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Ask PG: Do you expect "The Social Network" to impact # of YC applications?

24 points by amichail ↗ HN
I have a feeling this movie will motivate a lot of people towards entrepreneurship.

Maybe there will be a bump in YC applications?

14 comments

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pg
Sam Altman told me he thought we'd see a bump. I believe the thing that deters the most people from starting a startup is the sheer unfamiliarity of the idea, and this should make it seem more familiar. So possibly.
amichail
If you review the movie, there might be an even greater bump.
trickjarrett
I left the movie feeling quite motivated for entrepreneurship. I don't know if I'll take the leap into yc and leaving my current job, but I am revisiting some ideas I had previously set aside.
jakarta
It would be great to see a PG review/essay on the movie.
[deleted]
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timr
If people want to be entrepreneurs because of that film, they're in for a huge disappointment. Three years in the valley, and I've yet to see anyone snort cocaine off of a single coed.

That said, I do use emacs a lot. It wasn't all fiction.

cperciva
That said, I do use emacs a lot. It wasn't all fiction.

Well, that's the important part, right?

rdl
Be glad you missed out on 1998-2000.
Psyonic
You also didn't found (or get in early) on facebook, popular with coeds. Start the next facebook, and I lines might be in order!
Nemisis7654
I can honestly say I was a little motivated by the movie. Not because of the way they portrayed startup life with the "groupies", the parties, the seemingly instantaneous success and the money, but because he was a college student (like me) who was focused and passionate enough to attempt to change the world and succeeded. That's motivating.
limedaring
Exactly this. Zuck, in the movie, wasn't the one snorting cocaine or sleeping with everyone — he was the last one in the office working. It was inspiring how driven they portrayed him. Hot women at the party who want to bang him? Hell no, he has to run home and work on some new code.
happy4crazy
Yeah, I have to say, I just got back from watching it and now I'm super pumped to work on my YC app :)
philwelch
I wonder if Wall Street, back in the 80's, generated a lot of interest in people to work in finance. It's an interesting case since in both cases the point of the movie seems to be to make the person (the startup founder in The Social Network, the corporate raider in Wall Street) out to be the bad guy.

EDIT: Wikipedia: "It has also proven influential in inspiring people to work on Wall Street with Sheen, Douglas, and Stone commenting over the years how people still approach them and say that they became stockbrokers because of their respective characters in the film."