"Startup.com"
Only two or three years ago, a few smart guys with a little bit of capital could parlay an idea into a multimillion-dollar Internet business and have their fortunes made. Docu filmmakers Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim rolled their camera at the birth of just such a company and planned to follow the meteoric rise of its founders, until the bottom fell out of the market in 2000, in "Startup.com."
In 1998, four young entrepreneurs - Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Thomas Herman, Chieh Cheung and George Fatheree - founded PublicDataSystems, Inc., a firm whose goal was to build a government Internet portal that would ease the public's pain in dealing with the bureaucracy we have all come to know and loath. Longtime documentary filmmaker Hegedus and newcomer Noujaim followed their group of web entrepreneurs from the very beginning, at the first discussion of the idea of their business to hiring the first folks into the company to their almost arrival at the top. The plan was to show the rags to riches success of their govWorks.com website and the making of 20-something multimillionaires.
But, in true documentary style, things do not go off as planned and a variety of circumstances happen that signal the end of the ambitious plans for the company. Venture capital dollars are a fickle thing and can dry up without a moment's notice. The company offices are broken into and valuable documents, outlining business and strategies, are stolen. The volatile personalities and differing viewpoints of the founders creates conflict and threatens the future of the govWorks.com. Then, in 2000, the bottom fell out of the Internet marketplace. The rags-to-riches tale becomes the rise and fall of an American dream.
"Startup.com" is a sometimes-interesting document that suffers from a major problem - none of the individuals being followed are likable and, with their arrogance, bickering and techno-automaton behavior, create no empathy from the viewer. The makers do a decent job of capturing all aspects of the making of a startup company but they, unfortunately for the viewer, picked the wrong subjects. There is an attempt to introduce humanity into the mix by showing Thomas taking care of his young daughter and Kaleil having girlfriend troubles, but these are mere distractions and only serve to make an overly long film even longer. Perhaps some judicious editing would help, but the subjects, themselves, are the real problem.
"Startup.com" documents the rise and fall of four guys' dreams, but, in the end, I don't care, and that's not good for a documentary movie. I give it a C.
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