What, in your opinion, was the single greatest flaw of govWorks.com?
In my opinion, it was simply that the company hired disproportionately to their financial success; i.e., they had 200 employees and no revenue (or web site, for that matter).
I think it was that they didn't (according to the way things were depicted in the movie) have the best site out there for what they were offering.
That and security. The break-in was where things really started to unwind...
The biggest flaw is there really wasn't a market for their product. Trying to serve governments is not an easy market to break into. The beauracracy (sp) of governments does not lend itself to efficiency. That, and their poor execution.
shareOne word: greed.
sharehttp://www.publicdatasystems.com/pres_exrpt.pdf
this the site Tom made explaining what went wrong..
As I said in my other comment in this thread, the lack of planning is the root cause of failure in this case, as with most others.
But the greed was the motivator to start the business, and greed was clearly why they apparently forgot to plan. They had an idea, a rough concept, and they pitched it for financing. They got a little under $20M, and immediately declared that their business had a valuation of $50M. They talk on their way to their first financial pitch about how they're going to be billionaires. (They skip right over millionaires, they are so sure their idea is perfect.)
When their buddy (I forget his name) gets out they give him $700,000 to buy out his initial $19,000 investment. They were that certain that their baby would grow so fast. The cliche in movies and even cartoons is of rich business owners burning cash, using it ti wipe their asses, etc. These guys were already throwing it around like Monopoly® money before they even had a complete plan on paper.
Because of their greed.
- Jon
The biggest problem was planning. Plain and simple. They were out looking for funding but only had a sketch of an idea of what the company would be. Even after their first financing deal they were still pulling all-nighters trying to figure out what the company was about, and still had major disagreements about even the must fundamental strategy. (Remember Tom bringing up ideas about digital cameras in basements of wherever and charging $50 for the time it took the person to do whatever the hell he was describing?)
Execution can't be blamed, particularly not that they executed too quickly, because the execution was perfect in light of the fact that they did not have an actual plan to execute.
No amount of careful execution or financial management or general enthusiasm or any other otherwise important aspect of success in business can compensate for a complete lack of planning (and organizing).
- Jon
Too much style, not enough substance. They were trying to sell air like almost everyone else during the dot com boom. I love the one line this lady gives when introducing Tuzman at a political dinner. She says that his firm is tapping into a 600 billion dollar market. I was laughing my ass off.
Overall these guys made me sick. Tuzman made my skin crawl. Swarthy does not even begin to describe this guy. I don't blame Tom for not trusting this guy. Anyone that in love with themselves will put everyone second. Just ask the 3 chicks he went through in the course of the movie.
I was amazed when I read Tuzman's bio. He came off as very unimpressive. I thought he has a degree in "hi five's" and a minor in "man hugs". One more friggin self congratulatory hi-5 in this movie and I would have puked.
The failure of the company was its mission. Making government more efficient is a lofty goal. I'm no business major, but I would assume that first your customer would want to be efficient. The goverment does not care. It does not have to come in under budget or make a profit. It does not have a board of directors. Yeah, taxpayers and voters, but people are too lazy in general to hold the right people accountable.
In fact, the more streamlined and efficient you make government, the more glaring the faults. People start to really understand how they are being screwed and the the goverment is in real trouble.
Not to be all negative... at least they had the balls to try.
You know that's funny, because I had similar reactions (although I don't get the "swarthy" thing at all).
What I saw as the core of their problem was a lack of a basic understanding and agreement of what they were doing and what role everyone would have. I was astounded at their immaturity and their unwillingness to face the emotionally "hard" questions. I'll grant them at least that they probably understood going in that the failure to articulate a detailed and tightly focused vision of their company was a risk with a potentially devastating downside. And I think deep down they knew their avoidance of an explicit delineation of the respective role and authority of each principal could blow up in their faces down the road. Just as it did.
But there was an even more basic issue in my opinion. More than their terror of addressing the interpersonal politics of their dot-com was their inexperience (a natural and perhaps unavoidable result of their youth) and (yes, let's say it) their arrogance. It seemed to me they thought they were the golden kids. That they were not just the whiz kids; not just the smartest guys in the room, but actual morally superior beings to boot. (viz. their constant...and tiresome...use of the buzzwords of faux caring). It appeared they really believed they were above the ordinary human foibles of fear, distrust, hurt feelings or a need to display status.
