Product: Startup.Com (2001)
Rating: 4.0
INTERESTING FOR THE PERSONAL STORIES
This documentary about the rise and fall of govworks.com reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of cinema verite documentaries with no voiceovers.On the one hand, we get to see the two intelligent cofounders of govworks.com, Kaliel and Tom, up close and personal in a way that the printed word would have difficulty doing justice to. Watching their strains, their accomplishments, and their hubris is fascinating.On the other hand, we do not get much of the crucial but less photogenic backstory. We don't know much about what these guys were doing before they started the company. We don't see much of their interaction with the venture capitalists who funded them or the board that apparently was near the point of firing them. We see that there was a suspicious break-in to their offices, but there is no follow-up in the documentary about whether the police ever found the culprit, what the missing documents were, and why the documents were so important. We 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, and so forth. We never are told what the business model for the company was. How specifically did they expect to make a profit, and what did they fail to anticipate that prevented them from doing so? (Did they have too few customers? Could they not get enough cities to participate?) Perhaps they had no clear path to profitability, but that is something we should know. Finally, we see Bryan R. Mundy, the CEO of competitor ezgov.com, visiting govwork.com's headquarters, and we later hear Kaleil complain that govwork.com's competitors (including, I assume, ezgov.com) are doing much better. How did these other companies make a go of it? What did they do that govworks.com failed to do? (For those who are curious, ezgov.com is still in business, but Mr. Mundy died in a fire in his house in January 2001.) These are the sorts of details that a good Wall Street Journal feature or a John McPhee profile would have included.See the film if you are interested in the personalities and lives of two hi-tech entrepeneurs as they take flight and then crash and burn. It's like watching an engrossing Greek tragedy. But don't expect much insight into what it was like for the average worker at one of those Internet startup firms or into the business lessons of these failed companies.