Startup.Com
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Kenneth Austin, Roy Burston, Tom Herman, Tricia BurkeDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-09-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Live / Artisan
Movie Reviews of Startup.Com
Movie Review: It'll be the last time street punks like us were in charge of something that F'n valuable.
Summary: 5 Stars
Wait, that's Casino.
"It'll be the last time, touchy-feely, self-esteem believing psychobabblers were in charge of something that F'n valuable."
I actually love this movie being a small-scale entrepenuer centered in computers and specifically the internet myself.
We see 2 guys who actually have a great and truly lucrative idea in a new market, making government functions, services and information available over the internet.
We also see a time when investors were quite foolishly optimistic about investing in anything having to do with the internet.
We also have a couple of reasonably bright but not brilliant students raised on self-esteem believing they can conquer the world.
Here we have the fallacy of the psuedo-science psychology and specifically self-esteem which has been doing damage to the U.S productivity in the same proportion as it has been increasing in popular thought.
Our schools have been teaching so much self-esteem nonsense. If you feel good about yourself, you will achieve more. Yet if you compare academic achievement, students in countries such as Korea where the students were more likely to not consider themselves bright, considering themselves not to have above average skills in mathmatics scored much higher than students in countries like the U.S. where they indicated great self-confidence in their intelligence.
This is the opposite of when the U.S. students would have been on top in achievement in less-psychologized days.
The documentary starts out with Kaleil(?) and Tom buying out a third founder who is not going forward in quitting his job and dedicating fully to their new business. This guy plays Kaleil and Tom like marionettes and they buy him out for $700,000(?) before the thing is really even started.
At this point, we see our first glaring indication of what psychologized men they are, Kaleil and Tom comfort each other about how it hurt each other more "emotionally" than the money itself.
In the film, Tom is definitely the one who has bought into modern psychological thought the most. He places importance on creating good feelings, creating company social occasions, and positive work environments. He even focuses on little company "camping" events where his father plays a guitar and has sing-a-long songs. Meanwhile, Tom isn't that great of a programmer and the documentarians fail to show how he leads a programming team. However, we do later see, it was not done successfully as GovWorks software was incompentently made and has very obvious problems while nearing production status that shouldn't have gotten past the beginning stages of development.
Kaleil does seem to have a lot of organizational, business skills getting investors interested (although the absurdly unrealistically optimistic internet enthusiasm made it possible where normally he probably couldn't have) and putting together various business deals. Unfortunately, Kaleil himself does focus on organizing company "Rah Rah" sessions as well as motivational-speaker-type events.
Meanwhile Tom and the programmers have developed a horrendously faulty system that Kaleil rightfully declares he can not release into the market despite its emminent deadline.
Then business reality finally starts to take force and Tom is forced out of the company. Now Tom and Kaleil fight and then hug and nurture each other going through this struggle.
Now, we have a competitor breaking the market with what seems to be a competent product and the end of GovWorks quickens.
There is a lot of things I was interested in about this movie.
#1) Entrepenuerial effort even though failed.
#2) A study on the farce of psychological thought being an asset while in reality being quite destructive.
#3) True dramatic interactions between close friends during different situations and struggles. Even if they are sappy psychobabblers who made their own problems.
The potential of their plan was incredible and legitimate. These guys could have made in the hundreds of millions each if they implemented their ideas correctly. It was a time that won't happen again in the foreseeable future.
#1) A legitimately new and lucrative market waiting to be exploited.
#2) Investors throwing money around at anything "internet".
In honesty, with a little LESS confidence, LESS believing in themselves and an extreme dedicated focus on perfecting the product, they probably could have made it.
Summary of Startup.Com
Directors Chris Hegedus (The War Room) and Jehane Noujaim couldn't have imagined the drama that awaited when they began documenting the creation of the pioneering e-commerce site govWorks.com. For over a year they followed the company, the brainchild of childhood-friends-turned-business-partners software geek and doting single dad Tom Herman, and ambitious young business-school-grad-turned-company-CEO Kaleil Isaza Tuzman. During the rise of the Internet investment frenzy and the subsequent crash of the dot-economy, the cameras remain keyed into the human dynamic: the lifestyle compromises, the personal sacrifices, and the clash of philosophies and personalities that ultimately tear boyhood buddies Tom and Kaleil apart...almost. Startup.com's portrait of the cutthroat nature of American business culture and the choices one makes (or doesn't) to succeed poses the one question most documentaries ignore: Is it worth it? --Sean AxmakerSimilar DVD Movies
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