''Startup.com'' is a 2001 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed by

Jehane Noujaim Jehane Noujaim ( ar, جيهان نجيم, ) (born May 17, 1974) is an Academy Award nominated American documentary film director best known for her films ''Control Room'', '' Startup.com'', '' Pangea Day'' and '' The Square.'' In 2019, she co-di ...

and

Chris Hegedus Chris Hegedus (born April 23, 1952) is an American documentary filmmaker. She and her husband, filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker, founded the company Pennebaker Hegedus Films. Hegedus was nominated for an Academy Award for ''The War Room'', a behind-t ...

. D.A. Pennebaker served as a producer on the film. It follows the

dot-com start-up The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Com ...

govWorks.com, which raised $60 million in funding from Hearst Interactive Media,

KKR KKR & Co. Inc., also known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is an American global investment company that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and, through its strateg ...

, the New York Investment Fund, and Sapient. The startup did not survive, but it became a reference for lessons learned, as it was the subject of a 2001 documentary that follows

govWorks govWorks Inc. was a dot-com company that was founded in 1998 by Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Tom Herman and Chieh Cheung. It went bankrupt when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. govWorks's rise and fall is documented in the 2001 documentary '' Startup ...

founders

Kaleil Isaza Tuzman Kaleil Isaza Tuzman is a former entrepreneur associated with digital media, who spent more than 20 years in that industry before being convicted of multiple counts of fraud in 2017. Tuzman started his career at Goldman Sachs, was co-founder of Gov ...

and Tom Herman from 1999 to 2000, as the

Internet bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compos ...

was bursting. The film had its world premiere at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,6 ...

on January 21, 2001. It was released on May 11, 2001, by

Artisan Entertainment Artisan Entertainment (formerly known as U.S.A. Home Video, International Video Entertainment (IVE) and LIVE Entertainment) was an American film studio and home video company. It was considered one of the largest mini-major film studios until ...

Production

The film was produced by D.A. Pennebaker, and directed by

and

. Noujaim had been Kaleil Tuzman's

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

classmate and began filming Tuzman as he quit his job at

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, Ho ...

, 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

(which was later acquired by

Lions Gate Entertainment Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, doing business as Lionsgate, is a Canadian-American entertainment company. It was formed by Frank Giustra on July 10, 1997, domiciled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is currently headquartered ...

). 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

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.

Reception

Critical response

''Startup.com'' received positive reviews from film critics. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

it holds a 93% approval rating, based on 94 reviews, with an average rating of 7.55/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Startup.com is more than just a look at the rise and fall of the new economy. At its center is a friendship being tested to the limit, and that's what makes it worth viewing." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a score of 75 out of 100, based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". David Rooney of ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' called it a "timely, topical film, which goes beyond its potentially dry diet of facts to incorporate the juicy human drama of Machiavellian manipulations, ambition, torn loyalties and crushing betrayal."

References

External links

* * Kaleil's Official Website * * * {{Navboxes , title = Awards for ''Startup.com'' , list = {{Florida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Documentary Film {{Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Documentary Film 2001 films American business films American documentary films Artisan Entertainment films Documentary films about business Documentary films about the Internet 2001 documentary films Dot-com bubble Films directed by Jehane Noujaim 2000s English-language films 2000s American films Films about companies

Production

Reception

Critical response

See also

References

External links