At a glance, 34 of the 96 startups listed have "XYZ for ..." in their blurb (35%). Of these, there are 2 Ubers, 2 Slacks, 2 AWS's, and 1 each of Stripe, SolarCity, Nest, Siri, Palantir, Clever, AngelList and AirBnB...
Dumb question, but I'm a scientist and not in this field: how does this work? If I want to commit a certain amount for a certain valuation, how will my "portfolio" grow? By actual valuation placed down the line? Is there a quick guide? I couldn't find one.
That is true, people are generally optimistic about startups but i really do wonder if i have a lack of vision or something, because when i look at this list at exchangel, i see a pile of useless stuff with only 1 or 2 diamonds and 3 or so useful ideas...
I would argue it's not a proper market place, fantasy or not, without such ability. (meaning, whatever values or data that comes from this is of near zero utility without the ability to short)
I'd guess the comment was less about 'what people think is proper,' and more about the fact that there are typically no mechanisms by which to short very early stage private companies.
last time i checked, every single fantasy football site also didn't allow you to borrow money from money sharks to try to bet against on a bad line up.
This is amazing. The first time I used excel was to play the Stock Market Game (http://www.stockmarketgame.org/) in elementary school. The public markets were as bubbly then as private markets are today... I wonder if in 15 years it will be as common to invest privately as it has become to invest publicly.
I also did the StockMarketGame in high school (class of 2000). The market was ahhhh-booming. Howerver, I took advantage of the fact that the prices were delayed by 15 minutes (no real-time quotes), by the end of the semester, I think I had over a billion dollars in my account.
Fantasy stock markets were fun back in school, this could be too. Edit with my only feedback: put a big, fat FAQ button somewhere. It took a little while to notice the tiny "learn more" text.
this is a really cool idea.. its also great intel on the yc batch companies haha!
how do you track returns? how much money the companies raise? what the companies are valued at? isn't this dangerous because all angel investors including ron conway and pg say it's not about how much money you raise and that is a poor indicator of how successful your start-up is going to be...
obviously a fantasy league where you have to wait 10 years to see who actually wins and becomes a 10 billion company etc. isn't that much fun, but i can't figure out what short-term metrics that would work across different start-ups with different growth plans (i.e. some start-ups will focus on page views, others on sign-ups, others on transactions etc.)
The idea is that after the "seed" stage we're in now, the shares will float, so you can put in bids and asks to buy and sell. But, whenever real-world liquidity news comes in (raise money, acquisition, ipo), people will be able to buy/sell at that price for a week before it goes back to floating!
ahhh so it's less fantasy football more stock exchange where value is determined collectively by the market, as opposed to externally e.g. with fantasy scores every week. i understand now.
this could indirectly be a good way to reveal peoples biases (including angels) about what companies will be successful... it's especially interesting as it removes from the equation the one component that vcs/investors say is most important which is their feeling about how good the team is... if the stock exchange can accurately predict which companies are going to be successful without that information that has interesting implications for vcs approach in picking companies.
it would be interesting to have two separate fantasy leagues. one just like this one . but another where investors get to see 2 minute videos with the founders just talking about themselves/their company... it would be itneresting to see if the companies they invest in are any different because of these videos... and furthermore if 2 minutes of video lead to significanlty better predictions about which companies will be successful..
incl. obvious implications for ycombinators model with 10 minute interviews etc.
noob angel here - what is the maximum valuation box for? I figured if you are investor you want that number as low as possible and the company wants that number to be max big. I tried putting in .000001M but says "must be at least 5M". Is there any reason you would make it bigger than 5M?
I'm curious if this would ever create value as a prediction market. I've often thought that this exact tool, when used as a prediction market could remove some of the froth of this industry.
Sort of a tangent, I have the following idea, and would like to see if this idea could be quickly proved out with a fantasy model:
I was thinking an initial investment account could be setup for
Every baby born where the government would put in say ten thousand into an account for eighteen years and The new adult would then return $10k from the account at that point and would have that money as a foundation for entering society.
The way I have usually seen this expressed is that you take funding that would otherwise go to support/welfare programs, and use it to fund this. The problem becomes one of who is responsible if the particular investment fund/vehicle doesn't perform well enough to even pay back the original $10K? If it's going to be Government directed, then what the US buys and sells becomes a bit of a market mover, and you have to invest "against" that to have any hedge if the person running the US fund guesses wrong.
This has also been proposed as a way to get out of the Social Security "mess" that is heading our way.
Not saying it couldn't be done, but haven't seen the idea ever get much traction.
I don't know how come someone didn't come up with this earlier, but I don't believe it did, so congrats, awesome idea. I already started pretend investing in startups that seem promising.
Haha this is a great idea. I know angel investing doesn't necessarily work like traditional stock investing but I'm noticing all the companies on the exchange start at the same price. Is this accurate or should they be valued slightly differently from the onset?
Also it would be great to see some more information for each company added to the listings, even some basic details pulled from Crunchbase would be nifty.
Ah, so actually during the seed it's an auction. When you place your "commitment" to the round, you set a max valuation you'll participate at. Then, when the seed round is over, the price paid is actually the highest "clearing" price, and the company sells 500K to 2M shares.
Personally for me I would've liked to see the start-ups that did not get through interviews for YC etc.
Nothing against having the ones who made it through YC etc. too, but these have already been vetted by people we admire/trust/know-of.
