1. VentureNetwork
Recommend the best startups to
investors based on their portfolios
Vickie Zhang

2. How do investors locate the next hot startups?
• Network and talk to other entrepreneurs
• Join an angel group
• Join an equity crowdfunding platform
• Syndicate investments => co-invest

3. Investor: Geoff Ralston
Markets of interest: Education,
Mobile, Information Technology,
Kids
Helping school impro
ve through data anal
ytics
Mobile education
al games
Deeplinks for
mobile apps
SaaS
A snapshot of his investment portfolio:

4. Recommend new startups to investors
based on portfolios
Investors
startups
A B

5. Recommend new startups to investors based on
portfolios
Investors
startups
A B

6. Recommend new startups to investors based on
portfolios
Investors
startups
A B

7. Algorithm: collaborative filter
Top 500 investors
And 7000 companies (features) that they invested
Similar investor portfolios
PCA:
Dimensionality
reduction
Cosine similarity
Features: 7000  70

8. Similar investor portfolios
Recommend startups
Algorithm: collaborative filter
Rank Startups
Base on how similar their
investors are to the current user

9. 9
Insights
Top 10 market categories:
Cover over 90% of startups

10. 10
Insights
How diverse are the investment portfolios?
# of market categories an investment portfolio has
Count

11. 11
About me: Vickie Zhang
UCB - UCSF Bioengineering Graduate Program
Human prostate
Mouse prostate

12. Validation
On AngelList, investors can following startups
• 80% investors are following at least 1 out of top 3
recommended startups.
• API does not capture the most updated
investment information
– 30% of investors are now investing in at least 1
out of top 3 recommended startups.