The Social Network- Lessons Learned From The Movie

I watched a movie recently, and the title of the movie is THE SOCIAL NETWORK. The movie is about how Mark Zuckerberg got started with Facebook and how he built it into a billionaire company. I guess most of you might have watched it? If you haven’t watched the movie, I think you need to go pick it up and watch because you will learn a lot from the movie.

After watching the movie, I learned a lot of things from it and I would like to share it with you guys in order to take one or two things from it. Read on and let me know how you feel about what I learned from the movie (please pardon me, I won’t be talking about the lessons I learned in form of story but I will only share the overall points with you)

Lessons Learned: You don’t have to share your startup idea with anybody just because of the sake of getting feedback on the idea, because you don’t know who is who. People who you share your idea with might have another way of improving the idea. And instead of them telling you and express their mind with you; they will feel like giving it a shot and stabbing you on the back.

That’s why I said that, if you are going to talk about your startup idea with someone, you must know the kind of person you talk about your startup idea with. Why I said that was because, even if you can’t trust anybody, you just have to trust someone. It doesn’t mean that you have to pay attention to what they say, yours is to listen or not!

When sharing your idea with someone, make sure you don’t give the person the full details. You can just summarize what your startup idea is all about in two sentences. But what matters most is the execution of the idea. You might not be the only thinking about that idea, so you just have to go for it and launch it! During the process of transforming your startup idea into a reality, you will learn a lot from it.

As the founder of the startup, you must be bold, you must think big and dream big even when members of your team don’t understand your vision you must tell them that you are getting close to the promise land. And you must be ready to adapt to the startup life. A great founder who understands what it takes to build a business must always look for a way to win; I mean you must be addicted to WINNING.

Thinking about failure is one of the things that will kill your startup and I doubt if it will make it prosper. If you are to build your core team members (cofounders) make sure this people on your server are ready to work with their entrepreneurial minds and make sure that there’s no shady attitude in it. Also hire smart people, people who cherish your vision and not the people with the otherwise. When it comes to building your team, make sure you exercise patience in order not to hit the bad end. Don’t rush and pick anyone who don’t fit your criteria, someone who don’t have the skill you’re lacking.

It’s easy for founders of a company to quarrel and break the whole building apart, but when there’s respect in the team and no one tends to take things personal, all will be fine.

Founders should always be ready to lead, listen to their core members and brainstorm together on how to make it rain (I mean how you will take the company to the next level). You must know who have the final say and make sure you don’t do things to please your partner. Do the things that will satisfy you all and not the things that will not satisfy you, because it might lead to destruction of the company.

All ideas must be protected, you and your cofounders must sign a deal that any idea you talked about must belong to the company. Cofounders who are full of shady attitudes don’t build a great business; they will want to make sure that they do things that will make the company fall apart so that they can go their own way and start their own company, and at the end of the game most of them never build a great company.

Those who think that way are always full of crap and they usually end up blaming themselves. You the founder of the team must not be strong headed all the time, because there are some situations whereby the actual solution to your company is in the hands of your team members.  So learn how to be open minded and know when to follow your guts.

External influence can make you fall, that’s if you are not strong enough and if you don’t truly believe in your startup idea. But if you really believe in your startup idea and you truly know that your startup has a bright future, you just have to keep thinking of the way forward.

Founders who can be easily influenced by external forces don’t build a great company. If I may say, a founder must be the person who knows how to control his or her emotions the most and he or she must be able to help his team mates overcome any external forces that might hinder them from been proactive.

Know the kind of people who you seek advice from, make sure you don’t just carry your company’s problem to meet someone who only have the experience and hasn’t been in the game before. Consult the right people and keep seeking for the right solution.

Note that, the most important thing is how your startup idea is going to impact people’s life and not how you will gain from it. If your startup can solve a pain, forget about the money because the money will be pursing you.

Be cool, nice and make working with you be the best thing people would love to see. Be creative, innovative and learn how to follow your guts. Also stay loyal to the game.

That’s all I can say about The Social Network. So whether you are building an internet company or offline company, all the above lessons shared really matters!

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