Difference between revisions of "U.S. Seed Accelerators"
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==Update for Hira== | ==Update for Hira== | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Recoding Founders' Experience=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | I have updated and reclassified Founders' job titles. We began with 451 unique job titles, and were able to condense them into 16 categories, which are: | ||
+ | *Academic | ||
+ | *Advisor | ||
+ | *Board | ||
+ | *C-level | ||
+ | *CEO | ||
+ | *Director | ||
+ | *Founder | ||
+ | *Investment | ||
+ | *Management | ||
+ | *Marketing | ||
+ | *Partner | ||
+ | *President | ||
+ | *VP | ||
+ | *Other | ||
+ | |||
+ | The formulas used to recode, the old data, and the newest, updated data can be found on this Google Sheet: | ||
+ | https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/179ML4c1cO_1zooCGj4yjuXXUPwTDKZu52656_8uoNig/edit?usp=sharing | ||
+ | |||
+ | This has been merged into the File to Rule Them All. | ||
+ | |||
===Recoding Stage=== | ===Recoding Stage=== | ||
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We have updated dead accelerators on the following Google Sheet | We have updated dead accelerators on the following Google Sheet | ||
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_mZ8QgEXwSoTeyVbiEg2ZfoQukvCHfr0NKSk2QMGYnI/edit?usp=sharing | https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_mZ8QgEXwSoTeyVbiEg2ZfoQukvCHfr0NKSk2QMGYnI/edit?usp=sharing | ||
− | + | ||
+ | This has been merged this into The File To Rule Them All. | ||
===Recoding Equity/Investment=== | ===Recoding Equity/Investment=== | ||
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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XWtCTeaof8WxAuOCbn3XEFaK0sh-ZIif2JqcdbkH72I/edit?usp=sharing | https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XWtCTeaof8WxAuOCbn3XEFaK0sh-ZIif2JqcdbkH72I/edit?usp=sharing | ||
− | With the Sheets '''OLD''' containing old, outdated data, '''WORK''' containing the process of reclassifying, and '''Updated Info''' containing only good, updated data. | + | With the Sheets '''OLD''' containing old, outdated data, '''WORK''' containing the process/formulas of reclassifying, and '''Updated Info''' containing only good, updated data. |
The data has been merged into '''The File to Rule Them All'''. Old data has not yet been deleted but can at any time, considering we have it saved in the Google Sheet '''OLD''' (just wanted the go ahead from Hira or Ed). | The data has been merged into '''The File to Rule Them All'''. Old data has not yet been deleted but can at any time, considering we have it saved in the Google Sheet '''OLD''' (just wanted the go ahead from Hira or Ed). |
Revision as of 19:22, 31 July 2018
U.S. Seed Accelerators | |
---|---|
Project Information | |
Project Title | U.S. Seed Accelerators |
Owner | Connor Rothschild |
Start Date | 06/18/2018 |
Deadline | |
Keywords | accelerators, data |
Primary Billing | |
Notes | [[Has notes::Continuation of Accelerator Data]] |
Has project status | Active |
Is dependent on | Industry Classifier, Demo Day Page Parser, Accelerator Demo Day, Demo Day Page Google Classifier, Crunchbase Accelerator Equity, Crunchbase Accelerator Founders, Crunchbase Data |
Subsumes: | Accelerator Data, Accelerator Seed List (Data) |
Copyright © 2016 edegan.com. All Rights Reserved. |
Contents
- 1 Project Location
- 2 Relevant Former Projects
- 3 Update for Hira
- 3.1 Recoding Founders' Experience
- 3.2 Recoding Stage
- 3.3 Dead Accelerators
- 3.4 Recoding Equity/Investment
- 3.5 Amazon Mechanical Turk Pricing
- 3.6 Recoded Founders Education
- 3.7 Multiple campuses and cohorts
- 3.8 Fixed Google Sheet
- 3.9 Recode employee count
- 3.10 Remaning to do
- 3.11 Recoding Founders Experience
- 4 Recent Work
- 5 An Overview
- 6 Remaining To Dos
- 7 (Outdated) Necessary Steps
- 8 Workflow Image
Project Location
The master file can be found at
/bulk/McNair/Projects/Accelerators/Summer 2018/The File to Rule Them All.xlsx
Relevant Former Projects
This page serves as an updated and tidied version of the data and work presented on the Accelerator Seed List (Data) Project, which subsumed Accelerator Data. Both of these projects (and as a corollary, this project) are dependent on the Demo Day Page Parser, Industry Classifier, and the Whois Parser.
