Top movies for an Aspiring Entrepreneur
As an aspiring entrepreneur, you are brimming with ideas about your new startup.
You are reading books, networking with like-minded people, and attending the right talks and events. To cut the long story short, you are doing it all. But hey, even we deserve a break once in a while. And what better way to chill than the good old netflix business movies night!
You can binge-watch your favorite movies on Netflix and get inspired by these funny, whacky, out-of-the-box, and inspiring stories of real-life people just like you who built their dream company.
Some of these movies will inspire you to do the right thing in on your journey. Some will be a warning signal against making all the wrong entrepreneurship moves. And all of them will entertain you well!
Let’s check out the seven best movies for you to watch, their storyline, and what you can learn from them.
7 of the Greatest netflix movies Entrepreneurs should Watch!
1. Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened
This movie gives you a checklist of all the things you should never do!
This documentary recreates the infamous Fyre Music Festival that was held in 2017 in the Bahamas. The festival was promoted for months on end through social media like Instagram, featuring supermodels like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner. It eventually turned out to be a fiasco and a scam. People who had reached the festival venue having spent thousands of dollars on tickets were greeted with shabby tents, boxed sandwiches, and portable toilets instead of the luxuries they were expecting.
Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened puts the spotlight on the nightmarish build-up to the supposed three-day luxury festival that eventually turned out to be a ghastly experience for the guests. This brilliant documentary shows not only the plight of the festival guests, but also the Bahamian locals who worked hard for months on the festival site but never got paid.
In this documentary, you get to see and hear some of those people who went for the infamous Fyre Party in the Bahamas in 2017.
The movie is both a comedy and tragedy in the way it portrays the absurdity of people craving for larger-than-life luxuries so much that they easily get duped by phony influencer marketing.
There are many lessons for us to learn from this movie. You should never let your marketing overshadow the actual product or service so much that your customers feel duped.
You must assess your finances judiciously and be realistic in your goals and expectations. The movie focuses on the ethical aspect of using influencer marketing for brand promotion. You must know where to draw the line.
You must not promise things to the customers you could never offer. It’s as simple as that. Ultimately, it’s all about integrity. The founder of the Fyre Festival, Billy McFarland was an ambitious guy who wanted to create a massive buzz and make it big. But at last, ended up in prison because he didn’t respect his clients and investors, and his vision lacked integrity.
2. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
This movie tells an inspiring story that teaches us the value of adversity for entrepreneurship and innovation.
It is based on the real story of William Kamkwamba, a boy from Malawi who saved his village from famine and drought by building a windmill to provide electricity and water. William is forced to drop out of school because he is poor and the family can’t afford his education expenses.
But he has a natural passion for electronics and goes around fixing broken radios of village folks to help his family financially. Even though out of school, William strikes a deal with his school teacher to use the school library in his free time. By reading the books here, he learns all about energy and windmills and applies this knowledge to make his DIY windmill.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a must-watch. The movie tells you that your intent and passion for your project are what ultimately seal the deal. The lack of money, resources, or even lack of support from your community cannot stop you as long as you believe in what you are doing and are persistent. It also teaches you the importance of creating something that helps society or community.
William is drawn to electronics. But the idea of making a windmill strikes only when he sees his village in the grim crisis. William becomes a hero of the village and an innovator. But the desire to innovate stems from the intent to help out his family and village.
3. The Social Network
The Social Network is a biographical drama film based on the life of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It portrays the story of the founding of Facebook and the subsequent lawsuits that Zuckerberg had to face.
The movie is a dramatic portrayal of several events in Mark Zuckerberg’s personal life leading to the innovative idea that would eventually give rise to Facebook. Zuckerberg has a breakup with his girlfriend. He gets angry at her and creates a website called Facesmash, where he uploads photos of female students of Harvard that he manages to steal by hacking into the college databases. He then creates a mechanism to enable site visitors to rate the attractiveness of these women. All this leads to Zuckerberg getting rusticated from college for six months.
But his idea gets popular, and he then expands on it and continues to improvise till it finally becomes Facebook. The movie then portrays how he launched Facebook along with a friend of his, Eduardo Saverin.
The Social Network is another must-watch, as it narrates the gripping story of the founding of one of the most iconic and innovative brands of our times, the social networking site Facebook.
It also teaches us the importance of spotting the right ideas, understanding their potential, and developing them at the right time. The basic idea of Facebook was born from a college guy’s prank. After creating Facesmash, Zuckerberg could have just forgotten the idea and got on with his studies. But the creator in him seized on the idea to develop it further and create something as iconic as Facebook.
That is the real strength you need to develop– to work on the right ideas with persistence and dedication and not give up, no matter how great the pressure is.
4. Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates
What would it be like to get inside the mind of Bill Gates? This documentary series tries to do precisely that. Featuring direct interviews with Bill Gates and Melinda Gates, the movie brings to the audience the life of Bill Gates, and his goals and motivations.
The three-episode series focuses a lot on the development work done by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The movie does not follow a linear narrative. In each episode, the developmental work done by Gates is juxtaposed with insights into his life and work.
In the first episode, we see the work done by Gates to improve sanitation in developing countries. The second episode provides much more insight into the making of Bill Gates, the businessman. It portrays his life in the 1970s when Gates and his high school classmate Paul Allen started earning through their programming skills. They also began to make plans to develop some software to cater to the needs of the fast-growing personal computer market. This episode portrays the events leading to the founding of Microsoft. We get to see how Gates dropped out of Harvard because he didn’t want to delay the launching of Microsoft.
