Pirates of Silicon Valley 2.0

The Social Network will debut this Friday. There has been a lot of hype in the last few weeks about the movie. Zuckerberg had a big article with the New Yorker and Sean Parker did one with Vanity Fair. Rotten Tomatoes currently has the movie at a 100% rating and critics have compared it to Citizen Kane and The Godfather.

Clearly this movie is already part of history before even being open to the public. All this hype and drama filled around technology and Silicon Valley really made me think about how the rest of the worlds’ view has changed throughout the years of this place. Eleven years ago another movie quite similar debut. It was called Pirates of Silicon Valley. For those who have not heard of it the movie depicts the creation of the two biggest technological empires (Apple and Microsoft) and the story behind how they came to be. This movie went straight to television and their were no lengthy articles about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. I am sure the world outside of Silicon Valley has no idea such a movie exists. I would even bet some people who are part of the Silicon Valley culture have no idea either.

I know that in the New Yorker article Zuckerberg talks about how he is not going to go see the movie and that essentially he is very unhappy about it. I am pretty sure neither Jobs or Gates were too happy about Pirates of Silicon Valley either. From what I gathered Jobs is portrayed as a crazy tyrant, however even he found a way to accept the movie and find a little humor in it. I hope I see Jesse Eisenberg opening the next f8 conference.

I remember when I was first told about Pirates of Silicon Valley I was shunned by my fellow engineers and aspiring entrepreneurs for not already seeing it. Pirates of Silicon Valley was a right of passage for these people. In their eyes you could not fully appreciate how amazing the personal computer is and how difficult it is to start a company unless you saw this movie. After watching it I would have to fully agree with that view. The drama I am sure is a little over the top, but probably accurate in some way. The depiction of how both Jobs and Gates were as young driven innovators has to be as accurate as can be because without them have those types of personalities they would not have created the empires they have today and that is very important for any aspiring entrepreneur to understand. I am definitely curious to see if The Social Network will be able to leave such a lasting impression and if it will allow future entrepreneurs to learn about how intense and difficult it really is to start a company. It will be interesting to see if it becomes the new right of passage.

Also, It is amusing how the da Vinci quote “Good artists create…great artists steal” in the Pirates of Silicon Valley trailer can easily work for The Social Network. I have not seen the movie yet, but if Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher used that quote that would be amazing.