True stories of how business empires rise, and why they fall. One company per file: the climb, the moment it broke, and three lessons you can use. Researched and fact-checked by our team, narrated with an AI voice.
Why did Atari fail? In September 1983, trucks dumped Atari game cartridges in a New Mexico landfill and workers poured concrete over them. One year earlier, Atari was bringing in about $2 billion a year.
Every Empire File is a video first: the real photos, the documents and the numbers, on screen as the story unfolds.
Why did Atari fail? In September 1983, trucks dumped Atari game cartridges in a New Mexico landfill and workers poured concrete over them. One year earlier, Atari was bringing in about $2 billion a year.
Why did Pan Am fail? More than 93,000 people signed up for Pan Am's first flights to the Moon. Twenty years later, the airline that defined the jet age was gone.
In August 2000, Enron's stock hit $90. Fifteen months later it was worth 61 cents. Fortune had called it the most innovative large company in America. What it was really inventing was its profits.
On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy with $639 billion in assets, the biggest bankruptcy in American history. The firm had lived through the Civil War and the Great Depression. It didn't survive one weekend in 2008.
In 1993, Sears shut down its famous catalog. One year later, Amazon was founded. Sears had been selling to people at home for a hundred years.
In 2005, three investment firms bought Toys R Us for $6.6 billion. More than $5 billion of it was borrowed, and the toy store itself had to pay it back. Twelve years later, Toys R Us was bankrupt. Six months after that, all 735 of its American stores were closing.
In February 2008, Microsoft offered $44.6 billion for Yahoo. Yahoo said no. Eight years later, it agreed to sell its core internet business to Verizon for less than $5 billion.
In July 2006, for one week, MySpace was the most visited website in America by one research firm's count, ahead of Google and Yahoo. News Corp had bought it a year earlier for $580 million. In 2011, it sold MySpace for about $35 million.
In 1999, Tata flew to Detroit to sell its struggling car business to Ford, and according to a Tata executive who was there, the meeting was humiliating. Nine years later, Ford was the one selling, and Tata bought Jaguar and Land Rover for $2.3 billion. Then the financial crisis hit.
In 2019, WeWork was valued at $47 billion, the most valuable startup in America. It also owed about $47 billion in future rent. Six weeks after it filed to go public, its founder was gone and the IPO was dead.
In April 2020, Quibi launched with $1.75 billion in funding, two of America's most famous executives, Hollywood's biggest stars, and a Super Bowl ad. Six months later, it announced it was shutting down.
In 2009, the President of the United States fought to keep his BlackBerry. Less than five years later, BlackBerry lost nearly a billion dollars in a single quarter and cut 40% of its workforce.
In 1975, a young Kodak engineer built the world's first handheld digital camera. Management's reaction, as he remembers it: "That's cute, but don't tell anyone about it." Thirty six years later, Kodak filed for bankruptcy.
In 2000, Netflix offered to sell itself to Blockbuster for $50 million, and Blockbuster said no. That's the famous version. The real story is stranger: a few years later, Blockbuster was actually beating Netflix. Then it walked away from the plan that was working.
In 2007, almost 4 in every 10 phones sold worldwide were Nokias. Less than seven years later, Nokia sold its entire phone business to Microsoft.
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