E-Dreams

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Excellent Business Class!, 2008-05-20
br /This is not your typical left-wing ranting against Wall Street. It is an excellent, non-judgmental documentary about how cruel capitalism is with people, their dreams and ambitions. With real-time footage, it explains the dream-gone-sour of a young Asian-American entrepreneur who wanted to create a dot com empire out of his startup Kozmo. After a meteoric rise, the company fails to go public due to the 2000 stock market crash, and rapidly declines. br / br /Very bad luck, very bad timing! Had Kozmo gone public just two months earlier, Joseph Park would have become a millionaire. The film centers on the interactions of this young fellow with investment bankers, executives and delivery bikers, showing how a business dream turns into a collective nightmare. Pretty sad, yet an excellent business class.

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Not a Dream At All, 2007-06-20
While this documentary might be titled "E-Dreams," the money lost on Kozmo topped $250 million. Kozmo was possibly the greatest dot-com flameout: A company whose revenue never topped $2.5 million, Kozmo epitomized the "Grow Big Fast" business philosophy. Before their assets were dismantled in 2001, they had expanded to 12 markets and entered into an ill-fated $150 million deal with coffee giant Starbucks (of which 'Bucks only received $15 million). Hindsight, as they say, is 20-20, but watching this DVD it's impossible not to wonder how so many investors could have been so blind.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

The Rise and Fall of Kozmo.com, 2007-04-29
br /Four stars for e-dreams, mostly for the subject matter and a few insightful pronouncements by Yong Kang. But despite the striving music, pacing dragged (seemed longer than the already short ninety minutes). Same backdrop as Startup.com -- Nasdaq crash of 2000 -- and the founders of the respective companies were both deserters of Goldman Sachs!

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Fast-paced, amusing look at an internet company's implosion, 2005-10-23
E-dreams will probably be most interesting for those who are more business-minded or who were part of the internet boom. If you're neither of these, you may find yourself wondering, 'why do I care about this company,' or 'boy, that Joseph Park guy is really full of himself.' But if you are business-minded in the least, or if you have a passing sociological interest in that crazy period of economic history, you will probably find yourself captivated by the heady sense of inevitable world domination that permeated the offices of Kozmo.com and similar companies, which this documentary does a decent job of capturing. br / br /The star of the film is definitely the young CEO, Joseph Park. While there's no doubt that he's very smart, capable, and determined, you also get the sense that he's in over his head at times and is just barely winging it. Less optimistic (or more realistic) people, if placed in the same position, would probably ask themselves, "What am I doing here - I need to step aside and let the experts handle this job!" and resign immediately. br / br /Some of the entertainment value of the movie comes from the fact that despite the ridiculous nature of the Kozmo.com business model, the company had no trouble attracting massive amounts of venture capital in the frenzied atmosphere of the dot-com era's last days. br / br /As a viewer, you can't help but wonder to yourself, what the hell were these i-bankers and VCs thinking!? After all, Kozmo.com was a glorified delivery service that relied on massive amounts of manpower to make deliveries. With many customers taking advantage of Kozmo's lack of minimum order size, severely cutting into Kozmo's margins as a result, it should've been obvious to anyone with basic arithmetic skills that the company would never break even, let alone earn the outsized profits that the VCs were expecting, based on their massive investments in the company. In this respect, the movie provides a first-hand look at the suspension of good business judgement that occurred during these years, when any idea, no matter how outlandish, seemed like a good bet for taking a company to the IPO stage.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

trip down memory lane, 2005-09-27
I remember seeing kozmo logos all over the place a few years ago in a trip to NY, so when I saw this film it was a fantastic reminder of what one can do with a bit of luck and tons of hard work..or is it the other way around? br /Great film to watch and lots of insight into how not to run a company.