So it’s a pretty weighted question, but it’s exactly what BusinessWeek asked the much hyped YouNoodle (quick note: the site’s startup predictor, which uses an algorithm to predict how much your startup could be worth in three years, is a bit of a gimmick to draw people in, but the site has some interesting content like it’s YouNoodle Scores, which is a metric set up with Sean Gourley to quantify a startup’s “buzz”, as well as nice community features) to try and find out.  We all know the NVCA numbers that showed VC investment for Q1 of this year at a 12 year low, down 47% in dollar amounts from the previous quarter.  

Survey says: YouNoodle tracked 149 venture capital deals worth $1.55 billion among the 53,000 startups it follows (most of which are serious, some only serious in the entrepreneur’s head). Of this dollar amount, 26% was invested in biotech and medical devices; 16.5% in energy and cleantech; 14.3% in consumer Internet; 11.4% in hardware (including semiconductors, gadgets, and PC-related goods); 11.2% in finance; 6.2% in software; and the remaining 14% spread across four other categories such as mobile phones and education, each with less than 6%. The data also showed that most of the funding was later stage and Series B with 34% and 33% respectively, suggesting that VCs are taking a cautious approach at the moment by investing in more proven concepts.

These sector breakdowns by investment show the continued resiliency of biotech as it continues to hold up a bit better than other areas. The article points out that it’s taken 10 years for increased U.S. government grants to the sciences to start to bear commrecially viable fruit. Expect a dose of the same with world government’s increase in cleantech funding.  

Younoodle, a promising Business Networking and SEO rich site like LinkedIn and Naymz http://ping.fm/q9gdm

lookFIT, LLC is continually expanding their footprint on the internet and has recently created accounts on Twitter and YouNoodle. On the official lookFIT website there is now an option to join a mailing list for anyone who is interested in keeping tabs on the newly formed company’s progress. This is all due to the high demand for more information and exposure lookFIT has already received as the cutting edge concept is discussed in blogs, forums and social networking websites such as Myspace and Facebook.

You can follow lookFIT too:

http://lookfit.vpweb.com

http://twitter.com/lookFIT

http://younoodle.com/startups/lookfit

lookFIT, LLC thrives to be an outlet to create and purchase custom-fitted casual and formal clothing of exclusive quality to fit your unique body style – beyond what “slim-cut” shirts and tailoring provides. In life, success goes to the fit. Look your best.

Adeo Ressi, the founder of the TheFunded.com has joined a long list of entrepreneurs and investors that say that the venture capital industry is broken. However, Ressi decided to put his (didn’t use outsider funds) money where his mouth was and built a site that allows entrepreneurs to critique and rate the actual audience that was evaluating them…the investors.

Ressi argues that airing the venture industry’s dirty laundry will ultimately improve the efficiency of the funding process as well as the rocky relationships that exist between investors and entrepreneurs. TheFunded also allows entrepreneurs to view and share term sheets, to assist one another finding good investors, and to discuss the many facets of operating a business. While many entrepreneurs applaud Ressi for clearing out the cloud of smoke that surrounds the VC world, many simply see TheFunded as only an arena for disgruntled entrepreneurs to vent.

“The problem with sites like TheFunded.com, or any site with user reviews is that the reviewed product will always be at a disadvantage. For every unhappy customer, they tell 9 of their friends, and for every happy one they tell 3. The odds are against the VCs here. Of course the majority of turned away entrepreneurs will put a negative review – it’s a form of vengeance. But those that did have a happy experience will have little reason to post anything. They have already researched for information from the site, got what they were looking for and will not likely return without proper incentive.” Ian Bell, Entrepreneur

Because of this lack of positive reviews, many entrepreneurs accuse the VCs of gaming the system where they’ve asked entrepreneurs they’ve backed to submit a favorable commentary about them and their fundraising experience. This boosts the firm’s rankings on TheFunded’s leaderboard, and has resulted in many in the industry to question the sites credibility.

