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Open Startups data with revenue, launch date & social media follower count. Probably can find some pattern? Or some suggested ideas to replicate success? Or fi

Open Startups data with revenue, launch date & social media follower count. Probably can find some pattern? Or some suggested ideas to replicate success? Or find a niche?

tmpz22 6y ago
You'd need a lot of controls. See a startup with 50k MRR after 12 months and 10m followers? Those 10m followers must have really helped! Oh wait that company actually raised 10m and spent 2m on advertising...
- upen946 6y ago
  I hope the data helps someone to pick a nice idea to work on. Agreed, lots of controls needed though.
corobo 6y ago
Don't forget to check the reverse of your findings with failed companies Using a bunch of data from startups that succeeded is baking in a survivorship bias
- upen946 6y ago
  Survivorship bias is one of the biggest things we can't ignore. In my view, survivorship bias is the main reason , some projects fail as the founders dont see the main reason behind the success for the product they copied. There could be hundred reasons for a product to work for someone at sometime because of something. Probably I should make a list of product that died after making $1K MRR(in 12-24 months)
an_opabinia 6y ago
Without external audits, there's no reason to believe any of the startups on this list are giving real numbers. In addition, third parties like analytics SDKs or payment processors, which in principle have the capability to easily audit usage and financial data, seem to never do this business. Then there are non-primary-data-source firms like SensorTower and AppAnnie. They are always reactive to (not predictive of) "download counts" - they almost certainly take money to rank higher in their charts, or such a mechanism exists through whatever flawed data gathering approach they take. Anyone who can afford to pay AppAnnie and SensorTower is already well capitalized to some extent, and it is definitely effective to arbitrage $1m of cheap fake downloads through AppAnnie into a $10m investment from dumb money. Compare to Steam, which publishes realtime concurrent player counts and sales data that is irrefutably true, with rare exceptions caused by bugs. (1) There are always big surprises in the Steam data, especially when you compare the genres that lead the charts to the genres that giant companies most aggressively market. Such transparency has been instrumental to the continued success of indie game developers on that platform. Steam has the fattest tails in the business, at least in terms of something we can actually validate, so it's still your best bet for information. Despite the information, there is still not a viable venture capital model around Steam games. You'll never see a Y Combinator gaming startup list on Steam, and the ones that do, they'll fail to raise money because all that investors will talk about is "how many users u got?" It's a vicious cycle The problem is lack of simple ideas for analyzing this data, something so simple and straightforward that the kind of people who become Managing Directors can process in a deck. Anyway, a startup is never going to release numbers it can't fudge. (1) https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/aflabl/psa_stop_hyping_up_auto_chess_player_numbers_they/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/aflabl/psa_stop_hypi...
- muratsu 6y ago
  If you think how games are similar to music and movies, you can see a similar pattern on Steam. Money can to an extend guarantee top quality production but you still need "entertainment/wow" factor from the movie/game/music.
  - upen946 6y ago
    Right, money can bring in the top quality. But media/gaming still needs that wow factor.
- upen946 6y ago
  99% of this list is verified and trusted. These are not self published revenues on the blogs. This data is coming verified via stripe, paddle, baremetrics etc. So, I would say this data is real. But only point to note is the figures are without expenses deducted. Not profits. But only revenues.
wgx 6y ago
Could you make the source spreadsheet a view-only Google Sheet? I'd rather look at this in a sortable, searchable sheet if possible. :)

Open Startups data with revenue, launch date & social media follower count. Probably can find some pattern? Or some suggested ideas to replicate success? Or find a niche?

tmpz22 6y ago

You'd need a lot of controls. See a startup with 50k MRR after 12 months and 10m followers? Those 10m followers must have really helped! Oh wait that company actually raised 10m and spent 2m on advertising...

upen946 6y ago
I hope the data helps someone to pick a nice idea to work on. Agreed, lots of controls needed though.

corobo 6y ago

Don't forget to check the reverse of your findings with failed companies Using a bunch of data from startups that succeeded is baking in a survivorship bias

upen946 6y ago
Survivorship bias is one of the biggest things we can't ignore. In my view, survivorship bias is the main reason , some projects fail as the founders dont see the main reason behind the success for the product they copied. There could be hundred reasons for a product to work for someone at sometime because of something. Probably I should make a list of product that died after making $1K MRR(in 12-24 months)

an_opabinia 6y ago

Without external audits, there's no reason to believe any of the startups on this list are giving real numbers. In addition, third parties like analytics SDKs or payment processors, which in principle have the capability to easily audit usage and financial data, seem to never do this business. Then there are non-primary-data-source firms like SensorTower and AppAnnie. They are always reactive to (not predictive of) "download counts" - they almost certainly take money to rank higher in their charts, or such a mechanism exists through whatever flawed data gathering approach they take. Anyone who can afford to pay AppAnnie and SensorTower is already well capitalized to some extent, and it is definitely effective to arbitrage $1m of cheap fake downloads through AppAnnie into a $10m investment from dumb money. Compare to Steam, which publishes realtime concurrent player counts and sales data that is irrefutably true, with rare exceptions caused by bugs. (1) There are always big surprises in the Steam data, especially when you compare the genres that lead the charts to the genres that giant companies most aggressively market. Such transparency has been instrumental to the continued success of indie game developers on that platform. Steam has the fattest tails in the business, at least in terms of something we can actually validate, so it's still your best bet for information. Despite the information, there is still not a viable venture capital model around Steam games. You'll never see a Y Combinator gaming startup list on Steam, and the ones that do, they'll fail to raise money because all that investors will talk about is "how many users u got?" It's a vicious cycle The problem is lack of simple ideas for analyzing this data, something so simple and straightforward that the kind of people who become Managing Directors can process in a deck. Anyway, a startup is never going to release numbers it can't fudge. (1) https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/aflabl/psa_stop_hyping_up_auto_chess_player_numbers_they/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/aflabl/psa_stop_hypi...

muratsu 6y ago
If you think how games are similar to music and movies, you can see a similar pattern on Steam. Money can to an extend guarantee top quality production but you still need "entertainment/wow" factor from the movie/game/music.
- upen946 6y ago
  Right, money can bring in the top quality. But media/gaming still needs that wow factor.
upen946 6y ago
99% of this list is verified and trusted. These are not self published revenues on the blogs. This data is coming verified via stripe, paddle, baremetrics etc. So, I would say this data is real. But only point to note is the figures are without expenses deducted. Not profits. But only revenues.

wgx 6y ago

Could you make the source spreadsheet a view-only Google Sheet? I'd rather look at this in a sortable, searchable sheet if possible. :)