I generally find TechCrunch to be a worthwhile read, though it frequently lacks the right amount of skepticism when evaluating startups (come back Uncov, we need you! I need you!). Having said that, when Michael Arrington’s on, he’s on. His destruction of new startup YouNoodle yesterday is why I continue to read. YouNoodle claims it can predict which startups will succeed and which will fail and they got themselves a nice NY Times writeup. Arrington wasn’t having any of that, to wit:
The NYT did cover themselves somewhat by bringing in some venture capitalist quotes calling bullshit on the whole thing. “If their tool did such a good job, they’d raise a fund themselves and beat the tar out of us,” said Paul Kedrosky, who didn’t bother to write about the company on his blog.
And he’s exactly right. Just like the people who say they can sell you a book and a seminar to help you get rich quick off of distressed real estate - if these guys found some sort of magic formula that actually predicted the value of a startup down the road, they’d keep the information to themselves and make, well, unlimited amounts of money.
It’s hype and nonsense, and it won’t work. The NYTimes bit on it hard, but our readers are smarter. In a poll that Duncan ran earlier the vast majority say there’s no way YouNoodle can pick winners based on some algorithm.
I propose this as a test - If and when YouNoodle launches this magic predictor thingy, they should run their own founding team through it. If it predicts failure, then it’s spot on and we know it will work.
So far, Goodson says, they haven’t run themselves through the model. Smart move.
See? Now that’s what I want in a review of a startup, brutal honesty. Good job Arrington, lets make this a TechCrunch habit. Still, its a shame you couldn’t land the Uncov guy.