YouNoodle

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YouNoodle is a San Francisco-based company, founded in 2007, that is building an ecosystem of entrepreneurs all over the world to help organizations innovate faster. YouNoodle is the company behind Podium a software as a service (SaaS) platform that supports university, non-profit, government and enterprise clients in organizing innovation challenges and competitions. Podium manages the application and judging processes for 7 out of the world’s top 10 universities as well as for organizations like Intel, Amazon, NASA, and Start-Up Chile.

The company is also working to cultivate the global entrepreneurial grid with their network of entrepreneurs and startups. They are developing a site, currently in private beta, that will allow entrepreneurs to identify their Next Step – once identified it will provide targeted resources to help them achieve their goals, connect with others and find useful tools curated by experts.

[edit] History and structure

The founders of YouNoodle are Bob Goodson and Kirill Makharinsky, both former students of the University of Oxford.^[1] Goodson had studied medieval English literature before moving from Oxford to California when Max Levchin, the co-founder of Paypal, invited him to join a start-up there.^[2]^[3] Makharinsky's degree was in applied mathematics,^[4] and he was also encouraged to pursue opportunities in the United States by Levchin.^[5] Other significant employees include Rebecca Hwang, a Stanford University doctoral student whose research is into social network theory.^[6]

Bob Goodson and Sean Gourley left the company in 2010 to found Quid Inc, at which point Rebeca Hwang became the current CEO with Torsten Kolind as CTO and President.

The company was established in San Francisco. In the 11 months before February 2008, it worked to help universities organise competitions for business plans.^[5] Among its financial backers are Max Levchin and Paypal's other co-founder Peter Thiel, and the venture capital firm The Founders Fund in which Thiel is a partner.^[1]^[5]

[edit] Business networking

The site's provision of networking features for small businesses places it in a similar field to LinkedIn, Tradespaces and Smarta.^[7]

YouNoodle is currently developing the next iteration of their online networking tool, which will help to further cultivate the global entrepreneurial grid. The site, currently in private beta, that will allow entrepreneurs to identify their Next Step – once identified it will provide targeted resources to help them achieve their goals, connect with others and find useful tools curated by experts.

[edit] Startup predictor

YouNoodle's "Startup predictor", developed by Makharinsky and Hwang, uses mathematical models to predict the success of new businesses.^[4] The user fills in a questionnaire, which takes about half an hour to complete and concentrates on the business' concept, finances, founders and advisers.^[8]^[9] Because the procedure is designed for very new companies, questions on revenue and traffic are not included.^[6] The site then provides an estimate of what the company's value will be after three years and a score from 1 to 1000 representing its value as an investment.^[8] The service is free for the startups themselves, but YouNoodle intends to charge third parties for access to the results.^[10] (The level of detail required by the questionnaire makes it difficult for people without inside knowledge of a company to provide the data for a prediction on their own.^[11])

The company's founders have declined to explain the algorithm in detail, but state that it takes into account the entrepreneurs' experience, networks and mutual relations. Information provided by companies which use the site's networking features is used to improve the algorithm.^[1] As of August 2008, the algorithm was based on data from 3,000 startups.^[10] In the same month the company had four patents pending on the technology.^[4]

This is no longer a service offering of YouNoodle.

[edit] Independent analyses

[edit] Future plans

YouNoodle will launch their new online network in 2012 with the hopes of plotting the global entrepreneurial grid and helping entrepreneurs around the world connect, find inspiration and learn from one another.

YouNoodle also intends to continue to expand the number of companies, organizations, and schools it works with through its Podium software.