The Social Network is a must watch, especially for entrepreneurs!
The movie is one of the best movies of the year. The acting is fantastic and the movie has by far the best dialogue of any movie this year. More importantly for entrepreneurs, the story will resonate! From Zuck’s interaction with his girlfriend at the beginning of the movie, to his lack of social skills, to his condescending attitude towards those who “don’t get it”, to being on his notebook during boring legal meetings or all alone at night in at the office working on the product, it all felt familiar.
In the movie, Mark is supposed to be the arrogant, backstabbing evil genius, but I only felt empathy and respect and smiled knowingly at the challenges he faced.
Whether you are an entrepreneur or not, go watch the movie!
Mark Zuckerberg was asked what he thought of The Social Network in an October 16, 2010 interview at Y Combinator’s startup school. His response:
“It’s interesting what stuff they focused on getting right. Like every single shirt or fleece they have in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own. But… So there’s all this stuff they got wrong and a bunch of random details they got right.
“The thing that I think that is actually most thematically interesting that they got wrong is the whole framing of the movie. Kind of the way that it starts is I’m with this girl (who doesn’t exist in real life) who dumps me (which has happened in real life, a lot). And basically they frame it as if the whole reason for making Facebook or building something is that I wanted to get girls or wanted to get into some kind of social institution.
“And the reality for people who know me is I’ve been dating the same girl since before I started Facebook so obviously that’s not part of it. It’s such a big disconnect that the people who make movies think of what people in Silicon Valley do building stuff. They just can’t wrap their head around that someone might build something because they like building things.”
Ranjit:
I could not agree more with Mark’s comments. We build products and services (and therefore companies) because we like building them… It’s even more true once you have made enough money you don’t need to worry about making money.