What Nightcrawler Teaches You About Starting A Business

10 startup tips inspired by the movie Nightcrawler

I’m not sure if you’ve seen Jake Gyllenhaal in the gritty thriller Nightcrawler, but you need to see this movie.

Shot almost entirely at night on the streets of LA, the film features Gyllenhaal as Louis Bloom, a guy desperate to make it in any industry he can get into.

He stumbles into a new career as a cameraman and begins filming increasingly shocking accidents throughout the City of Angels.

But what I found really interesting is the way that Nightcrawler is a parallel for entrepreneurship.

Here’s how, and a quick “Spoiler Alert” warning in case you haven’t seen it yet:

1). Lou observes the scene of an accident and learns about film crews who use police scanners to get to the location before the LAPD.
Startup parallel: You observe the business landscape and look for opportunities. This is the research phase where you hear about tools that your eventual competitors are using that can give you the edge.

2). Lou invests in a basic camera to film on location and drives there in his beat up car.
Startup parallel: this is the bootstrapping phase. No frills. Just using what you have and making minimal investments to…