Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Syllable-based forecast of best performing yc-startups from latest batch

As previously written in predicting startup performance with syllables those with few syllables - typically 1 or 2 - in their name is likely to perform the best. Here is a quick prediction based on the yc startups from the latest batch just published: 1 and 2-syllables (most likely to be high performers according to the few-syllable prediction)
  • MixRank (2), alexa-rank: 43,724
  • Picplum (2), alexa-rank: 700,278
  • Depteye (2), alexa-rank: no data
  • Envolve (2), alexa-rank: 52,418
  • Quartzy (2), alexa-rank: 785,102
  • Snapjoy (2), alexa-rank: 450,142
  • Opez (2), alexa-rank: 719,612
  • Stypi (2), alexa-rank: 531,965
  • ZigFu (2), alexa-rank: 21,914,936
  • Parse (1), alexa-rank: 564,829
  • Verbling (2, alexa-rank: 237,636
  • Vidyard (2), alexa-rank: 508,951
  • Tagstand (2), alexa-rank: 812,669
  • Kicksend (2, alexa-rank: 326,583
  • Can'tWait(2), alexa-rank: 786,213
I am sure the rest of the yc batch startups are just fine, but not according to syllable-based prediction, the ones I have in mind are:
  • Aisle50 (3), alexa-rank: 1,106,951
  • Launchpad Toys (3), alexa-rank: 1,425,628
  • Interviewstreet (3), alexa-rank: 135,296
  • DoubleRecall (4), alexa-rank: 799,538
  • Munch on Me (3), alexa-rank: 130,234
  • PageLever (3), alexa-rank: 55,462
  • MarketBrief (3), alexa-rank: 467,943
  • MobileWorks (3), alexa-rank: 315,150
  • Vimessa (3), alexa-rank: 314,150
  • Codeacademy (3), alexa-rank: 61,582
How did it go with the last prediction round?
Unfortunately I only added the ones I though would be best performing according to syllable-count (and not the rest for comparison) for the yc summer 2010 batch, but here is how the low syllable count  did:
  • AdGrok (acquired by Twitter)
  • Brushes (winner Apple design award 2010)
  • FanVibe (acquired by beRecruited)
  • Gantto (customers: Fujitsu, Lucasfilm++,  investor:500startups)
  • GazeHawk (investor: 500startups)
  • HipMunk (most successful startup from that yc batch?)
  • OhLife (not sure how they have done)
  • TeeVox (not sure how they have done)
Whether this beats throwing darts (random selection) is yet to be tested.
Disclaimer: If I've counted number of syllables wrong for some of the startups (have never heard pronounciation of the startup names) please ping me.

Friday, August 12, 2011

slowly back in the academic publishing game

a very long time ago I created a list of conference Call for Papers (CFP) I wanted to follow (as a fresh PhD student), this grew into a service of its own (and development shifted from me to another developer), and has been used by researchers both directly as a service and later as a part of linked data (semantic web) input, and I just became a sidekick on a poster about linked data and call for papers from that service. Hope to get the time to publish more in academic forums (in addition to blog posts) later this year, perhaps about Atbrox search technology and (forthcoming) services.