The part that really hit home for me was the whole Winkelvoss plot-line. I got sucked into web development because of a deep desire to create something that will take off and become a hit - it's the best place to be if you're a modern entrepreneur, and I wanted to be a part of it. It's become an addiction for me, one that I fund by doing contracting work on the side. I don't have the money to pay someone else to do it, and even if I did I'd still build it myself.
I've met and been approached by countless Winkelvosses since I've started doing this, and I've always had the same question in my mind: if you want to create something for the web, why the hell don't you figure out how to create it yourself? I started out with ZERO development experience and figured out how to do it - pretty quickly too, in fact. I don't understand how you could stand not being able to act on your ideas yourself if you were truly excited about the prospect of building them out - especially when the barrier of entry to entrepreneurialism has never been lower in the history of business.
That the twins believed they should be compensated for having supposedly given Mark the idea for Facebook cuts right at the heart of what bothers me. The Twins were busy training to be Olympic rowers, besides being gorgeous Harvard supermen and screwing God-only-knows-how-many gorgeous women in the process. Mark was busy coding Facebook. Every waking hour. Obsessively. It's true the Twins had great insight about Facebook's (or ConnectU's) potential. But so did I back in 2002. So did every internet generation college-aged computer geek who'd seen Friendster and MySpace and hotornot.com.
The point, that I know has (rightfully) been beaten to death on HN, is that it's not about the idea. It's about the blood, sweat, and execution of the idea. If you're only coming up with ideas, you're not throwing your hat into the ring as far as I'm concerned. You're playing with monopoly money.
By far the best line in the movie was "If you were the inventors of Facebook, you've had invented Facebook." It was a fist pumping moment for me.
Are you intentionally forgetting the part where Zuckerberg is working for the Winkelvosses, yet not performing any work for them, and coding a competing website at the same time, then launching his site, and telling the Winkelvosses he can't work for them any longer, because of their problem code?
Also, the Winkelvosses had two prior programmers, whose code Zuckerberg had access to.
Later that evening, Zuckerberg told Cameron Winklevoss in an email that he didn't expect completion of the project to be difficult. Zuckerberg writes: "I read over all the stuff you sent and it seems like it shouldn't take too long to implement, so we can talk about that after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night."[9] The next day, on December 1st, 2003, Zuckerberg sent another email to the HarvardConnection team. "I put together one of the two registration pages so I have everything working on my system now. I'll keep you posted as I patch stuff up and it starts to become completely functional."[6] On December 4th, 2003, Zuckerberg writes: "Sorry I was unreachable tonight. I just got about three of your missed calls. I was working on a problem set."[6] On December 10, 2003: "The week has been pretty busy thus far, so I haven't gotten a chance to do much work on the site or even think about it really, so I think it's probably best to postpone meeting until we have more to discuss. I'm also really busy tomorrow so I don't think I'd be able to meet then anyway."[6] On December 17th, 2004, a week later: "Sorry I have not been reachable for the past few days. I've basically been in the lab the whole time working on a cs problem set which I"m still not finished with."[6] On January 8, 2004, Zuckerberg emailed to say he was "completely swamped with work [that] week" but had "made some of the changes ... and they seem[ed] to e working great" on his computer. He said he could discuss the site starting the following Tuesday, on Jan. 13.[9] On January 11th, 2004, Zuckerberg registered the domain name thefacebook.com.[12] Three days later, on January 14th, 2004, Zuckerberg met again with Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra about HarvardConnection, however, he never mentioned registering the domain name thefacebook.com or a competing website, rather he reported progress on HarvardConnection, told them he would continue to work on it, and would email the group later in the week.[9] On February 4th, 2004, Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com.
The Winklevosses and Narendra attempted to force the Harvard administration to act on what they viewed as a violation of the university’s honor code. They took the case to the Harvard Administrative Board and the university president Larry Summers, but it was ruled to be outside of university jurisdiction.[13]
Are you intentionally forgetting the part where Zuckerberg is working for the Winkelvosses, yet not performing any work for them, and coding a competing website at the same time, then launching his site, and telling the Winkelvosses he can't work for them any longer, because of their problem code?
What actually are the rules about that in this situation?
Well, Zuckerberg eventually paid the brothers $65 million dollars (in Facebook stock), after his attorneys advised him he would not do well in a jury trial (according to the movie).
