StartupRealities

Startup No 189 - #StartupRealities 2020 series  BlogPeerReview  is an online media company which subjects blog posts to peer review by fellow bloggers. For five dollars a piece, the company gets five experienced bloggers to read a blogpost and leave a meaningful comment each. The blog reviewers post all their comments in public and are free to make critical or positive comments as long as they have read the post once. The blog author who pays for the service gets engagement and feedback, which help improve the reach of the blog as well as the quality of writing, argumentation and topic selection. CEO QUOTE " In the world of social media, we are all shouting at the top of our lungs but hardly anyone would hear if all we do is leave scattered comments across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Blogs are a different matter: they are targeted communication channels. My company helps these channels grow into rivers, and helps these rivers connect. We are the Fiverr of the blogosphere!...

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...