Startup.com

Startup.com (2001)

Friends since high school, 20-somethings Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman have an idea: a Web site for people to conduct business with municipal governments. This documentary tracks the rise and fall of govWorks.com from May of 1999 to December of 2000, and the trials the business brings to the relationship of these best friends. Kaleil raises the money, Tom's the technical chief. A third partner wants a buy out; girlfriends come and go; Tom's daughter needs attention. And always the need for cash and for improving the site. Venture capital comes in by the millions. Kaleil is on C-SPAN, CNN, and magazine covers. Will the business or the friendship crash first?

Date of release
2001-01-21
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (39)
Runtime
1h 47m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Chris Hegedus, Jehane Noujaim

Casting

Interesting facts

Startup.com is a 2001 American documentary film directed by Jehane Noujaim and Chris Hegedus, with D. A. Pennebaker serving as a producer on the film. It follows the dot-com start-up govWorks.com, which raised $60 million in funding from Hearst Interactive Media, KKR, the New York Investment Fund, and Sapient.

Production

The film was produced by D. A. Pennebaker, and was directed by Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim. Noujaim had been Kaleil Tuzman's Harvard classmate and began filming Tuzman as he quit his job at Goldman Sachs, to begin govWorks with his high school friend Tom Herman. Noujaim contacted Hegedus and Pennebaker for help in financing the project. The film was distributed by Artisan Entertainment (which was later acquired by Lions Gate Entertainment).

The film was shot in digital video. The filmmakers shot for over two years, and were editing the more than 400 hours of video and film right up to their Sundance Film Festival premiere in early 2001. They re-edited the last few minutes of the film just prior to its May 2001 theatrical release.

Since the film's release, Herman and Tuzman worked together again at Recognition Group and JumpTV. In 2017, Tuzman was convicted of multiple counts of fraud and market manipulation in connection with his business KIT Digital.

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