Mattermark Index: Y Combinator Summer 2013 Companies(mattermark.com)
mattermark.com
Mattermark Index: Y Combinator Summer 2013 Companies
http://mattermark.com/fastest-growing-y-combinator-summer-2013-companies-ranked-by-mattermark-score/
20 comments
We've ranked the current Y Combinator Summer 2013 batch by Mattermark Score – which awards points to each company on a weekly basis for increasing their website traffic, mobile downloads, inbound links, Twitter followers, Facebook likes, and LinkedIn followers.
It's hard for me to understand how this formula could be a valuable measure of growth of a startup, since most of these things can be easily purchased. I'd guess that growth of Facebook Likes, Twitter followers, LinkedIn followers and website traffic are more accurately a measure of a company's ad spend than their actual growth in revenue and users.
It's hard for me to understand how this formula could be a valuable measure of growth of a startup, since most of these things can be easily purchased. I'd guess that growth of Facebook Likes, Twitter followers, LinkedIn followers and website traffic are more accurately a measure of a company's ad spend than their actual growth in revenue and users.
Those things are easy to purchase in the short term, but it quickly becomes very expensive to purchase 10% week-over-week increase of Twitter followers, Facebook likes, web traffic, etc (I know, I've tried this before). The Mattermark Score reflects long term growth trends, short term spikes aren't enough to move the needle.
I think that could make sense in the long term, but with YC companies on demo day, I'm not sure it does. Most of these companies appear to have <1000 followers on the services you're measuring. If Likes and Followers cost a dollar each, then it wouldn't be too expensive to buy a spot at the top of your list in this case.
It's interesting that the company at the bottom of your list (Reebee) has 3x the Twitter followers and 6x the FB followers that the company at the top of the list (OneMonthRails) has. If Reebee started out (i.e., when you started tracking them) with a couple hundred followers on each of these services and OneMonthRails started out with none, then Reebee had the deck stacked against them, needing to add 100x+ the number of followers added by companies that began with no traction, during a limited time frame.
It's interesting that the company at the bottom of your list (Reebee) has 3x the Twitter followers and 6x the FB followers that the company at the top of the list (OneMonthRails) has. If Reebee started out (i.e., when you started tracking them) with a couple hundred followers on each of these services and OneMonthRails started out with none, then Reebee had the deck stacked against them, needing to add 100x+ the number of followers added by companies that began with no traction, during a limited time frame.
We're very aware of these issues and our algorithm accounts for them.
You're welcome to sign up for free trial to poke around and see why each company's score it what it is. We provide graphs and details on all the data points for each company. http://www.mattermark.com/app/signup
You're welcome to sign up for free trial to poke around and see why each company's score it what it is. We provide graphs and details on all the data points for each company. http://www.mattermark.com/app/signup
"Weekly scores are averaged over 90 days," for companies that haven't received press until atleast 90 days ago is hardly "long term".
That's literally 12 data points per startup, way too little for any type of smoothing to have an accurate effect.
That's literally 12 data points per startup, way too little for any type of smoothing to have an accurate effect.
We collect 6 key data points on each startup every single day for the score, and track over a dozen more that we may factor into it in the future. This is just the beginning.
Based off of Danielle Morrill's previous blog posts ranking startups and this Mattermark post, I get the sense that a lot of this ranking is putting certain companies "against" each other even though it's like comparing apples and oranges. For example, does it makes sense to compare a SaaS company with a $10K ACV that makes Google Adwords work against a company that gets 10 tweets a second because it's viral?
It's just ranking the growth rates of the signals I listed in the post - not saying which company is "best". Frankly, I think a lot of these rankings differ greatly from what I think the overall potential of a company is (I saw them present yesterday at Alumni Demo Day), but potential is not what we're measuring here. Growth is certainly another data point for investors to consider, and historically has been a part of massive information asymmetry - VCs are already looking up all these metrics about companies (manually) as they research, source and diligence. We're just making that more efficient and transparent.
At the end of the day investors do have to choose one company over another, as very few can justify investing in all of them. We're trying to give them more info to go off beyond hype. All of these companies tackle large markets with varied margins, and I believe investors are smart enough to sort that out for themselves and make decisions based on their domain knowledge, relationships, and expertise.
At the end of the day investors do have to choose one company over another, as very few can justify investing in all of them. We're trying to give them more info to go off beyond hype. All of these companies tackle large markets with varied margins, and I believe investors are smart enough to sort that out for themselves and make decisions based on their domain knowledge, relationships, and expertise.
"We're trying to give them more info to go off beyond hype."
All you're measuring is hype though. Startups that rely on likes, follows, etc. as a gauge of success/traction are by nature, hype driven.
There are many industries - B2B, EdTech, etc. - where lack of social media traction is not at all an indicator of the health of a startup. I know because I run one. We have 0 likes, 0 mentions, 0 follows, but a hundred paying customers and on track to hit 1MM in revenue in less than 20 months since launch (with only 4 employees).
I hate to be critical of other founders, but all you're doing is contributing to and validating all the silliness that is the SV startup scene.
All you're measuring is hype though. Startups that rely on likes, follows, etc. as a gauge of success/traction are by nature, hype driven.
There are many industries - B2B, EdTech, etc. - where lack of social media traction is not at all an indicator of the health of a startup. I know because I run one. We have 0 likes, 0 mentions, 0 follows, but a hundred paying customers and on track to hit 1MM in revenue in less than 20 months since launch (with only 4 employees).
I hate to be critical of other founders, but all you're doing is contributing to and validating all the silliness that is the SV startup scene.
I think you make good points .. and also that mattermark probably would agree.
