Startup.com

Startup.com was a documentary made in 2001 and to be honest, at first I thought this documentary was going to be boring and I wouldn’t get much out of it, I was completely wrong. Startup.com was essentially an eye opening and informational video that I actually really enjoyed. I say that this documentary was eye opening because it showed how these group of young people got together and were trying to start a new company from the ground up and they knew that it would not be easy. As the company begins to get started, we watch as they kinda start to crumble and take the stress of the company out on each other. I was glad that the documentary emphasized this because it just shows viewers that you cannot achieve success unless you work as a team rather than independently. For example, the CEO of the company, Tuzman let the company get in the way of his personal relationship in which Tuzman’s girlfriend left him due to his neglectfulness. GovWorks, the name of their company without a doubt had potential. The people working behind govWorks were not just amateurs who had no idea what they were doing. In fact, Tuzman graduated from Harvard and Tom Herman as well had the technical expertise. They had the experience and knowledge needed to create this successful company, but they lacked the experience in forming a company overall. They entered the business world with confidence, but made mistakes along the way. As a company they failed to look at the future of govWorks and only thought in the now, which resulted in one of the three founders of govWorks to sell out his portion of the company. 

A Visit from Brian Forth

Brian Forth is currently a CEO of a site crafting company and he works with 42 other people, he was a former fifth grade teacher and often trained kids on how to build websites. It was interesting to learn about his career and what he enjoys most about his job. One of the first things that Brian said to us that stuck out to me was, “The only constant is change.” Brian was talking about how his company had to constantly adapt and transition to new things happening involving the world wide web. Additionally, Brian mentioned how one of our world’s biggest issues as a society is data security. He asked us if we own or our own data or does Facebook own it? Instagram? Twitter? Snapchat? This got me thinking. Thinking about the very first day of class when Professor Fry told us that today is the most privacy that we will ever have. Anytime I go on any of my social media accounts, I make the decision to put my information out to the world and am essentially giving away the right to my data. This can actually be pretty scary when you think about it and I think that was what Brian Forth was trying to get us to understand. “If the product is free, then you are the product.” As a society we put our trust into these mobile applications, but do not realize the possible consequences. During class discussion we talked about how sometimes when making purchases online we hesitate to input our card information because once we do that, it is automatically saved and now your money could be at risk. These are all important things to consider when discussing the world wide web and I am glad that Brian Forth made me realize this.