A review of the film "Startup.com"

Startup.com


This was quite an eye-opening documentary about the perils of starting a company during the dotcom internet bubble.  It was an interesting perspective of what young professionals trying to start a company had to navigate through in order to be successful and then watch them fail.  You could clearly see the change in character of the subjects as the stress of the ramping up of a company began to take effect.  Indifference to the company’s goal caused one of the three founders to sell out his portion of the company, and fortunately for him he got out with some money, which did not happen with his other partners.  The CEO of the company, Tuzman, and his friend and partner, Herman, also began to have problems with their management styles, which led to Herman being forced out of his position.  It also affected other personal relationships, as Tuzman neglected his relationship with his girlfriend, which caused her to leave him.  This is what happens when problems at work start to come home.


It did seem at first that the establishment of govWorks was a rather precarious attempt by some college students, but it turns out that Tuzman was a Harvard graduate and had worked for five years for Goldman Sachs getting experience at raising capital and Tom Herman and Chieh Cheung, who had the technical expertise.  They had experience behind them, just not in forming a new company.  They had to learn the business the hard way as they had no real experience in how corporate relations worked and had to learn from their mistakes.  One major mistake was not realizing the need for security, which resulted in the theft of computers and other information which put their venture at risk.  Another was not realizing that competition is cutthroat and that they shouldn’t have invited the CEO of a competitor to come by and see their progress.  They had found a niche in providing ease in accessing government sources but should not have allowed their competition any advantage.  Another mistake was their failure to look to the future and try to adjust to problems before they arose.  They had a very reactive problem-solving style and were not proactive enough to meet and overcome business obstacles.  All of this, and the dotcom bubble burst, combined to allow their company to fail regardless of any preventative actions that they could have taken.