Want to make tons of $? Don't mix business with pleasure. 😑

92% Rotten Tomatoes rated documentary, Startup.com, unveiled lessons of "power, duty, and betrayal."

We’re at this point in the quarter – everything becomes chaos. It’s Week 8. I re-watched the film to come up with what I overall think about: the big picture I’m getting from Startup.com.

     Startup.com tells the story of two co-owners, protagonists Kaleil Tuzman and Tom Herman starting their own company. Being friends since high school, Tuzman and Herman seemed determined to become wealthy. They came up an idea, a business model, of starting a company involved with the dot.com boom, in which they thought to create a website facilitating transactions between users and local governments (such as paying parking tickets or renewing driver’s licenses). With collaborative planning on how they made their idea become a reality, they successfully formed a company where number of employees increased overtime.
     Although the idea seemed brilliant at the time when websites were new, even as a concept, there were many issues that rose during the entire time they were trying to commence and maintain the site they created. There were interpersonal conflicts involved in the company itself – and most of the conflicts were about managing or employees figuring out their roles in the workplace. There has also been conflict of roles between and Tom and Kaleil (since they’re both co-owners) – Kaleil was the CEO of the company, but Tom’s role (at least to me, similar to how employees of govWorks felt) was questionable. There wasn’t quite a balance of power between the two protagonists. Money was also part of the conflicts – money quarrels were involved.
     This also affected personal relationships for the two protagonists. The fact that they worked together, even as friends, in developing their business wasn’t quite a success at all. Beyond the corporate retreats and pushing investors lies the goal of getting rich. The movie itself portrays that the initial goal of making a business model or even an idea boom may not be the goal at all. It’s a goal that doesn’t quite last because with money being considered/involved, there will always be complications and ethical issues (i.e. issues related to personal relationships – or, how business affects personal relationships).
     The vision of the company (which may be the goal) seemed to be unclear. I honestly think that – when it comes to starting a business or attempting to make an idea become a reality – there should be a clear vision reflecting the reasons why you would want to do so and that vision should be deeper than just money itself. Reasons to start up a business should be beyond money itself (of course, money should still be considered, but I’m just saying that there’s more to it than that because relationships may be involved and other aspects outside of business may possibly be involved) – so I think everything (all the details) should be looked at carefully.

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