YouNoodle: The Startup That Rates Startups

So naturally I joined and navigated my way through the site, and while it's clear that this is an innovative tool for tracking new companies, obtaining the information I was seeking was not an entirely intuitive user experience.

On the other hand, this company is trying to shine a flashlight into one of the most opaque corners of today's business world, where the talk is big but results rarely live up to the hype.

If you've never tried to evaluate what kind of future a little startup venture might have, here's some of what you're up against. PR agents pitch startups to industry analysts all the time, usually the chief executive will be made available for an interview.

Most of the CEOs are young, without a long track record. They usually seem cut from a mold -- technology backgrounds, including a computer science degree from somewhere, and an MBA from Stanford or some other leading university.

They can deliver a polished presentation about their company via Power Point slides rich with charts and message points. They will readily reveal the source of their initial funding, particularly when it comes from a VC firm locted on Sand Hill Road, or the equivalent.

Of course, they can describe their business model and how their effort differentiates itself from the competition, though usually they claim to unaware of any competition. (After all, their startup is unique.) Although they will usually tell you they have built a proprietary technology platform, they are reliuctant to let you look under the hood. (After all, it's proprietary.)

So then you proceed to the numbers. What is the user base? How fast is it growing? Here, the claims can be wild, and extremely difficult to check. I've spent hours tracking companies on all of the free metrics services, and rarely will the numbers add up.

It gets even worse when you ask about revenue. They're all going to be profitable eventually, of course, or they won't have a future. Well, that's not entirely true. Some aim to be acquired, hopefully by Google or Microsoft. For that to happen, they either need to have (1) established a demonstrably unique piece of software, or (2) accreted eyeballs on the order of magnitude of a YouTube, or better yet (3) both.

Anyway, most CEO interviews crash and burn on the revenue question, because precious few startups have any revenue of note, and even less motivation for admitting that.

Given this environment endured by those of us trying to evaluate new companies, what YouNoodle is doing is a welcome development. Now, if I can only figure out (on my own) how to make better use of its UI. Because that is what this startup needs to guarantee if it is going to rise to the top of its own ratings list, right?

(Note: Photo is of YouNoodle's Bob Goodson, Rebeca Hwang, Kirill Makharinsky.)