Driven entrepreneurs are not good guys
Joe Nocera nails it here.
Yet where is it written that driven entrepreneurs are also good guys? More often than not, they’re anything but. As a human being, Steve Jobs is the very definition of the word “jerk;” yet he’s also the greatest chief executive alive. The young Bill Gates could be obnoxious in the extreme. At the age of 24, Marc Andreessen was so arrogant that he allowed Time magazine to photograph him on its cover sitting on a throne barefoot.
Unpleasant personality traits are almost required of young entrepreneurs trying to build something lasting. It requires tremendous arrogance to believe that their idea is better than anyone else’s. They need to be immensely selfish, putting their fragile creation ahead of everything else, including important relationships. And they have to be ruthless, tossing overboard friends who were once useful and no longer are. Those are the qualities Aaron Sorkin captures so beautifully in “The Social Network.” That is what Mr. Kirkpatrick largely misses in “The Facebook Effect.”
