Determinants of Seed Accelerator Performance: The Horse, the Jockey, and the Racetrack

Academic Paper
Title	Determinants of Seed Accelerator Performance: The Horse, the Jockey, and the Racetrack
Author	Ed Egan, Yael Hochberg
Status	In development
© edegan.com, 2016

Existing Data

VC Code

The old VC code is in

E:\mcnair\Projects\MatchingEntrepsToVC\DataWorkMatchingEntrepsV2-2.sql

It uses vcdb2 and forks off of roundlinejoinerleanff, building the following sequence of tables:

• roundlineaggfirmsseq -> roundlineaggseqwexit (using roundlineaggfunds)
• RoundLineMasterSeqBase (from roundlineaggseqwexit and 10 LJ'd tables)
• RoundLineMasterSeq (RoundLineMasterSeqBase with FirmnameRoundInduTotal, FirmnameRoundInduHist)
• Build out by stage -- MatchMostNumerousSeed, MatchHighestRandomSeed, etc.
• RoundLineByStageKeys -> MasterByStageBase -> MasterByStage -> MasterByStageKeys -> MasterByStageBlownout

There is untested seq table code at the end of

E:\projects\vcdb3\OriginalSQL\MatchingEntrepsV3.sql

They build just roundlineaggfirmsseq

Accelerator Demo Day

See the Accelerator Demo Day for more information. We ran the code and posted several iterations to Turk, and completed at least one iteration by hand. from Amazon Mechanical Turk for Analyzing Demo Day Classifier's Results

• E:\mcnair\Projects\Accelerator Demo Day\Turk\batch_results_all_accs_excel.xlsx -- looks like it contains the results of a Turk run. 265 results, 160 usable.
• Accelerator_Demo_Day#Hand_Collecting_Data provides a link to a Google Sheet. This sheet was downloaded to E:\projects\accelerators\Demo Day Timing Info.xlsx - it contains 136 observations. Files of this format were processed by a script written by Grace?

Accelerator Code

The last build was by Ed and Hira. Hira's notes are on the Seed Accelerator Data Assembly page.

Claims:

• dbase is likely vcdb2
• All data files are in Z:/accelerator
• The SQL file that loads all data is: LoadAccData.sql. It is located in E:\McNair\Projects\Accelerators\Summer 2018
• Source data is E:\McNair\Projects\Accelerators\Summer 2018\The File To Rule Them All.xlsx
• timing_final - This table is based on the most updated information on timing compiled in source file: Z:/accelerator/Formatted Timing Info.txt (by Grace)
• additional_timing_info - source file: "merging_work.xlxs" located in: E:\Projects\McNair\Seed DB 8)
• additional_timing_info2 - source file: "formatted timing info2.txt" located in E:\Projects\McNair\Accelerators\Summer 2018. This was collected through MTurks.
• 9) timing_combined - This table combines all timing information we have and appends tables 4, 7 and 8. 10) cohortcompanies_wtiming - merges data in tables cohortcompany and timing_combined
• See also, Grace's code E:/McNair/Projects/Accelerators/Summer 2018/format_timing.py. Last file it produced was TurkData2ndPush-FormattedTiming.txt

Hira's code

Load:

• timing_final from formatted_timing_final.txt -- 1167
• additional_timing_info from merging_work.txt --257
• additional_timing_info2 from additional_timing_info2.txt -- 1523
• timing_combined from all three above (additional_timing_info,timing_final,additional_timing_info2) -- 2817
• cohortsfinal from cohorts_final.txt from File to Rule Them All.xlx
• founders from founders_main.txt from File to Rule Them All.xlx
• founders_experience from founders_experience.txt from File to Rule Them All.xlx

Last code written by Ed was likely:

E:\mcnair\Projects\Accelerators\Summer 2018\FindTiming.sql
/*
timing_final
	Demo manual fill out effort
	--1167
additional_timing_info
	SeedDB crawl
	--257
additional_timing_info2
	Main MTURK Crawl
	--1523
*/

Timing related tables:

• Draws from timing_combined
• Produces FindThese and FindTheseCos
• \COPY TurkRun2 FROM 'TurkData2ndPush-FormattedTimingWHeader.txt' --1538
• \COPY ManualAdd2 FROM 'SmallBatchTimingInfo.txt' --169

Files in Summer 2018 with provenance

SmallBatchTimingInfo.txt

Appears hand collected
170 lines, conamestd	accelerator	date	month	year	cohort	quarter

TurkData2ndPush-FormattedTimingWHeader.txt

Processed by format_timing.py
Comes from Final Turk Push.xlsx
1515 lines, company name normalized

Formatted Timing Info 2

No header but: coname accelerator date pagetype
1523 lines
Seems to have come from GraceData.txt and been processed by an earlier version of format_timing.py

Formatted Timing Info

Header: coname	acceleratorname	keyword	url	webpage	predicted	gooddata	page_details	full_date	month	year	cohort_name	notes	prog_duration_wks	actual_date	actual_month	actual_year	season
1168 lines, company name normalized
Seems to have come from Demo Day Timing Info - Good Data Only.txt

Demo Day Timing Info Companies

No header, but appears coname normalized
1143 lines
Might have come from Demo Day Timing Info - Good Data Only.txt
Made obsolete by Formatted Timing Info?

Note that the most recent file is NewBatchForTimingInfo.txt, which contains coname, accelerator pairs. It's not clear if it was ever run.