
Exchangel – Fantasy Angel Investing - zhoujianfu
http://exchangel.co
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chralieboy
The sign of a great idea: you sold me with the four word HN title.

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discardorama
At a glance, 34 of the 96 startups listed have "XYZ for ..." in their blurb
(35%). Of these, there are 2 Ubers, 2 Slacks, 2 AWS's, and 1 each of Stripe,
SolarCity, Nest, Siri, Palantir, Clever, AngelList and AirBnB...

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M8
Isn't it an accurate representation of the USA start-up arena?

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jonlucc
Dumb question, but I'm a scientist and not in this field: how does this work?
If I want to commit a certain amount for a certain valuation, how will my
"portfolio" grow? By actual valuation placed down the line? Is there a quick
guide? I couldn't find one.

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zstiefler
One interesting addition would be the ability to "short" companies who you
think are overvalued.

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pyvpx
I would argue it's not a proper market place, fantasy or not, without such
ability. (meaning, whatever values or data that comes from this is of near
zero utility without the ability to short)

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nodesocket
You can only short public companies, so why should you be able to short any
company in fantasy investing?

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eru
Why not? No need to restrict our fantasy investing to what people think is
proper.

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taylorwc
I'd guess the comment was less about 'what people think is proper,' and more
about the fact that there are typically no mechanisms by which to short very
early stage private companies.

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eru
Yes. I guess I think games ought to be more awesome than life.

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geverett
This is amazing. The first time I used excel was to play the Stock Market Game
([http://www.stockmarketgame.org/](http://www.stockmarketgame.org/)) in
elementary school. The public markets were as bubbly then as private markets
are today... I wonder if in 15 years it will be as common to invest privately
as it has become to invest publicly.

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nodesocket
I also did the StockMarketGame in high school (class of 2000). The market was
ahhhh-booming. Howerver, I took advantage of the fact that the prices were
delayed by 15 minutes (no real-time quotes), by the end of the semester, I
think I had over a billion dollars in my account.

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mentat
It pays to have a better connection than the other guy, very nice!

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ics
Fantasy stock markets were fun back in school, this could be too. Edit with my
only feedback: put a big, fat FAQ button somewhere. It took a little while to
notice the tiny "learn more" text.

My link if anyone wants (if you use, we both get Ex$50k apparently):
[http://exchangel.co/r/38](http://exchangel.co/r/38)

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jschwartz11
Would be cool to add in other startup stats at some point! Could potentially
use [http://mattermark.com/](http://mattermark.com/).

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zhoujianfu
definitely will! ALL of them eventually? :)

Gotta start somewhere... it's like the 2015 draft class for now!

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nicholasdrake
this is a really cool idea.. its also great intel on the yc batch companies
haha!

how do you track returns? how much money the companies raise? what the
companies are valued at? isn't this dangerous because all angel investors
including ron conway and pg say it's not about how much money you raise and
that is a poor indicator of how successful your start-up is going to be...

obviously a fantasy league where you have to wait 10 years to see who actually
wins and becomes a 10 billion company etc. isn't that much fun, but i can't
figure out what short-term metrics that would work across different start-ups
with different growth plans (i.e. some start-ups will focus on page views,
others on sign-ups, others on transactions etc.)

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zhoujianfu
The idea is that after the "seed" stage we're in now, the shares will float,
so you can put in bids and asks to buy and sell. But, whenever real-world
liquidity news comes in (raise money, acquisition, ipo), people will be able
to buy/sell at that price for a week before it goes back to floating!

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nicholasdrake
ahhh so it's less fantasy football more stock exchange where value is
determined collectively by the market, as opposed to externally e.g. with
fantasy scores every week. i understand now.

this could indirectly be a good way to reveal peoples biases (including
angels) about what companies will be successful... it's especially interesting
as it removes from the equation the one component that vcs/investors say is
most important which is their feeling about how good the team is... if the
stock exchange can accurately predict which companies are going to be
successful without that information that has interesting implications for vcs
approach in picking companies.

