The Social Network is now on my official list of ten all-time best business films. While compiling the original list years ago, I discovered that it was daunting task. Good business movies are as rare as hen's teeth.
I just came across the best review of The Social Network to date and I have read scores of them.
Speaking of The Social Network, my two favorite scenes in a film loaded with them are the following:
Just before Mark Zuckerberg begins to build Facemash, he cracks his knuckles and wiggles his fingers to loosen them up while uttering the unforgettable line, "Let the hacking begin!"
The other scene is where he sets a lawyer straight, "The Winklevii aren't suing me for IP theft. They are suing me because for the first time in their lives things didn't work out the way they were supposed to for them."
My only complaint is that we didn't get to see the scene where Mark meets a group of venture capitalists while dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe to deliver a personal message from Sean Parker.
So where do those good ideas come from? This post is a continuation of the one from the other day on the neverending war over who came up with the Facebook concept. The lesson here is that it's extremely difficult to point to any one person as being responsible for a particular idea that turned into something successful. Along the path from mere idea to reality there are normally a lot of people involved who will make a contribution to it..
The bottom line: Chance favors the connected mind, and I might add, those who actually bother to take action on their idea.
I finally got the chance to see The Social Network and enjoyed it immensely. It does a superb job of capturing both the entrepreneurial spirit and excitement of taking an idea and turning it into a real company. More importantly it shows the relentless focus and commitment required of the founders to make it happen. Jesse Eisenberg does a first-rate job in the lead role.
Yesterday I watched Bloomberg Game Changers: Mark Zuckerberg. Apparently the Brothers Winklevoss are going after Zuckerberg yet again for more money. They won a settlement of $65 million the first time around for allegedly having the original and--I might add--highly limited idea.
So how much is an idea all by its lonesome really worth? You know the old joke, "Ideas are like [insert body part]. Everyone has one." There's your answer.
As the movie shows everyone involved was probably influenced by the success of HotorNot. I recall visiting this site myself around 2001 because a forum I participated on had people constantly linking to it. Moreover, by 2001 there was another site which attempted to harness snob appeal by serving as a social network exclusively for Ivy League graduates. It was called "Golden Parachute." However, the site quickly opened up the flood gates to the hoi polloi from any university. As soon as I was eligible for membership my interest level plummeted to zero. What's that other old joke about how "I'd never belong to a club that would have me as a member"?
Once you understand that these two sites and a number of copycats existed years before the Facemash/HarvardConnections/Facebook concepts don't seem all that original anymore. In fact, they just sound tediously derivative.
Then there's the salient fact that the idea presented by the Brothers Winklevoss to Zuckerberg was limited in scope to only people with a harvard.edu email address. It was Zuckerberg who came up with the idea of opening Facebook up to all students and then finally to everyone and his Uncle Wojtus.
So the question that needs to be asked is how much would the Winklevoss's HarvardConnections concept, if limited to Harvard students and grads, be worth today? The answer is probably only a tiny fraction of what Facebook is worth with its current membership of half a billion users.
How I Blew My Big Chance to Become a Matinee Idol
Allow me to share a personal story that relates to the above.
Back in the mid-1980s, director Stanley Kubrick put out a world-wide casting call for fresh faces that looked like US Marines for his upcoming film Full Metal Jacket. I seriously thought about answering the call because I was 6'1", 180 lbs, running 6 miles every day of the week, and doing 3X12 sets of dips at the gym with 60 lbs hanging from my weight belt. If anyone looked like a marine, I did. So I bounced the idea off friends. They said I should do it but I didn't. When the film finally premiered a year or two later, I was shocked to discover that a guy from my college days social circle had won the role of the photographer "Rafterman." This is one of the main characters in the movie.
I had the idea. He executed on it.
Should I have been angry with him for doing what I only day-dreamed about??
No.
Value is Created in the Execution
The takeaway in all this is: Ideas are like belly-buttons. Everyone has at least one.
They literally are a dime a dozen.
The Winklevosses had an idea but it was Zuckerberg who not only executed but continuously improved on it as well. I seriously doubt that the twins foresaw any of the bells & whistles that make Facebook so popular with users today. To use an analogy, it's a bit like the inventor of the wheelbarrow suing the inventor of the car for a share of his profits. Why not since both have at least one wheel? The whole Facebook affair has gotten quite tedious. Sometimes, you just need to know when it's time to move on.
Here's the Bloomberg Game Changers: Mark Zuckerberg video I watched yesterday.
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