Startup.com
Startup.com
R | 21 January 2001 (USA)
Startup.com Trailers

Friends since high school, 20-somethings Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman have an idea: a Web site for people to conduct business with municipal governments. This documentary tracks the rise and fall of govWorks.com from May of 1999 to December of 2000, and the trials the business brings to the relationship of these best friends. Kaleil raises the money, Tom's the technical chief. A third partner wants a buy out; girlfriends come and go; Tom's daughter needs attention. And always the need for cash and for improving the site. Venture capital comes in by the millions. Kaleil is on C-SPAN, CNN, and magazine covers. Will the business or the friendship crash first?

Reviews
Hellen

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

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Dynamixor

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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Lollivan

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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Ogosmith

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

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antony-1

This is an excellent, compelling look into a time that seems so alien and so far away now. The days when there was so much money being invested into promises, and how the dot com bubble burst and took so much with it.Even though we now know where the story ends, the documentary is gripping from start to finish. It charts the venture from the inception through to its demise, although it focuses more on the early stages. I was part of a dot com venture and it really brought back the memories of "everything is impossible, we are unstoppable" that was pushed by those that run the ventures. And in the case of govworks.com, the gorgeous and charismatic CEO even met Clinton. How could it all go wrong? The documentary also charts, in fact in particular charts, the effect of the company on the personal relationships of those involved. Some of the agonies they face are better than stories you see in scripted dramas, and because they are so real they are very involving.It's a shame that the latter stage's of the company's demise are skipped over, we cut from them having over 200 employees to just 50 with no real explanation on what happened in between. Maybe it wasn't really required, maybe they didn't want to be filmed, but it felt like a bit of a hole. It's the only real complaint about the documentary however.Overall it accomplished showing us the birth and death of a dot com very well, and how it affects those involved. And anyone who watches the documentary will probably like me go to www.govworks.com and with sadness see that the domain is owned by one of those companies that registers dead domains, and feel such a sadness that all that blood, sweat and tears ended this way.

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billfrancis2000

I myself worked in one of the ubiquitous .com's in the late 90's and this movie is frightening realistic, from the long hours and technical glitches right down to the embarrassingly lame cheers.I read on the web the filmmakers set out to document their friends impending wealth and business fortune with this documentary, but what they got was the complete opposite. I think that speaks volumes for expectations during this era.I feel like some of the other IMDb reviews are off the mark. Yes, the movie is sometimes hard to follow. But it was shot in the Cinéma-vérité genre and that is to be expected. It is an uncompromising real life look, and it is up to the viewer to decipher; sometimes this works sometimes not. Some previous reviews wondered how the company folded. Honestly its a movie about an internet company, why do you think it failed? Having said this, I think more could have been shown of why Tom got the axe and the love relationships of Kaliel could have been better developed.According to the DVD the producers cut some realistic (and boringly technical) scenes to focus more on the relationship between Tom and Kaleil. This is where they succeeded. They are trying to tell the story of the company downfall through the interplay of these two characters. It is fascinating because it is real. The most compelling part is the coorelation between their relationship eroding as does the company. Viewed from that point of view this movie is really not a documentary. Nevertheless it is entertaining and gripping. What amazed me was the unfettered greed and their enormous hubris which prevented them from acknowledge their role in this sinking ship.

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Bishonen

Possible spoilersFor a film that allegedly went through over 25 revisions, "Startup.com" is shockingly poor in its construction and story-telling. Situations are brought up and dropped without explanation, scenes of seemingly great importance are played out with no set up, and people appear and disappear with no introduction or follow-through.The filmmaker's insistence on no narration or title cards is a stylistic choice which, in this instance, proves fatal as the scenes presented by themselves offer no clear narrative through-line. The mysterious "third partner", who ends up absconding with nearly a million dollars, is barely given any introduction and the audience gets no clear description of the financial conundrum his actions create for the two protagonists. A major story arc, the conflict between Tom and Kaleil over Tom's involvement in the company's tech division, is so poorly presented that when it plays a major role in the third act of the documentary's structure, it's just baffling until the very END of the film when the audience finally understands its importance. Kaleil apparently goes through two girlfriends in the film, but they appear and vanish with no explanation (this is an issue since the filmmakers solicit their on-camera opinions, then mysteriously excise them from the story altogether)---odd, since Kaleil's relationships with them are initially introduced as a relevant plot point, then there's no explanation when one girlfriend is apparently discarded and replaced.The film is fitfully compelling, and Tom and Kaleil are interesting enough figures to make this story watchable. Somewhere in here is a document of a fascinating time, of a brief period when hope, vision and foolishness coalesced into a mini non-revolution the effects of which are still being assessed. The clumsy assemblage called "Startup.com" is not that document.

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smakawhat

I think the greatest thing about this film is how it really shows the audience the future while the people in the film have no idea what is coming around the corner.We get a real sense of what is to come early on when Tuzman comes back from a meeting trying to raise capital. He bitches about how he got ripped to shreds by one investor (you have no project experience etc... etc..). It's a very telling sign.and it is amazing to watch how Tuzman was duplicated over and over again by several people who just threw money at a phenomenon without understanding it. It was an amazing thing to witness and Startup.Com captures it like nothing I have ever seen before.Add in some dramatic moments, an office break in, a missing lawyer, a ruthless competitor, and a telling firing.. and startup.com is one documentary that will engage you.Rating 8 out of 10

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