In this solo advice video, Ozan Sonmez, the "Brutally Honest Mentor," presents a curated list of movies and documentaries that he believes every startup founder should watch, either for personal enrichment or as a team‑building exercise. He explains how each title offers concrete lessons relevant to entrepreneurship, ranging from the early tech rivalry depicted in Pirates of Silicon Valley to the ethical dilemmas of social media in The Social Dilemma. For each recommendation he highlights the core insight – such as persistence and ethical pitfalls in The Founder, the necessity of clear communication and legal safeguards in The Social Network, the power of craftsmanship and relentless improvement in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and the broader geopolitical and competitive lessons from the Jack Ma/Alibaba documentary. He also stresses the value of watching these films back‑to‑back to spark discussion among founders, using them as a lens to reflect on their own challenges. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to like, comment, subscribe, and suggest additional titles, positioning media consumption as a strategic tool for perspective‑taking and inspiration in the founder journey.
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Hi everyone, this is Ozan again, your brutally honest mentor. We're back with another video for all the founders and entrepreneurs or startup enthusiasts out there. Today, like, we're gonna switch gears and talk a little bit about the movies and series that I believe every founder should watch, either in their leisure time or even as a team-building activity. This we have tried with teams that we have invested and we worked with and it's really an interesting way to start leaving the troubles of your startup, day-to-day problems, but then coming back to them with the lens of some creative activity, which is in this case is the movies and series. So we'll dive in right away. Pirates of Silicon Valley. It's very critical that you're understanding how this mythological universe of Silicon Valley have been evolved. The Pirates of Silicon Valley talks about the giants, the Apple and Microsoft, and it gets you into their initial journey in 1970s where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates started from 2 different places, from California and from Seattle, And had, by force of nature, became competitors, became collaborators, and there is still debates about who stole what from who even today. The early days of this internet revolution, or computer revolution to start with, had been very interesting to watch with founders, and they understood the history behind all these companies and why they're still like neck-to-neck fighting to each other. It's an eye-opening look at the drive, the passion, the— well, the ruthlessness that fueled their success and their fights. So watching Iconic Entrepreneurs will start giving you a few examples of the challenges you might be facing and the setbacks you might be facing and how you can deal with them. The second movie— and in this list, it's not a list of things that you will learn from necessarily, but it's an entertaining movie as well, which is The Founder. The Founder tells the story of Ray Kroc, the man who has marketed himself as the founder of McDonald's, as the empire builder of McDonald's. But when you watch the movie, you're going to have a really close-up look into the methods and the ethics he used to make this work. So the film provides valuable lessons about persistence, about vision, about the cutthroat nature of the business and how he turned a simple idea, actually that was built by the real McDonald's family, into this modern behemoth that we already know today. So you'll have a very critical eye watching it and learn from the successes and the mistakes and some pretty unethical applications in work. So the third one, probably you've guessed this, is The Social Network. So when the book came about, it was very controversial and you should go to YouTube and watch Mark Zuckerberg's reaction to the book. And the book talks about the creation of Facebook and the movie that's a part of it is taking you into the relationship with Mark Zuckerberg and his co-founders. The people who he got the idea of Facebook from and how he fought them in a legal battle and what he has done in his early days. Of course, it's not an endorsed copy or trusted copy of what really happened. Mark Zuckerberg denies a lot of the allegations there, but the film serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of, you might say, clear communication, trust, ethics, And actually having a good legal team backing you up when you start a company. Usually you will see at the end of the movie the successes come at a price, maybe currently not to Mark Zuckerberg, but to a lot of people that were involved in the building of Facebook. The second movie I really recommend you to watch it back to back with The Social Network is The Social Dilemma. This is actually a Netflix documentary that examines the but pretty dark side of social media and the tech industry. As a founder, enjoying the benefits of social media, enjoying the benefits of reaching out to billions of people with a touch of a button anywhere on the planet, finding out your exact customer archetypes and being able to reach out to them to market your products and services is amazingly powerful. However, there are certain pitfalls and obviously ethical dilemmas that came with this era of social media and always being alive, always being a notification. Use this film together with The Social Network to talk about how