
Capital-as-a-Service - arikr
http://www.socialcapital.com/caas/
======
dang
Comments moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551505)
(except the ones that are about this specific page).

------
jlg23
A slightly more informative link, IMHO, is the article on medium.com[1],
linked from this teaser/signup page.

TL;DR, I believe: They defined metrics[2], gather the relevant values from
applicants and ask their algorithm: "How much?"

Buried in [1] is this gem:

 _In our pilot, we evaluated nearly 3,000 companies and committed to funding
several dozen of those, across 12 countries and many sectors, without a single
traditional venture pitch. In fact, in most cases the data-driven approach
allowed us to reach conviction around an investment opportunity before we ever
even spoke to the founders. Worth noting that when we recently looked at CEO
demographics, we found that 42% were female and the majority nonwhite._

A purely data driven approach to VC investment could level the playing field a
lot and I could imagine that adapting that concept to hiring is a) not too far
off and b) a great way to reduce biases in the hiring process - if everything
works as promised (or rather "as hinted at").

[1] [https://medium.com/social-capital/capital-as-a-service-a-
new...](https://medium.com/social-capital/capital-as-a-service-a-new-
operating-system-for-early-stage-investing-6d001416c0df)

[2] [https://medium.com/swlh/diligence-at-social-capital-
part-1-a...](https://medium.com/swlh/diligence-at-social-capital-
part-1-accounting-for-user-growth-4a8a449fddfc)

~~~
dang
Since that other url was posted a few hours earlier
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551505)),
I guess we'll merge this thread into that one and roll back the clock on it to
give it a second shot. Seems fairer than the alternatives I can think of.

------
SandersAK
I don't get what this does or how it does it. It sounds like they have some
mumbojumbo machine that decides who to dole out cash to and how much, but
that's unclear.

Capital As A Service is, by definition, what VC is. You give capital as a
service to your startups.

I'm not sure (yet) what is novel about this approach, but if it's "shotgunning
money into things based on a set of rules" they might as well just call
themselves YC-lite.

~~~
rpedela
If you click the two links, it explains in more detail the how. Essentially
they have developed a set of GAAP-like metrics for early-stage companies, such
as MRR, which they use for evaluation. It appears to be similar to investment
firms using GAAP to evaluate public companies.

~~~
SandersAK
thanks, that definitely makes it easier to understand!

------
ztratar
While I like the idea, I think the page should be more robust.

This feels as though it was hacked together in 2 hours as an experiment.

------
rock_hard
Do they just keep posting the same link every 12 month?

~~~
mzzter
Doesn’t look like it’s been posted before

~~~
justboxing
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=socialcapital.com&sort=byDate&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=socialcapital.com&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

Either they "pivoted" or someone bought the domain name and rebranded it as
CaaS.

~~~
grzm
Considering it looks like the old URLS work, if anything I suspect the former.