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nicholasdrake
it would be interesting to have two separate fantasy leagues. one just like
this one . but another where investors get to see 2 minute videos with the
founders just talking about themselves/their company... it would be
itneresting to see if the companies they invest in are any different because
of these videos... and furthermore if 2 minutes of video lead to significanlty
better predictions about which companies will be successful..

incl. obvious implications for ycombinators model with 10 minute interviews
etc.

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solve
Would be nice if every new VC was forced to use this and share their results
with their partners, to learn some humility.

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arikrak
Since the SEC just announced the last part of the JOBS Act, sites like this
will soon be able to offer real investing...

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petersouth
noob angel here - what is the maximum valuation box for? I figured if you are
investor you want that number as low as possible and the company wants that
number to be max big. I tried putting in .000001M but says "must be at least
5M". Is there any reason you would make it bigger than 5M?

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rboyd
So that you're in action when the round is oversubscribed.

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Gabriel_Martin
I'm curious if this would ever create value as a prediction market. I've often
thought that this exact tool, when used as a prediction market could remove
some of the froth of this industry.

(Here's a paper Dave McClure wrote about prediction markets, if you're not
familiar:
[http://500hats.typepad.com/files/ChannellingCrowds_DaveMcClu...](http://500hats.typepad.com/files/ChannellingCrowds_DaveMcClure_Release2.0_April2007.pdf))

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ghall
Gabriel,

With a few months of back data at Sand Hill Exchange, we've found our results
often shockingly accurate.

For example, even before we experimented with a profit incentive, our users
forecast big increases in valuations on Slack
([http://blog.sandhill.exchange/post/101804376238/sand-hill-
ex...](http://blog.sandhill.exchange/post/101804376238/sand-hill-exchange-
tuesday-nov-4) ), Beepi, Mattermark, and Reddit, all of which proved true.

Our community also outperformed journalists:
[http://blog.sandhill.exchange/post/101679447223/parsing-
the-...](http://blog.sandhill.exchange/post/101679447223/parsing-the-
predictive-power-of-tech-journalists)

I won't tell you what the smart money has been betting on in the past few
months, but it will be great to see how this pans out. Here's the January
predictions of relevance:
[http://blog.sandhill.exchange/post/109527449373/january-2015...](http://blog.sandhill.exchange/post/109527449373/january-2015-ipo-
valuations)

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scottkduncan
So...insider trading then?

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samstave
Sort of a tangent, I have the following idea, and would like to see if this
idea could be quickly proved out with a fantasy model:

I was thinking an initial investment account could be setup for Every baby
born where the government would put in say ten thousand into an account for
eighteen years and The new adult would then return $10k from the account at
that point and would have that money as a foundation for entering society.

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EwanG
The way I have usually seen this expressed is that you take funding that would
otherwise go to support/welfare programs, and use it to fund this. The problem
becomes one of who is responsible if the particular investment fund/vehicle
doesn't perform well enough to even pay back the original $10K? If it's going
to be Government directed, then what the US buys and sells becomes a bit of a
market mover, and you have to invest "against" that to have any hedge if the
person running the US fund guesses wrong.

This has also been proposed as a way to get out of the Social Security "mess"
that is heading our way.

Not saying it couldn't be done, but haven't seen the idea ever get much
traction.

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samstave
Yeah, that's why a fantasy test model would be interesting to prove this out.

It would be great to be able to take some type of index for each birth year in
the past and apply a 10k investment into it and see what you arrive at.

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desireco42
I don't know how come someone didn't come up with this earlier, but I don't
believe it did, so congrats, awesome idea. I already started pretend investing
in startups that seem promising.

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foobarqux
They did. Sandhill exchange for example.

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desireco42
I was not aware, thank you for posting.

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kumarski
The signup flow isn't working for me.

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ponyous
Same, click signin. Write email address. It will ask you to signup first.