you see your role in the society, your startup's role in the society, and the long-term impact of your actions. That's a really interesting talk once you do it with your founders. In the Game is one of my favorites, is a documentary that gets you in the heads of independent video game developers. The problems, the triumphs, the struggles that come with deciding to be independent, deciding to build the game they really wanted to play themselves, and showing their personal life, their passions, and their failures is a really interesting game to— is a really interesting movie to watch. Very small teams, gigantic dreams, super tight deadlines. It's packed with valuable lessons about creativity, collaboration, perseverance, and the sense of community which the gaming industry has been developing for years and years. I think that's the strength of the industry itself. You will definitely, even if you don't play games, if you're not a game enthusiast, if nothing about, you don't know anything about the game industry or the business models, Watch it and you'll feel something very emotional about the journey and the founders. Movie number 6 is again coming from the left side on about entrepreneurship is Jiro Dreams of Sushi. So this is a beautiful documentary about, I think, currently passed sushi master. At the time of the movie, I think he was around 85. And his relentless pursuit of perfection. Of course, you'll relate it to him if you're an engineer especially, and you really want to do things perfect. The film offers an incredible lesson in dedication, craftsmanship, and like constantly improving your skills and pushing people around you to become better at what they're doing, not letting people drop the ball, not letting the quality down, not letting the stories down. It's really, really important. And I hope it will kind of inspire you to never settle with what you have already done and always have a focus on your vision. That might come with its backdraws, but it's really an amazing movie to watch. Movie number 7, we took you to the beginning parts of the tech world. with Apple and Microsoft. We took you to the parts of the social media part. But somewhere in between, there was this great pirate movie that talks about Napster. Without Napster, we wouldn't have had Spotify. Napster, you can call it, was the illegal version of Spotify for a while. It disrupted the music industry entirely. The reason why we're having so much digital content, so much digital music, is the reason why we started building. A couple of young people who didn't care about law and regalities kind of jumped into the movie and film industry as well as the music industry. So Napster shed light on the power of innovation, the importance of adapting to change, and kind of the legal battles, ethical battles that they had to endure to get their product into millions of people. I'm a fan of Metallica as well as like many other pop geek stuff, but when the movie have kicked, I really watched it and I was very curious about why Metallica was so much against fighting, so much against the Napster, and what was the reason. So it's a really interesting moment in history as well. I think there will be a lot of versions of these fights coming into the world because now a lot of people are debating the AI's impact on their industry and there's going to be a lot of legal battles between so many different parties in this. So it's kind of a prep you in what's to come. Movie number 8, most of the movies we talked about have been focusing on the US entrepreneurs and this one focuses on Jack Ma, the crazy person behind the the enormous company he's built, Alibaba. The way he contributed to the growth of the Chinese e-commerce ecosystem, not only on e-commerce, but in everything Alibaba has touched, has turned into a driving force for a whole nation that's arguably the biggest economy in the world now, fighting the US supremacy in many fronts. Understanding how Jack Ma started thinking about Alibaba and the struggles he went through it, and the work ethics he has instilled in his company with a lot of quotes and like real footage of him is going to be really important. He's a relentless optimist, and also like watching that movie with the lens of what's happening today to Alibaba is going to be an interesting journey because currently Alibaba has been changing leadership. Jack Ma has kind of disappeared from the scene by force in a little bit. So understanding it with current geopolitics and evaluating its importance also hopefully will give you some advice on your own entrepreneurial journey. So these are the top movies and series that I recommend to founders, early-stage founders, late-stage founders. Each of them have different insights. But definitely all of them had hard-earned lessons and a healthy dose of inspiration as well as caution to take. Remember, entrepreneurship is a very difficult feat of accomplishment, so these films can help you put your own journey into perspective as a founder, and you can find some nuggets that you can use in your work. As always, if you found this video helpful, Be sure to interact with us, like, comment, subscribe, do whatever you want to the Brutally Honest Mentor channel. Also, if you're listening on Spotify, I think it's a great tool so you can come back and watch the video where we have a lot of advices as well as we put the links to those movies too. So connect with us, let us know if there's anything else we could have included in the list so that we can kind of build up better list next time. Until next time, stay focused, get shit done, and may the Force be with you.
