Rating: 
Summary: INTERESTING FOR THE PERSONAL STORIES
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated
Review: After "The War Room", this documentary is especially disappointing. It suffers from a lack of distance between subject and film maker, and bestows affection on two immature posers who deserve little more than contempt. It focuses almost entirely on these two annoying people for no reason except that they are young and temporarily in control of big bucks. This is a bogus depiction of a dot-com, unless you believe that people flying around and grubbing money is the entire story. In fact, the internet phenomenon was a vast, complex drama, one which is shortchanged in this unfortunate mistake. Anyone familiar with the internals of the dot-com world knows that these "pioneers" never were the heroes portrayed in the popular media; they're simply jerks. The hambone buddy love scenes provide first class examples of myopic documentarians buying into the hocus-pocus of a couple of phonies. Their audience deserved an honest depiction of their empty souls and their pointless company. Instead, we got "gee whiz, they're young and going to be rich!"
Rating: 
Summary: Oh, the irony...
Review: As a refugee of the Silicon Alley dot-bust, I was interested seeing the experience from the point of view of the entrepreneur. It was incredible to see the levels of arrogance and ignorance that propelled this venture. Although I know that the directors were interested in the human side of the story, I wish they had delved a little more into the technical discussions. It would have lent the whole operation the appearance of competence, if indeed there was any, because there didn't seem to be much. Taking your whole company up to camp for a corny teambuilding weekend can't make up for a lack of technical knowledge. Why didn't they realize their product didn't work until a $2 million testing session revealed it? Was anyone at the top keeping an eye on product development? Also, I counted exactly one instance where Kaleil mentioned how they were going to make a profit, but he didn't seem to have any problem burning through millions of dollars. I have to admit it was delicious watching the film knowing that the company fell apart in the end.
Rating:
Summary: An important historical document
Review: As I sit here, self-indulgently typing in my humble opinions, I cannot help but savour the irony of reviewing a film about the spectacular rise and fall of a dot-com hopeful... on the website of one of those who succeeded. Twenty years from now, when people look back on the "dot com bubble", and when those who weren't there can't fathom the hundreds of overnight paper millionaires, the irrational stock valuations, the revolutionary nature of what was happening, and of course the impending crash - this film will surely stand as an indispensable documentary of the time, capturing the excitement and the madness of the incredible Internet commercial phenomenon. Hats off to the film makers - this is a truly remarkable time capsule that, compelling as it is today, will only become increasingly important as our collective memories of that time, fade. So here I am - a regular person, with a regular job - self-indulgently broadcasting my simple thoughts to anyone, anywhere in the world who will listen, courtesy of the global communication network that made it all possible. This is it. This is how it was.
Rating:
Summary: The STARTUP.COM quick acknowledgment
Review: This documentary is about a man and his friend who want to start up a company. Even though they have a hard time getting started they become successful. You will see betrayal among friends and friendships ending over money issues. You will get to look into the two main characters business lives and see how it effects their personal lives. Watch the small idea they made grow as their business expands and witness its fall. Learn the complications of starting up a company, maintaining and managing it growth, making and handling money, and dealing with people and the competition.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre At Best
Review: In my E-commerce/Business 101 class, our instructor introduced this DVD movie in one class, and it took us two classes to watch it. As I was watching this documentary and taking my notes, I was contemplating on what kind of review I would give this movie. To me, it gets 3 out of 5 stars, and I'm being a tad bit generous. The movie focused too much on the two CEO's of the company, and not the actual company itself. Kaleil and Tom (especially Kaleil) was focused on by the camera throughout the whole movie, and I got the sense that the whole time it was just Kaleil trying to figure out how to make his money and keep it. I was more interested in the site govworks.com itself and what was on it. Kaleil's relationship with his co-workers was focused on greatly. The good thing about this is that it does a good overview of how people act in the business world, and how life is in the internet universe. This documentary is more of a biography on Kaleil and Tom, and how their lives played out. I was looking forward to seeing the bulk and the detail of the company and how it rose and fell. I was not interested on seeing if Tom could spend time with his daughter all that much. It is a great overview on life in business and how you are affected, but I wanted the movie to focus on the company itself more, and who are the influential players besides Kaleil and Tom, the two CEOs....
Rating: 
Summary: Waste of Money
Review: I bought this thinking it could be interesting & educational, because it dealt with things that I am interested in. However, it turned out to be a disappointment. The plot & storyline are horrible. The quality is worse than a VHS, everything is amateurish. Go look somewhere else please.
Rating:
Summary: True Voyeurism
Review: The basis of this film is the voyeurism of two old freinds. Tom and Kaleil are frequently portrayed as self- interested, self- absorbed, megalomaniacal, and overly smug. These are the attributes that soceity assigns to the wannabe net gurus of the late 90's. Also, Govworks fits the stereotypical bad internet idea pumped up by scads of vc money and "new economy" hype. The editors set it up this way so the viewer will be interested in the collapse of the business and the humbling of the founders. At many times the details of the freindship and business are murky. This is evidence, in my opinion, of Startup.com not being a true documentary of Govworks.com but, instead, a documentary of two young bucks getting ambushed. I disagree with people who say that too many scenes are centered around Kaleil. Kaleil best typified the late 90's ruthlessness and hubris that the editors were trying to capture. Tom came across as more of an average Joe and somewhat likeable, hence he was not in as many scenes. People should make up their minds as to whether it is warped to watch, root for, and be entertained by the destruction of two peoples lives edited for maximum impact. If you are ok with this, go ahead and watch the movie.
Rating:
Summary: an empty fairy tale
Review: I couldn't wait to see this movie, and was I ever disappointed, as I yawned my way through most of it. The movie covers more than a year in the rise and fall of an internet startup, and does so with the assumption that the audience has a short attention span and won't be interested in the details. And so, there were complex interactions in several areas that were central to the story but which were dealt with superficially. First, the dealings between the company and the venture capitalists. A lot of screen time was devoted to the search for money, but I can't say it shed any light, for me, on how they actually got the money. Next, there was the buyout of one of the founders, with negotiations that got pretty ugly. Never did I get what precipitated the buyout or why things got so ugly. Then, there was a pivotal confrontation between the two remaining founders. I sat staring at the screen wondering, what are the issues here? What is happening to this company? Do I even care? No, the filmmakers gave me no reason to care about either the company or the people. There were a lot of people treating each other badly while saying to the camera how relationships are the most important thing in their life. There was no narration, little explanation, quick edits that left with me with more questions and no answers. There were captions showing the growth of the company. 20 employees. 75 employees. 200 employees. And suddenly, near the end, empty cubicles and a caption that said 50 employees. What caused the sudden dropoff? Was it the beginning of the bubble bursting for internet stocks? Or was it that their competitors had, technically, better websites? I really couldn't tell. Maybe the point of the movie was merely to entertain, and not to elucidate what happened to one company during the internet mania. But I wasn't even entertained.
Rating:
Summary: AMBITIONS FOR THE 21st CENTURY
Review: A really nice documentary film from Chris Hegedus (The War Room) and Jehane Noujaim about a group of friends who start a dot com company and they climb allmost on the top.
The every day running the relationships between them the strugle to survive and make people and investors to believe in them are given with a plain and simple way which on the other hand makes the film fascinating.It could be more specific about the industry and how it really works instead of passing fast this stage and this is a missing point but the whole movie is fast just like the success and the failure in todays world.
I really did have good time watching this movie.
No doubt it leaves you wondering if having just good friends-partners and bright ideas this is enough to survive in the modern bussines world or because of the globalization the good days are gone forever.
See it it is worthy
| 