For example, if a disproportionate number of members enter the site to provide a single comment on a given firm’s profile, this sends a red flag to TheFunded’s system. TheFunded looks for other behavior, too, for example, unusual semantic characteristics of the written fund reviews, such as excessive use of exclamation points and superlatives. It also looks at how many entrepreneurs voluntarily admit they were asked by their VC to submit a review (entrepreneurs are asked this when they provide a comment, and they check a box to say they’ve been asked).

Before this site can truly becomes a quality resource for the start-up community, they’ll need to become more respected (from both sides) by attracting additional traffic and even more helpful reviews to their site (Psst…a new Toyota Prius has over 160 consumer reviews on Edmunds.com compared to just 30 entrepreneur reviews of Kleiner Perkins on TheFunded.com). Unless these numbers pick up, it’s hard to look at this site without some real bias. At the end of the day tough, the TheFunded has definitely made Investors way more aware of their perceptions in the venture marketplace, and if that’s the nudge they needed to become more transparent and helpful to entrepreneurs; they deserve some applause, but not quite a standing “O” just yet.

“If their tool did such a good job, they’d raise a fund themselves and beat the tar out of us.” - Paul Kedrosky, investor & entrepreneur

“It’s a wantrepreneur focused product. Real VCs and real companies with a legit shot at VC money wont use it.” – Jeff Martens, strategic consultant

The above quotes are referring to the highly controversial YouNoodle.com, an online platform for start-ups and early stage ventures. The feature that has sparked a lot of debate in the investment community is their YouNoodle Start-Up Predictor that analyzes data on early stage ventures and generates a report on what that start-up will be worth in three years. For real? Yes, they’ve developed a software program that claims it can predict the valuation of early-stage start up companies (yes, companies that haven’t come within a whiff of a dollar in revenue…). The model relies on basically four areas: 1) the team; 2) financial factors; 3) the concept; and 4) advisors. How’s it work? The entrepreneur fills out the survey and provides a little detail, and like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, presto…YouNoodle spits out a valuation. Smells about as real as the future predicting information Miss Cleo (the famous TV psychic and shaman), provided after calling her “900″ hotline.

It’s hard for us to look at this with a straight face. Seriously. Has the venture community been Punk’d? After all, a “noodle” is defined in the dictionary as a fool or simpleton. Can you really believe that two teenagers working on a few lines of code in the basement have developed a $2.75 million dollar idea? Ridiculous. Be very afraid of this tool, looking at some number on the screen followed by a huge string of zeroes right next to the name and your start-up feeds the entrepreneurs ego like nothing else can. Think about the Far Side cartoon where the kids are all eating ice cream in front of the windows of a gym filled with overweight people sweating on treadmills. It’s pretty sick. We think it’s nothing more than a way to grow their real ambition – - yet another social network for entrepreneurs. If it isn’t, then why haven’t their own founding members run themselves through their magical predictor?

The following excerpt is taken from Breaking Through The Broken: The Transparent Guide To Overcoming The Inefficiencies In Early Stage Venture Capital.

Younoodle is a San Francisco based start-up that claims to be able to predict the viability of newcompanies.  Its meant to give venture capitalits and other investors a quick evaluation tool for assessing the potential of new companies seeking funding.  They accomplish this with their Startup Predictor software.  Companies fill out a lengthy questionnaire that assesses things like the experiences, qualifications, and contacts of the entrepreneurs who start the company, the relationships between members, and what kind of buzz already exists about them. The answers are run through a sophisticated algorithm and presto, they give your company a score out of 1000 and estimate your company’s valuation after 3 years. 

The website doesn’t just serve investors either.  It’s also set up as a social network for start-ups.  Membership is free, but while signing up the users provide data about their companies that YouNoodle can use to refine its predictor algorithm. 

Just last week, they took it a step further and released a new product called YouNoodle Scores that quantifies a company’s presence in the market. They partnered with Sean Gourley, a Rhodes Scholar from New Zealand that focuses on how collective intelligence works.  He found that you could predict the nature, size and timing of a company’s breakout by looking at things like cultural patterns, news reports, blog posts, etc.  Companies are given a score out of 100 and its tracked daily.  For example, Craigslist and Facebook are both leading the pack at 98. 

