Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This is an excellent, compelling look into a time that seems so alien and so far away now. The days when there was so much money being invested into promises, and how the dot com bubble burst and took so much with it.Even though we now know where the story ends, the documentary is gripping from start to finish. It charts the venture from the inception through to its demise, although it focuses more on the early stages. I was part of a dot com venture and it really brought back the memories of "everything is impossible, we are unstoppable" that was pushed by those that run the ventures. And in the case of govworks.com, the gorgeous and charismatic CEO even met Clinton. How could it all go wrong? The documentary also charts, in fact in particular charts, the effect of the company on the personal relationships of those involved. Some of the agonies they face are better than stories you see in scripted dramas, and because they are so real they are very involving.It's a shame that the latter stage's of the company's demise are skipped over, we cut from them having over 200 employees to just 50 with no real explanation on what happened in between. Maybe it wasn't really required, maybe they didn't want to be filmed, but it felt like a bit of a hole. It's the only real complaint about the documentary however.Overall it accomplished showing us the birth and death of a dot com very well, and how it affects those involved. And anyone who watches the documentary will probably like me go to www.govworks.com and with sadness see that the domain is owned by one of those companies that registers dead domains, and feel such a sadness that all that blood, sweat and tears ended this way.

I myself worked in one of the ubiquitous .com's in the late 90's and this movie is frightening realistic, from the long hours and technical glitches right down to the embarrassingly lame cheers.I read on the web the filmmakers set out to document their friends impending wealth and business fortune with this documentary, but what they got was the complete opposite. I think that speaks volumes for expectations during this era.I feel like some of the other IMDb reviews are off the mark. Yes, the movie is sometimes hard to follow. But it was shot in the Cinéma-vérité genre and that is to be expected. It is an uncompromising real life look, and it is up to the viewer to decipher; sometimes this works sometimes not. Some previous reviews wondered how the company folded. Honestly its a movie about an internet company, why do you think it failed? Having said this, I think more could have been shown of why Tom got the axe and the love relationships of Kaliel could have been better developed.According to the DVD the producers cut some realistic (and boringly technical) scenes to focus more on the relationship between Tom and Kaleil. This is where they succeeded. They are trying to tell the story of the company downfall through the interplay of these two characters. It is fascinating because it is real. The most compelling part is the coorelation between their relationship eroding as does the company. Viewed from that point of view this movie is really not a documentary. Nevertheless it is entertaining and gripping. What amazed me was the unfettered greed and their enormous hubris which prevented them from acknowledge their role in this sinking ship.

Possible spoilersFor a film that allegedly went through over 25 revisions, "Startup.com" is shockingly poor in its construction and story-telling. Situations are brought up and dropped without explanation, scenes of seemingly great importance are played out with no set up, and people appear and disappear with no introduction or follow-through.The filmmaker's insistence on no narration or title cards is a stylistic choice which, in this instance, proves fatal as the scenes presented by themselves offer no clear narrative through-line. The mysterious "third partner", who ends up absconding with nearly a million dollars, is barely given any introduction and the audience gets no clear description of the financial conundrum his actions create for the two protagonists. A major story arc, the conflict between Tom and Kaleil over Tom's involvement in the company's tech division, is so poorly presented that when it plays a major role in the third act of the documentary's structure, it's just baffling until the very END of the film when the audience finally understands its importance. Kaleil apparently goes through two girlfriends in the film, but they appear and vanish with no explanation (this is an issue since the filmmakers solicit their on-camera opinions, then mysteriously excise them from the story altogether)---odd, since Kaleil's relationships with them are initially introduced as a relevant plot point, then there's no explanation when one girlfriend is apparently discarded and replaced.The film is fitfully compelling, and Tom and Kaleil are interesting enough figures to make this story watchable. Somewhere in here is a document of a fascinating time, of a brief period when hope, vision and foolishness coalesced into a mini non-revolution the effects of which are still being assessed. The clumsy assemblage called "Startup.com" is not that document.

Okay, let's face it, this film is really nothing special. It is pretty good and it is actually pretty compelling as it documents the rise and fall of an internet mega-site. It follows two corporate a**holes as they have everything they could ever ask for, and then have it slip away.The whole thing is shot on a home video camera by two cameramen who never say a word. The whole movie is filmed on an interesting topic, but quite honestly, I thought this film was boring as hell. I found it to be quite interesting and compelling, but the story was slow, and there is footage shown that doesn't have much to do with anything else. There are some scenes that even look like they were set up. Like, why would a guy be sitting around chilling in his underwear while a guy videotapes him. If I was him, I would've gotten some pants on first. There were just some parts that didn't seem realistic, and seem to me like they were set up in advance.Personally, I thought the film was great. But, it is very, very slow and you must have a very high patience. For major film fans only. And even they should take note that this film is an experience that I would not be able to sit throught more than once.STARTUP.COM gets 3/5.