YouNoodle Thinks AI Can Predict Startup Success
Duncan Riley
65 comments »
We cover a lot of startups here at TechCrunch, but I don’t recall ever having covered a startup that thinks it can use artificial intelligence to predict whether other startups will be successful. YouNoodle promises to do just that.
The site opens to the public today, and they chose the NY Times to pitch their product:
Kirill Makharinsky, 21, and Bob Goodson, 27, call their software a “start-up predictor,” and they say their company, YouNoodle.com, might give an edge to venture capitalists and other investors trying to decide whether to sink money into an early-stage company.
“We don’t want to replace investors,” Mr. Goodson said. “We simply believe that industries of comparable size have utilized artificial intelligence to inform decision-making.”
“Give us some information, and we’ll give you some idea of what the company will be worth in five years,” he said.
Call me a little skeptical, but I’ve been pitched AI that will predict the results of horse races for years, and ASIC warns against them.
Having said that, this quote is not inaccurate:
Paul S. Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and the author of the Infectious Greed blog, said that his industry was indeed inefficient at picking winners; typically, 90 percent of venture investments are not home runs.
It sounds interesting, but what do you think?
I predict younoobies will join the deadpool soon
two words: n o
Success of a startup or any business is like a product. It’s all about Motivation, Marketing and the story behind the product.
Is this really “AI” or is it simply some back-end excel simulation based on data they have collected. I guess AI is a simpler way of putting it…
The team sounds young and talented, but do they have an investing background? A bunch of coders and designers who’ve never lost money (or gained it) through investing in startups have no place telling others how to do so, IMO.
Why (oh why) every single new website thinks that adding a retarded “beta” to the logo is a cool and hip and whatnot idea?
My AI software says that “beta” on the logo predicts deadpool within 1 year with 99 per cent certainty.
So what did the AI predict about their startup? I love to try and see the results when its open to all
This is very interesting.
@Kumel
GMail is beta…
@Francesco, see, that’s the 1 per cent error margin on my AI (beta) software.
@Kumel
“A beta version is the first version released outside the organization or community that develops the software, for the purpose of evaluation or real-world black/grey-box testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release. Beta level software generally includes all features, but may also include known issues and bugs of a less serious variety.”
well, as we are doing something similar, I obviously like younoodle!
@Lou, yep I know the definition by heart, it’s just that everything is perpetual beta nowadays, so why bother slapping it everywhere and keeping it there.
Everything being beta has become ridiculous after Google started doing viral/anticipation marketing with limited releases a couple of years back.
Looking at the company’s site, it seems Youtuuble is much more than just predicting winners so they might actually succeed despite my AI (beta) predicting them deadpool.
I would trust the dice. The dice never lie.
This is by far the most stupid Startup that I’ve ever heard of.
If I were you Duncan, I would’ve enjoyed trashing the idea, I don’t know why you even wrote about it.
That 90% not homeruns quote is accurate….across the industry, typically only 1 in 15-20 is a homerun.
Here’s a source:
http://dondodge.typepad.com/th.....al/page/2/
There’s a lot more sources, but that’s your job.
You guys should really research statistics before you deny/support them
I think its a good idea…it eliminates a lot of the biases/estimates/guts in due dilligence. It may not be sexy, but a good index, esp. if it was based on a learning algorithm would easily outperform the average venture firm
@Kumel (and @Lou)
You read “beta” and you think “Oh, this is new”. Standard “beta test” is a different thing. Google demonstrates this with its apps. So the startup possibility of success doesn’t depend so much on its beta state but on its… quality.
I wonder what happens if you put YouNoodle through their own AI predictor? Needless to say, I’m skeptical since imagination and creativity are such critical ingredients to a startup’s success - not really sure how you can AI the success of something when HI (Human Intelligence) can’t even get its head around a problem half the time.
Very amusing.
I think it is funny that these guys claim to have a way of predicting success, and then they have a major feature article, but you can’t actually use their product: “Coming soon…”
I think they may need to refine their AI engine just a little bit…
Anyone who knows anything about AI will find this pretentious, pathetic, and tragic-comic. I wonder how much the world would be a better place if anyone read Hosfatdter’s FCCA, or Hamid Ekbia’s PhD thesis.
I mean, of course, Hofstadter.
