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Startup Investor Rankings

mattermark.com

42 pointsdmor21 comments

Mattermark is something of little relevance to me but how good is the data? They recently produced a list of the fastest growing startups in my local community and the results were pretty odd. Companies with huge measurable growth beaten by, literally, new starts just a few months old with no revenue and few customers.

Granted I don't know what yard stick they used to come up with the list but to me on the ground in the community the list seemed way off and widely ridiculed.

Measuring public-facing growth is cool, but it doesn't seem particularly useful for measuring investor performance. It's like measuring someone's driving ability using the shininess of their car collection as a proxy.

It doesn't really looks like the goal is measure financial performance. I think it's kind of an interesting idea considering how odd the valuation process can be for a company that has no revenue but tons of growth.

Could someone explain why "signals of growth", or as in this case "momentum", would be relevant to anyone? I understand that actual growth stats might be difficult to get hold of, but I think I'd rather have 200 of those than 200 000 "weekly growth of web traffic, mobile downloads, inbound links, employees, and social media".

I'd suggest "signals of growth" & "momentum" are a proxy for a site that has repeat traffic & systematic word of mouth. You can't maintain the momentum of growth unless you retain a significant number of new visitors.

If new visitors are developing the habit of repeat visits, thats a strong signal the startup has discovered a formula that strikes a chord with their niche/market.

Is the page rendering properly for others? I currently see the list of companies right justified, then the bar graph part after all the companies have been listed.

Chrome 31.0

(edit: displays fine on Firefox)

edit2: 12:09am looks like they fixed it

12:33 - still broken for chrome.

same

had to make my chrome window smaller to make it work. Seems some floating problems (they needed to test with bigger screens ?)

Not trying to rain on the parade, but could this ever include weighted rankings by a fund's % ownership in a given investment. E.g. a fund that owns 10% of Uber should rank higher than a fund with 5%, everything else being equal.

That said, it's probably much more important to have any investment in Uber (to continue the example) than whether you have a handful % more/less than another fund.

AngelList should be in this ranking. Especially because FundersClub, a direct competitor, is at the top.

Yes there is a slight difference. FundersClub is a curated platform while AngelList is open. But curation alone does not a VC make. If one brokerage is on there, the other should be too.

FundersClub makes investments in companies alongside their customers, which is why they have a portfolio. AngelList does not (to our knowledge) do this, which is why they are not included.

I think you are mistaken. FundersClub curates the investments it brokers but the money comes from a (typically very large) group of independent investors.

From the FundersClub FAQ:

FundersClub lets its members who are accredited investors invest in startup venture funds online... FundersClub manages the funds and provides value-add benefits to the startup companies we invest in, as well as the investors in our funds.

No mention of kicking in their own funds. Perhaps there's a relatively trivial amount contributed by the FundersClub team from time to time but it's not the basis of their operation (Naval participates in some AngelList investments too). This is extremely similar to AngelList apart from the curation.

This seems like an edgy way to attract traffic. If there were some more specifics behind how these rankings were determined, I'd be more inclined to care.

Interesting, but may I suggest you use a table or graphic to show this data? As it is now, the labels and bars are not aligned in the three browsers I tried. It also breaks in narrow windows.

I wonder if this is any different than Money magazine ranking mutual funds? Nobody smart would ever use that ranking to pick a fund. "Revert to the norm" anyone?

I guess it depends on whether we think the underlying ability is a skill with long-term, differentiated levels. If so, even after factoring out reversion, we could still find that there is a consistent ranking.

For managed mutual funds, I think it's been studied that there is no ability (source: Boglehead books). So, unless things radically change, there is no signal in the noise to be found -- the rankings aren't more stable than random.

I have no idea for VC funds.

YC is not at the top. There must be something wrong.

Coming from a finance background, calling this measure of startup investor performance "portfolio momentum" is very confusing.

Isn't this just random noise? Just because your portfolio is doing better doesn't mean you know how to pick winners. It just means you're better at rolling dice.

This is pretty neat

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