which society is manipulated by Google and Facebook and blows the lid off the remarkably subtle - hence powerful - manner in which they do it.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019)
With a magical new invention that promised to revolutionize blood testing, Elizabeth Holmes became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, heralded as the next Steve Jobs. Then, overnight, her 10-billion-dollar company dissolved. The rise and fall of Theranos is a window into the psychology of fraud.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTPB AFK: The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard (2013)
TPB AFK is a documentary about three computer addicts who redefined the world of media distribution with their hobby homepage The Pirate Bay. How did Tiamo, a beer crazy hardware fanatic, Brokep a tree hugging eco activist and Anakata – a paranoid hacker libertarian – get the White House to threaten the Swedish government with trade sanctions? TPB AFK explores what Hollywood’s most hated pirates go through on a personal level.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCode 2600 (2011)
CODE 2600 documents the rise of the Information Technology Age as told through the events and people who helped build and manipulate it.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Silk Road: Drugs, Death and the Dark Web (2017)
Documentary looking at the black market website known as the Silk Road, which emerged on the darknet in 2011. This 'Amazon of illegal drugs' was the brainchild of a mysterious, libertarian intellectual operating under the avatar The Dread Pirate Roberts. Promising its users complete anonymity and total freedom from government regulation or scrutiny, Silk Road became a million-dollar digital drugs cartel.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Startup Kids?
The closest matches to The Startup Kids are The Patent Scam (2017), General Magic (2019) and 8 Bit Generation: The Commodore Wars (2016). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Startup Kids?
People who watched The Startup Kids most often go on to The Patent Scam (2017), General Magic (2019) and 8 Bit Generation: The Commodore Wars (2016).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Startup Kids?
TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard (2013), rated 7.2/10 by 368 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Startup Kids?
Finding Satoshi (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Startup Kids?
Yes: The Patent Scam (2017), General Magic (2019) and 8 Bit Generation: The Commodore Wars (2016).
How are movies similar to The Startup Kids chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Startup Kids, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.