The way this is laid out it looks like the entities that are in a row are associated, it's confusing. You name the columns at the top and label the ranks on the left.
I love the use of different-sized circles, but I feel like you're comparing apples to oranges in a way. I think the circles should all be relative to one master size (#1) only their own category; rather than comparing Ron Conway to Google his circle could be of equal size. This way when searching for entities their circles would make more sense because the user is aware of the consistent max circle size. By comparing Conway to Google you're giving up a wider scale you could be using for the Peoples' circles.
Still though, cool project. I found the 5-person startup I'm interning at this summer :) Makes for a great crash-course on who matters if someone were trying to study up on the startup scene.
We tried both options and liked using one scale for all categories. The idea is that you are comparing influence, or something like it, so that can be visually compared across categories. You do have the downside of having very small dots for the people after only a few pages, but since there are > 100,000 people, most are going to have the minimum sized dot anyway.
Dave McClure at #3, Paul Graham at #943; whereas 500 Startups is at #41, and Y Combinator is at #15?
Why is 500 Startups classified as a financial firm, whereas Y Combinator is classified as a company?
Also, I'm surprised that Andreessen Horowitz is ranked #67 of financial firms (given that Marc Andreessen is ranked #14), and Elon Musk is #119 for people. I would have thought they'd both be ranked much higher.
In the data source, TechCrunch's Crunchbase, the influence of Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, et al. is captured in YC the company, and Marc Andreessen is split between his personal identity and AH. So you get a lot of odd things like that.
As for why YC got classified a company, who knows? It's accident of history. They should change it.
Co-builder of this here. Hope you like it! Don't forget to click on a dot - then you can walk the graph of relationships among startups, people, and financial firms.
This is really interesting. I'm surprised you found that startups with higher centrality raised less money. Not sure how to explain that. Your investor graph has edges pointing both from investors to startups and back, right? Anyway, thanks.
I actually did a lot of Crunchbase clean-up for http://seedtable.com - if people are interested in this perhaps we should collaborate on some kind of data cleansing project.
Want to hustle? This is a great list to go through and familiarize yourself with these people, what they make, what they need, how you can help them, what you might ask them for if they ever offered to help you, etc. Great way to visualize Crunchbase, which is a great resource.
Minor pagination issue: when you click "next" the "prev" link takes its place. I went back and forth between the first page and second page a couple times before noticing.
Paul Graham's credit is mostly subsumed into Y Combinator's rank (#15 among companies). Yahoo has bought a lot of startups. But yeah, there are some things that don't make sense.
I think you can only say that this is a visualization of how things are in Crunchbase, not "the startup world" in general. It's ranking things based on the number of connections each thing has. For angel investors this may be a good indicator, but not necessarily for companies or VC firms.
One request, in the UI, where you have checkboxes, can you add 'exclusive' select. So for example, I want to see ONLY 'acquisitions' made; right now, we have to deselect everything else manually.
Very cool, but you really need to work on the algorithm. It's easy to pick out the reason why MySpace might be found higher than Facebook or as a few people have pointed out, PG vs YCombinator.
But my last start-up, which I shutdown over a year ago (HearWhere, 19,883) is ranked as more influential than companies that are significantly larger traffic that are still operating (example, AllRecipes, 23,087).
Nice to think I'm that influential, but I can assure you, I'm not (yet ;))
[+] [-] artursapek|14 years ago|reply
I love the use of different-sized circles, but I feel like you're comparing apples to oranges in a way. I think the circles should all be relative to one master size (#1) only their own category; rather than comparing Ron Conway to Google his circle could be of equal size. This way when searching for entities their circles would make more sense because the user is aware of the consistent max circle size. By comparing Conway to Google you're giving up a wider scale you could be using for the Peoples' circles.
Still though, cool project. I found the 5-person startup I'm interning at this summer :) Makes for a great crash-course on who matters if someone were trying to study up on the startup scene.
[+] [-] herdrick|14 years ago|reply
We tried both options and liked using one scale for all categories. The idea is that you are comparing influence, or something like it, so that can be visually compared across categories. You do have the downside of having very small dots for the people after only a few pages, but since there are > 100,000 people, most are going to have the minimum sized dot anyway.
[+] [-] stevenj|14 years ago|reply
Questions:
Dave McClure at #3, Paul Graham at #943; whereas 500 Startups is at #41, and Y Combinator is at #15?
Why is 500 Startups classified as a financial firm, whereas Y Combinator is classified as a company?
Also, I'm surprised that Andreessen Horowitz is ranked #67 of financial firms (given that Marc Andreessen is ranked #14), and Elon Musk is #119 for people. I would have thought they'd both be ranked much higher.
[+] [-] herdrick|14 years ago|reply
In the data source, TechCrunch's Crunchbase, the influence of Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, et al. is captured in YC the company, and Marc Andreessen is split between his personal identity and AH. So you get a lot of odd things like that.
As for why YC got classified a company, who knows? It's accident of history. They should change it.
[+] [-] herdrick|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aba_sababa|14 years ago|reply
The data from Crunchbase is very, very dirty, but I managed to clean it up a lot. Feel free to fork if you want pre-built NetworkX graphs.
[+] [-] herdrick|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ig1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmspring|14 years ago|reply
I miss attending events when a prior startup was based there.
[+] [-] dmor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshbetz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graiz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staunch|14 years ago|reply
Very nice work!
[+] [-] herdrick|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbecker|14 years ago|reply
But Yahoo ahead of Facebook, Amazon and Apple?
Myspace ahead of Apple?
Paul Graham is #943 among people?
Cool project, even with the eyebrow-raising results.
[+] [-] herdrick|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] athst|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] AndyNemmity|14 years ago|reply
Good luck, useful.
[+] [-] hsshah|14 years ago|reply
One request, in the UI, where you have checkboxes, can you add 'exclusive' select. So for example, I want to see ONLY 'acquisitions' made; right now, we have to deselect everything else manually.
[+] [-] pedalpete|14 years ago|reply
But my last start-up, which I shutdown over a year ago (HearWhere, 19,883) is ranked as more influential than companies that are significantly larger traffic that are still operating (example, AllRecipes, 23,087).
Nice to think I'm that influential, but I can assure you, I'm not (yet ;))
[+] [-] jquery|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herdrick|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] franze|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] googletron|14 years ago|reply