Hi Eric. Thanks for featuring VCFlair!
Just a quick note to thank @JoshConstine. This started with him tweeting about his fantasy portfolio last month. I thought it was a great idea and built this. Let me know what you think!
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@cam_pj Fun idea... kinda like fantasy football. I wonder how many VCs are on it :)
Michael, thanks for the kind words and thanks for the question.
Totally agree. It's the reason why I built in a version of the "beauty contest" concept. Keynes came up with this. His idea was that people price shares not based on what they think their fundamental value is, but rather on what they think everyone else thinks their value is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key...).
When you build a portfolio on VCFlair, you need to estimate the valuation of each company you pick. At the end of the month and if no external financial events occurred, I will look at how close from the average (set by the community) you got and you’ll get bonus points for this. This average will become the new valuation for the company. And a new month starts.
With this, we are not limited to external financial events. Every month there will be new scores.
I hope it makes sense?
cc @centsandsums.
@cam_pj This is the problem. A month is too long. The fantasy model demands at least weekly engagement, but really it's a daily thing for core users (trades, updates, rumors, news, lineups). The frequency for this VC model hasn't been nailed, despite how fun it seems on the surface.
@dshan@cam_pj Derek, definitely fair point. I guess in this specific case, the goal is not really to create a super intensive fantasy game like many of the sports ones. The idea was more to give some kind of structure to what people were already sharing on Twitter (their "fantasy portfolio"), and add a bit of gaming fun to it (cf the valuations estimates).
That being said, if we were to try and make it even more "playable", what metrics do you think we should add first?
I love this concept (it's been on PH a few times) but it just doesn't work in practice (despite all of these products being designed quite well) because the VC game is too long-term. Funding rounds, IPOs, and exits (and even failure) are so rare. There isn't nearly enough action on a day-to-day basis to keep players engaged.
@Cam_pj Do you have any particular solution to this problem?
Hey. Nice work :-) I've got my advanced portfolio in place. I guess we'll all learn a lot when the first results come in!
I think adding a few steps in the FAQ might help. Something like this?
STEP 1: Pick your portfolio of 5 companies.
STEP 2: We calculate a score based on i) How close your guess is to the collective estimate of all players and ii) if your companies increase in value. and...
STEP 3: We display a result after one month and the highest score wins the league and the special prize of XXX provided by this month's league sponsor :-)
Step 3 is your monetisation opportunity :-)
Notes: you can edit your portfolio at any point, up until the moment the final scores are calculated?
Regarding engagement... Did you ever see those horse racing games with little mechanical horses competing? Could we have some visual indication of who's winning at any point? It wouldn't disclose why they're winning, just give a relative view of how they're doing compared with other people competing.
I apologise if I'm misunderstanding the scoring piece, so ignore the last bit if you need :-)
@prattarazzi Thanks a lot Eddie for this detailed feedback. Great ideas. Will see how I can implement these.
On the ability to edit a portfolio: actually you can only edit it once a month. That was part of the initial "informal" set of rules on Twitter.
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great idea. The site should explain more of the rules though. e.g. I remember Josh Constine saying the company's valuation had to be less than $500 million or something. also, should you put a company that you work for/have shares in in your fantasy portfolio? I'd say those should be excluded.
also the valuations are confusing:
e.g. Mattermark's is listed as $25m (which the source lists was the POST money valuation; whereas product hunt's lists a source saying that their $22m valuation may have been PRE money, they're very different). some of those valuations I know for a fact are false, so not sure what value they have being listed there.
@Cam_pj Also think 30 days could be too long term, are you guys also condidering in future we can bet actuall money on certain players (each month winners), or guessing when there's gonna be a next round (time), or who will acquire the company (exit). Something around this may fix the long term. The short term suggestions - could be also events in the middle - like I would bet this person get the 'exiter' right, etc. Will be interesting if VCs would join the game ;-). Good luck guys! Martin
Cool idea - but I was a little confused by whether I should be creating a portfolio of companies that I think will go up in value, or creating a portfolio of companies that I think I can accurately guess the valuation of.
Unless I've just got the complete wrong-end of the stick, it seems like points are awarded for accurately guessing valuations, rather than accurately guessing undervalued companies.
@edmoyse I did not do a good job at explaining all this... sorry :-(. I did not want to make it look too complex. It's a difficult balance to find.
To answer your question: it's a bit of both actually. You will get points if you guess valuations accurately, but there is a multiplier applied based on the variation amount. So if you accurately guess a valuation AND the valuation jump is significant, you will get even more points.
I will try and put more details on the site so people can have a look.
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