The (Highly Controversial) YouNoodle Startup Predictor Is Coming

I'm skeptical of this on a very plain basis: If you had technology that could do this for companies, why would you focus on the startup market and not instead on the potentially much more lucrative public markets?<p>If the technology is as good as is stated in the TC article couldn't they pretty rapidly build up a listing of undervalued companies on Wall Street and buy into them?

Techcrunch should have also tested whether predictions for startups that failed were correct too; otherwise this is way too incomplete (YouNoodle might be designed to make you happy by making you believe your company is always worth a lot).

I would prefer a tool for entrepreneurs that would show them directly what factors they can focus on to get a higher valuation and/or higher chances of success.<p>The page would be interactive and users would drag bars or change data such as cost of infrastructure per user, cost of marketing per user, data about competition etc, and then the probability of success would change in real-time.

Startup Idea: Take the same concept and apply it to indie bands. It's such a point of pride among hipsters to predict the next big band that I bet it'd be a niche hit.

This makes me want to make a YouNoodleNoodle that predicts whether or not YouNoodle will succeed.<p>Done! Here's the code:<p>&#60;html&#62;&#60;body&#62;&#60;h1&#62;NO!&#60;/h1&#62;&#60;/body&#62;&#60;/html&#62;<p>But seriously, there are so many subjective factors (including luck) in judging the viability of a business that I doubt their ability to do so. If they produce a better-than-random track record, they can change my mind. Until then, I am highly skeptical.

Quit hating; this is awesome. Statistical analysis can tell upstarts what's important and what isn't in a way a blog post can't. It might reveal statistical surprises a la Freakonomics. I'm just saying, I'm happy someone is bothering to do the math on what works and what doesn't. This is something I want. If my startup were taking off, I'd pay to access this information.

I like the idea, but there will always be anomalies that crop up. So just as Google is always fine-tuning their algorithm, so must YouNoodle. Only God knows what will really happen and it sounds like there is an over-emphasis on the Social Proof of those associated with a startup. Opportunities exist that can present themselves to anyone.<p>It says: "YouNoodle aims to make the prediction right before the first round of funding for a company."<p>What happens if a company can't or doesn't raise capital? If there were a tool on the site like the just launched <a href="http://webequity.com.com.au" rel="nofollow">http://webequity.com.com.au</a> <a href="http://bit.ly/3lZTZa" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/3lZTZa</a>, these startups could still launch whereby the team is paid with equity in the startup instead of cash.<p>Also, with the valuations in place, tools could be provided to raise money by way of small payments from investors who would also use the site. Alternatively, tools may exist to simply locate such investors with the financial exchange to take place off-site. Such investors may co-invest alongside a high-profile investor who leads the round and who takes an active role in monitoring and working with the company. In this way, a company can uphold its valuation by enabling many diversely sourced investors to access a round who are prepared to pay a premium to access such an investment that they would otherwise not be able to find or participate in, and are likewise also willing to forgoe any board seat claim.

This one's probably more accurate and much simpler: <a href="http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~ssanty/cgi-bin/eightball.cgi" rel="nofollow">http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~ssanty/cgi-bin/eightball.cgi</a>

It would be interesting what the prediction would be for 37Signals.

I really believe in this to change how investors validate their gut assumptions. All YN is trying to do is take the social, psychological and environment factors to generate an accurate estimate.<p>Historically successful entrepreneurial teams have exhibited drive, ambition, a great network and ruthless determination. What makes you say its going to change.<p>Hats off to these guys

How is it impressive that a company in 2008 predicted data that is accurate as of 2008? I'm sure they legitimately used 2005 data in doing so, but they probably tweaked their algorithms until the 2005 data was accurate given what we now know. Anyone could do that.<p>This is posed as being equivalent to making accurate predictions of the near future, but it's not.

I really don't see the point of it. Its like horoscopes, and its basing all startups as a neutral idea with the same success rate - Facebook is the same as Techcrunch which is the same as Twitter, even though they are completely different in the size of the target audience.<p>It looks as if its mainly basing the predicted investments off the founders and what they have worked on in the past, but is that good enough? We all know startups can fail no matter who is behind them - Cuil, its founders had first hand experience with the leader of search, Google, but has still pretty much failed so far.<p>Plus, apart from a bit of fun, who would use it? I doubt investors would use it over their years of experience in the industry, and it seems like they are in fact the target audience!<p>I look forward to giving it a go.

I don't really get why this is "highly controversial" unless it's just more TC link bait.<p>Sounds like a good idea to me; if they're able to do what what Moneyball did for baseball and what PER did (to a lesser extent) did for basketball all the power to them. What's the downside of having more accurate tools and indicators&#62; Since the tool will be public and founders will know what to focus on.<p>However, I highly doubt too many VC's will take them seriously until they start producing verifiable results instead of form fitting historical data. Very few took sabermetrics and some of the other sports' quant stuff seriously to start either.

There is a movie production company called Epagogix <a href="http://www.epagogix.com/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.epagogix.com/index.html</a> that has an algorithm which predicts the success of a movie from the script. Epagogix was profiled in the book Super Crunchers <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/supercrunchers/" rel="nofollow">http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/supercrunchers/</a>

I think all this predictor thing is a hype they are using to gain traction.<p>I used YouNoodle and I felt all this prediction thing is spoof - The real crux - This IS going to be a startup directory (crunchbase + social aspect.)<p>Imagine a niche area for linkedin to concentrate on - high powered entrepreneurs all connected and talking about their ventures even stealth startups.

I am still wondering why others like TechCrunch et al have not at least <i>tried</i> something like a quantitative prediction tool before.<p>Perhaps it was too much conflict of interest to their core reporting/news business model, or too much work?<p>Still it is interesting to observe the shifts from reactive to proactive process in that space.

"YouNoodle is also basing predictions on historical data, and in a rapidly changing world that is consistently disrupted by new technologies, those predictions are very hard to make. Humans who are on top of recent developments can make subjective decisions that are far more likely to be accurate than an algorithm."

No startup predictor can take in consideration how well team members execute their ideas.<p>Sure, it could take in account information about past startup founders, but what if you asked it about Larry and Sergey in 1998? No past information. How are you going to predict how well they executed Google?

I love this kind of idea, but it never works.<p>TechCrunch tested predictions of success - but what of failure? (maybe it says they all succeed...?)<p>Anyone care to enter a past learning-experience startup, to test this out?

I'd be interested see how YC companies are valued by this predictor.<p>YouNoodle may or may not be an accurate predictor, but I bet they're good at predicting which teams/startups are likely to get funding from investors/VCs.

Surely they don't have enough data on the startups that didn't make it, that didn't have a high profile. Will the algorithm not tend to be very optimistic?

it doesn't calculate for supply &#38; demand.<p>Powerset is worth whatever MSFT was willing to pay for it, not what the predictor says its worth.

How is YouNoodle going to make money from this?

rand(60,150)*1000000

the only predictions worth a damn are the ones with money involved.