5 Startup Lessons from the General Magic Movie
Silicon Valley’s Most Important Failure
The reason this story so haunts the people that were involved, that they still live with it, is because they knew that they were right.
Epic failures are inevitable when you are innovating but not many are as compelling or world changing as General Magic was.
General Magic was a company spun out of Apple almost thirty years ago. Led by Marc Porat who had a vision of what the future smartphone would look like, and alongside the Macintosh team’s Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson, the company was destined for great things. But it wasn’t to be.
With many of the original team as narrators in the film, we learn how Porat’s idea in 1989 — a handheld device with messaging, note-taking, games and emojis — was way ahead of its time. Despite the dogged determination to build the future of communication, and with an incredible group of designers and engineers at the helm, the end result was not enough. The market just wasn’t ready. After the product’s release, the sales never picked up, the company went…
