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It sounds like the value may be in who is on the list and growing. Maybe the order is not as important as the fact that these are all companies worth watching?

by dmor 14y ago

bravura 14y ago
Let me say first of all that I have great respect for the way you have engaged with criticism on this post and on your previous ones. Even when I disagree with your approach or whatever, I appreciate your curiosity and eagerness to learn. Some ways that you could make weaker claims but with more confidence in your results: * Have an unordered list of companies that are growing. This was your suggestion. I don't know how interesting that is. * Group companies into five or ten buckets, based upon Alexa ranks. (i.e. 1=low traffic bucket, 5=high traffic) Find the top three movers-and-shakers within each bucket. This makes the weaker assumption that Alexa ranks deltas are comparable within each bucket, as opposed to your original assumption that they are comparable across the entire spectrum of Alexa ranks. There are a handful of other things you can do that are more complicated. For example, if you can correlate Alexa ranks with Compete unique visitor estimates or some other number (company's exit value). Compete estimates are also biased, but at least people have better intuition of what unique visitor numbers mean.
- dmor 14y ago
  Thank you, especially for hearing my earnestness through all the noise - I'm glad it comes through. Without revealing too much, I can tell you that I have a much varied and interesting data set to use to rank companies for the next full YC index. I expect there will be feedback on the method for that one too, but with every iteration it is getting massively better. Crazy idea - javascript startups can put on their site to report their actual data to me?
  - mrwhy2k 14y ago
    I basically agree with this, putting an order on this list might have irked some people, but a list of companies to follow in no particular order might have worked better.

It sounds like the value may be in who is on the list and growing. Maybe the order is not as important as the fact that these are all companies worth watching?

by dmor 14y ago

It sounds like the value may be in who is on the list and growing. Maybe the order is not as important as the fact that these are all companies worth watching?

bravura 14y ago

Let me say first of all that I have great respect for the way you have engaged with criticism on this post and on your previous ones. Even when I disagree with your approach or whatever, I appreciate your curiosity and eagerness to learn. Some ways that you could make weaker claims but with more confidence in your results: * Have an unordered list of companies that are growing. This was your suggestion. I don't know how interesting that is. * Group companies into five or ten buckets, based upon Alexa ranks. (i.e. 1=low traffic bucket, 5=high traffic) Find the top three movers-and-shakers within each bucket. This makes the weaker assumption that Alexa ranks deltas are comparable within each bucket, as opposed to your original assumption that they are comparable across the entire spectrum of Alexa ranks. There are a handful of other things you can do that are more complicated. For example, if you can correlate Alexa ranks with Compete unique visitor estimates or some other number (company's exit value). Compete estimates are also biased, but at least people have better intuition of what unique visitor numbers mean.

dmor 14y ago
Thank you, especially for hearing my earnestness through all the noise - I'm glad it comes through. Without revealing too much, I can tell you that I have a much varied and interesting data set to use to rank companies for the next full YC index. I expect there will be feedback on the method for that one too, but with every iteration it is getting massively better. Crazy idea - javascript startups can put on their site to report their actual data to me?
- mrwhy2k 14y ago
  I basically agree with this, putting an order on this list might have irked some people, but a list of companies to follow in no particular order might have worked better.