It's been quite some time since my last entry.  I've been indulging in my newfound drug - GOLF!  I've discovered the attraction of golf is that it appeals to my EXTREME type A personality - there are SOOOO many parts to try and perfect that it's going to keep my interest for years and years until I perfect all the parts (yeah right).

But golf is not the subject of my blog entry today.  I was going to show a documentary today to my employees to generate a discussion, and I ended up showing to a group of high school kids (in addition to my employees) taking place at The Enterprise Center (yes we do movie day every now and then at CTE).  The movie is entitled "Startup.com".  It is a documentary that follows the rise and fall of Govworks.com during the dot.com boom of the late 90's/early 2000's.  It is a fascinating movie and I highly recommend it.  The company raised about $60 million, but failed less than 2 years later.

You can have your own opinions if you watch the movie, but here are the reasons why I think the company failed:

1. Failure to have a clearly defined brand/mission/vision.  At a meeting with a VC group, the two co-founders found themselves contradicting themselves as to where they saw the future of the company.  The CEO (Khaleil) later had a discussion with his co-founder, Tom, on the topic.  His point was that they cannot give conflicting messages in an external environment - and he was 100% correct in this.  As the CEO, though, it is his responsible that the company has a clear vision. 
2. Failure to clearly defined roles.  Throughout the film, the co-founders find themselves in a power struggle over decisions.  I felt that one of the major issues was that Tom did not have a clearly defined role.  More importantly, I think the unclearly defined role that Tom was filling was poorly suited to his skill set.  He later admitted in the movie that he wasn't suited to directly the product development and that he just didn't have the experience.  Seems like a HUGE issue for such an important role for a dot.com. 
3. Growing too fast.  The company grew from 8 to 50 to 200 and back to 50 in the course of a year and a half.  That's CRAZY!  The CEO has a moment where he says "Our infrastructure is ridiculously inflated".  I think they just grew too fast which a lot of times breeds inefficiency.  Which also probably leads to the lack of clearly defined roles in point 2. 

You will have to watch the movie yourself and take away your own lessons.  It's a solid movie and there a lot of "what not to do's" for startups.