Movie You Should Watch: Something Ventured

Eventually I am going to build out a resource library with any media or educational materials I find helpful.  And from time to time I want to give a little more attention to a book or movie that I found particularly intriguing.  One such movie is Something Ventured.

It covers the careers of some of the original Silicon Valley venture capitalists.  It offers a great history of how guys sitting around the table at coffee shops, with informal investment groups, formed what we know today as venture capital firms.

As venture capital is most notably tied to big tech deals that are vastly more capital intensive than any of my needs to date, I am only loosely interested in it.  But I am incredible interested in businesses and industries that are creating their own field to play on, which is exactly what the Silicon Valley pioneers did.

Wether your business cleans houses, handles SEO, or sells medical equipment, the core of scaling your operation remains largely similar.  Hiring and retaining talent, maintaining market share, holding onto intellectual property, managing cash-flow are things every successful business has to excel at.

This movie offers an interesting angle because you have exceptionally brilliant people playing with exceptionally large sums of money. This seems to exaggerate the successes, failures and conflicts in a way that almost makes caricatures out of them which in turn creates big easy lessons to take away.

If you enjoy hearing inspiring histories of companies as I do, you will love this movie.  As an added bonus it is shot and edited in a way that puts it on par with any modern documentary and as such is far more digestible than typical business productions.