EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

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...

scottwired2172 I had one of the most infuriating movie watching experiences of my life watching this on DVD. I can't believe the immature, clueless, egomaniac founders of Kozmo raised $280 million for this harebrained, no win, "business," and then blamed its demise on the markets and the VCs who didn't want to plow more money in. The filmmaker cast a nauseatingly sympathetic eye toward the whole train wreck, basically making the founders look like cute failed visionaries. God help us if we ever go back to a time where half-baked, profitless ideas, on such a mass scale, get funded. If anything, this movie demonstrated how intoxicating media attention is, how it drives a company to made bad decisions. The CEO's inability to stop himself from talking to reporters during the IPO quiet period is one blatant example. To that end, I can't think of any other failed business-oriented documentary, chalk full of corporate malfeasance and ineptitude, that so likely pleased its subjects. The epilogue (the special features interviews) confirmed that the only lesson learned by these guys is that it was everyone else's fault, or that they grew too fast because the older seasoned guys they brought in wanted to "run big companies." Never mind that it was the founders who raised a Third World-debt-sized war chest and blew it. Or that the economic underpinnings of the business were flawed and hardly baked, and there was no possible way to become profitable EVER. The filmmaker, like the founders, gives no thought to the numbers. So what is this movie about? Publicity -- pre, during and post. Addiction to personal publicity, self-satisfaction, and no practical experience in building a business is what drove this company and its founders to extinction.

Charles B. Owen e-Dreams is a real-life view of Kozmo.com, a startup Internet company during the final heyday of the net IPO's. Kozmo followed the traditional dot-com business plan of raise financing, raise more financing, then IPO, only the market crash tanked their IPO, leaving them unable to function after burning of $280 million of investment funds. Of all of the various businesses created during that craze, few can approach the absolutely ludicrous level of stupidity the Kozmo business plan (if it can be called that) represented. One analyst computed that Kozmo would have to grow large enough to hire virtually the entire popular of the United States in order to make a profit that justified the target stock price. I really believe Wonsuk Chin, the director, recognized that and planned to show the rise and fall from the beginning. As an inside view of Kozmo, the film is sometimes fascinating, showing how financing ideas developed, and often enlightening, demonstrating stupidities like failing to pay the utility bill or not having paychecks ready on time. It is also fascinating in its complete omission of any details about running the company. The lack of a business plan is evidenced in every day's operation. But, it also has long periods of absolute boredom. We see lots of plane travel that adds nothing to the narrative and near the end of the movie there is a long monologue by Joseph Park that seems to go on forever. (Spoiler here, though most everyone knows how this ends, anyway) But, what I did not like about this film is that the ending was decidedly unsatisfying. As a critic at the time of the egregious waste in the Internet era, I wanted to see them close the doors and recognize that their idea was a failure. Instead, we are cut short at the departure of Joseph Park, who leaves feeling that the only thing he did wrong was not choosing the right financing model. The ultimate climax of the movie, the failure of Kozmo.com, is left to footnotes at the end. You get the impression that these are criminals who get away with it, and that's just not the point of the film.