Of the original 3 guys, the only one I thought who had any real decency when the chips were down was Tom. The Asian prick who extorted $700,000 from the company just to go away takes the cake for king *beep* All he did was put in $19,000 and then expected the same rewards as the other guys who, although they were making a lot of mistakes, did seem to be working like Trojans. The other prick essentially blackmailed them: he wouldn't do any work, and then wouldn't clear out and get out of the way unless they threw an exorbitant amount of money at him. He was the true cynical and greedy jerk of the bunch.
I was initially pulling for Kaleil just as much as Tom, but then I saw how much of Mr. Tuzman was just pose and schtick. Kaleil was quite aware of being on camera, and everything he did and said was with an eye toward how he would come off on screen. All his talk about his love and caring for Tom, etc. was just so much b.s., because it was apparent that Kaleil had absolutely no intention of sharing control or the spotlight. I was disgusted by the cynicism of Kaleil having a touchy-feely office-wide meeting to talk about how heartbroken he was to lose his good friend Tom. Now, Tom was the same guy that, when he caught on that his 3-month "paid vacation" was really a severance package and decided to stay at work, dear friend Kaleil ordered to be immediately escorted from the building while being shadowed by a goon. The same guy who the instant the door closed on him Kaleil put in effect a whole series of extraordinary steps to ensure he would never be able to have any connection with the company he helped found. And when Kaleil had everyone do a "company cheer" for the same Tom he just fired, it was such a cheap and disgustingly manipulative bit of fraud that I thought I would puke.
After watching most of the documentary, the only guy I thought I could trust at all was Tom. He didn't have all his stuff together, and he got in over his head. But he didn't come off like a cynical, manipulative conniver like the little egomaniac who insisted on being called "Kaleil Isaza Tuzman". That guy just creeped me out.
The dude was swarthy enough, but I'm guessing from the context that the intended word was "smarmy".
shareYeah dude swarthy was a bad choice of words. That doesn't describe anything except the color of his skin.
Smarmy is good. Smart ass is better. Swaggering?
Oleaginous? How about fulsome? Too extreme. Vain, narcissistic definitely. Arrogant. Cocky.
That said, without him the film wouldn't be as compelling. The world needs people like this. They wouldn't have raised a fraction of that money without him. I kinda liked him.
But his passion is for money, not the actual innerworkings of his business - This is the flaw, to me. Look at the other websites he runs now, and the ones he's run in the past. From the KIT website:
"KIT digital’s VX platform leads the industry in enabling businesses to ingest, manage, and deliver video to internal and external audiences. Our software is used worldwide to increase operational efficiency of large corporations and drive revenue for publishers and syndicators of video."
What the hell does that mean?
I'm a film editor. I understand the functionality of software and hardware. I would never use a middle man for anything that I do. Tuzman, and the other members of his team from 'Startup.com' don't seem to have a real passion for anything except becoming rich, and going through the motions of what one might go through to become rich.
He is the only member of the film with his own Wikipedia page and it appears that he or a close friend wrote it to promote his ventures. It's bloated with boasts about what kind of money he has made, and what deals he has struck, but there is no substance beyond that. He has never created anything.
While I think they guy's brilliant, I believe the word for somebody like that is 'second hander'.
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The same guy who the instant the door closed on him Kaleil put in effect a whole series of extraordinary steps to ensure he would never be able to have any connection with the company he helped found. And when Kaleil had everyone do a "company cheer" for the same Tom he just fired, it was such a cheap and disgustingly manipulative bit of fraud that I thought I would puke.
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There's a lot of truth in your statement, but (though my library DVD skipped at this point, and I could be wrong) wasn't Tom's firing mandated by the board? Didn't the options boil down to one person losing a job, vs. both people losing their job?
For whatever reason, Tom forgave him and entered another venture with him. I'd love to know if they still work together, and if they are still friends.
He was swarthy and guess he's running another company now: http://www.kit-digital.com/
Arthur
I'll agree with all of the above ~ HR problems, ridiculously poor planning, GREED. I would add a lack of a unified vision/definition (Kaliel and Tom had differing views of what the site would even offer to customers - and who were their customers? Governments or those the governments (ostensibly) serve?
But the clincher for me came very early in the doc: Who goes to Silicon Valley to pitch a hot new Dot.com idea and makes their presentation on paper??? Someone should have told Tom (the 28-year-old birthday boy who claims as he's getting the ax that he's been dealing with technology for 23 years, so since he was five! - Nintendo's Mario World, maybe?) that simple presentation/slide show programs like PowerPoint have been around for a long, long while. If you can't produce a simple A/V presentation on your laptop how could anyone have confidence in your ability to run a cost-effective, profitable and secure website? No wonder so few tech savvy VCs wanted to throw money their way. It took the luddite investment bankers who were willing give bags of money to anything with a ".com" in its business name to finance GovworksDOTCOM. *POP* And the bubble bursts ~ splat.