Update for Hira
Recoding Founders' Experience
I have updated and reclassified Founders' job titles. We began with 451 unique job titles, and were able to condense them into 16 categories, which are:
- Academic
- Advisor
- Board
- C-level
- CEO
- Director
- Founder
- Investment
- Management
- Marketing
- Partner
- President
- VP
- Other
The formulas used to recode, the old data, and the newest, updated data can be found on this Google Sheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/179ML4c1cO_1zooCGj4yjuXXUPwTDKZu52656_8uoNig/edit?usp=sharing
This has been merged into the File to Rule Them All.
Recoding Stage
I have updated and cleaned up the "what stage accs look for companies in" by splitting it up into three categories:
- seed
- early stage venture
- late
Other classifications were collapsed into these three or were not significant (n<2) enough to be coded as a classification. The Google Sheet used to recode the stage variable can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G_XbIrHB6YOU5tWs0dqZot6_eJLDsp-nxoAIuHM9_Yc/edit?usp=sharing
It has been merged into The File To Rule Them All.
Dead Accelerators
We have updated dead accelerators on the following Google Sheet
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_mZ8QgEXwSoTeyVbiEg2ZfoQukvCHfr0NKSk2QMGYnI/edit?usp=sharing
This has been merged this into The File To Rule Them All.
Recoding Equity/Investment
The Google Sheet with this work is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xFlFR1OAoHY4XgesB8ZAugL99DgT0OehxIEzcmYuMB8/edit?usp=sharing
It has also been merged into The File To Rule Them All.
I have updated equity from data from https://www.seed-db.com/accelerators.
I have also updated the columns with a new normalized version of investment. Within the File To Rule Them All, you will find two normalizations of investment:
- the midpoint normalization, used by taking an average of the accelerators' investment ranges.
- the upper bound normalization, used by taking an average of the highest amount accelerators will invest.
This dual normalization was performed because many accelerators say they invest "Up to $__,___" so a midpoint may not accurately reflect actual investment amounts.
The average investment when using the midpoint is $40,164 and the average investment when using the upper limit is $48,313.
NOTE: There may be one outlier to control for, as Boost VC says they offer **between $50,000 and $500,000**. This is a huge range and the upper limit of $500,00 may throw off our analysis.
By removing Boost VC's investment amounts, the average using midpoint drops to $37,555 (~$3,000 less) and the average using upper limits drops to $43,293 (~$5,000 less). The distance between the two averages drops from ~$8,000 to ~$6,000. We should consider/discuss removing or controlling for Boost VC.
Amazon Mechanical Turk Pricing
Information can be found here [1]
Recoded Founders Education
I have recoded two components of the founders' education sheet:
1) Degree name has been reclassified into nine categories:
- High School
- Associates
- Bachelors
- Masters
- Certificate
- JD
- MBA
- PhD
- Other
2) Majors have also been recoded into nine categories:
- H = Humanities
- SS = Social Sciences
- NS = Natural Sciences
- E = Engineering (includes computer science)
- B = Business and Economics
- L = Leadership
- MBA
- JD
- O = Other
The Google Sheet I used to reclassify can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XWtCTeaof8WxAuOCbn3XEFaK0sh-ZIif2JqcdbkH72I/edit?usp=sharing
With the Sheets OLD containing old, outdated data, WORK containing the process/formulas of reclassifying, and Updated Info containing only good, updated data.
