Startup wiki TradeVibes rings the bell on its fantasy stock exchange

August 26, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments |

TradeVibes, a wiki-format site for information about startups, is giving users a chance to put some money behind their opinions on which startups will be hits and which will fail. Of course, the money is fake, but the “Startup Exchange” is a fun addition to the site.

The new feature — which just launched in its public “alpha” test — is basically a fantasy stock exchange for startups. There are 50 companies listed on the exchange right now, and registered participants are given a fake $100,000 to invest as they choose. Buying and selling proceeds as it would in a normal stock market, and the fluctuating stock prices provide a broad reflection of the community’s view of a company.

Since each company has a million shares, you can even estimate a valuation by multiplying the stock price by 1 million. So, as of about 11:30 Monday evening, the Startup Exchange valued professional networking site LinkedIn at $864 million, and build-your-own-social-network startup Ning at $570 million. (The Ning valuation is pretty close to the $560 million post-money valuation in its latest funding round, while LinkedIn’s falls a bit short of its recent $1 billion valuation.)

Of course, I’d put about as much faith in these valuations as I’d put in YouNoodle’s startup predictor — less, even, since this is explicitly just a gauge of public opinion. But it will be interesting to see how companies rise and fall. (More statups will be added over time.) It’s also a smart improvement to the TradeVibes site. Mill River Labs, the company that built TradeVibes, has been landed partnerships with news sites like Mashable and The Inquisitr to help raise its visibility. But it’s fun social features like the Startup Exchange that will keep users coming back, and perhaps help TradeVibes snag some of the traffic from CrunchBase, its more famous competitor.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • This is seriously cool. I've just put together my portfolio. Funnily enough I seem to have shorted half of Silicon Valley! The next really cool thing would be is if I could see other people's portfolio and share trades.
  • Chun Pan
    Wow, this is going to be a lot of fun. Here are some initial thoughts. The Startup Exchange page is simple and intuitive - this makes it easy for first time users who don't want to be overwhelmed with too much information. For the mathematically challenged (myself included), it’s very helpful that the Exchange tells me how many shares I can afford of each stock. Finally, the leaderboard is great to see how I’m faring with others (look for me at the top) I’m looking forward to seeing some smaller companies on the exchange (to identify early success), but overall, this is a great step for TradeVibes. I wish them the best.
  • Mike
    Cool. Looking forward to seeing if they add incentives and prizes for top traders.
  • Max
    First time user of TradeVibes and I like what I see. The site is interactive, the info is current. Probably not a high priority feature for alpha testing but I'd get a kick out of seeing a live ticker (How often are the prices updated?)
  • austin
    Sounds intriguing... kind of late though, ill try it tomorrow
  • I'm wondering why it's dubbed a startup wiki? It contains information on companies like Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Cisco, Citrix, etc. as well.
  • Hmm, good point. I think that when it launched it was pretty much all startups, but don't hold me to that. More importantly, my sense is that its strength and focus is on startups, although entries on bigger companies have snuck in there too.
  • Doesn't the logo and color scheme look eerily similar (if not exactly the same) as socialpicks.com?
  • Yeah, they're similar but "eerily similar" seems to be going a bit far. Both logos look pretty generic to me.
  • Anthony,

    I think YouNoodle's concept is interesting, but I also like TradeVibes. Wouldn't you think that the "Wisdom of Crowds" might have a better chance at pegging the correct valuation on a startup than YouNoodle's proprietary algorithms developed in house by a small, yet very smart team?
  • Um, not really, but then I haven't read Surowiecki's "Wisdom of Crowds" yet. To my mind, the interesting thing about the Startup Exchange isn't whether it can give you a real valuation, but rather what it tells you about public opinion.
  • Good point but oftentimes, public opinion = valuation. I'd like to see them figure out a way to let the public put some real money on opinions, although they'd have to convince regulators that isn't gambling. Check out Hollywood Stock Exchange for another take on crowdsourcing.
  • Great information!
  • Eat your heart our, CrunchBase!