Startup.Com Movie Reaction Paper
Startup.com shows the perils of going into business with a shaky business plan. It shows the initial excitement, the rise and fame, the bumping of heads and the eventual downfall. Such is the story of govworks.com, the documentary, startup.com covers it’s first, and only, year in business.
Long-time friends, Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, had a great business idea, with a large market, and little competition. They took something that nearly everyone goes through, and marketed it in a more efficient way. They wanted to make the DMV more efficient, specifically; they wanted to allow consumers to quickly and securely pay their traffic tickets online. This business plan parallels Netflix in many ways, as it took something that we were already doing, renting movies, and making it easier. With the internet booming and more and more people having access to computers and internet, Govworks.com soon exploded. They went from a one-room office with a tiny staff to over 200 employees and a net worth in the millions.
However, like many internet startups of that time, Govworks.com was not a success, and by 2001, the company had let go of almost all its employees, and it was eventually overtaken by another company. “GovWorks's failure is a textbook example of the perils of grandiosity”(footnote1) . Over and over again we have seen examples of companies that have gone too big too fast, and GovWorks was one of them. Rather than just focusing on one aspect or one city, they wanted to spread out in as many places as possible as fast as possible. A similar plan was used by Fresh Samantha, in that they wanted to spread in as many places as they could, as quickly as they could, which may have led to their eventual overtaking by Odwalla. Tuzman wanted to claim the first stake in the online government payment firm. He wanted to be the forerunner, the one who set the standard, and ultimately, the one that brought in all the money. What he failed to realize is that every great
Long-time friends, Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, had a great business idea, with a large market, and little competition. They took something that nearly everyone goes through, and marketed it in a more efficient way. They wanted to make the DMV more efficient, specifically; they wanted to allow consumers to quickly and securely pay their traffic tickets online. This business plan parallels Netflix in many ways, as it took something that we were already doing, renting movies, and making it easier. With the internet booming and more and more people having access to computers and internet, Govworks.com soon exploded. They went from a one-room office with a tiny staff to over 200 employees and a net worth in the millions.
However, like many internet startups of that time, Govworks.com was not a success, and by 2001, the company had let go of almost all its employees, and it was eventually overtaken by another company. “GovWorks's failure is a textbook example of the perils of grandiosity”(footnote1) . Over and over again we have seen examples of companies that have gone too big too fast, and GovWorks was one of them. Rather than just focusing on one aspect or one city, they wanted to spread out in as many places as possible as fast as possible. A similar plan was used by Fresh Samantha, in that they wanted to spread in as many places as they could, as quickly as they could, which may have led to their eventual overtaking by Odwalla. Tuzman wanted to claim the first stake in the online government payment firm. He wanted to be the forerunner, the one who set the standard, and ultimately, the one that brought in all the money. What he failed to realize is that every great