YouNoodle - BigOven.com worth $11.2 million?

YouNoodle.com, a rather silly site that attempts to place an automated value on a website by looking at traffic plus your answers to some simple questions (like the year the company was started, education of the founders, etc.) placed a value of $11.2 million on www.bigoven.com when I filled out the questionnaire with completely honest answers.   

Bidders, please jot me a note.  :-)

Comments

[Kirill Makharinsky]

Steve, thanks for you post. The first version of Startup Predictor actually does not consider traffic in the equation -- it is optimized for pre-funded and even pre-launch startups that are just getting started. but we will include any traction in future versions. Despite this, glad that it spotted that you have a good chance of getting a high level of traffic - congrats on the 1M milestone :)

You also didn't include the date relevant to your predicted valuation - when was it?

[Steve Murch]

Thanks Krill!

Perhaps I didn't have the right tone in my post -- I always applaud entrepreneurs trying to tackle something really hard. While I think there are lots of good reasons to network entrepreneurs and job-seekers, and it's a very interesting viral marketing idea to try to estimate the value on an algorithmic basis, I guess I was skeptical with the output.

I do think YouNoodle does a good job at inviting you and other entrepreneurs to be part of the process, and certainly, the automated Startup Predictor is generating a substantial amount of press. So on that measure, well-done!

BigOven was started in January 2003, and went live in November 2004.

The valuation I mentioned was actually pegged for January 2006 -- two and a half years ago, when BigOven had less than 10% of the traffic it had today...