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.
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.