Media moguls in the '70s had Network, bankers in the '80s had Wall Street and tech drones in the '90s had Office Space.
Inexplicably, Hollywood has yet to throw dot-commers a bone.
But as investors continue to suck the air out of the Internet bubble, time's running out, and so is the public's tolerance for anything dot-com. Last week, a San Francisco audience for the art flick Memento groaned audibly at the trailer for the soon-to-be-released documentary, Startup.com.
Though anyone who's worked at an Internet company may cringe at the movie's familiarity, it comes as a relief that Startup.com doesn't attempt to glamorize the dot-com era, nor does it rely on cliches to tell its story.
The documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently playing on the indie film circuit, chronicles the rise and fall of the real-life company GovWorks.com. It shows at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 20 and 23 and opens to the general public in New York on May 11.
There are no Gordon Geckos in this movie, and thankfully, it doesn't star Ben Affleck. Though Startup.com may hit too close to home for many laid-off dot-commers, it manages to be, well, touching.
You get the sense that these aren't the mythical two-guys-in-a-garage-turned-millionaires we all love to hate, but slightly better-than-average-looking, smart people with the burning ambition to retire rich before they turn 30. You might not admit it, but they could be your friends.
Documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim co-directed the documentary – shot in digital video – with Chris Hegedus, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her work on the 1994 documentary The War Room, a behind-the-scenes look at Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.
Noujaim, who began her work on Startup.com at age 25 after leaving her job as a producer for MTV, was a roommate and close friend of Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, the CEO of GovWorks.com and the central figure in the movie.
Their friendship afforded the filmmakers a rare degree of access to intimate moments between Kaleil and his close circle of business associates and friends. With the pervasiveness we've grown accustomed to in MTV's The Real World, many of the best scenes take place in gyms, bedrooms, bathrooms and behind closed doors at elite VC firms.
Shot close up in true cinema-vérité style, Startup.com is not just the story of another dot-com gone bust, but an intimate portrayal of the relationship between Kaleil and Tom, best friends since they were 15, and how the experience of starting a company together irrevocably changed it.
Having quit his cushy job at Goldman Sachs to pursue his dot-com dream, Kaleil joined Tom and a few other friends to found GovWorks.com, an Internet portal that attempted to automate transactions between local governments and the public, in 1999.
It sounded like a good idea at the time. At least it was better than the other ideas Kaleil and Tom momentarily considered, including virtual tombstones (you hope they were kidding, but you're not quite sure).
Through the team's hard work and equal measures of blind faith and good luck, the startup quickly established itself as one of Silicon Alley's most promising, and raised $15 million in funding from the Mayfield Fund.
At the height of GovWorks.com's success, the company is singled out as a sure thing by Forbes, SmartMoney and The New York Times.
Looking back, all the attention and money showered on GovWorks was stupid. But at the time, investors believed the company was "going after the largest uncharted territory on the Net." It was a multi-billion dollar opportunity that would be ripe for an IPO in six months.
The pacing and dialogue of the movie is so dead on that it's often hard to believe it's not scripted. Dot-commers in the audience may be able to recite many of the management's pep talks verbatim based on personal experience.
In a moment that will make all current and former dot-commers experience embarrassing flashbacks, GovWorks.com management leads the company in a rousing cheer:
"What are we going to do? Rock 'em!"
"When are we going to do it? Every day!"
"How are we going to do it? Every way!"
It's impossible, of course, not to know from the beginning that GovWorks is doomed. Had this been a fictional movie, the heavy foreshadowing of its inevitable outcome would have done it in.
At one point, Kaleil's high-maintenance girlfriend, Dora remarks, "They look like grown up gentlemen, in their ties and their suits. But they're not. They're just kids."
And when the going gets rough, Kaleil reassures Tom, "I'd rather see GovWorks fail than risk personal relationships."
The funny and sad thing is, Tom believed him. That makes him as much of a sucker as many – if not all – of the would-be dot-com millionaires judging him in the audience.
