My question for Follow The Seed + VC - what inspired you to create an algorithm that detects Unicorn worthy startups?
And is it true, that if they prove that they are the next unicorn, would you fund the consumer based startup?
@stringstory Thanks for this really important question.
We believe it's time to change the way VC industry operates (considering it hasn't change for 40 years) and truly democratise access to capital irrespective of where you're coming from, where did you study (or if you studied at all), what language do you speak and what's the color of your skin.
You'll be surprised how much the above criteria affect one's chances to get funded.
Not necessarily because the VC's are racists, but because they don't have too many alternatives.
Top tier VC's would easily get over 10K unsolicitated pitches a year, so in most of the cases they default to the ones that are referred to them by the people they know and trust. Now, there's nothing wrong with this, but if you're a founder in North Dakota (let alone in Eastern Africa) - your chances to raise VC funding are less than 1% of someone who just happens to live in the Valley.
The Raving Fans® algorithm was designed to enable everyone a fair chance and the only thing it cares about is your execution and whether you've managed to create a "Habit Forming" product.
The beauty of it is that entrepreneurs don't even need to talk to us, prepare pitch decks, build revenue forecasts (that generally go straight to the trash bin anyway) or drive/fly/waste time in countless meetings. Anyone can hop on our website, download an SDK, plug it in and within 2-3 weeks - we'll be the ones calling you and flying over to meet, assuming of course, you've made of RavingFans material.
Worst case - it's not that good, but hey, we didn't waste your time and you didn't waste ours.
Andrey, very cool! Do you plan to open this up as a SaaS product for startups to check their stats and VC's to use on deal flows? Have you considered opening up this up as open-source?
@iamwormify Thanks Luke. We know what we're good at and what we aren't good at. Being an analytics provides belongs to the later category, therefore we're not going to do it. We also don't think there's lack of good analytics products out there. Raving Fans® wasn't designed to solve this problem, but to assist us, as investors to look at more deals without any prejudice and of course on the flip side - to give all startups a fair chance at getting funded irrespective of their location on the Globe or any other subjective criteria.
Open-sourcing it will defeat the purpose, as there will be some people who would try to game the algorithm and trick us into investing in them and eventually will screw it up for everyone else.
@ashirben I think the data is really valuable, not just for investors, but startup founders too.
Totally awesome, I want to test it out actually. Perhaps this weekend or Monday, we're launching something similar to Reddit (but used in a different way). Would be interested to see what the data says, tracking from Day 1.
It would super cool to have like a "Raving Fans Bot", with automated messages & triggers that get sent out to founders based on metrics, KPI's etc.
![Follow[the]Seed VC](https://ph-files.imgix.net/6e483d8f-e9ec-49eb-98fc-a5478e79517c.png?auto=compress&codec=mozjpeg&cs=strip&auto=format&w=64&h=64&fit=crop&frame=1)
![Follow[the]Seed VC gallery image](https://ph-files.imgix.net/29c4d301-35dc-45eb-8b42-68d397474758.png?auto=compress&codec=mozjpeg&cs=strip&auto=format&w=669&h=220&fit=max&frame=1)
Follow[the]Seed VC
Follow[the]Seed VC
True Stories
Follow[the]Seed VC
CodeCloud.me
Follow[the]Seed VC
CodeCloud.me
Follow[the]Seed VC