

YouNoodle Startup Predictor now live to try it for yourself. - babul
http://younoodle.com/predictor

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flipbrad
"Give us your sensitive data, we'll make you feel good and optimistic"

Preying on the vulnerability/need for validation of most startup founders?

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tlrobinson
I would be very cautious about giving a lot of this requested information
(funding details, % ownership, etc) out to some random website...

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dcurtis
It's not random. It's funded by Founders Fund, Peter Thiel, and Max Levchin.

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flipbrad
does that lend weight to, or subtract from, his warning?

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fiaz
Has anybody tried entering the details for a 1990s dot.com to see what kind of
valuation you get?

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demandred
YN wants the data -- not sure they really care about making an (accurate)
prediction. Foolhardy exercise to fill in the information.

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babul
On a side note, and without wanting to be negative, at times I am not really
sure they care about many things apart from growing really fast and getting
momentum/exposure/traction (which is understandable).

You can gauge how much they (or anyone for that matter) care by the response
you get when you try and engage with them. In this respect, my past experience
has not been good (no response to emails/queries/etc), but maybe that is
because I am not significant to them as an individual.

When I compare this to the engaging experiences I find with many YC start-ups
(<http://www.socialbrowse.com> springs to mind) and others (e.g.
<http://www.huddle.net> and <http://www.freshbooks.com>), the difference is
night and day.

Maybe this is just my experience. Still, I’d be more likely to provide
sensitive information to sites I trust and that seem to ‘care’.

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kirill
Babul - we aim to respond to every email and query, sorry to hear your
experience. Feel free to email me: kirill@younoodle.com with more details and
if you think we didn't cover any particular issue properly. Thanks.

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babul
Sorry for delay in response. Just saw this. We resolved what we needed to by
other means, but thank you for the offer. :)

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dcurtis
Considering that about 70% of startups fail, shouldn't this actually give you
a negative valuation most of the time?

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sdpurtill
You can always sell the laptops back on eBay, right?

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mixmax
My unlaunched startup which I work on part-time will apparently be worth $10
million in 2011. maybe I should start working on it full time :-)

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c3o
Some feedback:

* The connections-drawing tool is somewhat broken: First it wouldn't show for me at all ("Loading..."), and then when I wanted to correct something, the eraser didn't remove the lines (although I think it did invalidate them, because I could draw new lines on top of the old ones)

* Entering team details is very tedious when every single question is on its own page. I got tired of clicking next, and would very nearly have quit the process there.

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sdpurtill
I can't figure out what's wrong with the flash not loading - several people
have reported this now. Can one of you guys hack it and reply with the answer?
I'll buy you a pizza (no seriously, I will)

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sanj
Seriously, pizza? Please!

Cash!

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sanj
It seems a little hypocritical to downmod me _and_ complain about business
people taking advantage of hackers.

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sdpurtill
I built the majority of the survey, so if you see any bugs or have feedback
reply to this. Thanks!

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Tichy
"YouNoodle's model is based on rigorous quantitative analysis of historical
data and the application of the latest relevant theory"

Brilliant generic tag line.

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jfornear
My startup will apparently be worth $36 million in August 2011... total BS.

The entire YouNoodle process feels like a phishing scam.

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cperciva
Apparently my startup (tarsnap, online backups for the truly paranoid) will be
worth $3.71M in September 2009. Given that I'm a sole founder and tarsnap is
pre-revenue, I can only guess that YouNoodle is giving me very high marks for
(a) having a doctorate from Oxford, and (b) having started university when I
was 13 years old.

Of course, I'd be happy if YouNoodle was correct in their assessment... but if
someone offered to buy tarsnap for $3.71M right now -- or offered to buy any
fraction of tarsnap for a corresponding fraction of that amount -- I'd have no
hesitation in accepting the offer.

EDIT: Yes, I do realize that the assessed value is effective a year from now
-- but I still think $3.71M would be a generous amount to pay for tarsnap. Of
course, tarsnap might take off faster than I expect...

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prakash
I understand where you are coming from. Some of those calculations might be
based on, for a lack of a better term, VC math, meaning if you are in the
process of raising a series A, the VC might value your company (pre-money) at
say 4 million, give you a A round of 2 million and own 50% of the company.

BTW: When are you launching?

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cperciva
_BTW: When are you launching?_

Depends how you define "launching". I haven't got the accounting code written
yet, so revenue is still a month or more away -- but if you mean in the sense
of "providing a service which people want", tarsnap has been up and running
for three months.

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prakash
nice. good luck.

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babul
These tools are really only as good as the information they are provided or
access, and without looking at failure rates/reasons in the model do seem
fundamentally flawed to me.

As mentioned by others, the results provided do look very optimistic (at least
from what I can tell based on the values it provides for things I am involved
with) and with refinement once they get the datasets will probably go down
significantly in most cases.

Time will be the real judge. It will be interesting is to see what they
predict and what actually happens in the next years. Hopefully they will
provide this information (semi-)publically, but it seems unlikely.

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jonmc12
I'm surprised no one else has asked what the valuation algorithm is yet.

Anyone ambitious enough to survey a set of Younoodle inputs and outputs so we
can estimate the valuation formula?

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hooande
YouNoodle is busy...

We're experiencing lots of activity so we can't handle your request just yet.
Please click the refresh button and try again.

scaling = fail

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sdpurtill
Appears to be a problem with our search index, we're on it ;)

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dkasper
So,this may be a minor grievance, but why is the last name field white unlike
the first name and email field even though it is required?

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helveticaman
I feel super iffy about completing the form.

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thenextweb
Trying my start-up now. Does take a lot of time to fill out everything...

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stats101
My startup, InsideDesi (<http://www.insidedesi.com>), will apparently be worth
8 mill by 2011.

