

Ask YC:  Prediction market to determine how likely HN contributors are likely to succeed? - amichail

Even if a startup is in stealth mode, people might guess the likelihood of success based on the contributions made here.<p>This is useful feedback to founders and may influence the way they present themselves in the future.<p>Some may expect a correlation between prediction market performance and karma, but that's not obvious to me.
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nostrademons
Part of me thinks "Ugh, no, we don't need a popularity contest" and another
part of me thinks "But it might be cool if done in a just-for-fun manner."

Regardless, I don't think this would be useful feedback, if only because the
only people whose opinions matter are your customers. It could encourage some
people who are all talk and no action (like me ;-)) to keep talking, and
discourage some folks that otherwise have good ideas.

The one thing I would kinda like to see would be graphs of prediction-market
prices over time, with feature announcements and other events overlaid on top
of them. I've changed my opinion of several YC startups fairly dramatically
over time, and it'd be neat to see if I just suck at making predictions (i.e.
everybody else got it right at the beginning) or if specific things they did
made lots of people change their minds about the success of their startup. And
it may be useful data, both for them and for the rest of us, to see what the
impact of a particular event is on the futures price.

(Curiously, this is a large part of what my last employer did, except they
were dealing with the real financial markets.)

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ivank
Those most likely to succeed are probably not doing much posting here. By the
time people are posting here to promote their startup, you could judge success
by the startup itself.

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amichail
You could have a prediction market based on the startups then.

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rms
Does that violate some kind of SEC regulation? It seems perilously close to an
actual open market for startups. Though obviously no won would care if the max
buy-in was $20.

Actually, cash prediction markets are probably against US Law anyways, I think
Intrade operates from Ireland.

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amichail
There would be no money involved although YC might use it as another factor
(both in terms of predicting success and being predicted to succeed) in its
selection process.

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rms
How can you have a prediction market without money or at least prizes? People
won't take it seriously. It's not a market then.

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ericb
This would be interesting in that the leaders may have an easier time getting
venture funding. It's another piece of social proof that would help VC's with
their groupthink.

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mechanical_fish
Define "succeed".

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rms
People buying your stock on this prediction market.

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rms
I'd play...