The data has been merged into The File to Rule Them All. Old data has not yet been deleted but can at any time, considering we have it saved in the Google Sheet OLD (just wanted the go ahead from Hira or Ed).
Multiple campuses and cohorts
The File to Rule Them All contains an updated address variable. 139 of our 166 accelerators have addresses that are available online. The ones we could not find information for are left blank.
The collaborative sheet that Hira, Maxine, and I worked on to update this list can be accessed here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nktgJZfm3L8IsSCHgYbPasSdvKb7QHKxZp8K5Si2iNo/edit?usp=sharing
We have also added a new cohort list. Under The File To Rule Them All, the sheet Multiple Campuses contains the different locations for accelerators with multiple campuses. Column B can be used to filter out multiple location accelerators.
Fixed Google Sheet
We created a new sheet with only data we want to keep, and cleaned it up. That sheet is called "Good Data Only", at the same link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16Suyp364lMkmUuUmK2dy_9MeSoS1X4DfFl3dYYDGPT4/edit?usp=sharing
I first used our "recap" and "announced" classification to standardize and fix the dates.
- Columns N-R contain our new data. Please note that all of these columns are based on formulas and will be made erroneous if edited.
- Column N is the # of weeks for an accelerator program, gathered via VLookup from The File to Rule Them All.
- Column O is the Actual Date we want to record, and was gathered by subtracting the # of weeks from a date if the listed page was a recap.
- Columns P and Q are the Month and Years stripped from Column O.
- Finally, Column R is the season variable, as Ed said it should be coded.
We have also gone through and removed all bad data, all duplicates, and all rows without timing info. These is the most complete list possible.
Recode employee count
I have added a new column in Cohorts Final (of the File to Rule Them All) yet left the old column in case you would prefer to edit/classify differently. Column AB (emp_count_scale) contains a variable coded on a scale of 1 to 9, with each number corresponding to one of the employee_count classifications (1 the lowest, 9 the highest). The exact output can be modified (1 could instead be tiny, 2 be small... 9 be huge).
The employee count column is standardized and can easily be edited given some modification of the Excel formula.
Remaning to do
Recoding Founders Experience
I've began recoding the Founders variable. I can categorize 232 of the 824 listed job titles (there are 466 distinct job titles)into 9 categories (the most frequent results as given in a PivotTable found in the sheet).
We will need to talk about how to categorize the most extraneous job titles.
Recent Work
Here's a project update on the work that has been done since coming to McNair. The most recent file is
/bulk/McNair/Projects/Accelerators/Summer 2018/The File to Rule Them All.xlsx
Merging Cohort Companies with Crunchbase Info
More information on this part of the project can be found on the page Merging Existing Data with Crunchbase.
The newest updated sheet of cohort company info is under the Cohorts Final sheet of The File to Rule Them All.xlsx.
Working with Maxine Tao, we have matched companies to their respective pages and information found in Crunchbase (via UUID). We ensured single matches by doing a 1-1-1-1 match with our data and with Crunchbase (using the Matcher). We then received additional information on 8092 companies. The following new information (on top of what we already had) is included in the sheet:
- short_description
- long_description
- category_list (details the company's category)
- category_group_list (a less refined, more all-encompassing category classification)
- founded_on date
- employee_count
- linkedin_url
- address
And the following information was also pulled from Crunchbase and merged with our existing data:
- URL (was merged with courl cells)
- city (was merged with colocation)
- state_code (was merged with colocation)
- country_code (was merged with colocation)
- status (was merged with costatus)
The Equity Variables
Maxine Tao and I have added six new variables to the Accelerators Final sheet. Those variables are:
- Terms of joining - terms of joining accelerator and important details about program
- Equity? (1/0) - cells contain a 1 if the accelerator take equity, a 0 if an accelerator definitively does not, and is blank if we could not find that information
- Equity Amount - the % of equity the accelerator will take (can sometimes be a range (eg. 5-7%))
- Equity Amount Normalized - this copies the previous column but only keeps %>0, and if a range was given (e.g. 5-7%) it returns the average (e.g. 6%)
- Investment Amount - the $ the accelerator invests in a company to begin, if relevant (also could be a range or a "up to $######")
- Investment Notes - anything to comment on previous 4 columns
These six variables tell us more about the characteristics of accelerators; specifically, which ones take equity and which ones do not, and how much equity accelerators take.
