From utopia to dystopia in two decades
Emma Stone's biotech CEO in *Bugonia* delivers a masterclass in passive-aggressive toxicity, her smile frozen as she suggests employees who still have work should "absolutely stay" past the new 5.30pm cutoff introduced to combat burnout. The scene is fiction. The character feels utterly familiar.
"Do I wince when I see them on screen? Occasionally," admits Jason Druker, chief commercial officer at London-based VC firm SFC Capital. "Mostly I find myself thinking: 'Yes, I have definitely met a diluted version of that person.'"
That admission, from someone who spends his days evaluating startups and sitting on panels with founders, suggests something more uncomfortable than Hollywood caricature. The tech villain has become cinema's default antagonist not because screenwriters lack imagination, but because the archetype resonates. And increasingly, people inside the sector are admitting it.
The tonal shift has been dramatic. Films from the late 1990s and early 2000s explored technology with philosophical optimism—could a robot develop genuine sentience, and what would that mean for humanity? *Bicentennial Man* and *A.I. Artificial Intelligence* approached the question with earnest curiosity.
That sensibility has curdled. According to Milette Gillow, cofounder of The Tech Bros, an accelerator for women founders, contemporary films present AI as a seductress in *Her*, a manipulator in *Ex Machina*. Technology transformed from subject to threat.
The timeline matches tech's evolution from scrappy underdog to consolidated power. Mark Rylance's tech solutionist in *Don't Look Up* dooms humanity with an overcomplicated scheme to intercept a comet, prioritising his own vision over straightforward solutions. Lukas Matsson in *Succession* behaves like a boorish European founder because he was written as one. Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor borrowed his mannerisms from Silicon Valley, just as his earlier portrayal in *The Social Network* helped establish the archetype.
Streaming services have leaned hard into this territory. *WeCrashed*, *The Dropout*, and *The Playlist* mined real founder catastrophes for prestige drama, betting audiences would tune in for thinly veiled versions of Adam Neumann, Elizabeth Holmes, and Daniel Ek. They were correct.
Why the stereotype works
Renée Shaw, a creator at German AI company Tl;dv who lampoons figures like Sam Altman on LinkedIn, offers a blunt diagnosis. "Because they genuinely are bad at understanding how they come across. The industry spent 15 years saying 'we're making the world a better place' with a straight face. The lack of self-awareness is the joke."
What makes this reputation crisis different from previous tech downturns is the nature of the criticism. Druker contrasts it with the dotcom crash: "Back then it was about overhype and froth. Now it's about power." Platforms shape electoral outcomes. AI systems reshape labour markets. Founders speak in world-historical tones about their apps whilst governance scandals accumulate—Cambridge Analytica, FTX, WeWork, Theranos.
Shaw's observation cuts deeper: "None of these movies are saying 'technology bad'. They're saying: 'Unchecked power plus a God complex plus nobody saying no equals bad.'"
The cultural shift reflects genuine public anxiety, not manufactured outrage. When tech leaders bypass traditional media scrutiny entirely—speaking only through owned platforms or sympathetic podcasts where the hardest question might be "how are you killing it so much?"—the perception problem intensifies rather than resolves.
The unglamorous defence
British founder Gavin Wade, currently developing a startup "in stealth", pushes back against the stereotype. "In my experience, 99% of tech founders are exceptionally good, generous people," he claims. "They see a problem that is causing people pain and are using tech to solve it."
That figure is unsubstantiated opinion rather than data, but the underlying point about visibility bias has merit. Druker notes that cameras rarely capture "founders grinding away at climate tech, health diagnostics, supply chain software. 'Person builds moderately successful B2B SaaS company and improves procurement efficiency' does not sell much merch."
Yet venture capital allocation data suggests Wade's framing may be generous. Whilst some founders do tackle unglamorous problems in climate and healthcare, funding concentration remains heavily weighted toward consumer applications and enterprise software. The sector's capital flows reveal what investors actually bet on, which often differs from its self-image.
Lovable founder Anton Osika, who reportedly walks around the office in socks and speaks enthusiastically about charitable giving, represents the counter-stereotype. His Netflix takedown seems unlikely. But the question worth asking is whether his approach represents the sector's centre of gravity or its periphery.
Reputation as recruitment challenge
The entertainment industry's portrayal creates tangible business implications. Talent recruitment becomes harder when your sector serves as shorthand for dystopian villainy. Regulatory sentiment hardens when policymakers absorb the same cultural messages as everyone else. When Mark Zuckerberg last sat for a mainstream media interview becomes a telling data point—tech leaders increasingly speak only to audiences they control.
The sector's defenders often frame criticism as attacks on innovation itself, mistaking legitimate questions about governance for technophobia. That defensive posture may explain why the reputation slide continues. Shaw's satirical LinkedIn posts about Sam Altman gain traction precisely because the gap between rhetoric and reality provides endless material.
Whether tech's reputation recovers depends partly on whether insiders like Druker continue admitting they recognise the stereotypes in their own professional circles. That self-awareness represents either the first step toward cultural change or evidence the problem runs too deep to fix. The difference matters for founders trying to hire engineers who've watched *The Dropout*, for investors managing limited partner concerns, and for an industry that spent years insisting it was making the world better whilst struggling to prove it.
