StartupRealities

StartupRealities No 114 PhdEngine is a venture capital (VC) firm which uses a diverse range of social science PhD graduates to review and assess investment prospects and projects. The company maintains a large database of business-savvy PhDs and runs every investment project by at least a dozen doctoral graduates from a diverse range of social science areas, in addition to the regular quantitative, investment and industry analysts who carry out the basic eligibility review. The additional social science angles give the company's investments an edge over its VC competitors. CEO QUOTE "We all try to create a unique startup pipeline but it is clear to all that access to startup investments is now a commodity. Where we do make a difference is in subjecting these startups to review by such a diversity of minds that we get ideas about the development of these startups before their own founders have had these ideas. That's the advantage of diversity," said PhdEngine fo...

StartupRealities No 108 StealthDemystifier is an venture capital (VC) firm which invests in startups in stealth mode . The company has developed proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) technology to discover and analyse stealth-mode startups. The StealthDemystifier algorithm distinguishes between genuine stealth-mode companies and non-starters, based on analysing the CV and background of the entrepreneur, their network of contacts and social media presence. CEO QUOTE "There are four types of people who launch a stealth-mode startup or claim they are working in stealth mode: A) Experienced people who disappear from the radar screen and don't make any public statements for sometime. B) Serial entrepreneurs who announce that they are working on a startup in stealth mode and have solid rationale for doing this in stealth. C) Inexperienced entrepreneurs who believe they have something to hide but actually don't. D) People who are hiding the fact that they are unemploy...