Venture Hacks, a blog dedicated to helping entrepreneurs navigate the world of venture capital, has launched a new social network of sorts around the idea of professional recommendations.
Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists can use the sub-site, simply called Recommended, to track who and what others think highly of, and to indicate their own affinities as well.
It’s structured much like Twitter – users set up profiles and subscribe to each other, then review recommendations made by others and make recommendations of their own.
Recommendations can be made for both companies and people themselves (entrepreneurs or venture capitalists). Membership is currently by invitation only, although you can request an account if you think you travel in the right circles. Companies, venture capital firms, and people all have profiles where you can find information about track records, teams, outside resources, and more.
The overall idea behind Recommended is to lubricate the process by which members of the startup community network and determine who and what is popular.
While the current set of features is fairly limited, co-founder Babak Nivi says that Venture Hacks has plans to create a more sophisticated online ecosystem for the venture capital community. His co-founder is Naval Ravikant, who runs The Hit Forge and co-founded Epinions.
Congrats to these guys– interesting to see them bringing some transparency to what’s really a pretty murky world for us neophytes.
no offense to them but using language such as lubricating the process, can get an invite if you move in the right circles, etc./ Doesn’t this continue to promote the belief that already labels the valley being somewhat incestuous and elitist? Other than format why is this different than say LinkedIn really or even the Funded?
Or even Link Silicon Valley http://www.link...ic/ABOUTUS.aspx ?
This is great and should do well
Hi antje wilsch,
The site is invite-only while we test it and make it better. We’ll open it up as soon as the site doesn’t suck. Anyone can browse it in the meantime: http://ventureh...com/recommended
How are we different than LinkedIn and The Funded and other sites? We’re trying to help investors and entrepreneurs get introduced through recommendations. I don’t think anyone else is providing that service online.
hi nivi,
good job, i hope it all works out for you guys. I will bring my startup to your site and see if I can get funders there.
good luck
It looks like everyone there is either a VC or sold a company… Will us ‘normal’ entrepreneurs get an invite?
Hi Bob, This is Nivi from Venture Hacks. We’re going to open the site up to everybody once the site sucks a little less. =)
Isn’t this just a clone of YouNoodle?
Hey sharpshoot, Recommended is for recommending people and companies. I think you’ll like it if (1) you’re looking to invest in companies, (2) you’re looking to help other people’s companies by recommending them, or (3) you want to show off your company’s recommendations.
Sounds like a chain letter.
Love that VentureHacks site. Great job, guys.
Go Nivi Go.
Cool idea. I really hope it works… my experience raising money made me feel like the process could use something like this. Increase exposure to investors.
I’d say the site needs some more features though, and a little polish. My profile page is looking a little barren:
http://ventureh...johnphilipgreen
Been reading the Venture Hacks blog since it launched… great content. Glad to see this new development.
I still wanna buy that t-shirt site they made