E-Dreams

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?Great film to watch and lots of insight into how not to run a company.

Well, we knew trouble was headed in the compnay's direction when they couldn't get the utility bills paid on time. Or when the payroll procedure was out of whack. All this, of course, while Kozmo.com dodged phone calls from some of the world's top investment banks and lead the investment community to think that a tenuous relationship with the Internet was all it took to catapult these companies to nose-bleed market capitalizations.In e-dreams, we are taken on a roller coaster ride through 2 entrepreneurs vision and its contrapuntal relationship with the grim realities of corporate America. At one point in the film, one of the co founders bemoans the fact that senior talent had to be recruited to help the fledgling dot.com. Welcome to the party, pal. Early 2000 saw over 2 trillion dollars of company and investor money wiped out. Kozmo.com is imbricated in the middle of all this, transforming from a ten employee squad operating out of a decrepit Manhattan warehouse to a 1,100 man arsenal covering ten major US cities. At its acme, the company was able to collect 280 miilion dollars in VC money and form a strategic alliance with SBUX, which was in and of itself an incredible business concept.In the end, sadly, Kozmo.com was out the door as fast as the Seinfield character that spawned its name. In 2001, all the remaining employees were laid off, the 2 founders headed off towards MBA-ville, and company assets were liquidated. 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 of how ludicrous the Internet company craze was to begin with. At the end of the day, profits are what matter most. Not good PR.

This is a horrible movie about an arrogant person.

This is an excellent item

I was a faithful Kozmo.com customer - even as my friends and I were placing orders for goods (with an "on time or free" policy), we never could figure out how they were making any money. The documentary is just "ok" but not really revealing of the whole internet bubble as a force to propel something without a clear revenue model like Kozmo to the top of the heap. Now - who needs Kozmo with N'flix "instant play" and CSAs that deliver to your door.

The beginning artfully depicted the optimistic start up culture. The dream was coming real, but eventually a string of bad choices, lack of judgement, and the market crash caused this company to fail. The film showed every aspect of what Silicon Valley was like in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Almost by definition, fly-on-the-wall documentaries have sub-standard audio - you can't have radio mikes on all your participants 24 hours a day, whatever your boom mike catches, that's what you're stuck with. So I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the audio in E-dreams. Almost all conversations were clear enough to be understood on the first viewing.Equally fortunately, although Joseph Park is Korean, he has an clear and standard American accent. This is just as well, because this movie should have been called "The Joseph Park Show". The guy is on screen the whole time (except - perhaps significantly - during the payroll chaos in the despatch area ) and he does not shut up.He has two modes of speaking - the first is snappy, caffeine-charged corporate-speak, the second is slow, thoughtful and annoying speak, you know, where the speaker repeats the first word of a sentence until the thought process fully kicks into gear.With the hustle and bustle of a busy, energetic company, Joseph Park is the vortex of his tornado, but whether he's being too sharp or too tedious, the viewer always has a vigorous situation to absorb without necessarily having to concentrate on his every word. I especially enjoyed the Starbucks shareholder meeting and the aforementioned payroll chaos - the bosses were in their ivory tower talking about millions in venture capital while the poor delivery guys were trying to extract their hundred bucks from the clueless paymaster.Whether by accident or design, I found the clarity of the audio decreased towards the end. It was almost as if Joseph Park was being swallowed into the belly of a whale - the plunge of the NASDAQ, the losses being racked up by the company, the mirage of the IPO, the people appearing out of left field to take over Kozmo. It all added up so that his voice was no longer the song to which the company danced.This leads me to the DVD extras. There is a full-length commentary, with both the director and Joseph Park. Unfortunately the director said virtually nothing about how the movie was shot , or his vision, or even his opinion on what he was witnessing. He is basically there to ask Joseph Park questions, and the whole commentary becomes a tedious post-mortem of a dead company. If you can wade through 90 minutes of Joseph Park in annoying-speak mode, there are a few snippets and worthy insights, but generally the commentary is not worth your time.Equally disappointing is a mini feature, supposedly about what the main participants moved onto a couple of years after Kozmo closed. Unfortunately the production standards are low and Joseph Park has nothing interesting to say anymore.This movie was hard to get for a while, but I see now that's back in print. If you are interested in how snappy talking and a big smile can rake in millions of dollars, grab E-Dreams and let Mr Park take you on a wild ride of good intentions, incompetence, big bucks, hype and ambition.