Startup.com Documentary

The Startup.com movie was nothing if not a roller-coaster ride. We see the ups and downs of the GovWorks founders Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Tom Herman, and Chieh Cheung as they try to navigate the process of starting a company from scratch. One of the most surprising points by the end of the movie for me is that the third founder, Chieh Cheung, was the only founder to profit from the company after being bought out for 700k somewhat early on. The remaining founders walk away with nothing after the company is forced to file bankruptcy and sell the company after burning through $60 million in capital over 3 years. We see multiple points of contention where members of the company seemed to have been outpaced by its growth, starting with Chieh, all the way to Tom Herman himself when the power struggle boils over into a dramatic scene ending with his termination and escort from the building. I found myself confused early on seeing so much emphasis towards wooing investors before a product had even begun production. It did make more sense later on seeing the size of the team that was used to build the infrastructure, but I couldn't help but wonder why something couldn't have actually been scraped together from the start. It was challenging at times to differentiate between Kaleil's motivation being a necessary use of decisiveness and a conflict of ego. Some of his rationale became increasingly questionable when I researched him after watching the documentary and saw how he was recently convicted of multiple counts of fraud because of his activities in companies after GovWorks. Aside from all of the issues that played out, it was an incredibly insightful look at some of the real life complications of starting a business. What specifically was the cause for the companies failure wasn't necessarily clear to me, but nonetheless it wasn't a surprise given the many hurdles that came along. Amid robberies, communication failures, personal struggles, and poor management, it was disappointing to see the way it turned out; Especially considering it seemed like a product that to this day hasn't been implemented to the extent it could be.

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