

Remember the movie Startup.com? WSJ interviews the co-stars a decade later - huckle
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/07/16/second-act-startupcom-stars-reflect-on-life-a-decade-later/?mod=wsj_share_twitter

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rada
I used to work at GovWorks. What I've found interesting about the movie is
that it got started because Jehane Noujaim (the filmmaker) happened to be
roommates with Kaleil just as he was starting a company with his buddy Tom.
She began filming casually, and the rest is documentary film history. A few
years later, she happened to be visiting some relatives and found herself in
the Al Jazeera newsroom just as the war with Iraq broke out. Again, she
started filming casually and ended up making film history for the second time.
That woman really has a knack for being at the right place at the right time,
and making the most of it.

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bootload
_"... Again, she started filming casually and ended up making film history for
the second time. ..."_

A part of what Jehane did was hack the documentary movie making process. When
DA Pennibacker (<http://www.phfilms.com/index.php/phf/people/d_a_pennebaker/>)
/ Chris Hegedus (<http://www.phfilms.com/index.php/phf/people/chris_hegedus>)
of (The War Room, Ziggy Stardust, dont look back) ~
<http://www.phfilms.com/index.php/phf/films/> great documentary makers
themselves wanted to film they carried around bulky intrusive tripods and
large cameras - requiring permission and time to set up the shot.

In startup.com the key reason a lot of the shots (shooting inside doing the VC
rounds / inside the cars after the deal) was the use of hand held cameras. It
was Jehane who took the hand held and got the great scenes and dialog that
make startup.com a study of founder dynamics.

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ahi
Sounds like they're still trying to sell some hand wavy bullshit.

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wallflower
> Because I find a lot of entrepreneurs often will come now looking for
> capital or some sort of involvement in a start-up dynamic, and you feel that
> in the dialogue they’re afraid of talking about their own failure. And I’ll
> say, "Hang on. It’s okay to talk about it." It’s actually much more credible
> if you talk about the lessons you glean from it.

No one likes to hear someone brag just about their success.

See: "The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment, part 1: Biases 1-6"

[http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-psychology-of-
entrep...](http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-psychology-of-
entrepreneurial-misjudgment)

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SoftwareMaven
I was working at a dot-com in the late 90's that could have been GovWork's
twin: We had a 3-person joint-CEO (the "Three-EO), we were going to give the
product away (our target was higher ed), the technical founder was forced out
of the company, we were even going to make students' lives better by being
able to pay parking tickets online.

It is always fun to watch the movie for nostalgia's sake.

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chaostheory
Isaza Tuzman: _I’m probably going to get tarred and feathered by the venture
capital community, many of whom we consider friends, but I think it’s given me
as an entrepreneur a little bit of a view that really the interests are not
aligned between entrepreneurs focused on one project and looking at not only
financial risks but career reputational risks, and a venture capitalist who
has 10 companies and a portfolio and really expects out of the box that six of
them will be unmitigated, absolute zero-end basis failures. And that tension
isn’t always addressed openly in the venture capital ecosystem. I don’t think
it’s accidental that we’ve kind of tried to stay away from venture capitalists
and the rights and preferences they bring into the capital structure._

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nhebb
This follow up interview seems to be focused a lot on capital and very little
on the product. IIRC, they never really got the software up and running. Yet,
even now, there doesn't seem to be a recognition that the lack of product was
a core issue. Maybe it's just WSJ tailoring the article to their audience, but
this whole storyline seems out of whack.

BTW, my favorite dot-com movie is the satire "Dot". If you've never seen it,
try to find a copy.

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imack
At the last startup I worked at we had a movie night where we watched this. A
non-programmer PM was, at the time, pressuring us to hire more developers by
loosening our standards to get more bodies working on features. There's a
great line in the movie where one of the managers basically says the product
isn't coming along because it's not like they have a bunch of genius
programmers to work with. I shot over a smirk to the PM after this line and I
didn't hear too many more about hiring low skill in bulk.

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chopsueyar
Obligatory plug for "E-Dreams", the Kozmo.com documentary.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262021/>

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rbanffy
Having seen it shortly after the dot-com implosion, it was a slightly
disturbing experience.

And it felt like I knew both of them since ever...

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oxtopus
Wait. That was real? After having watched through most of it, I thought it was
a mockumentary. I never finished watching it.

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rmason
Love that movie. The format may have introduced flaws but it is still the best
documentation of that period for those who lived it. Saw variations of that
story played out dozens of times with entrepreneurs I met while trying to
raise money.

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waterlesscloud
That movie always makes me feel so dumb. I missed out on a grand era of
printing money for anyone and everyone who just asked.

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hotmind
I'll pop in my Startup.com dvd and watch it at least once or twice a year.
Great docco. Probably my favorite.

