Startup that Predicts Success of Other Startups

It is a paradox only if you assume that the quality of the product makes or breaks a company (not to mention their "AI" could be right only accidentally, in this particular case). It is weird that they believe that, given that "their algorithm uses sophisticated modeling pertaining to how social capital and networks can affect an organization’s performance".

It's an entertaining idea, but I doubt how they got to score such a PR hit with no substance whatsoever.

dkokelley• 18 years ago

Good point. The product may be a success, while the company as a whole is a dog. If their product works as well as it should, they should be able to use it in reverse to tweak startups according to what the box says will increase their chances.

Hmm. I see a world where VCs and other investors use "the box" to pick the companies they invest in. I also see a world where startups use "the box" to adjust their companies "box score" to present to investors. In the end, "the box" may be a self-fulfilling AI system.

herdrick• 18 years ago

Sounds very bogus.

jamiequint2• 18 years ago

Its as bogus (or not) as you believe statistical machine learning is.

davidw• 18 years ago

There are plenty of things that are not bogus at all, but are very bogus for given applications.

rms• 18 years ago

I think they made a social network for startups and investors that has this clever hook about predicting success.

wumi• 18 years ago

something potentially useful for many of the HN users

xirium2• 18 years ago

This looks like a social network for entrepreneurs, many of which lack programming ability and are seeking junior people who can implement the technical details of their vision.

Coders: don't be fleeced of your valuable skills. If these people had good connections, foresight, understood technology or valued programming then they wouldn't "Need someone with coding skills" ( http://www.younoodle.com/profile.php?id=989 ), be "on the lookout for web design jobs" ( http://www.younoodle.com/profile.php?id=16 ) or "have leet skillz" ( http://www.younoodle.com/profile.php?id=4 ). That's just the founders' alumni ( http://www.younoodle.com/group.php?id=2 ).

sharpshoot• 18 years ago

hmm, if this was true then why do you see members like http://www.younoodle.com/profile.php?id=288 (Founder of HotorNot) http://www.younoodle.com/profile.php?id=557 (Partner in Founders Fund) http://www.younoodle.com/profile.php?id=11 (CTO of Yelp) http://www.younoodle.com/profile.php?id=455 (CTO of Mochi Media & contributor to pylons)

Do these guys fall under the 'entrepreneurs, who lack programming ability who are seeking..."?

xirium2• 18 years ago

Hey! Quote fairly. "many of which lack programming ability".

apexauk• 18 years ago

the first guy is currently learning rails in order to make a start on his first startup, but appreciates that ultimately he 's gonna be rather disadvantaged trying to code something complex with no experience.

the second guy is not "on the lookout for web design jobs", he wants to find people that are cuz he has too many people asking him if he knows anyone that can do it.

the third guy was joking, i assume. he co-founded the site, after all..

bootload• 18 years ago

“Give us some information, and we’ll give you some idea of what the company will be worth in five years”

Which makes me think have they run the software on their own company? But it makes for interesting reading. A quick look around it appears to be positioning itself as doing all things to all parties:

- dating site for startups & engineers

- business reporting (analysts) for VC's

- euro-style-facebook for engineers & entrepreneurs

"... We provide business competition, event, networking and mailing list functionality for real-world groups that support startup communities. For investors, we're building technology to help inform their decisions. ..." [0]

Interesting to see Harj [1] there (with a low id) and ycombinator listed as a Startup but not a direct competitor. [1] Is uNoodle trying to do too much at once? There is another problem with this approach. Startups make new things using Ideas so new that historical data points are no real predictors of success. So how predict such Startups are going to succeed?

Make no mistake, though. The real target for these guys is to set themselves up as middle men for VCs. Mini-blood suckers.

[0] http://younoodle.com/about.php

[1] Not very surprising due to the number of Oxford & Entrepreneur alumni ~ http://younoodle.com/profile.php?id=23

[2] http://younoodle.com/group.php?id=74

eusman• 18 years ago

if this worked why make it public and not use it for them selves?

doesn't everyone know failure feed success? So them problem is more how to increase your chance of success, not tell you Yes, No if you will succeed

nickb2• 18 years ago

“Give us some information, and we’ll give you some idea of what the company will be worth in five years”

Ridiculous. One of the silliest things I've ever read in NYTimes. Kedrosky was being way too kind on them.

As for their algorithm, it's probably along the lines of how connected you are on their site.