One problem is stats like you mentioned are hard to count, as for one you may have a competitive incentive to hide them. For another, there are no easy APIs or ways of scraping that data.
What mattermark could do (and are probably doing) is learning what stats are signals of success for what types of startups. For a consumer web or mobile startup, mattermark's data is likely a very good health indicator, for a b2b thing likely not.
One problem is stats like you mentioned are hard to count, as for one you may have a competitive incentive to hide them. For another, there are no easy APIs or ways of scraping that data.
What mattermark could do (and are probably doing) is learning what stats are signals of success for what types of startups. For a consumer web or mobile startup, mattermark's data is likely a very good health indicator, for a b2b thing likely not.
Yes I agree that this data is better to have than to not have. A savvy investor can use this as a starting point for their own research, I was just worried at the framing of the posts ranking companies (in the past based off of alexa mostly and now off of other metrics such as likes, follows, tweets).
A couple examples to play devil's advocate even when discussing consumer startups against other consumer startups: 1) The social media startup that relies on spammy incentives to retweet or like something. 2) The ecommerce startup that relies on free giveaways or hefty price cuts to get people to tweet or post deals that are not sustainable from a business perspective.
Unless there are other signals that you can combine with this data, in many instances it can be deceiving. Like I said, the data can still be a great starting point because you at least see the data ranked with the names of the startups and then can investigate those startups closer from other perspectives.
A couple examples to play devil's advocate even when discussing consumer startups against other consumer startups: 1) The social media startup that relies on spammy incentives to retweet or like something. 2) The ecommerce startup that relies on free giveaways or hefty price cuts to get people to tweet or post deals that are not sustainable from a business perspective.
Unless there are other signals that you can combine with this data, in many instances it can be deceiving. Like I said, the data can still be a great starting point because you at least see the data ranked with the names of the startups and then can investigate those startups closer from other perspectives.
At the end of the day investors still need to meet with founders and do their diligence, but I believe we may be able to bring attention to good companies that are not spammy or dishonest but also don't get a lot of press, attention, etc.
Within Mattermark Pro investors can filter by stage, vertical, business model, geography and many other factors to create useful comparisons between companies... Mattermark scores for B2B companies are quite meaningful when comparing apples to apples. I know it is painful to judge and be judged in this ecosystem, but I hope people will see that we are blogging about interesting stuff that others aren't covering and bringing more transparency and information symmetry than before.
Within Mattermark Pro investors can filter by stage, vertical, business model, geography and many other factors to create useful comparisons between companies... Mattermark scores for B2B companies are quite meaningful when comparing apples to apples. I know it is painful to judge and be judged in this ecosystem, but I hope people will see that we are blogging about interesting stuff that others aren't covering and bringing more transparency and information symmetry than before.
One of the problems with your business appears to be your belief that information asymmetry is a problem for investors. It is not. In fact, information asymmetry creates opportunity for venture firms. If all firms had the same information about the same startups at roughly the same time, it would be much harder to identify attractive investments before competing firms, and competition for deals would be even fiercer than it already is.
There's a reason that so many tech-focused venture firms are located in Silicon Valley. It makes it easier for partners, associates and analysts to hit the pavement and keep their ears to the ground. Why do they want to do this? One of the big reasons: to obtain meaningful information about potential investment opportunities before (hopefully) it becomes widely known. This is particularly valuable in the context of early-stage investments.
If, for the sake of argument, we assume that Mattermark has actually developed a model that can identify promising startups that aren't getting the attention they deserve, you're destroying the value of that model by selling its output to anybody willing to shell out a paltry $6,000/year for your pro service.
There's a reason that so many tech-focused venture firms are located in Silicon Valley. It makes it easier for partners, associates and analysts to hit the pavement and keep their ears to the ground. Why do they want to do this? One of the big reasons: to obtain meaningful information about potential investment opportunities before (hopefully) it becomes widely known. This is particularly valuable in the context of early-stage investments.
If, for the sake of argument, we assume that Mattermark has actually developed a model that can identify promising startups that aren't getting the attention they deserve, you're destroying the value of that model by selling its output to anybody willing to shell out a paltry $6,000/year for your pro service.
Not only are these Mattermark posts becoming quite boring and repetitive, but for the company's sake it's time to move on. Readers of HN aren't going to make a purchase. And if entrepreneurs/hackers are the target market, then it's time to rethink that strategy a bit.
Seems like there are an awful lot of programming tools, restaurants, and delivery. The programming tools I get - these are hackers developing for hackers. Is delivery a wave because of Amazon and others trying to provide convenience, or is it the softwarization of our industry? And the food - is that on the back of the GrubHub and SeemlessWeb success?
Interesting index. One funny note: http://www.hackermeter.com/ and https://onemonthrails.com/ use the same photo. Found that kind of funny
This is a great tool for other startups, funds, and companies. Just clone these companies in that order, they're already pre-vetted by good VC's like PG and also somewhat market tested.
A smart VC could just send of them as a spec to dev team in Russia/India, and hire mechanical turkers to blitz forums. Even hire a few good writers to create blogs and post to HN.
A smart VC could just send of them as a spec to dev team in Russia/India, and hire mechanical turkers to blitz forums. Even hire a few good writers to create blogs and post to HN.
Also, a note for those signing up for the trial, there is neither an option to cancel your subscription directly nor information about billing inside the application. You have to email them to cancel the account and i got a response after 5 days(3 working days) when i sent an email asking them to cancel my trial account. While it is totally acceptable for an early stage startup to not have those features and i am sure they have it in their backlog, just make sure you don't send that cancelation email the day before your trial ends.