They’ve also partnered with Women 2.0 for the upcoming Pitch Night.  Whichever company has the most followers by May 1st will win “the Big Noodle: Best Idea” prize.  So, check out Savvy Tools’ profile and become one of our followers!

Rebecca_SF

YouNoodle, the company that made a splash last year by claiming to predict the future value of startups, is continuing its efforts to turn startup evaluation into a science. Now it’s adding a YouNoodle Score that tracks news stories to determine a startup’s “impact and importance based on traction, acitvity, and buzz.” And it’s making those scores available to the public, not just entrepreneurs who joined YouNoodle’s online community.

Co-founder and chief executive Bob Goodson says YouNoodle has been working to develop the scores behind-the-scenes for the past year. There are around 7,000 companies that have already created profiles on YouNoodle, but the San Francisco team just published another 20,000 — and all of them have YouNoodle scores. (Though it looks like VentureBeat wasn’t among the profiles.) [...]

via YouNoodle scores the buzz on 25,000 startups » VentureBeat

I periodically engage in an on-and-off conversation with a writer friend about the challenges creative types face in balancing consumption and productivity. This conversation spins off in several directions, depending on how much coffee and/or beer we’re drinking:  the differences between consumption of information and learning; the differences between entertainment and art; re-appropriation and the instinct to seek or disregard “newness.” This dialogue is really all over the place and rather heady but can frequently spark a new line of thinking for me, or at least consideration of a new perspective.

I am a creative and productive person, but when it comes to early adoption of web technology and trends, I am more of an absorber of information than a generator of new insight or perspective.  I am a big fan of tools that can aggregate sources of information and trends, and lay out the basic information for me.  At least giving me the ability to “catch up” within a click or two. I don’t typically engage in the early seek-and-trial behavior that many early adopters do, but I like to know what’s out there.

YouNoodle is a resource that aggregates data on startups.  I believe they launched in the middle of last year, but through partnerships and promotion are really starting to swagger recently.  Their Startup Predictor decision making tool is a sharp first product, and seems to be helpful to beta testers.  However, my main utility here is their Scores directory, compiling data on startups from news sources and indexing each with a quantitative metric to enable easy display on category, industry, and publisher top standings lists.

As an added bonus (for me), you can easily click through any of the startup names on the lists to learn more about them.  This will not only give you more in-depth detail on their YouNoodle data, but will simply let you know what these trendy rising-star sites and appliations are.  Easy aggregation and easy consumption of information.

“YouNoodle is a place to discover and support the hottest early-stage companies and university innovation. We develop decision-making technology and tools for the startup community.”

Check it out here.

I recently spent some time on YouNoodle to test their Startup Predictor.   YouNoodle’s Startup Predictor estimates what your startup will be worth in 3 years – Bizak estimates (based on revenues) what your startup is worth right now.  From the YouNoodle questions it appears that they calculate your startup’s valuation based on the probability of success and the previous success of similar startups and entrepreneurs. For example, I have 13 years of online experience so my guess would be that I have a higher valuation or probability of success than someone with only 1 year of experience?

My initial interest in YouNoodle was because my startup, Bizak, calculates valuation based on revenues and in essence could be seen as a competitor.  However, this information could be very interesting and possible useful for Bizak – especially on the consulting side. In addition to the Bizak Benchmarks it could also be beneficial to offer startups this probability of success data. For example an entrepreneur looking to start a business network can use Bizak to determine the average valuation of startups in his industry is $100,000. They can then use YouNoodle’s probability of success data to determine that for entrepreneurs with over 5 years of experience the average valuation jumps to $500,000. That would be a very interesting combination of data! This combination would be very beneficial to investors in the form of direct data, research papers and consulting services. With this information we can decrease investors’ investment risk by providing them with both an estimate of future valuation and which type of entrepreneurs have a higher probability of success.