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brandnewlow
The signup link doesn't do anything. And then when you click your one-time
sign in link, nothing happened until the third time I generated one.

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Udo
Same here, clicking on signup button doesn't do anything (not even the mouse
pointer changes). Latest Firefox on OS X.

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zhoujianfu
Aha.. I didn't realize you aren't supposed to put <a> tags inside <button>
tags! It works in a lot of browsers but doesn't in others! FIXED?!

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dmschulman
Haha this is a great idea. I know angel investing doesn't necessarily work
like traditional stock investing but I'm noticing all the companies on the
exchange start at the same price. Is this accurate or should they be valued
slightly differently from the onset?

Also it would be great to see some more information for each company added to
the listings, even some basic details pulled from Crunchbase would be nifty.

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zhoujianfu
Ah, so actually during the seed it's an auction. When you place your
"commitment" to the round, you set a max valuation you'll participate at.
Then, when the seed round is over, the price paid is actually the highest
"clearing" price, and the company sells 500K to 2M shares.

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bushido
I like the idea.

Personally for me I would've liked to see the start-ups that did not get
through interviews for YC etc.

Nothing against having the ones who made it through YC etc. too, but these
have already been vetted by people we admire/trust/know-of.

Having just these makes it seem like picking out of the Dow/S&P/Your advisers
suggestions as opposed to ALL public companies (penny stock, pink slip and the
rest included).

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marrington
What's most interesting about this to me is the ranking of the startups by
user demand for the virtual stock.

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aet
Does this signal a tech bubble? :) It's like those Bravo shows about flipping
houses. Very neat idea.

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mncolinlee
No. It's not. It's really unrelated and a good idea. Wall Street S&P500 still
beats Venture Capital returns on average and it has PLENTY of fantasy
investing.

If most people on a fantasy site seem to be making money hand over fist then
it's time to watch out. Angel investing is harder than most people think.

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yuncun
This looks really interesting. I love playing football manager, and I always
thought there is a niche for business oriented simulation games. I wonder
though, are there copyright issues with using these company names, or do they
all used with permission?

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kriro
Pretty cool but I'm pretty sure most of the 10k@5M I got before reading the
actual rules will not clear :D

I also don't like the "get an extra 50k" link (viral I suppose). Hope people
won't start posting their links in here :D

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ics
I posted my link in a comment below and people seem to be taking advantage of
it, though nobody has replied with their own as I was expecting others to. The
upside to the bonus is that it makes the game a little more interesting and
realistic; some investors simply have more than others and they will affect
how the game is played by others (hopefully bringing in more players than
making people think that unfair means not fun).

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rboyd
The prize is based on ROI anyway, right? So the value in having more capital
streaming in just means you have the luxury of adjusting your picks. The
trade-off being that you're now obligated to put it all to work.

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ryanSrich
Any reason this only includes YC companies? Sorry if I missed the answer
somewhere.

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zhoujianfu
I just gotta start somewhere, and since I was at demo day this week, I started
there!

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fiatjaf
Why the guy building a cool game like this took its time to write an annoying
form that asks for the first and last name AND does server-side form
validation to ensure everyone inputs their last name?

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sirbetsalot
yah this idea will never be smart for one very good reason. The probability of
the bottom 99% of VC ever rising up to challenge john doeer, chris sacca and
the rest is near zero.

In sports you have the probability of a lower tier athlete going off on any
given day and that probability is high enough to create uncertainty, For this
model to actually work you need a VC like "HighlineVC" to hit a unicorn. Fat
chance of that every happening, they are orders of magnitude more stupid then
sequioa.

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Red_Tarsius
Great idea, I'm signing up tonight! I already play fantasy stock market, I
think other Investopedia users would love to get a taste of Angel Investing as
well.

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elaineo
There is a company doing fantasy startup investing with bitcoin:
[http://sandhill.exchange](http://sandhill.exchange)

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ghall
Thanks for the mention!

As mentioned below
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9272670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9272670)
), we're excited to see many more players expanding the fantasy VC space --
startups are awesome and we need more utilities like this!