How did they score funding from Max Levchin? One of the cofounders worked at Slide. http://younoodle.com/about.php So I doubt it's due to their amazing AI alone.

It's just a social network, folks. You can make your own on Ning or Facebook.

A better predictor would probably be someone's comments here on N.YC.

icky• 18 years ago

> A better predictor would probably be someone's comments here on N.YC.

Don't you mean, someone's karma, nickb? ;-)

nickb2• 18 years ago

No. Definitely comments :).

edw519• 18 years ago

“So far, we haven’t run ourselves through it,”

Then why should anyone else?

jdueck• 18 years ago

At best, they'll have 20/20 hindsight. These guys haven't been to the School of Hard Knocks yet!

dshah• 18 years ago

They really lost me with this claim.

I have a hard time believing that anyone that would build such a thing could resist running it on themselves.

I don't know these guys, but if it were me:

Run software on self. It says I'm going to fail. There's a bug in the software! Tweak, tweak. Run software on self. It says I'm going to fail. There's a bug in the software! Tweak, tweak...

tyohn• 18 years ago

ummm, they have seed funding? Amazing! If there is one thing I know its that you can't predict what passion can and will accomplish. I've been coaching gymnastics for over 20 years and I've come to realize that people with heart can and do beat out the most talented, accomplished, educated... "sure winners" time after time. If they've found a way to predict talent and passion I'd love to see it. And of course if your team "gels" - the whole can be much more than the sum of the parts. I'll try to keep an open mind but just look at the Superbowl - who won... And if its possible to predict the success of a business - they really wouldn't need startup funding - they could just play the stock market. p.s. - if this is a simple case of marketing/PR - Good Job Guys...

Frocer2• 18 years ago

If they just predict every start-up to fail, statistically, they would be 90%+ accurate :P

Predicting the success of a start up is probably just as hard as predicting where the market is going to go tomorrow (if not harder). There are too many variables in play. I think this is just a PR stunt; it definitely created enough buzz!

rrival• 18 years ago

Funny =) Article says 90% aren't home runs - I'm curious: what's the expected rate of profitable exits (non-loss exits)? Is there enough activity in the vc-backed space / volume in the startup space to classify investments in tech startups on a mutual fund-like scale of risk vs growth expectation or is everyone, to massively oversimplify it, playing roulette hoping for another google?

Frocer2• 18 years ago

I read that 1 out of 10 VC-funded start up succeeds, on average. I am assuming "succeed" means profitable exit.

Activity wise, there certainly are enough data to pull a reasonable sample size to create a model. However, the tricky part is to identify the right variables. In my opinion, unlike the stock market, the variables to start-up success is much difficult to quantify. Would love to see their theory behind their model though!

redorb• 18 years ago

I think their PR firm is the real news! Getting them on the nytimes homepage. bestpr.net is them.

jamescoops• 18 years ago

the AI thing is really good linkbait im amazed so few people spot it for what it is

pg3• 18 years ago

Though I know and like these guys, I worry they have set themselves an impossible task. As someone who spends literally every day trying to predict the success of startups, I know how hard it is. And worse still, in this case, hard to automate: the success or failure of a startup depends almost entirely on the personalities of the founders.

What makes the problem more complicated still is, founders can change. E.g. when we meet someone who seems smart and energetic but a bit timid about starting a company, we have to ask ourselves if the guy's intrinsically timid, or just put off by the weirdness of the idea, like we were before we started Viaweb.

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

Silly idea:

1. take every email exchange you've had with past YC companies whose outcomes are now known. Good=bought, IPO, etc., Bad=no longer exists (with exceptions for folks like Kiko?)

2. train a bayesian filter on the set

3. Apply to the rest with as yet unknown outcomes

4. Publish the results :D

pg3• 18 years ago

We do plan to try this with the applications one day. I'm not super optimistic, but it's worth trying.

ChaitanyaSai• 18 years ago

What about a futures market that offers non-voting shares in startups (or Vegas-style wagers)? Startups relevant to the traded instruments can accrue some percentage of the option price. This gives you predictive power and funding. There must be some major pitfalls that I can think of, other than startups deliberately going belly up to cash out negative wagers :) One aspect of Ycombinator is, I guess, that of a prediction market with people trading in early attention and uptake.

pg3• 18 years ago

They'd be de facto public. The SEC wouldn't like it.

yters2• 18 years ago

Something like this could be a self fulfilling prophecy. Then the momentum would just build.

Startup that Predicts Success of Other Startups

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