The matter has been settled, so there's little point in arguing the finer details about what happened between Zuck and the Twins. The point I'm trying to make is that the Twins could have avoided all of this if they had gotten off their damn boat and learned how to program themselves. If their idea was so damn revolutionary and game changing, they would have built it themselves or made Zuck sign an NDA. They fucked up, plain and simple. Zuck in the movie put it best (and I paraphrase): "They are just upset that for the first time in their lives things haven't gone exactly how they thought they would."
They weren't programmers. Some people just cannot, and never will be, software developers.
So, they 'fucked up' by hiring someone, and trusting that he was not lying to their faces and scheming behind their backs? I hope those aren't the morals you put to play in your own work.
That's kind of like saying Zuck should have trained hard and gotten on the Crew team so he could have "relations" with the female at the beginning of the movie.
Aslo The Winklevoss brother's insistence on acting as "men of Harvard", could have entirely changed the outcome. Had they immediately sued, the CFO would not let development continue and we would not have Facebook in its current form.
Also, they could have kicked the crap out of the guy, which, although illegal, can be pretty demotivating.
If the Winklevoss's claim had no merit, they would not have received $65 million in Facebook stock, nor would Zuck's attorney advise him against a jury trial.
I don't completely agree with you. You need good ideas, and you need to be able to execute them properly.
An alternate quote could easily be "If Zuckerberg had come up with the idea of Facebook on his own, then he would have come up with the idea of Facebook on his own" and the Winkelvosses wouldn't have had even a weak argument to put forth. Zuckerberg's original execution was more along hot or not, correct? And it wasn't until he had input from the Winkelvosses that he solidified something closer to the current Facebook. That's an important contribution. Whether it deserves any legal or financial reward is another story, but you can't just ignore the importance of an idea.
And I am confident in assuming that Zuckerberg also did not come up with his modern mission of Facebook all by himself, for it to be a social, informal version of Google search (for lack of a better description). Without that pivotal idea, Facebook would die or be dead already, just as MySpace has died.
Not everyone can figure out how to code so easily. That's why you have contract work.
I don't think it "another story", I think it cuts to the heart of the question. What constitutes a business? It is merely the functional aspects? Or is it (as I believe) inherently tied to the larger vision?
To me it's the latter. Successful startups are built at the junction of motivation, skill, and vision. Zuckerberg, as far as I can tell, had the first two... but the third was certainly influenced (if not outright stolen) by his interaction with ConnectU. The twins made a tremendous contribution to Facebook, and were rewarded by (as far as I can tell) fraud on the part of Zuckerberg.
That's most definitely worthy of compensation. I still think they sold out for far too little really.
Tell me exactly what was unique about the idea of Facebook.
It could be summed up in three words: MySpace for Harvard. That's not an idea, that's an obvious conclusion.
I don't argue that you don't need good ideas. I argue that good ideas are a dime a dozen. I argue that no matter how good an idea is, if you can't execute, it's not going to be worth anything.
Im not a tech person and I saw it the opposite way. I really wanted to paint my car red a few weeks ago but I dont have the tools, skills, or means to paint my car so I took it to someone who could.
No different from what entrepreneurs due to coders and vice versa.
If you truly feel this way, next time you have an idea pitch it yourself, sell it yourself, run the books, hire employees, etc.. I mean, if you REALLY wanted to do it, you would and teach yourself accounting, finance, and get a sales background....
The idea that you have to be all in and proficient in every aspect of your company is absolutely ludicrous.
I want to try to avoid hyperbole here, but I think this may have instantly jumped into my top 5 list of favorite movies. Its pacing and acting is unbelievably tight, and it happens to be about one of my favorite topics ever. I have a feeling it's going to give a lot of fellow HNers a queasy feeling in their stomachs like I got; like you need to get back to your computer and start coding right away, and everything is passing you by, that you could catch fire if you just found the right combination, and you should have and maybe did think of it first.. Ugh.. it's what this is all about, HN, startups, etc.
going to give a lot of fellow HNers a queasy feeling in their stomachs like I got; like you need to get back to your computer and start coding right away, and everything is passing you by,
That is exactly how I felt watching it. It's inspiration to work harder.
I went into it expecting to not like it. Actually, I didn't want to see it in the first place ("Psh, a movie about Facebook?") but got free tickets through StartupDigest and decided to go.
Really happy I did — the movie is one of my favorites now. Writing was awesome, soundtrack was fantastic (by Trent Reznor, and $8 to buy: http://www.nullco.com/TSN/), cinematography was enchanting (the tilt-shift part during the crew race was particularly great), and I thought that Jesse Eisenberg in particular did a great job creating both an arrogant but sympathetic character.
