VividSimon Simply Perfect

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

vincent-27 2 Trillion dollars down the drain in 6 days? Just think what that money could do in the world. It amazes me how people jump all over the government for overspending and being inefficient, well at least they provide some kind of service, where did all that money go? This movie documents the rise and fall of a startup dot com company during the late 90's, much like the movie "startup.com" did (a far superior film). Kozmo.com was just one of the many companies that went bust when investors started to wake up from their dreamy fog and realize that, hey, businesses need to make money. What a concept! But I guess that's what investors do, they perpetually look for a way to make a lot of money by doing very little. How could they expected such a hair-brained idea as having everything delivered to your door in less than an hour and actually make money at it. Just because you can do it on the internet? Big deal, people could order stuff from the phone for a long time before that, and even order stuff through their TV. Just because you make that first step a little easier doesn't change the fact that you have an enormous infrastructure to support. Even I realized early on in the internet days that the only way internet companies could make money is if they delivered information only, not actual hard goods. That's what ebay does, that's what google does, yahoo etc. Other than that a website is nothing more than a sophisticated pamphlet. And I thought these guys were supposed to be smart? I guess greed can blind your judgement. There is a scene in the movie, just before Kozmo is supposed to IPO, where Joe Park is at a party (probably drunk) and yelling into a microphone about how great the company is. The look in his eyes is kind of scary, he just seems to be overcome with swimming in so much money. One thing he fails to see, and so did most of the other companies, that raising $250 million in VC funds is NOT the same as actually MAKING $250 million, which is much harder. Didn't they realize that these people were INVESTING in their company, not GIVING them free money? And I thought these guys worked at Goldman Sachs? Here's a hint guys, if somebody's idea seems crazy, it probably is.

alexkogon ...but after the drink, the Cosmopolitan, which was quite the hip drink those days. When I first met Joe he wined and dined me at some of the most over-priced bars in Manhattan (not the hip ones, they were down the street; I offered to show him, but his self-conviction that we were in the best place was amazing), and he drank many.I actually haven't seen this movie, but I was involved with Joe and Yong before it was a company with 10 employees in a decrepit warehouse, when it was just the two of them in an apartment in lower Manhattan, with me living upstairs. I was running a software development firm at the time and met Joe in the hallway and he asked me to come talk to them.I met with Joe and Yong and gave them some technical advice and they asked me if I would be interested in developing their software. I said sure, and we negotiated the terms, and they said great they wanted me to do it.I started putting a team together and getting the paperwork together and was in touch with them and they were constantly positive. Then a few days later they told me they wanted to compensate me all in equity, to show that I was committed to their concept. As I personally believed they would never make more than enough money to pay their delivery people (a view apparently shared by many more sophisticated analysts), I told them I was interested in cash only.They continued to lead me on that I would be doing the work, until I came down to finalize the paperwork and they told me they had hired someone else, after assuring me they wanted to work with me and not even telling me they were looking elsewhere! Now knowing what Joe Park's handshake and word were worth, I ventured off to fairer pastures and didn't think much of it again. I bumped into Yong later and he told me that the people they hired didn't know what they were doing (you get what you pay for!) and asked if I wanted to be involved again; I felt sorry for Yong but didn't want to get back involved.Of course I saw them again and was even their customer (though I quickly defected to Urban Fetch when they launched, on principle). It was great to come back from Europe with jet lag, call them up at 5 AM and order a movie and some cokes and have them show up. I was amazed at how successful they were at raising capital; whenever I met with Joe in the early days he couldn't get through a sentence without stammering with an "ummm...well..."; years later I saw him on TV, and it was the same story! People invested over $250MM with this guy? What are the rest of us doing wrong??? I look back on it all with affection for the funny days of the dot com madness (and this was early). It was only a couple weeks of my time and I didn't invest a penny, so I guess I got off easy. I did not know there was a movie made, I have to see it; nor did I know it made CNet's Top 10 dot-com flops list. The things you find when you are bored surfing the internet! I would like to know what Joe Park is up to these days, but that info is not so obvious...

Edwin T. Rywalt After viewing this documentary, I did some additional research on this company, Kozmo.com and discovered just how ridiculous the dot.com business model (if you can call it that) was. The DVD that I viewed had some additional information on the founders of this company. After the company failed, the CEO, Park, is reported to have gone off to the Harvard Business School. Incredible, but not surprising. I thought the documentary was terrific in that it perspicuously presented the 'scam' that was perpetrated by this company by going after funding instead of profitable and meaningful business. Kudos for producers and directors Wonsuk Chin and Sam Pai.

sarge_5150 As a veteran of several dot-com companies, watching this film was like watching home movies. Other vets of that era and I watched this film with sick fascination, seeing events and situations that we ourselves had endured. This film perfectly captures the thoughtlessness, greed, and insanity of those years. Unlike the other reviewer, I thought the ending perfectly captured the era: even when it was obvious that it was over, the jokers that led us down the garden path in the first place refused to acknowledge it. This film serves well as a documentary of one of the most spectacular dot-bombs but it serves even better as proof to those that lived through it that they are not alone.