Generally, our ‘Scoring Bot’ is looking for companies which have gained mindshare, be it through social media or more traditional media, in particular as a result of achievements such as winning awards, new contracts or raising investment. In addition, we are capturing inputs relating to website rankings, ASX share price movement (for listed companies) and increase in employees. We crunch various types of data, from a diverse range of sources, and by applying carefully selected weightings and a little bit of magic, we produce a score for every company featured on Techboard. We expect healthy turnover at top of our leaderboard, as we are focussing on events of the previous fortnight rather than cumulative or historical achievements.
As an indication of the types of inputs being looked at:
- Press coverage;
- Awards;
- Search engine ranking and time spent on website;
- Social media engagement (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Techboard);
- ASX share price movement;
- Number of employees;
- Votes received from members of our Panel of Experts (each expert can nominate 1 to 3 companies per period).
Obviously no system is ever perfect, and as such we carefully monitor the scores being generated and make tweaks and improvements where necessary. We’re also conscious of the fact that these types of public rankings can occasionally cause controversy and concerns over their reliability. We’d therefore like to offer the below reassurances with respect to the integrity of our scoring system:
- While one of the many inputs in the scoring system is a subjective measure provided by our Panel of Experts, the system itself is truly automated and is not a panel decision or judgement call.
- There is no commercial dimension to the scoring, points are not for sale, companies are not awarded extra points in exchange for membership or subscription or anything like that. The system rewards activity and engagement on social media and this does include Techboard as well as the other main platforms.
- The weighting of the inputs is carefully balanced to avoid the larger, listed companies dominating the top of the list. For instance, we reward relative increases in measures rather than the absolute measures themselves.
- Manual controls and oversight are in place to detect any attempts to game the system.
- Our Panel of Experts is truly independent and carefully selected to ensure breadth of exposure. While individual members may have relationships with particular startups, given the number of panel members and other inputs which go into the scoring system, it is unlikely any one member could exert influence over the overall ranking. Furthermore, there is a degree of oversight in place over the votes received by panel members. And let’s not forget that our panel members are all well-respected identities of the startup community.
We feel it is important to focus on the positive impact of acknowledging and highlighting local startups. Let’s celebrate the startups that are out there scoring goals!