Relevant information:
- 82 accelerators take equity, 42 do not, and we lack information for 37.
- The average % of equity among accelerators who take equity (rough estimate--do not use for anything official) is 6.49% (got this number by only looking at accelerators who take equity, averaging equity amount for accelerators who report a range (e.g. 4%-10% equity would be coded as 7% equity) and took mean.
Matching Accelerators to UUIDs via Crunchbase
We've also added UUIDs for 163 of our 166 accelerators. The UUIDs can be found in Column AE of the Accelerators Final sheet.
The file with accelerators matched to Crunchbase UUIDs can be found at:
/bulk/McNair/Projects/Accelerators/Summer 2018/Accelerators and UUIDs.xlsx
This is the master file and should never be modified unless we find a UUID changed. ALL OTHER SHEETS with UUIDs are linked to this sheet so its changes will be reflected elsewhere.
More information can be found on the Crunchbase Data page.
Linking Accelerators to Founders/LinkedIn Crawling
Grace Tan got the LinkedIn Crawler (Python) to work, which means we currently have the following information about accelerator founders:
- Current Job Title
- Location
- Employer
- Job(s) Title
- Dates Employed
- Time Employed
- Location of jobs
- Extra Description
- School Name
- Degree Name
- Major
- Attended
- Graduated
- Societies
This information can be found in the various Founders sheets in The File to Rule Them All.
Finding Company URLs
Excel master datasets are in:
E:\McNair\Projects\Accelerators\Summer 2018
Code and files specific to this URL finder are in:
E:\McNair\Projects\Accelerators\Summer 2018\url finder
Results
I used STEP1_crawl.py and STEP2_findcorrecturl.py to add approximately 1000 more URLs into 'The File to Rule Them All.xlsx'.
Testing
In this file (sheet: 'Most Recent Merged Data' note that this is just a copy of 'Cohorts Final' in 'The File to Rule Them All'):
E:\McNair\Projects\Accelerators\Summer 2018\Merged W Crunchbase Data as of July 17.xlx
We filter for companies (~4000) that did not receive VC, are not in crunchbase, and do not have URLs. Using a Google crawler(STEP1_crawl.py) and URL matching script(STEP2_findcorrecturl.py), we will try to find as many URLs as possible.
To test, I ran about 40 companies from "smallcompanylist.txt", using only the company name as a search term and taking the first 4 valid results (see don't collect list in code). The google crawler and URL matcher was able to correctly identify around 20 URLs. It also misidentifies some URLs that look really similar to the company name, but it is accurate for the most part if the name is not too generic. I then tried to run the 20 unfound company names through the crawler again, but this time I used company name + startup as the search term. This did not identify any more correct URLs.
It seems reasonable to assume that if the company URL cannot be found within the first 4 valid search results, then that company probably does not have URL at all. This is the case for many of the unfound 20 URLs from my test run above.
Actual Run Info
The companies we needed to find URLs for are in a file called 'ACTUALNEEDEDCOMPANIES.txt'.
The first four results for every company, as found by STEP1_crawl.py, are in 'ACTUAL_crawled_company_urls.txt'.
The results after the matching done by STEP2_findcorrecturl.py, are in 'ACTUAL_finalurls.txt'.
Note that in the end, I decided to only take URLs that were given a match score of greater than 0.9 by setting this restriction in STEP2_findcorrecturl.py. Then I manually removed any duplicates/inaccurate results. If you want, you can set the threshold lower in STEP2 and use STEP3_clean.py to find the URL with the highest score for each company.
