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...

daj224 Well, we knew trouble was headed the company's way when they couldn't get the utility bills paid. Or when the payroll procedure was out of whack. All this while thwarting the flurry of calls from top Wall Street investment banks and leading the investment community to believe that a tenuous relationship to the internet was all it took to catapult the company towards an astronomical market cap.In e-dreams, as with Startup.com (another fine documentary about the e-retail debacle), we are taken a roller coaster ride through one entrepreneurs dream and its contrapuntal relationship with the grim realities of corporate America. At one point in the film, the co-founder bemoans how control of the company was turned over to seasoned veterans. Welcome to the party, pal. Early 2000 saw 2 trillion dollars worth of company and investor money wiped out in about six trading sessions. Kozmo.com is caught in all of this, transforming from 10 employees in a decrepit, NYC warehouse to a 1,100 arsenal in ten major cities after collecting over 280 million dollars from VCs. In the end, sadly, Kozmo was out the door as quick as the Seinfield character that spawned its name, laying off all employees, jettisoning its founders, and liquidating--at one point, giving away--its assetts. Yes, even the orange fleeces had to go.Ultimately the story about CEO hubris, contingency plans M.I.A, and IPO fever, e-dreams reminds us how ludicrous the whole Internet bubble was to begin with. In the long run, profits rule the day, not good PR.D.J. NYC Aug 2004

geoff-29 This film gets close to what was happening with New York internet startups 1999-2001. The chaos, the parties, the IPOs, the overall feel of possibility (at least in 1999).The director made a great choice by featuring Joseph Park, who shows the energy, dedication, and naivete of an entrepreneur in charge of a Big Idea and a (onetime) Big Company.Startup.com got more word-of-mouth, but this is a much more satisfying film, showing and explaining the company up-and-down and some key issues in Kozmo's life. For those disappointed with the lack of anything internet-related in the startup.com story, this film hits the mark.(sort-of-spoiler below)The music is distracting, and I wish the movie was a bit longer and more fleshed-out, but overall it's a great documentary, with a party scene that took me back - I wasn't at that party, but I was at plenty others like it...

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.