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.