The third episode portrays the story of Bill and Melinda Gates, and how they got together. It also gives a peep into Gates’s handling of multiple accusations regarding Microsoft.
There is a lot we can learn from this documentary. The movie portrays various initiatives taken by Gates and the problems and obstacles he encountered.
One gets to see how he successfully overcame those hurdles through his drive and intelligence. This is the first lesson the movie offers – We need to have determination, drive, and problem-solving skills.
In each episode, we see Gates with a pile of books. The documentary focuses a lot on his voracious reading habits, and how he devours volumes of books on every subject imaginable.
This is the second lesson of this movie. Expanding knowledge is a must for broadening one’s horizons and exploring new opportunities.
Finally, we get an insight into the workings of the mind of one of the world’s most successful innovators. We get to see how solving the world’s problems has always been a part of his vision.
5. The Intern
This famous movie starring Robert de Niro and Anne Hathaway has many lessons you can learn from.
The Intern portrays the rather unusual story of a 70-year-old widower, Ben Whittaker (played by Robert di Niro) interning at the startup of a young woman, Jules Ostin (played by Anne Hathaway). Jules is the founder of an e-commerce fashion startup and Ben is a bored retiree who has tried everything from yoga to Tai Chi to keep busy. When he spots an advertisement announcing that an online fashion site is looking for senior interns, he immediately applies and gets the job.
The paperless world of a modern tech-driven startup is a complete shock to Ben. He knows nothing about using a computer. Initially, he resists and Jules underestimates his ability to contribute to the company. But then one gets to see Ben’s drive, dedication, and openness to learn new things. With the help of his new colleagues, he slowly becomes a pro and proves to be an asset to the company.
The Intern has many lessons for entrepreneurs. Jule’s business is barely 18 months old.
Although the company has surpassed its 5-year goals under her leadership, the investors are unsure about her ability to take the company ahead.
They suggest she hire a CEO. But Jule has trust in her dreams and abilities. She is not the perfect but then no one is. No matter how stuck you feel, you should learn from your mistakes and move ahead. And most importantly, you must have faith in your vision.
The movie also teaches us the importance of continuous learning. You are never too old for learning. A 70-year-old-man starts a new professional life and has to adapt to a completely different skill set. But he takes it as a challenge and accomplishes the feat. No matter, what age or situation you are in, it’s never too late to pick up new skills and do your own thing.
6. Manjhi-The Mountain Man
This movie is based on the real-life story of the late Dashrath Manjhi, a poor laborer in a village in the Indian state of Bihar. Manjhi accomplished the extraordinary feat of carving a path through a mountain with only a hammer and chisel to assist him. He took 22 years to build the path.
Manjhi’ The Mountain Man offers valuable lessons to entrepreneurs. When you genuinely want to accomplish something, you don’t need massive resources.
You just improvise with whatever is available. Manjhi didn’t have access to any tools or equipment, but he still carved a 9.1 meters wide and 110 meters long path through a 7.6 meters high hill.
People called him a madman, but he kept on working. It’s a story of extraordinary grit and determination that every hustler needs to see.
Manjhi decided to carve the mountain road because of a personal loss. His pregnant wife died while crossing the mountain to reach the hospital on the other side.
The loss of his beloved shook him to the core and he became a man on a mission. What relevant lesson does this teach you? It tells you that the trigger is a must for creating an enterprise. You will eventually earn money, but that shouldn’t always be the prime motivation. You got to have a strong motive to achieve something.
Ultimately, the movie tells you that you need a bold and great idea, to begin with. The idea of a lone man carving a road out of a mountain made the villagers laugh at Manjhi.
But he stayed focused on his task and tackled all practical problems step by step. Manjhi started by chipping the smaller stones first. As he gained confidence and skill, he moved on to the bigger boulders. This reinforces the value of creating and fulfilling small actionable goals.
7. The Big Short
This movie is about the chain of events leading to the global financial crisis of 2008. The Big Short tells the stories of those American financial professionals who predicted the 2007-2008 collapse of the housing bubble and profited from the whole thing.
The 2015 Oscar-winning film is an adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book that goes by the same name.
The movie puts the spotlight on the story of Michael Burry who is the manager of hedge fund Scion Capital. It is sometime in 2005 that Burry begins to see through the booming U.S. housing market and starts suspecting that the whole thing is virtually an asset bubble.
Michael Burry spots an opportunity in this and he creates a new kind of financial instrument, known as a credit default swap that would enable him to sell positions based on the assumption that housing prices will take a plunge. His new creation catches the attention of Deutsche Bank executive Jared Vennett, hedge fund manager Mark Baum and several others. Together, these folks make a fortune out of America’s upcoming economic crisis.
The Big Short offers many significant entrepreneurship lessons. It reinforces the importance of having an analytical and critical mind, and not just going by the trends.
When everyone else is sure of the infallibility of the housing market, Bury relies on data instead of popular opinion. He analyses all the data, converts it into insights, and sees through the impending housing bubble.
Michael Burry sees an opportunity and wastes no time in seizing upon it. This is an important lesson for entrepreneurs. When you sense an opportunity, you must take quick and decisive action.
