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07/05/2001 Entry: "Startup.com Review"
I went to see Startup.com at the Visions theatre today. The movie tracks the rise and fall of the govWorks.com startup.
If you're a techie who thinks this movie may show some of the 80-hour crazy work schedules, terribile engineering practices, etc involved with startups, this isn't the movie for you. Software development takes up about 3 minutes of the entire film, and when this happens it involves upper management types over-reacting to last minute bugs they are finding in the software.
I was hoping for something a lot more like PBS's Code Rush from a while back. This film is nothing like that. Even Code Rush fell short of what it feels like to be on a death march project, probably because their product was successful for the most part, and people actually got rich. That hasn't been my experience in such projects...
What this movie does show is some people running around to various venture capital firms pitching an idea for a website, giving some pep talks, and getting angry when the software isn't up to snuff. Umm, so this whole time someone was actually developing something ? Where was that happening ?
I couldn't get over the feeling that I was being force-fed "the winners" version of history, especially as the more technical founders of the company were being forced out of the company, especialy when the young developer I suspect actually wrote most of the code for the system is forced out early in the film. I left the film feeling scammed. There was no explanation of why the company fell apart, or what could have been done differently. There was no lessons to be learned, besides the lame "put people before profits" that seemed forced.
But in retrospect, perhaps the lesson is found in looking at what wasn't covered in the film. Isn't the lack of an engineering viewpoint in the film indicitive of what a lot of the dotcom crash was all about - people focusing more on the idea of making money rather than the mechanics of actually getting it done ? That getting funding is more important than being sustainable ? That putting design and testing behind marketing hype is a sure path to disaster ?
So what was I hoping for ? The dotcom movie I would like to see would follow the life of a lowly software developer. It would start with his interview at the company, where the stock options and cool technology were discussed, and follow the path as the company gradually consumed his entire life, where he was spending all his waking time at work constantly putting out fires. It will show the employee losing the once close contact with upper management as the company grows and new layers of management are added. Eventually it will show the collapse of the company, with the employee being escorted out by an armed guard, and close with him trying to put his shattered life back together.
(One final point is the color of the film wa pretty bad - everytime they showed the govWorks logo, I wondered why on earth anyone would make a logo with a fellow waving a huge Socialist flag. It wasn't until I put this post together that I saw the flag was supposed to be orange. Still doesn't make any sense to me....)
