The Social Network
I just finished watching, “The Social Network” at the Spectrum theaters in Irvine. That movie taught me some valuable lessons. And it also reinforced some beliefs that I already had. This movie is more than a dramatization of an internet phenomenon or startup company. The Social Network has a message and a warning that any young business owner or entrepreneur should heed. The first lesson that I learned from The Social Network is that if you own shares of a company, those shares can be arbitrarily devalued. Walking into the movie I thought that shares in a company could only loose value if all the shares lost value. But from the film I gleaned that certain shares of stock could be targeted to lose value. That is a very scary idea. So I am going to think twice before ever signing anything about sharing stock in any of my business endeavors. So that was worth my $9.00 ticket price right there.
Another important thing that I learned from The Social Network is that you need to stay close to the people you are working with. This is especially true when a business is in its infant stages. In the movie, the character who made the initial financial investment into Facebook seemed to allow himself to get distanced from the project. He was concerned with monetizing too early, and he even paid his friend to live on the other side of the continent. He did this even though he saw that a potential threat was in California. The character, “Eduardo,” really allowed himself to be phased out of the business. It is important to stay close to your partners in the early stages of a project. If you are not in close proximity and tight communication, you can end up losing clout in your own project.
Something that got reinforced by the movie was how there is karma in business. Even though the main character made billions of dollars for himself. He still could not escape the dubious karma about the beginnings of his business. His initial notoriety and success on “facemash.com” (I don’t think this site exists anymore) was created at the expense of other people. And even though the main character, Zuckerberg made tremendous amounts of money in the end. The negativity of his beginnings will forever be immortalized in, The Social Network.
Overall, the film was an extremely pleasurable and interesting viewing experience. I haven’t had this much fun in a movie since I saw, “Inception.” There was one line in the film where Justin Timberlake’s character was talking about how he brought down the record industry. One character asked Timberlake about it and he responded by asking something like: Are you going to run out and invest in a Tower Records anytime soon? (Not a direct quote – paraphrase) I felt that the question summed up the whole movie and how individual people actually do have power. This is true even in a dynamic and huge system that we have today.
-Tyler