Re:How Mattermark Teamed Up With Bloomberg Beta to Predict W...
by roybahat on Thursday March 27, 2014 @07:38PM
(#7484275)
Hey... I run Bloomberg Beta. I think that creating a self-fulfilling prophecy is absolutely a dynamic here. Our goal wasn't to succeed at predicting so much as it is to get to know great people before they start companies. If that action induces them to start companies, and they have a great experience doing it, but our prediction's accuracy is compromised -- that's fine. We're using data as a tool to make things better, not for its predictive value in and of itself.
Re:How Mattermark Teamed Up With Bloomberg Beta to Predict W...
by loumf on Wednesday March 26, 2014 @11:57AM
(#7474254)
They don't have findings yet. They are predicting 17% conversion. After a year or so, we'd have to revisit this group to see what happened. At that point, it would be fair to take the "Future Founder" label into account.
Probably, they should compare the #351-700 cohort's prediction against actual to the "Future Founder" prediction against actual.
Re:How Mattermark Teamed Up With Bloomberg Beta to Predict W...
by stillsut on Wednesday March 26, 2014 @03:09PM
(#7475682)
You're absolutely correct, Onion.
This is referred to as Uplift Modelling in the direct marketing lit.
To observe if your algo has real world performance, you would want your invite list to include a (blind) holdout set composed of random people sampled from each decile of the entire scored population, meaning [(360/2)/10]=18 should be the bottom 10% of potential founders according to the algo.
Re:How Mattermark Teamed Up With Bloomberg Beta to Predict W...
by seventytwo on Wednesday March 26, 2014 @11:10AM
(#7473893)
Either way, they'll be able to point to their huge successes on "finding" the next Valley heroes.
Leave Bob to get on with his life. Maybe he'll start a company, maybe he won't.
Invite Sarah to a private event at a well-funded VC company and call it "Future Founders".
If either of them definitely wasn't going to start a company then they still won't. If either definitely was then they still will. Nothing has changed.
But if either of them had considered starting, and was wondering whether to or not, being labelled a "Future Founder" and being granted access to a group of 349 other people who rank highly on an entrepreneurial scale, plus direct contact with high profile VCs seems likely to influence their decision. That nudge could easily account for the difference between founders and non-founders.
Did MatterMark factor that in to their findings? Seems a bit self-fulfilling as prophetic judgements go to me.