Are You “In” Or Just Deleted For 2009

As I spend all day setting up my new Blackberry (ver ver ver sexy bit of kit!) and I’ve been having a little purge of blogs I subscribe to via RSS I thought I would share why some are “in” and some are “out” for 2009.

This follows my very public purge and reporting of, via Twitter, of my unsubscribing of certain ezines…… now that was fun!

I’m on a mission to follow only those blogs who add value.  Difficult to quantify but I’m a big blog follower – have been for about 3 years – and I think I can trust my instincts now.

Very truly OUT are….

1.   all those (including those of my family!) where they can’t be arsed to post to their blog within the last two weeks (this criteria would have been the last week but it IS Christmas/New Year), as I bloody well give up if they don’t get it yet about blogging.

2.  where every post is a video with no intro beyond the title – what’s gonna make me watch it?

3.  where it’s all sell, sell, sell particularly of other people’s stuff,  and no personal insight and thoughts at all.

4.  anyone who talks about god without qualifying it at all to cater for all tastes (i.e. or the universe or whatever YOU believe in) although I am becoming strangely hooked on Rev Run’s show on MTV which my 13 year old is watching compulsively and is absolutely hilarious.  We have found a common bond in music and very rich people’s property a la  MTV’s Cribs over the Xmas hols……..best interior design taste award so far goes to Pamela Anderson FYI.  Go figure.

Rev Run’s into hip-hop and god, not two of my favourite things in the whole wide world as god=organised religion in my book and hip hop just gets on my nerves after a while.    Still…..it’s a very cool show AND a loveable family.  Almost as good as Shazzer and co, and I didn’t like rock music either.  The Rev’s two older daughters are very smart, funny and quick (aka Phoebe) and the middle son reminds me of Nelson a lot.  Jo-Jo is a techie geek who’s cool and the dog makes me laugh.  As does the baby.

Do they have a blog I wonder?  Must have………

I’m off to find it.  I’ll come back to this rant later.

What Is YOUR Company Worth Right Now?

With thanks to Thomas Power of Ecademy for twittering this – the quick 11-step process revealed a very surprising outcome for us at The Money Gym!

“YouNoodle, the online platform for the global entrepreneurial community, today introduced Startup Predictor™, the first technology that analyzes data on early-stage startups and generates a scientific prediction of the companies’ future outcomes, as well as the first standardized score for pre-funded startups.

The first version of Startup Predictor has been made publicly-available and is a free Web-based service that allows entrepreneurs, investors and other startup supporters to enter information about early-stage companies through an online test. Users receive an estimate of the startup company’s valuation in three years, as well as a “YouNoodle Score” — a number similar to a credit rating, based on a 1,000-point scale, that gauges the feasibility and promise of the company’s future.

After taking the free online test, users will also be matched with other YouNoodle members determined by the YouNoodle search engine to be of value to that particular startup company — potential employees, advisors, journalists, service providers, business partners and more.

“This is the first time technology has been used to help manage risk and predict growth for early-stage companies,” says Bob Goodson, CEO and co-founder of YouNoodle. “For more established companies, quantitative, systematic decision-making for investors is standard – using technology-driven credit rating services such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. But until now, no similar system has existed for companies in their earliest stages.”

Startup Predictor uses a sophisticated and patent-pending algorithm that evaluates a number of variables, including backgrounds of the founders and advisors, business concept and team dynamics. Users must input details about key team members or advisors, relationships between team members, current or future products, patentable technology, and any capital invested by the founding team.

To determine the information needed to generate an accurate and reliable score, YouNoodle’s development team studied thousands of current and past startups, using both publicly available and proprietary data, to determine patterns of predictive factors for early-stage companies’ success.

“We learned that a company’s DNA — the fundamental things that can strongly influence its future success — is generally formed in the very first days that the company is in business,” says Kirill Makharinsky, co-founder of YouNoodle, who led the development of the mathematical algorithm behind Startup Predictor. “Our technology analyzes data based on those early days — going back to the pure concept and the bones of the business built by the founders. Our research has proven that the patterns in the data we measure from those days can be surprisingly prophetic about how a company will perform in the future.”

Calibrated specifically for companies that were founded recently and have not yet received capital investments in its first version, Startup Predictor is the first in a series of decision-making tools YouNoodle plans to introduce for the startup industry, including predictive tools for later-stage companies…..”

READ MORE & FIND OUT HOW MUCH YOUR COMPANY MIGHT BE WORTH >>>