Startup.com

Startup.com is a documentary that follows the full story of a 90s tech company called govWorks. They got started with the initial boom of the dot com era, and attempted to capitalize on the incoming technologies that were being introduced with the newly formed internet. The company was formed by a few best friends: Kaleil, Tom, and Chieh. None of which had any experience starting or running a company, let alone a internet company in the dot com boom. Their idea was brilliant, allowing citizens to pay parking tickets from the comfort of their home through their personal computer. But in this documentary, one of the biggest things we learned was that it takes a lot more than a good idea to succeed in business. After all, a rival company with the same concept ended up surpassing them in popularity. They had dozens of engineers working on this product, and they still struggled with tons of bugs and properly designing this software, which hurt their growth in terms of actual service they offered. This is yet another lesson about hiring the right people for your company if you want to be successful. In this movie, they also showed us how Tom became more of a liability for the company than an asset. This forced Kaleil to make a tough decision, eventually asking Tom, his best friend, for his resignation. Through over-evaluation, poor finance practices and a lack of a strong product, they went eventually went bankrupt. They had to learn the hard way and eventually ended up suffering the same fate that many internet companies suffered that boomed too fast in the dot com bust.