Additionally, the movie is pretty inspiring, as other commentators mentioned. Kind of disappointed in myself for being such a 'hater' in the beginning before actually seeing the movie.
The fact that it is so gratuitous is what makes it great. A lesser director would have allowed the studios to cut it, because it doesn't "move the story forward" or other such BS. Instead he gets to tell us what he thinks of the Winkelvosses and their tiny world, in a way I've never seen before.
the opening credit score where Mark is running through Harvard was beautifully crafted. totally set the tone for the 1st half of the movie. Great electronic composition with sparse organic elements.
I left the movie quite satisfied. It was such marvelous dialog paired with excellent directing. I love Fincher's style, though at times it felt like he was being held back, such as during the regatta segment, I felt like he couldn't go as crazy as he would like given the soundtrack.
Sorkin is a master of dialogue, and though the story is wildly inaccurate, I suspended disbelief and enjoyed the ride.
To be fair there'd be no way it could ever be 100% accurate - this is how it goes in real life too. Ask 100 participants in the Facebook history how it all went down you'll get 100 different versions of the story.
That's true, but I think it is a little worse than just accounting for multiple perspectives. The movies is based on "The Accidental Billionaires," whose author didn't interview most (any?) of the main participants other than Eduardo Saverin. When you combine that with Sorkin's loudly proclaimed internet ignorance, I think you can end up with a great movie, but not one that is particularly related to a careful analysis of the 100 different versions of the founding story of Facebook. In The Accidental Billionaires, "Mezrich allows that he invents dialogue, synthesizes details, and puts imagined thoughts into his characters’ heads." If you want a less sensational book, but one where the author interviewed many of the principals I'd suggest Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect
I thought the tech stuff was pretty realistic (although I refuse to believe Facebook was written inside of emacs).
Also I felt the whole "I scored 1600 on my SATs" and shooting down his professor with some technobabble about memory management was a little much. I understand there needs to be elements to add dramatic effect, but I can't help but feel there's a whole generation of assholes out there taking notes and thinking that being arrogant all the time = being right all the time
Very engaging and reflective of the current culture/generation.
As a geek, I liked how they didn't do a lot of fake flashy computer stuff (looked like he was using KDE3 and it was butt ugly). Though netbooks weren't around yet in 2003. ;)
That part at the beginning was certainly realistic.
The part where there were 6 guys interviewing for facebook by taking a shot a minute "cracking SSL" or whatever it was surrounded by 30 screaming people was not realistic.
Yeah, it was Swordfish-esque. And they started so well. Too bad.
I guess the screenwriter just needed a "triumph" moment at that point in the script, something that the audience can share in other than some interns completing a programming assignment.
I was definitely surprised by how good it was, I read the book last year (very good as well), but I was expecting the movie to be more cheesy. I would see it again with no problems when it will be on netflix.
I really don't think the grandparent meant that Facebook is a subculture. I think he meant that startups and founders are the subculture and that Facebook is a result of that culture.
At it's core the plot is about a pretty specific experience (the challenges of founding a tech startup as a young, inexperienced hacker), but the emotions and the drama are universal, which is why I think the movie will enjoy widespread success.
At the end of the day, though, it's about founders and hackers and startups. And that's awesome.
I was actually wondering how well the movie will do because, while it's about a service used by 500 million people, it's not about the service itself but about the creation and early days of the company. So a facebook user might not necessarily be interested.
I thought it was a very well made movie, and Fincher has a way with these kind of scripts that lack a traditional story arc that leaves them compelling anyway.
It is kinda funny that Sean Fanning's name in the movie is Sean Parker. Or was that character supposed to be someone else and to protect the identity they claimed he made "napster" instead of whatever he really made? Certainly Timberlake looks nothing like Fanning.
I think the movie is a bit kind to Zuckerberg, but then, it is pretty hard to make a movie focused on a single individual and not have it come out sympathetic. Unless that individual is, say, hitler or idi amin.
I enjoyed the mental thought process and geek speak of Zuckerberg when he tried to hack into harvard's network and hire the first intern. A lot of people in the theatre around me were visibly confused, while I was actually able to follow along and think to myself "hey, I know that term!." Pretty cool.
The best part for me was when Mark was hacking early in the movie and mentioned Emacs... I looked over at my wife who laughed, as she's used to me saying similar things.