The business of startup companies is really all about ideas. Who can come up with the most innovative, breakthrough product that the worldwide market will flock over, and who will come up with a brilliant idea, but find out it is too bleeding edge or non-understandable for the world’s eyes. And now — one startup of their own claims to predict that — YouNoodle. 

These guys are all over the web advertising their top secret algorithm, which they claim can predict not only if a startup is successful or not — but their overall fate over a short or long scale. Their sample predictor is getting worldwide buzz, but I’m not so convinced it is a good thing. 

Oxford dropout Bob Goodson, left, claims that his idea can help out our economy crisis by in advance predicting successful companies — but it seems like marketed quicksand to me. First of all, I don’t believe that its possible for a math equation to predict the fate of a company — that’s purely in the mind of the general public itself to decide if it will be useful in their lives.

Second, if proven to work (or somehow convincing to everyone) this idea will be like pulling fruit out of an ecosystem — it will not only be imbalanced, but everyone else will eat each other. If YouNoddle becomes the standard for all startups — then they essentially will decided if they fail or not. The public will believe that whatever they say will come true and that will stop many ideas from coming through. 

They will, in a sense, form a blockade between the office and the world, beta and public, and most importantly, a dud and a bloom. And looking far ahead, if YouNoodle is a proven winner and the public trusts them, they will be able to decide the fate of any new company. YouNoodle would act as a tollbooth that decides whether the company can go on or not. The public, in the end, will not invest if the idea seems good or the CEO is promising — but solely on what YouNoodle says about it. And by then, YouNoodle can just drop their mystery math algorithm and basically hire teams to hand pick companies they like and dump the ones they don’t. They are really dangling the fate of anyone who crosses their path — and I think that’s wrong. Thank goodness the general public has its doubts too.

pacer521

No I am not criticising you! 
YouNoodle is a new startup company helping to predict the success of startups, founded by Kirill Makharinsky and Bob Goodson. I was introduced to Kirill by my friend Oli Barrett a few years back and know him to be a damn smart guy and I love the idea of this new venture.

For people wishing to start up there are a number of sites which are out there to support or tell stories of success. Startups.co.uk and the soon to be launched Smarta are two which come to mind. YouNoodle however wishes to bring something different to the table. If you are starting up their model will enable investors and followers to track your progress, predict where you will be in five years and posssibly invest in your company.

Definitely one to check out.  I am on there!

—————-
Now playing: Jim Chappell – Baby’s Escapade
via FoxyTunes    I’ve been hearing about this hoopla called WEB 2.0 from year last and at last I decided to get that on to my blog just to satiate my more than one pernicious reasons. Everyone must’ve heard about this kind of rara avis with these buzzwords attached as AJAX, mashups, wikis, blogs and offcourse the famous feeds and RSS which are everyone’s way of being updated on the latest action on their fav sites. Lets try, if not wholly to demystify about what this fuss is all about.

The video below has Tim ‘O Reilly himself defining what exactly is a WEB 2.0.

TIM 

So, web 2.0 constitutes of blogs, mashups and so on and so forth. Its always been said of guys who don’t try to change with the tide end up left behind. And it ‘d take only a luddite of a guy to not to use the scrumptious theme of things that this technology offers. Lets just try to get a bigger pic of the scheme of things.

Everything on your Desktop:

Using web 2.o is so fantastic that you feel a lot at home its literally kind of using things off your desktop and into your browser. For instance, take the umpteen number of social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook, younoodle and so on which help us to make new friends and also be in contact with our old ones literally just from our hot seat. And if you are getting itchy about a buzz word just google it and there you will have on your screen millions of websites showing you the more info. than you had anticipated and then there is this new thing called cloud computing which gives you access to data from anywhere to anything. So, this is nothing but the morphing of our PC into one big power house of information.

Business networks:

One might’ve well guessed by now, why the WEB 2.o is called Enterprise 2.o. With the rapid proliferation of the companies that are vying to grab the loyality of the customers WEB 2.0 plays a predominant role in not only providing a platform for online advertising but also provide solutions to their customers within hours if not months. Add to these the umpteen of these social networking sites such as Myspace, Younoodle, Facebook, to name a few using which companies can zero in on their customers individually which will help them in establishing a sort of a sentimental connection with their candies and also as most of these companies have their target audience in the age range of 15-35 so its pretty easy to get them on this platform.