Having just these makes it seem like picking out of the Dow/S&P/Your advisers suggestions as opposed to ALL public companies (penny stock, pink slip and the rest included).
People take more risk on paper -- it's like your high school stock market contest where the winner put everything on a penny stock and got lucky. Will there be some bias like this?
No. It's not. It's really unrelated and a good idea. Wall Street S&P500 still beats Venture Capital returns on average and it has PLENTY of fantasy investing.
If most people on a fantasy site seem to be making money hand over fist then it's time to watch out. Angel investing is harder than most people think.
This looks really interesting. I love playing football manager, and I always thought there is a niche for business oriented simulation games. I wonder though, are there copyright issues with using these company names, or do they all used with permission?
I posted my link in a comment below and people seem to be taking advantage of it, though nobody has replied with their own as I was expecting others to. The upside to the bonus is that it makes the game a little more interesting and realistic; some investors simply have more than others and they will affect how the game is played by others (hopefully bringing in more players than making people think that unfair means not fun).
The prize is based on ROI anyway, right? So the value in having more capital streaming in just means you have the luxury of adjusting your picks. The trade-off being that you're now obligated to put it all to work.
Why the guy building a cool game like this took its time to write an annoying form that asks for the first and last name AND does server-side form validation to ensure everyone inputs their last name?
yah this idea will never be smart for one very good reason. The probability of the bottom 99% of VC ever rising up to challenge john doeer, chris sacca and the rest is near zero.
In sports you have the probability of a lower tier athlete going off on any given day and that probability is high enough to create uncertainty, For this model to actually work you need a VC like "HighlineVC" to hit a unicorn. Fat chance of that every happening, they are orders of magnitude more stupid then sequioa.
Great idea, I'm signing up tonight! I already play fantasy stock market, I think other Investopedia users would love to get a taste of Angel Investing as well.
As mentioned below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9272670 ), we're excited to see many more players expanding the fantasy VC space -- startups are awesome and we need more utilities like this!
-- Gerrit Hall
Co-Founder, Sand Hill Exchange
gerrit AT sandhill DOT exchange
As a co-founder of Sand Hill Exchange (http://sandhill.exchange/), we're excited to see many people growing the burgeoning Fantasy VC ecosystem. I like Exchangel's focus on seed stage startups, as I feel this is where the most interesting entrepreneurial energy resides.
Obviously, there are many key differences -- Sand Hill Exchange in particular offers the ability short sell, profit, etc. We'll be spinning up a hacker news league on http://sandhill.exchange/ soon so you can all skip our waitlist!
--
Gerrit Hall
Co-Founder, Sand Hill Exchange
gerrit AT sandhill DOT exchange
dear god. run for the exits. the day is finally here.
i left the world of finance and headed toward software engineering. side benefit, no fantasy football. nobody pretending that they understood "the market". those who commented regarding "shorts" etc. why not options? or swaptions? or futures? or future options? you should totally start a risk-neutral team. wait, weren't we talking about software engineering.
here is the thing. by and large, you all have zero clue what you're talking about. tell me that's not true all day long, but, whatever. you've read a book. you've worked on some algorithm. but chances are you've never been wined and dined by a bulge bracket investment bank attempting to win the brokerage business of the hedge fund you work at. you've likely never spoken with bankers about upcoming offerings. you've likely never been given a tour of the manufacturing plant floor by management, because you're thinking of investing a hundred or so million.
and here is the thing that makes me really sad. at least bankers, a horrible bunch of humans, by and large studied the humanities and admit that they are generally selling crap. this new breed of programmers sorta study computer science and then walk around like they have "the answer" for every human problem. and now i have to deal with "Fantasy Angel Investing".
So some guy lists a side project of putting a fantasy spin on startup valuations(which i guess is fun for some people?) and thats the straw that breaks the camels back for you?
the exit is to your left, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
i wasn't taking issue with exchangel.co, per se. i was taking issue with the responses to it on HN. "Best idea ever!" "You should be able to short!" "How about an 'Index Fund' version!" "I wan't to make money and pretend I know investing!"
"Bankers" may not be the most likeable lot, or even the smartest, but telling folks who have perfected the art of siphoning small percentages from vast pools of other people's money over long periods of time, often with room for meaningful upside and limited downside, that they have no idea what they're doing is kind of silly.
Note: I'm assuming that your use of the word "bankers" refers broadly to those who work in finance (investment bankers, fund managers, etc.).
Of course there are plenty of clueful angels/vcs/analysts/bankers/traders/hedge fund operators. Just like there are programmers that are qualified to pick good startups. The stereotypes and generalities are a bit ridiculous, which I was trying to (and I think you helped) illustrate.
so, this is my point. your assumption is wrong. very, very, obviously wrong. that isn't at all the meaning of the word "banker" in finance. and it's not "my" use of the word. it's the broadly used / accepted / understood meaning. and they aren't small percentages. the percentage they receive for making deals is published, look it up. banker != trader != portfolio manager, etc.
also, i didn't say they weren't likable. generally they are very likable. and i didn't say they don't know what they are doing. they know very well what they're doing.
You do realize that what I wrote was in reply to somebody else's comment, not yours, right? I guess it's time to run for the exits when folks who don't understand how a discussion forum works are leaving finance for software engineering. I mean, if you can't figure out how to read a hierarchical comments structure, how in the world are you going to get your head around recursion?
