What Does Eric Ries Say Movies Get Wrong About Startup Founders?

On Below the Line with James Beshara, Eric Ries says case studies, magazine profiles, and movies mislead people who actually start companies. He names The Social Network and Ghostbusters. In Ghostbusters, the founders are thrown out of a university lab, take out a loan, and spend the money on advertising and technology before they have customers. They are down to the last dollar of petty cash when the first customer walks in. Ries says real life is not darkest before the dawn. It is darkest before you go out of business. The film saves the company from having no customers, and not because the founders did the selling, marketing, and customer development a real startup has to do.