Windsor Mountain | JumpTV | Recognition Group | Lessons Learned | Summer Jobs  | govWorks

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Public Data Systems was the original name of the company govWorks, Inc. which was featured in the movie Startup.com.  Many people come to this site looking for unanswered questions about the govWorks, the movie, and the people in it. The most common questions asked are

1. What are you and Kaleil doing now?
2. What would you have done differently if you had it to do again?
3. What happened with the "break-in" to the Gov Works offices?

To the surprise of many viewers, Kaleil and I have been working together on and off for many years. govWorks and the movie Startup.com was just one episode in a long list of entrepreneurial endevours of varying success. Immediately after govWorks ended, Kaleil and I started another company called Recognition Group. It's a restructuring firm based out of New York that has done some interesting work with a broad range of distressed clients. Recognition Group has been in business for 5 years now with many successful engagements and it has been a departure from our more typical venture in so far as it was started without any outside capital. Kaleil still runs Recognition Group and I still take clients through RG occasionally. JumpTV, Inc., started as an RG engagement, but eventually became a full time job for both Kaleil and myself. Currently I'm designing video chat and video conferencing applications for ooVoo.com.

After 2 years with Recognition Group I was able to save a bit of money and I decided to move back to New Hampshire to help my father and my sister with the family business, Windsor Mountain International. Windsor Mountain International was founded in 1961, as Interlocken International.

43 years ago my parents started Windsor Mountain as summer camp in southern New Hampshire. It has since grown to offer a broad array of travel opportunities for young people to explore other cultures, build outdoor skills, language skills, and to offer community service. In the 80's Windsor Mountain began the first youth exchange with China and has since created friendship exchanges in the former Soviet Union, Israel, and Cuba. We'd be happy to send you a catalog so you can read more. We also hire lots of college students from around the world to teach or lead trips, so if you or someone you know is interested in that click summer jobs. Finally, Windsor Mountain is always looking to recruit students, so if you know of anyone who is interested or has children between the ages of 8 and 18 who might be interested, please email them our URL!

I spent 3 years in New Hampshire when the tech startup bug hit again and Kaleil recruited me to work on his latest venture, JumpTV. JumpTV is an internet TV broadcaster which was purchased in May of 2005 by an investor out of Toronto, Scott Paterson, who had been on the board of the small company and decided the time was right to take JumpTV to the next level. Scott brought in Kaleil and myself to help take the 3 employee company through a year of torrid growth to an IPO. Scott, the CEO, brought Kaleil on as company President with the mandate to sign up more international TV stations to exclusive contracts and to convert the 20 or so legacy channels to exclusive deals. He has performed beyond even his own expectations and now in June, 2006 we have more than 200 TV stations on our network from more than 65 countries. In the last 10 months Kaleil has travelled over 900,000 air miles and has met with most of the largest media groups around the world.

Back home in New York and Toronto, I took on the role of COO where I built out a team of engineers, marketing staff, channel managers, and admins to launch new channels, build out our streaming network, and develop our new online video products.

So, back to the original list of questions, how about the govWorks break in? The guy who did it was caught, but by the time they knew it was him he was already in a federal facility on some other charge. As far as what I would do differently, I suggest you read "Lessons Learned" for what is an instructive admission of mistakes. They make good discussion topics for classes even though not all of them are addressed in the movie. If any of you have case studies or papers you've written that you'd like to share with others please send them to me and I might share them on this web site.

As a result of the movie, I get a large volume of email.  I try to respond to all of it and although I sometimes fall a bit behind, I still welcome your communications. My email address is therman1@recognitiongroup.net.  Generally questions are about the movie, the business, or my availability to speak at schools and conferences. You might be surprised by the number of people who write to ask if govWorks really existed or if Kaleil and I were characters made up as part of a screenplay.  I enjoy meeting students and often I'll travel to your school or event for just the cost of travel. I have remained involved with the community of entrepreneurs both through speaking engagements and through my turnaround and insolvency work with Recognition Group.  My talks generally focus on the challenges of entrepreneurship, managing crisis when an entrepreneurial endeavor unravels, maximizing the return to investors in an insolvency, and generally the lessons learned from govWorks (excerpt). I would like to hear from you if you are interested in having me speak at your conference, school or trade association.  Recently I have spoken at Harvard, RIT, Tennesee Tech, UNH, and Case Western.

Further information about the movie can be found in an interview I did with the Washington Post.

If you want to see what the First incarnation of the govWorks web site looked like, send me an email and I'll email you back w/ a link.

We still have great govWorks T-Shirts with our orange logo (M and Large). For $20, I'll send you one. Order here.

Thanks for stopping by,

-tj