Summary of Startup.com

“Startup.com” is a pretty good documentary centering around two friends, Kalei Tuzman and Tom Herman who begin their company and in less than 2 years are running a 50 million-dollar corporation employing over 250 people. And then it all begins to fall apart rapidly. It is not only about their success and failure of their business, but also about their strong friendship remains despite the wringer. Watching the movie is a good chance for me to mediate on my dream and the relationship with people around me again.

Kaleil and Tom spent their high school years by dreaming and scheming out their futures. They made their dream a reality and opened Govworks.com, a Web-based firm devoted to helping people deal more efficiently with local governments (it began as a notion to pay parking tickets online). Kaleil is strong individual, a CEO of the company and raises the money, Tom is the technical chief and a much softer-spoken individual, try to keep everybody happy and deal with problems. Kaleil is always enthusiastic for the need for cash and for improving the site. Venture capital comes in by the millions. Kaleil is on C-SPAN, CNN, and magazine cover so a reality in life. Govworks.com soon exploded, going from a one-room office with a tiny staff to over 250 employees and a bankroll of 50 million.

However, like many other Internet firms of their day, Govworks.com was not destined to succeed, and by January of 2001, the company had let nearly all its employees go, and was eventually swallowed up by the large firms in spite of Kaleil’s firmly refusal to loose any one. I do not have enough idea about how they affected the business. We really don't have much idea about the business itself, except for the original pitch. I do not know what's happening, why they're growing so fast and why they fail so quickly.

One thing I can see in the film is that it implies potential problems such as immature readership, launch with the idea, and lack of experience. In the beginning of the movie,
Kaleil goes to Silicon Valley for consulting of the idea of the business. He seems not to pay attention of the advices. The consultant says “The idea is good, but Works has light weight and a very specific meaning in the software world, it refers to a very low end product,” Even though Kaleil seems to understand the man’s candid advice which they did not have any body with startup experience and like the sapient relationship, he does not want to believe his advice. And then immediately, he disregards it. What a strange self confidence! I think he was confused of why he wants to see the consultant. It is not for the confirmation of what he wants to do, but for more helpful and better information to succeed. In addition, I see more of their discussions about raising money and less of the conversations about what features they would include on the web site, how they decided on its design, what the business model for the company was, and little concerned with producing a quality product and so forth.

The most interesting to me is when Personality conflicts between Kaleil and Tom begin leading to some unpleasant consequences. They have different readerships styles and personalities. Tom is the uptight techie tinkering in the shadows with remedial social skills. Kalil is Mr. Charisma with unbounded ambition looking to cinch the big deal and steam roll anybody in his path. A power struggle ensues between Kaleil and Tom. Finally, Tom is fired and is escorted out of the building by security. I have not seen any fired employee is treated like Tom. It is hard to see that their long term friendship might end. Dramatically, a solid friendship remains in reconciliation.

Overall, Startup.com gives me an inside look into the inner workings of not only the company, but the personal lives and thoughts of its founders. In the end I got a great sense of hope that there is more to life than just making profits and that true friends can get through anything and come out on top at the end. Although I wish the documentary would show all the details about why the business failed and what went wrong, it is fascinating documentary to see the life of internet business, Govswork.com until the bubble burst and the process of relationship between two high school buddies.