FAQ
What is YouNoodle.com all about?
YouNoodle is an online platform for startups, early-stage ventures and the world's top entrepreneurship clubs and competitions. If you're at a startup, add it to the network to attract team members, get exposure and build a following. Otherwise, create a profile and browse the site to find startups you're interested in.
We also offer free, powerful tools such as full business competition, event, newsletter, and membership management for the leading startup clubs, conferences and startup competitions worldwide. Think your group qualifies? View our tour and request an invite here.
What is the YouNoodle Startup Predictor?
The Startup Predictor analyzes data on early-stage startups and generates a scientific prediction of the companies' future outcomes. More simply: it helps to predict what a startup will be worth in three years.
The Startup Predictor is the first in a series of decision-making technology products YouNoodle is developing for entrepreneurs, VCs, and others in the startup industry. These data-driven products are the reason YouNoodle is able to offer its online platform and group tools for free.
Ready to predict a startup's success? Take the free Startup Predictor test now.
What is the YouNoodle Team Score?
We generate a score to assess the quality of the team for every startup that is run through the Startup Predictor test. The YouNoodle Score acts like a personal credit score when a lender decides whether or not to take a risk and approve a loan. Based on a scale of 1,000, the score indicates the quality and promise of the team based on a number of complex factors.
How can YouNoodle help me?
YouNoodle is for you if you're working on or interested in any way with startups and university innovation. YouNoodle lets you:
- Discover the hottest startups and trends.
- Use Startup Predictor to compare your startup to others, and get connected to relevant others.
- Get exposure and recruit for your own startup.
- Reconnect with and meet new people in the startup industry.
- Use our competition, event, mailing list and networking tools if you run an enterprise group or competition.
What is a startup?
A startup is any early-stage company or venture. We are expanding what is usually referred to by the term 'startup' to include university technology, inventions and business plan competition entries.
Startups on YouNoodle range from companies in stealth mode who haven't even launched and are looking to recruit, to others that have been around for a couple of years and are already making significant amounts of revenue.
A startup is any early-stage company, venture or idea that might be pursued. If you're involved with a startup, you can either add it to the public network; or run it through the Startup Predictor test to see how it compares with others. All data entered in the public startup page is public, and all data entered in the Startup Predictor test is private.
Startups on YouNoodle range from companies in stealth mode who haven't even launched and are looking to recruit, to others that have been around for a couple of years and are already making significant amounts of revenue.
Who can see my profile and startup?
With the exception of data entered into Startup Predictor, which is totally private, content posted to YouNoodle is entirely open. If there is something you don't want to share, probably best not to post it on the Internet. Startup pages do have a 'Publicity' setting so you can indicate whether you are open to receiving media attention. Share as little or as much as you are comfortable with. This is a place to find team members, investors, advisors, early-adopters and media exposure. If you're not interested in finding those things, either keep an eye on other startups on the site, or join YouNoodle later on.
How does the Startup Predictor work?
By studying thousands of past startups — from bootstrapped success stories to tales with less cheerful endings — YouNoodle has discovered patterns of predictive factors that provide signs about future performance for the earliest-stage startups.
We've built a sophisticated algorithm (currently patent-pending) based on these predictive factors. When entrepreneurs enter information about their companies, the algorithm crunches the data to generate:
- An estimated value for the company after three years.
- The YouNoodle Score, a number that comparatively rates a company's potential.
What kind of data does the Startup Predictor factor into the results?
The product's "secret sauce" is the data we collect and how we collect, analyze and weight that data. Because we have a provisional patent pending for our current and more advanced algorithms we haven't made available yet, we can't share all the details. But we can say that we consider a number of factors about a company, including:
- Team (backgrounds, education, dynamics between team members)
- Advisors (backgrounds, track record)
- Financial factors
- Company concept
What kinds of companies can use it?
The initial Startup Predictor that YouNoodle has launched has been optimized for early-stage Internet startups — companies that are pre-funding and in their infancies. The tool is designed to generate predictions based on information available in the early days of a company. You can still run tests for older startups and other kinds of companies, but results may be less reliable.
What about later-stage startups?
The current version of Startup Predictor is designed to study the DNA of early-stage companies — those that haven't yet raised their first rounds of funding. Eventually, YouNoodle plans to develop models for startups at all stages of development.
Where does the startup data you used to create the algorithm come from?
We combined publicly available information about startup companies with information collected through partnerships with investors and service providers. We also conducted interviews to collect detailed information on the first steps dozens of past companies. Our distinct difference is our knowledge of how to find the right data and use it successfully.
Who built the model for Startup Predictor?
Our own international in-house team of talented individuals constructed Startup Predictor's inner workings from the ground up.
YouNoodle co-founder Kirill Makharinsky — an Oxford graduate in mathematics who was named Real World magazine's U.K. Graduate of the Year in 2006 — led the data set analysis and design of the mathematic model that powers the tool.
Leading the data collection and questionnaire design was YouNoodle's head of network strategy and development Rebeca Hwang, an MIT grad and Stanford Ph.D. candidate in Social Network Theory.
How do you account for all the factors that go into a startup's success but can't be measured — things like creativity, imagination and luck?
The Startup Predictor started as an experiment. With an open mind, we set out to collect as much data as we could find on measurable factors related to early-stage companies — and to see what patterns and trends developed from them. While we knew there were plenty of uncontrollable factors that wouldn't be represented (market trends, competitors, personal things that might happen to founders and team members), we didn't want that to deter us from studying the ones that we can measure.
In analyzing several thousand startups and a total sample set of several hundred thousand data points, what we found in our research scientifically proved that the factors we can measure work together to very closely predict the future success of a startup. The factors we account for in our model are influential enough that they affect the outcome of a company's business success substantially — proving to us that a scoring system can be a valuable addition to decision-making.
Do you help companies that score favorably in the Startup Predictor to secure funding?
Over time, we'd like to help highly rated startups make the right connections with advisors, journalists and potential team members. For now, however, we simply offer a quantitative measure of future success for decision-making: the predicted valuation and YouNoodle Score. We respect entrepreneurs' and investors' need for privacy and control, and we offer this technology for business people to use independently.
What's a YouNoodle Score?
A YouNoodle Score is a quantitative measurement, on a scale of 0 to 100, of a startup's progress and traction based on its traffic, funding, employees, buzz and other activity. The score is based on information pulled in from thousands of online sources: traffic sources, mainstream media, funding sources, the blogosphere, conversations on Twitter, and other key factors.
How big is the directory?
The directory includes 40,000 high potential companies, and pulls in over 150,000 startup news stories every day, allowing business owners, customers and investors to track the progress and news stories associated with any startup in real time.
What time period do you have available?
YouNoodle Scores are updated in real time and the three-month trend for each company is available.
Why are some scores over 100?
When a startup reaches a stage that it can exceed 100 it is most likely ready to IPO and is a candidate to be removed from the index.