\-- Gerrit Hall Co-Founder, Sand Hill Exchange gerrit AT sandhill DOT exchange

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benmathes
Needs more angellist API integration. Who do I know at the companies? Who are
their current investors? Prominent advisors? etc. etc.

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zhoujianfu
Agreed! It's all in the pipeline! EVERYTHING! :)

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pmelendez
This looks really nice, but I tried to sign up and the button didn't work for
me. Is it closed?

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findjashua
It'd be nice if there was also an option to invest in a diversified fund (like
Angellist)

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lukasm
bug the links is
[https://angel.co/Akido%20Labs](https://angel.co/Akido%20Labs) but the correct
one is [https://angel.co/akido-labs](https://angel.co/akido-labs)

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zhoujianfu
Thanks! Fixed!

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mhluongo
Reminds me of sandhill.exchange

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ghall
As a co-founder of Sand Hill Exchange
([http://sandhill.exchange/](http://sandhill.exchange/)), we're excited to see
many people growing the burgeoning Fantasy VC ecosystem. I like Exchangel's
focus on seed stage startups, as I feel this is where the most interesting
entrepreneurial energy resides.

Obviously, there are many key differences -- Sand Hill Exchange in particular
offers the ability short sell, profit, etc. We'll be spinning up a hacker news
league on [http://sandhill.exchange/](http://sandhill.exchange/) soon so you
can all skip our waitlist!

\-- Gerrit Hall Co-Founder, Sand Hill Exchange gerrit AT sandhill DOT exchange

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aarongray
Awesome idea!

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systemtheory
dear god. run for the exits. the day is finally here.

i left the world of finance and headed toward software engineering. side
benefit, no fantasy football. nobody pretending that they understood "the
market". those who commented regarding "shorts" etc. why not options? or
swaptions? or futures? or future options? you should totally start a risk-
neutral team. wait, weren't we talking about software engineering.

here is the thing. by and large, you all have zero clue what you're talking
about. tell me that's not true all day long, but, whatever. you've read a
book. you've worked on some algorithm. but chances are you've never been wined
and dined by a bulge bracket investment bank attempting to win the brokerage
business of the hedge fund you work at. you've likely never spoken with
bankers about upcoming offerings. you've likely never been given a tour of the
manufacturing plant floor by management, because you're thinking of investing
a hundred or so million.

and here is the thing that makes me really sad. at least bankers, a horrible
bunch of humans, by and large studied the humanities and admit that they are
generally selling crap. this new breed of programmers sorta study computer
science and then walk around like they have "the answer" for every human
problem. and now i have to deal with "Fantasy Angel Investing".

run for the exits

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rboyd
that's cute, because as programmers we generally think you bankers have no
idea what you're doing.

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7Figures2Commas
"Bankers" may not be the most likeable lot, or even the smartest, but telling
folks who have perfected the art of siphoning small percentages from vast
pools of other people's money over long periods of time, often with room for
meaningful upside and limited downside, that they have no idea what they're
doing is kind of silly.

Note: I'm assuming that your use of the word "bankers" refers broadly to those
who work in finance (investment bankers, fund managers, etc.).

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systemtheory
so, this is my point. your assumption is wrong. very, very, obviously wrong.
that isn't at all the meaning of the word "banker" in finance. and it's not
"my" use of the word. it's the broadly used / accepted / understood meaning.
and they aren't small percentages. the percentage they receive for making
deals is published, look it up. banker != trader != portfolio manager, etc.

also, i didn't say they weren't likable. generally they are very likable. and
i didn't say they don't know what they are doing. they know very well what
they're doing.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
You do realize that what I wrote was in reply to somebody else's comment, not
yours, right? I guess it's time to run for the exits when folks who don't
understand how a discussion forum works are leaving finance for software
engineering. I mean, if you can't figure out how to read a hierarchical
comments structure, how in the world are you going to get your head around
recursion?