The Single Greatest Flaw of the company was its business model. Why would someone go online and pay extra just to pay their parking ticket when they can mail it in for the cost of a stamp?
shareWell I didn't think parking tickets was the main thing, being able to for instance renew your license without the stupid dmv seemed to me a huge selling point. The ideas along that line really jumped out.
"I pray every single day...for a REVOLUTION!"
Heh. If govWorks had developed a rock-solid platform from which cusotmers could renew drivers' licenses so that they didn't have to descending into that maw of hell that is every DMV office in the country, then Special K and his assistants (Let's not pretend: Kaliel obviously intended to run the whole show himself) would have made countless millions - even if that was the only thing their software could do. Too bad they forgot to make sure they had a working product to sell before they did all this other big wheel stuff.
shareAs Tom mentioned in interviews, they changed focus on the consumer rather than the government. They should have become a consulting company to the governments, which then would normally offer online services for free. That's where the money is, there are tons of companies who leach off of fat government budgets. It's a steady stream, whereas selling to the public is very difficult and a fickle game. There's so much out there that's free, if you're not selling widgets or oven mits it's hard to make a profit.
Also, they really didn't know what they were doing, I saw it first hand myself, they grew too fast without a solid plan. I can't believe they had 233 employees for one website? rediculous.
--
"Surrender Dorothy!"
Underestimating how difficult it is to sign up governments to use your service, and what it would take to service those customers. I'm guessing they desperately needed those 200 employees to sell, implement, and service the product. They landed something like 45 customers, and each of those would have different systems, procedures and requirements.
share[deleted]
Looking at some of the scenes in the movie, one of the biggest problems is lack of diversity in the company. Not by race. By age. Simply too many young people who lacked experience.
I work for a company that is a contractor for the federal governments.
We have young people doing the it work, and people in their 50-60s who work with the liaisons to the federal government. Each of these people have 20+ experience working in this field with the government.
Our company also has experience in winning contracts with the government.
We know what to bid. We know how to fulfill the government's needs for the contract.
And many times, we hire people that have recently retired from the government so they can help us win the contracts. Its all legal. Its about know the ins and outs of the government.
There was greed in this movie.
But they lacked experience dealing with governments.
The ceo did a great job with the Vcs and getting funding. But the company lacked experience in executing the game plan cause, from watching the doc, they had no government contractor experience.
I just watched this again. I still can't figure out from the documentary what their *beep* product actually was. So the biggest flaw: utterly nebulous idea for developing a product other than "it's cool, it has something to do with interfacing government to citizenry, we'll work out the rest later. Profit!"
Pay your parking tickets online? That's e-payment, and there were already companies moving into that market space that had a better idea of how to do that. Watch a town hall meeting in your underwear? That's online video streaming and "portalling", and while Youtube hadn't got their yet, again, other companies were better placed to do that too. What their website govworks.com actually /did/ once they built it, I still have no idea. "Some kind of portal" -- a database of links to online government services? Hey, the masses will flock to that!
According to their very sketchy entry on wikipedia, their initial product was "software to help governments track contracts and purchasing functions." So some kind of contract-management and procurement management software -- a notoriously ill-defined area filled with software that doesn't work very well, because the unstructured nature of the process it's attempting to control. So even their first product was vagueware.
If anyone's still reading, can someone explain what govworks.com was supposed to do?
You nailed it. They really didn't have a business model, and it's tough enough to sell a good working product that is actually useful. In my opinion, the most talented employee rarely even appeared on camera. Time and again the publicity/PR person for govWorks got Kaleil on TV shows, magazine covers, etc.
Someone pointed out that Tom didn't seem to have as many stars and $ bills in his eyes as some others in the company. Perhaps, but I do recall Tom talking about getting a "substantial" settlement, and as the most technical member of the company I think he deserved blame for the poor software and programming that was dragging the company down. Tom also seemed to be "mailing it in" during most of the movie. For better or worse, at least Kaleil was out there hustling and seemed to be holding down his end of the bargain. Did anyone actually see Tom perform ANY technical work during the entire movie? I sure didn't.
I think these guys had some decent ideas, but what they needed was a really solid way of executing them, which they did not have at all. I also think they were a little ahead of their time. We pay bills online as a matter of course now, but 15 years ago it still made most people nervous. I would have never paid a parking ticket online back then through a website like that. I would have sent a check in the mail with a clear paper trail leading back to my bank account.
share