3 ms·

"Every month, a new batch of startups – led by top students and graduates - is ranked by a community of students, professors and alumni from the best schools in

"Every month, a new batch of startups – led by top students and graduates - is ranked by a community of students, professors and alumni from the best schools in the world (as well as investors)." - I see this as the core problem. Tetlock Study and a huge mound of evidence suggest the crowdsourced authority isn't a good way to gauge founder DNA.

leodesrumaux 11y ago
Thanks for the feedback kumarski :) It is first important to know that we carefully screen each startup application before allowing startups to enter a batch. We check that founders have a working prototype, a company and that their project is viable (they have the skills to build it + a clear path to monetization). In this regard, the batch that undergoes ranking by the community is already “gauged” for projects that have reached a certain quality threshold. More directly on point, I would tend to agree with you that it is very difficult to directly assess founders’ quality via crowdfunding/crowdsourcing. What crowdfunding/crowdsourcing does however is provide a great way for a community and investors to indirectly assess founders. In a sense, founders are only good to the extent that they make an appealing product and are good at marketing it. This is at the core of Seedrunners. With regards to studies, we could battle it out :) You can find numerous studies (see links below) showing that the crowd selects projects using the same set of criteria as VCs and is as good in selecting high-quality projects, with a noticeable ability to pick “hit” projects. I would be happy to continue discussing with you on this topic, it is definitely one of the most critical (and contentious) points of Seedrunners. Studies from Wharton and Harvard: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239204 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239204 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239204 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239204

leodesrumaux 11y ago

Thanks for the feedback kumarski :) It is first important to know that we carefully screen each startup application before allowing startups to enter a batch. We check that founders have a working prototype, a company and that their project is viable (they have the skills to build it + a clear path to monetization). In this regard, the batch that undergoes ranking by the community is already “gauged” for projects that have reached a certain quality threshold. More directly on point, I would tend to agree with you that it is very difficult to directly assess founders’ quality via crowdfunding/crowdsourcing. What crowdfunding/crowdsourcing does however is provide a great way for a community and investors to indirectly assess founders. In a sense, founders are only good to the extent that they make an appealing product and are good at marketing it. This is at the core of Seedrunners. With regards to studies, we could battle it out :) You can find numerous studies (see links below) showing that the crowd selects projects using the same set of criteria as VCs and is as good in selecting high-quality projects, with a noticeable ability to pick “hit” projects. I would be happy to continue discussing with you on this topic, it is definitely one of the most critical (and contentious) points of Seedrunners. Studies from Wharton and Harvard: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239204 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239204 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239204 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239204