We've had a lot of questions and prodding regarding the "under five years old" requirement of our Start-up Indexes. When they were originally started, we used the criteria that Marcelo was using for his Seattle Startup Index. That criteria was:
We have been a little flexible with this criteria as the age of a company can be subject to interpretation depending on acquisitions, sell-outs, complete overhauls of a business model, etc. For instance, Techvibes the site/brand is six years old, but Techvibes Media Inc. is just over a year old. Even Wikipedia agrees that there is no definitive definition of "startup company", and age isn't really a valid measure. So, in the interest of more inclusive lists, we're going to remove the "less than 5 years" requirement.
Going forward, we are looking to fold the start-up indexes into the functionality of the Techvibes company directory. Not only will this save me time producing them, but will allow for dynamic lists of varying criteria, supplying stats junkies with a greater fix.
If you have been holding back on suggesting your company because it was older, now is the time to suggest it for inclusion into future lists. Please include where you are located.
Good decision IMO!
What may make your life a lot easier is to require everybody that wants to be part of the index to get quantified. That way you'll have a very accurate measurement versus Alexa/Compete's guesstimates. Actually, even if you don't require people get quiantified I find their stats/rankings to be more accurate than the competition.
There's also Google trends...
Add Nitobi Software then!
[...] to our revised requirements for the Techvibes Start-Up Indexes, look for Plentyoffish to be back on that August 1st Canadian list. They should be neck-and-neck [...]
[...] to our new Start-Up Index criteria, we’ve got a battle brewing between #1 MetroLyrics vs. #2 Plentyoffish. However, comSore [...]
