Item — HN Reader

I'll bet the "Wizard of Oz" strategy would work well for this idea.

Start off by NOT building any of the fancy infrastructure—the crawler, crunchbase joiner, LDA algorithm to cluster investors, etc.

But set up a form where somebody can enter their company idea, URL, and traction metrics and then you'll do the research and suggest 5-10 VC firms and partners.

You (the maker of the site) will learn a lot from being the wizard of oz behind the curtain.

And when you're done, you have two routes: 1) the "Google" approach: build algorithms to automate what you're doing already, 2) the "eBay" approach: let the VCs themselves onto the site, show them a stream of (anonymized?) pitches, and let them choose which entrepreneurs to meet. No need for an algorithm. Then the site becomes a marketplace to match startups and investors, a sort of an online, always-running demo day.

2 comments

I think an "anonymized" pitch would be hard at best and self-defeating at worst. If a company has tangible traction in the space, they way they describe themselves, the industry, and their products will quickly show who they are.

I'm more interested in your "Wizard of Oz" idea. It's basically LendingTree for the VC community. If you could pair it with good warm introductions to VCs, that could be really useful. And realistically, if you analyzed someone's LinkedIn (probably cross ref with FB), you may be able to figure out who they might approach for the introductions.

(I don't think LinkedIn enough is alone.. you may have just traded cards. Being connected on Facebook is a stronger indicator of some sort of relationship or possible engagement. Bi-directional following on Twitter is probably even stronger.)

Isn't the second version extremely similar to AngelList? Just includes much more proprietary information about the startups (so I'd imagine it wouldn't be as public-facing). Still an interesting idea.