Wait a second. They came up with the algorithm(s), right? So they should know the parameters necessary to get a great 5-year outcome. If they believe that their predictions are worth a darn, why don’t they just do a startup based on those parameters? It’s like saying, I’ve got a program that accurately predicts the stock market, but instead of making billions on the stock market with my predictions, I’ll sell those predictions for $20 instead. It would only make sense if those predictions are not accurate.
When’s the predictor going to be up? I checked the website and it isn’t working yet.
Plus, I agree, is this really AI, or is it just some function spitting out an output? If it used real-world data and continually honed it’s outputs to be more accurate, then it might bei nteresting. If it is some function written by programmers to spit out a result, it’s a waste of time.
Interesting but this system has one huge critical flaw, it’s programming. Programs are only as good as the programming (foundation) behind them and I am sure these guys worked their *** off but there are simply too many variables that cannot be quantified (calculated) to make any such system of any use predicting the future. The biggest variable of them all is LUCK, a nasty little variable that can turn paupers into kings and back again at a whim, without any need for understanding nor explanation.
Jon
http://buzvia.com - Where’s your traffic going?
My EKVM Vega (http://www.taswegian.com/MOSCOW/vega.html) added up all the potential revenue for noodletube and said нет!
I think that we are giving too much attention on this AI aspect (ok, the YooNoodle founders choose to emphasize it themselves). I got invited to YooNoodle.com a couple of months ago (was it an alpha ?) and then, my perception of the site was more of a friendly community of startuppers, a helpful ressource to relate, and to find the missing pieces in the launch of a project (designer, lawyer, etc.).
I thought “ok, this is helpful, it offers something to the startup crowd that LinkedIn or PartnerUp don’t really do”. I did like it quite a bit.
Now I guess that pitching themselves as “yet another social network” seemed a bit bland, so they opted to spice it up with AI.
In the end, success will not depend so much on whether AI works, but on the number of startups and people that register there.
From that point of view, they keep their chances, IMHO.
If you actually look at the site it’s clear that the startup predictor thing is just pure linkbait. It’s more of a social network/ vertical industry community around startups - the predictor feature is really not core.
This is a group of people trying to come up with a differentiated business model. The intangibles like passion and hard work can never be predicted. Add them to the deadpool.
maybe someone could host a fantasy startup league based on younoodle’s startup predictor…
Techcrunch should be called, TechTease.
It’s cool you guys are ahead of every other tech blog, but its becoming really annoying that 80% or more of the things you talk about are always in bullshit phase to see if they shuould build it or not based on techcrunch results.
The SuperCrunchers book by Ian Ayars is packed full of good examples of experts that believed their knowledge can not be SuperChrunced. Ian and Steven beg to differ:
“In the past, one could get by on intuition and experience. Times have changed. Today, the name of the game is data. Ian Ayres shows us how and why in this groundbreaking book Super Crunchers. Not only is it fun to read, it just may change the way you think.”
—Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics
This doesnt sound like AI at all. AI mimicks human processes by learning form experience and adapting a process accordingly.
Seems as if they’ve done a study on the parameters for success/failure and estimated these using classic Linear Regression, so they end up with an equation which spits out a probablity. Nothing new in that, putting it up on the web is no biggie.
Aside from the AI project, there is an interesting entrepreneurial social network built around there that will have a stand alone value. I would like to see it combined with Thefunded.com into a free panel/database for entrepreneurs.
Another aspect you missed is the impressive talent the funding team (http://younoodle.com/about.php) seems to have. This is no ordinary startup, and they could do great things, probably not in their current main focus.
@Qian , Excellent Point.
Its kinda the same with psychics. Next time you see one, kick him in the nuts. When he asks you why, just say he should have seen it coming, and dodged.
Basically, this is snake oil(with technical lipstick aplied).
If you could do this, first thing you should do is start a venture capital company.
There’s nothing special about AI folks. It’s just another potential method for doing something. Anybody that knows anything about AI knows that the human programmer(s) have a huge affect on the quality of the technology. That person would do better to sit in a room and judge each start-up american idol style!
Some sh*t VC will buy this company…….NOT. well, maybe.
I’ve been in the younoodle beta for a while and all I see is nothing but a social network built around ideas and startuppers. Nothing special.. so I’m not sure where the startup predictor came out from.
As far as AI for predicting startup, read the last few lines of the NYTIMES and you will know if they are going to succeed or not… lol.
startupper seems to be bang on target. The site is simply a social network for startups. The AI seems to be one great linkbait strategy.
May be Techcrunch would not have covered them if they had said that they are just another social network. Even more likely I would not have visited the site even if TC had written about them but said that they are just another social network.
