

The Original Techcrunch 40: Where are they now? - jaybol
http://grasshopper.com/blog/company/2010/03/31/techcrunch-40-2007-where-are-they-now/

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vtail
I'm wondering whether the outcomes for the Techcrunch 40 are _statistically
different_ from the outcomes for a group of 40 randomly selected startups.

4 companies went out of business, 4 were acquired (with only one being a major
success), several more are doing OK for themselves - which to me is not
significantly different from the usual startup survival rates.

And these companies were supposed to be the cream of the crop! It shows how
fundamentally difficult it is to make credible business forecasts in
technology.

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j-g-faustus
> It shows how fundamentally difficult it is to make credible business
> forecasts in technology.

Becoming a major success is fundamentally hard and predicting the future is
fundamentally hard, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise.

You can see the effect in major established companies as well: Microsoft has
two very successful products (Windows OS and Office), Google has one
(search/AdWords). In both cases the core products are pretty much the entire
profit for these companies. This is hardly for lack of trying, they have both
launched dozens to hundreds of other products (and have tons of money to back
them up), but have so far been unable to replicate the success.

It's not just technology either: Peter Lynch (a successful fund manager)
coined the term "ten bagger" for a stock investment that increases tenfold in
value. According to Lynch, ten baggers were incredibly satisfying and
incredibly hard to find. (As I recall it from his book, the fund invested in
hundreds of companies each year and there was still years between each ten
bagger. In that perspective, one major success out of 40 seems pretty good.)

I guess it mostly goes to show that mountains of money tend not to lie around
for the taking :)

~~~
vtail
>> It shows how fundamentally difficult it is to make credible business
forecasts in technology.

> Becoming a major success is fundamentally hard and predicting the future is
> fundamentally hard, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise.

And still, many people assign significance to whether a particular startup was
selected (or not) for Techcrunch 40, or was funded by YCombinator.

Even more people believe in cherry-picking stocks as a sound investment
strategy.

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redstripe
I think I've only heard of two of those (mint and docstoc) - and they're not
sites I use.

Getting some venture capital, which is hard enough in itself, doesn't seem to
be any kind of decent predictor of success. This SaS business is a tough slog
despite all the excitement people have about it.

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babar
Isn't the classic VC model an expectation of only ~10% real successes, a
larger amount break even/moderate success, and about half failures? Although
that may be a better success rate than non-funded companies, getting VC is not
in any way equivalent to a guarantee of success.

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pclark
(Why is this an image?)

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jimfl
It's an "infographic."

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blasdel
It's more on the border between a stupidly formatted table and a USA Today
sidebar.

Now _this_ is an infographic:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/philgyford/4505748943/sizes/o/>

~~~
jacquesm
Great satire. I know a few future recipients of that graphic ;)

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acgourley
I would rather see these companies rated for success by a large pool of vetted
'judges'. Yes it's subjective, yes it's how they got into the TC40 to start,
but it's a lot more useful than the monthly uniques, which can't even be
accurately known by us.

As long as the judges are careful not to associate blog press as
success/promise, I think one could create an yearly rating for a large pool of
companies and track the success of various conditions such as investors,
awards, location, etc.

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justliving
what strikes me, when reading these figures is the comparison between their
total funding and the monthly uniques! E.g $2,880,000 vs 373 uniques in Feb
2010 for BroadClip ...

~~~
tjogin
What struck me was that profits, or even revenue, apparently aren't even
interesting metrics, at all.

~~~
hristov
It is not that they aren't interesting. I think the problem is that they
aren't available. Most startups are not in a situation where they are legally
required to publicly disclose their finances, but they usually are required to
publicly disclose their investments.

~~~
tjogin
Several of those startups don't disclose the chosen metrics either, though.

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callmeed
What's the status of Flock? Seems to have raised the most VC of the group (at
least those without an exit).

Anyone still use it?

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barmstrong
Interesting and somewhat discouraging article.

I agree with the other posters that it would have been really interesting to
see which of those companies actually made a profit, and or gave positive
returns to investors.

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psranga
Does Mint really have 250 million users as this site claims?

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axod
afaik TruTap is dead.

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dnsworks
When 10 artists display their work at Bob's Gallery, will they forever be the
Bob's Gallery 10?

