Has entrepreneurial spirit turned sour?

We are living in the golden age of the entrepreneur. Thanks to our collective fascination with billionaire business leaders, start-up moguls are the hottest celebrities of the 21st century. When they aren’t being photographed at red carpet events, they can be found making television cameos or dominating the cultural conversation on Twitter. Long gone are the days when tech founders and start-up moguls lived quietly in the background, making millions yet rarely making headlines. Today, tech entrepreneurs are household names, achieving rockstar status the likes of which was traditionally reserved for – well, rockstars.

The only thing that interests us more than a business success story, however, is one of fraud and failure. Take a look at the biggest pop culture hits from the past few years and you will notice an interesting trend – many of our most-watched television dramas, binge-worthy streaming series and must-listen podcasts have chronicled the rapid rise and fall of would-be entrepreneurs. From the Fyre Festival fiasco to the spectacular fall from grace of WeWork’s Adam Neumann and Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes, these stories continue to captivate audiences around the world. But does the recent…