Its not only this but few of the social networking sites can even land you a job. Sites like Younoodle and LinkedIn have these resume posting kind of things which a really helpful according to a survey. So, the age where in social networking was for fun or when you might get chided for is a passe and now its vice-versa.

This has also laid a platform for a two-way communication as the CEOs and the top dogs of various organizations are burning in their time to get personal with their customers.

Blogging:

If there is anything that has really revolutionized the internet age is Blogging. Everyone seems to be so smitten by this that you can hardly find any site or for that matter any guy addicted to this wired thing not really having this four letter word in his profile and then add to that various incentives being provided for merely eking out yourself on to the wires that many are just taking this not only as a passion but also as a profession. Log into any site and you will find the employees hitting on the keyboard on multifarious issues ranging from the work culture to the recent movie they’ve been to. Being a passionate blogger myself I’m pretty glad that many companies are actually allowing their employees to blog which is quite contrasting to some companies. I’m pretty happy my company encourages blogging and has indeed recently started a blog to get closer to students.

The proliferation of the blogging sites has seen the growth of wikis which is being advocated by many corporates.

Hacker-Proof:

Many are still quite pessimistic about the way the technology is being used. On one side it is quite intimidating to think about the caveats of hackers and on the other side if left behind it ‘d just be to our own peril. So, everyone is just tending to take on the latter route as the threat of hackers is perennial. Though they are quite concomitant security related issues getting surfaced as time moves on everyone is just as ready as to take on the risk than being edged out by their rivals on the techie front. So, that’s a huge gain point for these sort of services.

And as few companies are still staring into the blue on porting onto web 2.0 the many of the geeky companies who’ve helped themselves away from the luddites have suddenly found themselves caught in the eye of another technological storm called web 3.0.

Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.

Web 3.0 if simplified is nothing but a slight improvement over web 2.0.

In precise terms its a spin-off from the head of Nova Spivack whose Radar Networks is trying to upset another giant. The first product off the radar is the Twine, a tool for collecting and organizing data which is pretty hatke from Google.

An example of how Twine works: A user uploads a text document to their Twine account. Twine then parses the document to find the words with meaning — names, places, concepts and so forth. Those terms become tags, which the person can use to access related information.

Twine’s underlying technology gives the computer a measure of intelligence. Using tags, a computer can distinguish between, say, a reference to the kind of bird that flies and the kind that flips people off. Once it has, it can give users a wealth of other information, drawn from their own accumulated knowledge base, other users and the outside internet. Where Google crawls the entire web and ultimately pollutes your search results with different kinds of “birds,” Radar picks from a smaller universe of sources and tries to automatically discard the ones you don’t want. Having said that, the search is more stream lined when compared to Google as you don’t have to google through a chiliad of sites.

As the companies gear up for web 3.0 I’m quite periliously trying to wade myself through all these technological revolutions and thus trying to see myself clear off these things. Yeah OK! I can hear someone calling me a luddite!

—————-
Now playing: Jim Chappell – Baby’s Escapade
via FoxyTunes

Earlier this week, Andy and I submitted our application for Web Mission 2008.

The event will see 20 UK Web 2.0 companies travel to San Francisco to explore new opportunities for growth with key people in Silicon Valley. It will be showcasing innovative UK web talent, seek meaningful assistance for companies ready for expansion, and provide a platform for those involved to gain valuable media and business exposure.

Serial networker and entrepreneur Oli Barrett has joined forces with social impact facilitators Polecat to organise the event which runs from 19th-25th April.

The chosen companies will have their trip subsidised, and partners of the event include UK Trade & Investment, Doug Richard (Dragon’s Den and CEO of Library House), TechCrunch, HSBC and Make Your Mark. Also assisting with the event are Bob Goodson, Kirill Makharinsky and the guys at YouNoodle, Michael Birch (CEO, Bebo) and various other ex-pats who are now making a name for themselves in the Valley.