So they seem to have succeeded in getting in some good curious traffic for their website. Atleat my natural intelligence predicts success for their startup
No AI has been able to predict the markets (in fact quant systems fail all the time), and no AI would be able to predict accurately success of a startup. They may be able to predict edge cases, such as a badly managed startup, but VCs can do that already, and there aren’t so many startups that you need a robot to filter them out.
However, if the team behind this gives a decent Sales and Marketing effort, they should be able to sell this to VCs. If the Dancejam website was funded, then for sure there will be a VC firm that will decide to buy this tech,
if people haven’t already noticed…. most VC’s already use artificial intelligence to invest.
If you look at their track record you will see this…
to #40, please don’t insult AI by comparing it to VC intelligence
i’ve already got a YouNoodle.. it’s called TechCrunch and VentureBeat…. hehehe (together have a pretty decent hit rate)
I love how they “chose” the NewYork times to launch their site!!
Am so fooking jealous, how can 2 little young punks know people so important?
The release of this site, is enough said about their product.
did younoodle ever predict the future of itself? based on my AI, it’s deadpool no doubt.
I’ve been on younooodle for a while now. It’s okay nothing to get excited about. no real features, no real startups either …a few hots girls though.
the real queston is, if younoodle fails, who are we going to turn to to predict the success of startups???
Lets take a step back here.
The site is called YOU+NOODLE!? Just think for a moment how ridiculous that name is. Yes there are tons of other absurd names out there but this one is best (worst) I’ve heard in a very, very log time.
Now I’ve truly heard everything. For the love of god, please make it stop!
I personally predict that Bob Goodson will go very far.
However when I read the title of this post, I thought of a lecture I recently attended, called “From the Avatar space to the Outer space”.
Bob, right on!
A.
This is no better than a magic 8 ball. Marvellous it can get so much attention
So what did their predictor say about their own venture? hmmmm…..
I can predict where their company will be in five years and I don’t need AI.
The homepage of younoodle says:
“YouNoodle is a place to discover and support the hottest early-stage companies and university innovation. We provide business competition, events, and mailing list features for real-world startup communities.”
This sounds like a good idea to me. I wish them luck.
I think the AI start-up predictor is mainly a marketing/PR thing - a bit of fun to get people to take a look at the site.
It looks more like a social network for start-ups, which is not a bad idea.
I like it, I hope it picks up.
A lot of people are saying this is just a social network - of course it is, that’s obvious! What factors go into make a startup successful but the people working on it, the people interested in it and their position in a global network of entrepreneurs and investors? Of course there’s timing, there’s the idea (can be captured by relevant industries and consumer interest), and luck.
I’m sure the predictor isn’t worth a damn in its current state - the website openly says that it’s not available and this team is obviously working hard on it. But I say they stand a better chance than anyone else of pulling off the mathematical model of early stage startups, with the data they’re collecting.
And in the meantime, they let you “discover and support the hottest early-stage companies and university innovation” while providing “business competition, events, and mailing list features for real-world startup communities.” Sounds pretty good right?
It’s all about the network you have and not the product. I love when startups are getting funded even with a cheesy idea like YouNoodle. The beauty of entrepreneurship is who you know and really not what you do or offer.
Look at them, got payal guys behind them, an article in new york times, and a product that I still wonder what it does (even after spending 45 min it last month).
I love this.
I won’t be surprised if they steal one of the startup ideas(if people actually do use it. I doubt it). All they have to do is predict or just say no and then build it themselves.
Guys,
Great work with the publicity younoodle guys (I presume you are reading this).
Clearly they don’t have an AI engine yet, but time and time again the best AI engines depend on the best data. One of the critical pieces in any start-up is who you know and how easy you find it to get plugged into funding, hiring etc. Its pretty clear that if you had a social network for start-ups you might be able to use it to build such an engine. One day. Maybe.
In the meantime its a great pitch for investors etc. And if the AI doesn’t work at least the founders build a social networking company and flip it to some crazy investor at crazy valuations. And lets be honest, at least this network isn’t promising ‘ad revenue’ as its source of profits. Good luck to them.
Antony
PS My understanding is that they got all their great connections by becoming finalists at last years seedcamp… connections like this can be open to everybody!!
I love the name and the idea but I can’t see how artificial intelligience is going to pick the winners and losers. Everyone and everything gets things wrong from time to time - especially my computer.
Chris