Rating: 
Summary: How Not to Run A Business
Review: "Startup.com" is a fascinating, but slightly flawed documentary following the lives of several men who founded a dot-com in 1998. (Work leading to its creation had started months earlier, but wasn't included in the documentary.) The principal dot-com founders were Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Tom Herman and Chieh Cheung. Kaleil and Tom were high school friends. Shortly after the company's official launch, Chieh's involvement was terminated after Kaleil and Tom decided to buy him out. They believed Chieh wasn't doing enough, in spite of Chieh's time, work and money invested prior to the company's official launch.For the most part, the first third of documentary is devoted to Kaleil's efforts to obtain venture capitalist (VC) investment into the new company. The combination of his efforts and unbridled VC risk-taking of the 1990's succeeded in Kaleil securing $50-million in VC investment. At the company's launch, it had eight employees. After several months of hard work and the hiring of a lot more staff, the company's website was finally launched. Within about a year, the company's total employment exceeded 200 employees, but the joy didn't last long. Personality conflicts between Kaleil and Tom lead to some unpleasant consequences. Also, like most of the dot-com's created in the 1990's, the amount of money earned through the company's website paled in comparison to the amount of invested capital and the money squandered by the company. Sadly, the creators of this documentary (Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim) focused far too much on Kaleil, not enough on Tom and very little on Chieh. The quality of the documentary would have been far better had more time been devoted to Tom throughout the film, and more to Chieh at the beginning (prior to the company's launch). No narration was provided in the documentary. Instead, it was shot much like a reality television show using small hand-held cameras, but occasional subtitles provide the viewer with time references and employee counts. Highlights in the documentary include an actual CNBC interview with Kaleil (when the company was worth $50-million with venture capital) and his brief meeting with then U.S. President Bill Clinton. The real value of this documentary is fourfold:
(1) The eagerness of 1990's venture capitalists to willingly invest millions of dollars into companies with unsubstantiated and exaggerated business plans.
(2) The squandering by dot-com's of millions of invested dollars
(3) The strain put on long-term friendships when money and cutthroat business practices get involved.
(4) Seeing some of the faces and narcissistic egos behind dot-coms.
For these reasons, I rate this documentary with 4 out of 5 stars. I highly recommend it to any former or current dot-com employee, to anyone that invested and subsequently lost money in a dot-com or to anyone that wants to form his/her own company.
Rating: 
Summary: A better name would have been ...
Review: This documentary is actually pretty good, but the title of the piece should probably have been Hubris.com. It focused on a couple of very egocentric guys and how they blew through a lot of money in a very short period of time. This is a good unintential morality play.
Rating: 
Summary: Primarily a historical doument rather than a documentry
Review: This documentary is primarily a cinema verite documentation of the personalities behind a 'start-up-dot-com' during the apex of the 'internet bubble'. In other words, the directors used non-actors, such as the CEO and his co-founders, small hand-held cameras, and actual homes and surroundings as their location for this film to capture the personalities involved. This includes: The tantrums, the broken friendships, the narcissism, the venture capital meetings, and the often obscene; (yes, obscene), amounts of money tossed out by venture capitalists to anybody with a website as if they were drunk sailors visiting a two-dollar brothel. My favorite part was seeing our CEO interviewed on a 'CNBC-like' program stating with a straight face that his company was worth 50 million dollars. Below him at the bottom of the screen was a stock-ticker going off with a myriad of internet ticker symbols rolling by which were all generally trading in the triple digit range such as, SUNW, or Sun Microsystems, trading then at $133.00 a share but now trading in 2002 at $4 a share. I often got angry watching this documentary primarily because of all the excess. However I am glad this film was made because it chronicles the personalities behind the history rather than the history itself. This is something we don't see when we watch a documentary about the '1929 stock market crash', or by reading a dry dissertation of the Dutch 'tulip-bubble'. If you are looking for just the human story alone and what money can do to friendships and egos, buy this movie. If you are looking to observe the day-to-day management of a dot.com you will be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A must see for new age investors
Review: Truthful documantary, hard work, excellent movie. A must see for new age, dot com investors.
Rating: 
Summary: Really Stupid DVD
Review: This was really bad. I had to turn it off before getting to the end. It is a home video quality production showing many stupid business decisions. I can't believe that myself or anyone else would be willing to pay to watch this.
Rating:
Summary: Too true
Review: This is pretty good, a documentary of some latecomers starting a company at the height of the bubble, when capital was chasing anything with a web site. Their idea of using the web to pay your parking tickets is typical of the era... undeniably useful, but so also obvious that it could never succeed on the scale the investors had hoped. I was reminded of the character Lenny in Randy Komisar's book "The Monk and The Riddle," who proposed selling caskets online to save the overhead of funeral homes. Like others, I wished they had spent more time covering the downfall of the company after the bubble burst; that would have painted a much more complete picture. But basically they've it so accurate that it's painful... people who are so full of themselves for having gotten funding, who take themselves just a little too seriously in the excitement of the era. This is probably as good a record as we'll ever get of that time, and it was indeed an amazing phenomenon.
Rating: 
Summary: You go girl!
Review: I really didn't learn why this company failed or even exactly what they were trying to sell, but with over five scenes of him working out in the gym, I sure got to know how really buff Kaleil is. Excellent!
Rating:
Summary: A good doco that could have been great.
Review: A very interesting subject, but this doco doesn't quite flesh it out satisfactorily. The opening 3/4 is fine, but it is the last 15 minutes that so disappoints. As the dotcom boom turns to bomb there is virtually no coverage of the monumental NASDAQ collapse and the financial hole that the likes of boo.com, epets, yahoo, aol etc fell/have fallen into. I appreciate that the doco is more about the relationship between Tom and Kaleil, but seeing more information about the actual govworks product, who was using it, why it failed, and how so many others failed, would have added so much to the story. As it is you get the feeling that govworks was alone in its failure. There is little of the additional background story which would have fleshed out the govworks story immeasurably. This failure to place govworks in the 2000 dotcom crash perspective saves this story from being excellent. Technically some of the focusing and framing is poor, as you'd expect. Worse tho is the terrible lip-sync which is sometimes wildly out of kilter which adversely affects ones ability to follow the story. A subtitle track would also have helped to follow some of the muffled telephone calls. Overall tho, a very good slice of life at the turn of the century.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent documentary...
Review: Growing up in Silicon Valley and attending tech school in San Jose during "the boom" might create a bias in my view of this film. However, Startup.com is an amazing documentary no matter where you were during the dotcom craze. It is a fascinating peek into the birth, growth, and ultimately...death of a dotcom. It follows two high school buddies on their quest of fame and fortune, from raising venture capital, to the hardships of running a business and the tests it put on their personal relationships. Informative and fascinating, I'd recommend this film to anyone interested in a unique documentary that captures all the madness of this crazy time. The DVD is great, though I wish it would've sported a few more extra features. There are the standard few, but nothing special. All in all, this is one of the best documentaries to come out in some time.
Rating:
Summary: A good view into a funny slice in time
Review: Having lived first hand through the silliness of the internet bubble I can tell you that this film does a nice job in documenting the absurdity of the time. I bought it and in 20 years when my kids ask how this happened, I plan to pop this in and show them. My only complaint would be that I wish they'd spent a bit more time on the last months, it ends rather abruptly, but all in all a great effort.
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