
Demo Day Is Coming: Ranking the 500 Startups Spring 2013 Batch - dmor
http://mattermark.com/ranking-the-500-startups-spring-2013-batch/
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pytrin
I'm one of the batch founders (Binpress). I know most of the companies on the
list intimately, and most of the data is completely inaccurate (some is even
ridiculous - 2 companies have 0 employees according to this chart).

I hope no one, and especially investors - take this site seriously. We're
doing well, but some of the other companies are counting on the upcoming demo
day for a last push to their fund raising efforts. Mattermark would serve
themselves and their users better by doing some actual diligence on the
companies before publishing this data, instead of just aggregating old crunch-
base data and Alexa rankings.

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ridruejo
I see as an iterative process. Right now the most readily available data are
things like Alexa rankings, twitter followers, etc. which are an imperfect
proxy for how well a company is doing. As Mattermark gets traction, I am sure
that they will add additional, more reliable sources and that companies will
have an incentive to keep their information up to date

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7Figures2Commas
I see that Mattermark charges $499/month for its "professional" plan. If
you're suggesting that the data it's using is imperfect, I'm curious as to why
you believe anyone would have an incentive to pay this amount _before_
Mattermark has the ability to acquire better data?

For what it's worth, there are already a ton of other sources of data for
private companies (Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, FactSet, infoUSA, CB Insights,
PrivCo, etc.).

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ridruejo
None of the companies you mention target startups, that's the niche Mattermark
is going after. Re: paying and imperfect data, I would turn the argument
around: the fact that people are willing to pay money for imperfect data,
proves that there is demand for this.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
CB Insights and PrivCo absolutely have data on startups, and just because a
company is a "startup" doesn't mean that it won't have any visibility in some
of the other sources I listed.

As for imperfect data, billions are spent every year on all kinds of weight
loss supplements of questionable value. That doesn't mean that there's
necessarily going to be demand for _your_ weight loss supplement.

Here, I see little more than an amalgamation of free data from sources like
CrunchBase, AngelList, Twitter and LinkedIn along with a proprietary momentum
scoring system that is designed to track a startup's growth but for which no
efficacy/validation data is presented. I don't see any reference to the
specific metrics that are inputs to the scoring system, but the mention of
"traffic graphs, app store ranking, inbound links, social media stats"
suggests that the aforementioned free data is what is being used.

Of course, "growth" in the abstract is an ambiguous concept and, I would
argue, a poor one to try to measure for private companies:

1\. _What_ is growing matters. A B2C startup may have a lot more traffic and
social media activity than a B2B startup, even though a B2B startup in a
lucrative market could be growing its revenue at an exponentially higher rate.
This is why angels and venture capitalists will _always_ have to hit the
phones and the streets: you can't find the B2B startup that inked $500,000 in
deals with Fortune 500 companies in its first six months of existence if
you're just looking at Alexa stats or Twitter followers. This information
simply isn't being released publicly. If you want an advantage, you have to
seek out non-public information. It's why some hedge funds, for instance, go
to great lengths to physically monitor in real time the supply chain movements
of companies they have or are considering positions in.

2\. Very young companies can more easily grow at a faster rate than more
mature companies. Going from 0 to 1,000 visitors in the period of a week is
generally easier than going from, say, 20,000 to 30,000 in a month, but the
former is arguably likely to be a lot less meaningful than the latter for most
businesses.

3\. How big you need to grow to have a sustainable, highly-profitable business
varies substantially from company to company and market to market. In other
words, it's all but impossible to distill "growth" down into a single number
that allows for an apples to apples comparison of companies in different
spaces and at different stages of development.

