Sand Hill Exchange — Fantasy Stock Exchange for Startups

@eiaine where can I see our market cap? :) Also, what happened on Sept 21st? Looks like we tanked. Ha!

@rrhoover Product Hunt prices had been rising for a while on fundraising rumors (congratulations on your Series A, btw!)

@utekkare This is very much your style! ;)

@Percival The co-founders are from Stanford, Harvard, and MIT. According to Silicon Valley, that equals billion-dollar company. On a more serious note: We recently exited our last startup together and wanted to give back to the startup community.

@Percival Warren is a data scientist and a machine learning expert, Gerrit is a serial entrepreneur, and I spent 2 years designing technology for the Australian Stock Exchange.

@eiaine Yes the trifecta of entitlement ;) Can you tell me what that last startup was?

@Percival It was Barnacle, a peer-to-peer delivery startup. The technology and platform were acquired by another company earlier this year. I can't disclose the details publicly but it's a great story I'd love to tell in person.

@eiaine "Silicon Valley is in another tech bubble and everyone knows it." Well reasoned.

@chug2k Huge Andy Warhol fan :)

@eiaine You ever think about using hiring, either as a signal or a monetization route? I have a friend who just thought this might be interesting to figure out where she should apply to work.

@chug2k That's a great idea. Our co-founder Gerrit previously built RezScore, so he is certainly interested in this space. We are keeping things simple for now and will see where to build things out as we grow.

@Percival We have fantasy leagues set up just like fantasy sports, so there is offline engagement as well. Our daily emails with news and market stats have a 60% open rate.

@abhic She has a fantasy VC firm already! :D

@Percival The exchange is meant for startup fans to share sentiment on startups, the aggregated data can be used by investors as they see fit.

@Percival Given your focus on bitcoin investments, what do you think of BTC as a currency for real investments on our exchange? Also, we've been running a closed league in our office here at First Floor Labs and the members love it. Would you like to help us organize a similar league for @500startups founders?

@eiaine Could be interesting (or a huge legal issue) but also might want to consider a lot of the new smart contract technology being used. Some of them actually have exchange/equity features built in natively. I would be open to having our team or a future accelerator batch do a closed league.

@Percival great, we'll DM you!

@Nivo0o0 Thanks Niv!

@Percival No, not yet.

@goeric Sure, send us a message and we'll help you set one up!

@goeric No open to all to add comments

@AnjneyMidha Thanks! We see blockchain as a protocol through which any titled asset can be transferred, and some of the new contract technologies are made for this, as pointed out by @Percival. We had not seen Truthcoin, thank you for the heads up. This is a cool idea, we should discuss more -- let's DM.

@utekkare Pranay, my Product Hunt account just got approved, so I'll field this one :) We've found the best way to use Sand Hill Exchange is to compete with small groups of your colleagues. This is akin to the "leagues" that power fantasy sports competitions. In fact, we're currently closing off registration to only allow participation as part of league play, so it's good that you joined when you did :) At our MVP stage many of our features are done manually so keep me on speed dial. I can take care of things like helping you organize a league, answering any questions, adding your startup. Email me your Crunchbase link which we scrape to build out your company's page, and we'll announce your listing in our next email blast. Angellist is coming next! :) Best!

@arush It's fairly easy to obtain a roster of insider holders (founders, early employees, institutional investors). As with public markets, we can report insider transactions as another data point for users to interpret as they like. Furthermore, insider trading on our marketplace would be great! Part of the problem with private companies is that they disclose very little information. Outsiders don't have a great way to gauge the health of a company. But if employees and customers are selling a company en masse, this provides a warning to real-world investors.

@par_ham Thanks Parham! DM me so we can talk further about this, we could use your help :)