The point of this URL finder is to find timing information for companies. Timing information can be found on Whois. See the page http://mcnair.bakerinstitute.org/wiki/Whois_Parser#Summer_2018_Work for information on running the whois parser.
Using Python files
To use STEP1_crawl.py:
INPUT: a list of company names (or anything) you would like to find websites for by searching on google OUTPUT: a list of company names and the top X number of results from google
1. Change LIST_FILEPATH in line 26 to be the name of the file that contains the list of things you would like to search.
2. Change NUMRESULT to be however many results you would like from Google.
3. Adjust DONT_COLLECT to include any websites that you don't want.
4. If you would like to add another search keyword, add this in line 87 which is queries.append(name + "whatever you want here")
5. Change line 127 to be the name of your output file.
To use STEP2_findcorrecturl.py:
INPUT: output file from STEP1 OUTPUT: a file formatted the same as the output of STEP1, but URLs that do not match over the threshold value you set will be replaced with "no match"
1. Change file f to be the output file name from STEP1. Change g to be the desired name of the output file for this part.
2. In the if statement on line 44, set your desired threshold. Note that anything greater than 0.6 is generally considered a decent match. It might be safer to use 0.75 and my use of 0.9 ensures almost exact matches. However, you should consider that if your list of companies (or whatever you are searching) includes really common names, then a 90%+ match might not be exactly what you're looking for.
To use STEP3_clean.py:
Note this is an optional step to use depending on the accuracy level you need and what kind of data you crawled earlier. I chose not to use this and instead set a more restrictive threshold in STEP2.
1. Change file f to be the output file from STEP2 (you should delete anything that says "no match", and when you use STEP2, you must also write the ratio score to the text file). Change g to be the desired name of the output file for this part.
Your output should be a text file containing the company name and the URL that had the highest assigned score in STEP2. In case of more than 1 URL with the highest score, the script should take the first one.
An Overview
This project will be used to determine which accelerators are the most effective at churning out successful startups, as well as what characteristics are exhibited by these accelerators. First, we need to gather as much data as we can about as many accelerators as we can in order to look at factors that differentiate successful vs. unsuccessful ventures. Next, we need to create a web crawling program which will gather information about accelerators across the world by accessing their websites and extracting information. I believe that our overall goal with this research project is to gain insight into the methods of successful accelerators, as well as to find out what exactly differentiates very successful accelerators from dead accelerators.
Helpful Links: http://seedrankings.com/
Remaining To Dos
The last update on Accelerator Seed List (Data) said the following needed to be done:
- Cross-reference sheet with data from Peter's old accelerator consolidation file ("accelerator_data_noflag" and "accelerator_data" in "All Relevant Files") and fill in missing data
- Variables that are 100% NOT in these 2 files:
- Cohort Breakout?
- Subtype
- Designed for Students?
- Campuses
- Stage
- Software Tech
- What stage do they look for?
(Outdated) Necessary Steps
Acquiring the necessary data to complete the Accelerator Master Variable List and the Cohort List will require the following (not necessarily in this order):
Step Zero: Connect to Crunchbase and Link Data
Complete - more info: Crunchbase Data
Step One: LinkedIn Founders Data
This project will begin by working with Grace Tan and Maxine Tao to connect accelerators to their founders and cohort companies using Crunchbase and LinkedIn crawlers. Grace and Maxine will go through Crunchbase and find the UUID for companies and their founders (reference Crunchbase Data, Crunchbase Accelerator Founders, Crunchbase Accelerator Equity). Connect them using SQL and feed the names of founders into our LinkedIn crawler (headed by Grace Tan).
The list of founders for accelerators can be found at
McNair/Projects/Accelerators/Fall 2017/founders_linkedin.txt
The Unfound Founders file codes a 0 for all companies not listed within the LinkedIn Founders file, and a 1 for those that do have founders listed.
