Backed By Steve Blank and More, Compass Launches Next-Gen Benchmarking Tool

http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/20/backed-by-steve-blank-more-startup-genome-founders-launch-next-gen-benchmarking-tool-for-startups/

by bjoernlasseh • 13 years ago

61 27 13 years ago

techcrunch.com

niamh• 13 years ago

I love reading the annual report this team sends out every year. It's smart to use tools like mailchimp, google analytics etc. What about something like optimizely? Also, I assume there's the ability to use the startups own tools for automated data collection?

ashish_rvce• 13 years ago

I really like the idea of applying big data to startups and helping them do benchmarking with other startups. It would be interesting to see the results or case studies of how some startups have benefitted from this data. I understand this might be too soon to make that inference, but might be something to keep in mind for near future.

iterable• 13 years ago

This platform could be ridiculously valuable. Metrics are clearly pivotal to any startup, but it's often very hard to know how you stack up vs. the competition. Congrats Bjoern and team.

tinco3• 13 years ago

Come buy your shovels, extra fine shovels will guarantee you dig up that gold!

rgrieselhuber• 13 years ago

Shovels?

This sort of data is useful in running a startup. My only concern is whether they will be selling it to VCs, etc. on the backend.

bjoernlasseh9• 13 years ago

We are not selling it. Our objective is to maximize business success, not helping investors.

tinco3• 13 years ago

Woops, you're absolutely right :)

eren_bali• 13 years ago

Don't care about how the G's are made. Most startups don't speak metrics and this may give them a base framework to think about it

tinco3• 13 years ago

What kind of person downvotes this comment? It's a valid concern and it resulted in a staff member responding, pretty good value add wouldn't you think?

alexnewman• 13 years ago

From techcrunch Up until now, the Compass team has made most of its money via R&D for governments and consulting firms and by offering sponsored versions of its “Startup Genome Reports.” Moving forward, Compass will also begin piloting a handful of potential revenue channels, including matching companies to value-add products and services, providing automated audits of startups for investors or bye working specifically B2B transactions, or companies within large organizations. The other option, Herrmann said, is to allow financial customers, for example, to manage their relationships with their tech customers.

squigs252• 13 years ago

This could be valuable, especially for VC firms, and for startups who are looking to pitch themselves.

That said, I'm a data scientist, and if your startup ranks poorly, there's no way for big data to estimate your ingenuity and ability to creatively improve your product.

Data science works, but it doesn't govern the universe.

bjoernlasseh9• 13 years ago

Our main focus is helping business to focus on what matters most by providing reference points on metrics. We are not planning on serving investors.

squigs252• 13 years ago

Fair enough. I think it's a solid idea, and really useful for every company.

I also think there's money in serving investors.

ryanobjc• 13 years ago

The reality is private companies is where the value creation happens. The public market is too unwieldy.

So we need an entirely new series of metrics for companies. This is one of them.

bjoernlasseh9• 13 years ago

Agreed :)

renatk2• 13 years ago

Yet another testament the software is eating the world. What we are seeing is a proof of it - startups get real-world big data analytics. The cost of figuring out if they are really making progress compared to their own targets and compared to peers/competitors, just got slashed by 10x to 100x. I think this product has a good chance of becoming the "holy grail" in the process which Steve Blank calls"customer discovery".

renatk2• 13 years ago

Startup Compass further disrupts VCs by letting anyone a) evaluate deal-flow and b) de-risking portfolio on a totally different level. It adds more fire to "Venture Capital is broken" reality. It gives non-professional angels and the rest of the "long tail" investor community deal-flow and portoflio analysis options previously available only to professional VCs, accelerators and super-angels.

jaegerpicker2• 13 years ago

It sounds great and I'm a partner in a startup that I think this could be super helpful for but I can't get the page to load. curl -L http://www.compass.co gets websites are turned off message and the latest safari and chrome on OS X 10.9.1 get blank responses back.

bjoernlasseh9• 13 years ago

trying to fix that atm

jaegerpicker2• 13 years ago

Awesome, I reread that post and it seemed a little prickish, sorry. I've been there with a site not working, it sucks and I shouldn't have blasted away in public comments.

bjoernlasseh9• 13 years ago

its a problem with mongohq

tlogan2• 13 years ago

This would be great if it really worked :(

As I was expecting:

Sorry! Something went wrong while processing your data. Please contact us at support@startupcompass.co

As always, people (including Steve) forget V in MVP.

bjoernlasseh9• 13 years ago

Can you please send us an email so we can fix the issue you are experiencing?

tlogan2• 13 years ago

If something does not work and that person gave you data (access to services) I think it is appropriate that you follow up on the error. That what we do. Not other way around.

Backed By Steve Blank and More, Compass Launches Next-Gen Benchmarking Tool

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