Having visited Silicon Valley last year, Andy and I have some idea of the value of these sort of experiences. Michael’s comments affirmed this:

“The Web Mission represents an amazing opportunity for the best of entrepreneurial UK talent to visit Silicon Valley, and learn for themselves the differences that make the US a breeding ground for innovation and more importantly successful execution of ideas.”

And I particularly like the point about execution. How many UK Web companies have successfully executed ideas on the global stage in recent years? LastMinute.com, Last.FM, Skype (not UK founders though). How many other technology-based Web companies? There are embarrassingly few. How about the US? Well, already this year we’ve seen MySQL exit to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion, Microsoft bid $44 billion for Yahoo! (albeit in vein so far), a TechCrunch source says that an acquisition of Bebo (built and executed in the US) for $1 billion is “definitely happening”…and we’re only just over half way through February!

With the right network of contacts – the right investors, partners and market specialists, there’s no reason why the UK can’t produce successes with much higher frequency. Web Mission is a firm step in the right direction.

We want GroupSpaces to be further evidence that it’s possible to build globally successful companies from the UK. We want to be part of this event.

Wish us luck!

Os EUA deve ser o país aonde mais startups de tecnologia sao iniciadas, fruto também da dinamica da sua propria economia. Mas nem sempre os investimentos nessas startups resulta em sucesso, ja que muitas vezes se investem milhoes e nao se retorna nada desse investimento. Hoje por hoje, quando acedo ao CruchBase, visualizo centenas de startups com ideias maravilhosas para a Web 2.0 muitas delas recebendo investimentos de milhoes de dolares.

Uma startup (vejam só), a YouNoodle  promete com Inteligencia artificial, prever o sucesso de qualquer startup até 5 anos a frente por exemplo se lhe forem fornecidos dados suficientes.

Other than visiting Michael Birch at Bebo, entrepreneurial landmarks that greeted us during the Silicon Valley trip included Google, Facebook and Crystal Towers – affectionately known as the “Y Scraper” since it has so many residents from the Y Combinator program.

Google stood out though – it recently beat McKinsey to #1 in Fortune magazine’s annual list of the top 100 MBA employers (arguably the most reputable ranking of employers available). With their gyms, games rooms, unlimited free exotic cuisine, campus environment and density of super-smart people working in sunny Mountain View, it’s not hard to understand why. Having been started up by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998, they’re now a $210bn company and are still growing fast 9 years later!

One of the Y Scraper’s residents and someone we spent a lot of time with was Sumon Sadhu, the Co-Founder of Imperial Entrepreneurs and Lightbox , and also a Board Member of Seedcamp. Last year I was introduced to Sumon by my (then) girlfriend and I like to think we’ve become pretty good entrepreneurial buddies since – we certainly share a lot of opinions on the European ecosystem and how it can be developed. Along with his co-founder Jamie Quint , Sumon was staying on the top floor of Crystal Towers, overlooking Alcatraz. Andy and I worked round at their apartment a few times during the week and also had the pleasure of attending a British Founders event which Sumon organised:

Left: Bob Goodson, Co-Founder, YouNoodle – a social network for student entrepreneurs
Centre: Andrew Davies, Co-Founder, Idiomag – a personalised digital music magazine
Right: Andy Young, my co-founder on ClickUni and GroupSpaces

Later on in the week, Sumon invited us to a Happy Dev Lunch at Facebook – an event focused around platform applications. We saw Mark Zuckerburg, and also bumped into Alex Tew, Creator of the MillionDollarHomepage – another British founder. The quality of conversation at the event was high, and unlike many events in Oxford or London, most of the attendees had a very good understanding of Web start-ups, raising funding and how it all fits together. I was fortunate enough to meet Eddie Codel, the Internet video producer and Co-Founder of GETV. We got talking and he really liked the vision for ClickUni. This resulted in him inviting us to be interviewed on the Podtech show LunchMeet:

Andy and I both enjoyed shooting the video and it’s a nice souvenir to take home from the states. Cheers Eddie!