Startup.com

The film Startup.com shows the story of two men who try to start a new website in the beginning of the new internet age. The men, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman, were friends all through high school. After graduation they stayed good friends and eventually went into business together. The film shows all they went through to try and create their own business. It is all shot using the real people rather than actors, and it is all real events rather than using sets, scripts, and having directors.
In the late nineteen-nineties the two friends, Kaleil and Tom, have the idea to create their own website. Before this point in time the internet was not nearly as popular as it currently is, and it was also not as well known. At the time when the two friends starting making the business the internet was just becoming really popular and widely known. Kaleil and Tom had the idea to make a website on this ever growing internet for the public to use.
The friends had the idea to make a company that was government related. The plan was to make a company that allowed the public to deal with municipal governments. This means they could do such things as pay parking tickets online in the convenience of their homes. The company they wanted to start was originally called Public Data Systems. The name was later changed to Govworks instead which lead to the creation of the website www.govworks.com.
After initially deciding on what to make the website about the two friends had to figure out how the website would work. They would also need money and backers for the company. The first person to loan money to the two was Mrs. Herman, the mother of Tom Herman. She believed in the company and wanted to help them get started.
There were many other small backers that helped the two friends by loaning money to help them start the business but it just wasn’t enough. Kaleil had to go around and try to find money in different places. He worked hard trying to pitch his idea to rich people and companies and asked for money to help get his business underway. Eventually they had lots of different sources of money for the business, including different venture capitalists. The total amount of money raised for the business was somewhere in the tens of millions.
In all, the company only lasted a few years. Throughout the course of making this film, the two friends had lost their third partner, who had to be bought out of the company, went through many girlfriends, lost many employees as the company died down, and also had a few rough moments in their friendship. In the end the company died. Kaleil and Tom stay good friends to this day and have also started a few new companies since the death of www.govworks.com. This film showed the rise and fall of their dream. In failing with the company, the two men learned many useful things about making a company and also about themselves.