VentureBeat

Nisan Gabbay, a venture capitalist with Sierra Ventures in Menlo Park, has launched a noteworthy site called Startup Review to assess why certain start-ups are successful.

Nisan, who makes Internet investments, and was a strategy consultant at Accenture before joining Sierra for two years ago, says he is devoting about ten hours of weekly research for each success case-study. His latest case-study, about MySpace, is worth reading.

Here’s Nisan’s own description of his site:

Startup Review features weekly, in-depth case studies on successful Internet start-ups. The companies profiled will have achieved either: a) significant exits, b) large revenue, and/or c) strong Internet brands. Each case study is based on interviews conducted with early employees of the company. The case study analyzes what strategy and product decisions made the company successful, including a section on launch strategy, exit analysis, and additional resources.

We saw the site referenced by Jeff Nolan, a former venture capitalist at SAP Ventures.

Jeff notes that Nisan (pictured here) is using the social aspects of blogging to elicit input from others. It is not a wiki. Nisan appears to be asking for contributions mainly in the form of tips about who he can interview for each case-study. Most of the feedback is coming through comments. The MySpace study comments are helpful, delving into why Friendster failed, for example, and also how Facebook is a relative success despite opting for a more “closed” environment than MySpace (which is relevant, because Nisan says MySpace’s success was partly due to its open environment). Good stuff, Nisan.