Given the founders' names, we will then be able to use the LinkedIn Crawler (Python) to find the relevant details of an accelerator founder (education, work experience, etc.) This data on founders will help us solve the horse, jockey, racetrack question to detect what variables affect a startup's success (the accelerator, the founders, the environment/city).
Step Two: Linking Accelerators to Cohorts Using Investments on Crunchbase
In this step we focus on accelerators who take equity from the companies that engage in their program. We do this to prevent looking at accelerators who may also run funds/invest in various companies but do not take equity. This would provide us misleading results and lead us to believe some companies are in cohorts at accelerators that they are really not.
Maxine will acquire the list of accelerators who take equity from companies from the following sheet:
E://McNair/Projects/Accelerators/All Relevant Files/accelerator_data_noflag.txt
Looking at the file, however, shows that very few are actually categorized well and the equity variable is messy. Moving forward, we need to check/refine/fix this classification.
This file has 266 rows. The most recent, actual version of our accelerator database (found at E://McNair/Projects/Accelerators/Summer 2018/Connor Accelerator Work/Accelerator Master Variable List - Revised by Ed V2.xlsx under the sheet Master Variable List) only has 167 rows, meaning the accelerator_data_noflag.txt file has too many rows.
We will need to do a left join of Accelerator Master List with accelerator_data_noflag.txt to get rid of the accelerator names that are in accelerator_data_noflag but NOT in Accelerator Master List.
Once this is finished, we should have an “Equity” classification variable for every accelerator in Accelerator Master List. The accelerators that have a Y (or maybe it’s a 1) are companies that do take equity. These are the companies we’ll be able to do your Crunchbase work on to see when accelerators take equity.
We then look at the accelerators investments (or companies and the entities which invested in them), cross-reference the list of companies/accelerators, and once we find a match, we know that a company went through an accelerator and during which year they went through a cohort.
From this, we get the following data:
- Accelerator a given company went through
- Year said company went through a cohort/Specific cohort company went through
Step Three: Demo Day Crawler
This part of the project relies on the contributions of the wonderful Minh Le. Better documentation for the project can be found on the Demo Day Page Parser, Demo Day Page Google Classifier, and Accelerator Demo Day project pages.
Essentially, this part of the accelerator data project will use the Demo Day Page Parser to look through accelerator websites for pages which list a cohort's 'Demo Day', or the day in which accelerators present their companies to a group of special investors (here's an example FAQ page from Y Combinator). The Demo Day Page Google Classifier will then determine if the page is, in fact, a demo day page.
Given a cohort's demo day, we can gather a few pieces of key information (check with Ed to make sure this is the correct information to gather from Demo Days):
- The date a cohort began/the season the cohort went through the accelerator
- This is acquired by looking at the cohort's demo day date, and subtracting the number of weeks/months of a cohort for that given accelerator. The length of a cohort can be found in the file:
E://McNair/Projects/Accelerators/Summer 2018/Connor Accelerator Work/Accelerator Master Variable List - Revised by Ed V2.xlsx
- I assume we can also acquire the companies in a specific cohort, as in we will have the list of all companies in the (for example) Spring 2018 Cohort of Techstars.
Step Four: Non-profit Finder
More at Non-profit Finder
Another important step in this project is finding which accelerators are non-profits.
A comprehensive list of nonprofits taken from the IRS can be found here:
E://McNair/Projects/Accelerators/Summer 2018/Connor Accelerator Work/Nonprofits in US.xlsx
Warning: this file has 1 million rows
This file should be cross-referenced with the list of accelerators to find which ones are listed--those accelerators are non-profits. We'll need someone good in SQL to do this with a match.
Potential problem:
- The names of listed non-profits will likely be somewhat different than the names of accelerators, because companies often file for tax exemption with different names than they show the public.
Workflow Image
(the color coding for this image is a very rough and preliminary estimate subject to change) I imagine the project will look something like this, in that it will require the following information to fully complete the project: