On one internet company’s rapid rise and speedier fall, the documentary Startup.com would be more fun if its subjects didn’t come off as such egotistical assholes.
Friends since their high school days, Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman decide to chase fortune by staking their claim in the lawlessness of the World Wide Web with a site called govWorks.com, a public-to-government facilitator — in other words, you could pay your parking tickets online. As many did in the dot-com boom, Herman and Tuzman start believing this idea will reap millions upon millions.
We watch their heads balloon as their head count balloons from under a dozen employees to more than 200, thanks to venture capital, all before even having a legitimate product. When their site finally goes live, mishaps not only follow, but march in time; their Gordon Gekko-level greed so clouds their judgment, they fail to recognize their massive shortcomings, not the least of which is not having a fucking clue what they’re doing. It’s rather amazing they allowed co-directors Chris Hegedus (The War Room) and Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) to let cameras capture their abhorrent, self-fellating behavior.
After witnessing this pair of douchey hotheads do douchey hothead things — like Tuzman irreparably damaging their friendship by firing Herman via form letter — their downfall is the icing on Startup.com’s cake. To be honest, as engaging as the film is, I wanted to see even more failure, as we are told karma dictates. Real life eventually (read: in 2017) gave us what the movie could not, with Tuzman found guilty in federal court for schemes of widespread financial fraud. —Rod Lott