The Scale is New, the Idea Isn't
Last night, I was doing a bit of home-related work and wanted to have something on in the background so I chose BlackBerry, the 2023 film about yes, the rise and fall of Research in Motion (RIM). I had seen it before and liked it and now it's on Netflix; it's just a great rewatch. Anyway, there's a sequence about midway through that made me pause. Under threat from Palm, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie, realizes they need a game change.
"Okay, party's over," as he rushes in to tell his RIM employees, interrupting the sacred movie night. "You guys having fun? Because we're about to lose our fucking company."
A verbal back-and-forth ensues between Balsillie and co-founder Doug Fregin, who informs him that they can't possibly sell more devices because of the "network limit load" the carriers are facing. At that point, Balsillie pulls his co-CEO (and Fregin's co-founder) Mike Lazaridis aside to ask him what a network limit load is and how to fix it. Lazaridis tells him that without the carriers rebuilding their networks, RIM would need to figure out a way to shrink their data. "These guys can't do it," Lazaridis sheepishly admits about his current employees.
Balsillie: "What do you mean they can't do it?! You said they were the best engineers in the world."
Lazaridis: I said they were the best engineers in Canada.
When Balsillie asks who could do it, Lazaridis tells him that maybe the "top guys" at Motorola or Microsoft or Google.1
With that – after going to rally the sales team to kickstart his plan – Balsillie hops on his private jet and flys straight to Mountain View. The next time we see him, he's on Google's campus in the office of Paul Stannos, Google's head of physical engineering. The pitch is simple: "Come work for me." So simple that Stannos just laughs at the hubris. Of course he can't just go work for him – he works at Google. "How much money do you want?" Stannos gets up to close his office door.
Balsillie: "I'll give you a million dollars if you sign right now."
Stannos (as he unplugs his computer from the ethernet): "I am not moving to Canada. We are not having this conversation."
Balsillie: "Two million."
Stannos (very uncomfortable): "Stop."
Balsillie: "Three million."
Stannos: "I need you to leave."
Pause.
Balsillie: "Ten million."
Stannos (thinking): "Well you don't have ten million dollars."
At this point, Balsillie opens his briefcase and presents Stannos with a million dollar option deal. He says he'll backdate the options to make it so that if RIM can hit their Merrill Lynch target, those options will be worth more than $10M.
Now, there are two problems here. First, Paul Stannos is not real. Second, the whole backdating options element was real in so far as people – namely Balsillie and Lazaridis got in trouble for this and ultimately settled with the SEC – but it doesn't seem like it was specifically tied to the recruiting of top talent as portrayed in the film. (There are... a lot of liberties in the film, which was adapted from a book.) At the same time, the high level notion of RIM feeling the need to pay – and perhaps overpay – to lure top talent to Canada does seem accurate.
And so in a weird way, this movie that came out two years ago – and specifically that sequence – feel more like a representation of what is currently happening at Meta with their, and specifically Mark Zuckerberg's, attempts to lure the top AI talent in the world to the company. Again, there are Hollywood liberties, but the high-level notion of these outlandish pay packages tied to stock performance – it's all right there on screen.
Yes, the scale is different – $10M? Try $100M or even $1B these days! And yes, there's no fraud – I mean, hopefully! But the general mentality is the same. Mark Zuckerberg, like the fictional Balsillie in the movie, realized that his current team wasn't cutting it and that they needed to get the best people in the world in their sectors on board to win. No matter what. One imagines the fictional Stannos could have asked for $100M. It wouldn't have mattered. Balsillie, like Zuck, was going to pay whatever it took to get a "yes". The stakes were that high.
In the case of Alexandr Wang in 2025, that took $14B. For Meta to buy the stake in Scale AI – an offer Wang couldn't refuse. And while others have been refusing Zuck's offers of late, he's clearly going to keep making them. Because like RIM v. Palm, Meta can't afford to lose against OpenAI, Anthropic, and who else? Google.
Back to the movie, Balsillie gets back on his jet and he's off to continue his shopping spree. Microsoft. Nokia. Nintendo. Meanwhile, Stannos shows up at the RIM offices and Lazaridis and Fregin cannot believe he's there. The first of a new SWAT team – the Alexandr Wang of RIM.
Balsillie goes on to get another target out of Motorola – and hires his boss too. It all feels very Zuckerbergian – except it's not. Both because it's fictional but also because it's actually not new. Zuck is just the latest and most extreme example of willing to pay whatever it takes to catch up and win. And whether it works or not – it did for a bit with RIM, until it didn't – he won't be the last.
Anyway, great sequence, great movie.
1 Special shoutout to Fregin popping in to humorously mention John Carmack, the co-founder of id Software, in the scene.
Fregin: "The guy who made Doom."
Balsillie: "What's Doom?"
Lazaridis: "Have you played Wolfenstein?"
A dead stare from Balsillie.
Lazaridis: "Please just don't sell anymore phones.
Carmack, famously, worked at Meta for a time. Though not on AI – he left to go work on AI.