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The startup world, ranked and visualized

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Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#21

Post by [deleted] »

herdrick wrote: post #19
stevenj wrote: post #17

I like the interface design. Questions: Dave McClure at #3, Paul Graham at #943; whereas 500 Startups is at #41, and Y Combinator is at #15? Why is 500 Startups classified as a financial firm, whereas Y Combinator is classified as a company? Also, I'm surprised that Andreessen Horowitz is ranked #67 of financial firms (given that Marc Andreessen is ranked #14), and Elon Musk is #119 for people. I would have thought t…

Thanks! We like to keep it clean. In the data source, TechCrunch's Crunchbase, the influence of Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, et al. is captured in YC the company, and Marc Andreessen is split between his personal identity and AH. So you get a lot of odd things like that. As for why YC got classified a company, who knows? It's accident of history. They should change it.

[deleted]

Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#22

Post by pg »

herdrick wrote: post #8
mwmnj wrote: post #7

myspace?

Yep, there are a number of surprises. For one thing, this is cumulative, so deals made and competitor relationships from 2005 are as good as from 2012. For another, having a well-flushed out Crunchbase profile makes all the difference. Try clicking on MySpace's blue dot and see what is connected to it.

You might want to experiment with weighting data by recency.

Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#23

Post by necubi »

herdrick wrote: post #20
jquery wrote: post #18

The "impartial algorithm" line was good for a laugh.

It's impartial. Did you click thru to Wikipedia?

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but there's no such thing as an "impartial" ranking of things.

Any ranking will put importance on certain factors which are chosen from all the possible factors by the designer of the ranking. You have chosen to rank based (I presume) on incoming links on CrunchBase. However, this is intrinsically no more impartial than a ranking based on yearly revenue, or number of employees, or size of their offices, number of mentions in the New York Times, or any other of an unbounded number of metrics.

I would argue that PageRank, while it may have done a good job of ranking websites for the purposes of search, is a pretty poor choice here. It's highly susceptible to reporting bias, where some companies will be better-represented on CB. Empirically, you also get weird artifacts, like the ranking of MySpace ahead of Apple.

Choosing a good metric requires a theoretical explanation of why that metric is important and why it helps answer your question (which you don't state, but I suspect is something like, "which are the most important startups", whatever that might mean). Just choosing something doesn't necessarily tell you anything useful.

[If you're interested in high stakes debates about rankings, look into the hoopla that comes about every year when US News & World Report releases their college rankings. These numbers can have huge effects on college's prestige and, lower down the food chain, their bottom lines.]

Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#24

Post by pedalpete »

Very cool, but you really need to work on the algorithm. It's easy to pick out the reason why MySpace might be found higher than Facebook or as a few people have pointed out, PG vs YCombinator.

But my last start-up, which I shutdown over a year ago (HearWhere, 19,883) is ranked as more influential than companies that are significantly larger traffic that are still operating (example, AllRecipes, 23,087).

Nice to think I'm that influential, but I can assure you, I'm not (yet ;))

Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#25

Post by izak30 »

herdrick wrote: post #19
stevenj wrote: post #17

I like the interface design. Questions: Dave McClure at #3, Paul Graham at #943; whereas 500 Startups is at #41, and Y Combinator is at #15? Why is 500 Startups classified as a financial firm, whereas Y Combinator is classified as a company? Also, I'm surprised that Andreessen Horowitz is ranked #67 of financial firms (given that Marc Andreessen is ranked #14), and Elon Musk is #119 for people. I would have thought t…

Thanks! We like to keep it clean. In the data source, TechCrunch's Crunchbase, the influence of Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, et al. is captured in YC the company, and Marc Andreessen is split between his personal identity and AH. So you get a lot of odd things like that. As for why YC got classified a company, who knows? It's accident of history. They should change it.

I don't think it's an accident. It's the way they talk about what they're doing. Partly because they don't want to be seen as VCs or an Incubator.

Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#26

Post by athst »

I think you can only say that this is a visualization of how things are in Crunchbase, not "the startup world" in general. It's ranking things based on the number of connections each thing has. For angel investors this may be a good indicator, but not necessarily for companies or VC firms.

Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#27

Post by dmor »

Want to hustle? This is a great list to go through and familiarize yourself with these people, what they make, what they need, how you can help them, what you might ask them for if they ever offered to help you, etc. Great way to visualize Crunchbase, which is a great resource.

Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#28

Post by herdrick »

necubi wrote: post #23
herdrick wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impartial. Did you click thru to Wikipedia?

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but there's no such thing as an "impartial" ranking of things. Any ranking will put importance on certain factors which are chosen from all the possible factors by the designer of the ranking. You have chosen to rank based (I presume) on incoming links on CrunchBase. However, this is intrinsically no more impartial than a ranking based on yearly revenue, or number of employees, o…

It certainly is susceptible to reporting bias, like most data out there.

Perhaps the better word, instead of 'impartial', would be 'disinterested'.

Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#29

Post by herdrick »

pg wrote: post #22
herdrick wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, there are a number of surprises. For one thing, this is cumulative, so deals made and competitor relationships from 2005 are as good as from 2012. For another, having a well-flushed out Crunchbase profile makes all the difference. Try clicking on MySpace's blue dot and see what is connected to it.

You might want to experiment with weighting data by recency.

Unfortunately most of it isn't dated. But yes it'd probably help.

Re: The startup world, ranked and visualized

#30

Post by joshbetz »

dmor wrote: post #27

Want to hustle? This is a great list to go through and familiarize yourself with these people, what they make, what they need, how you can help them, what you might ask them for if they ever offered to help you, etc. Great way to visualize Crunchbase, which is a great resource.

Except for the part where there are 10 companies ranked higher than Apple...
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