Earlier this week, FLT punched out a piece grouching about the lack of comprehensive data on the Australian startup ecosystem. Despite a greater focus on using data in startups, investors and entrepreneurs have so far lacked the information necessary to make informed decisions about how we can build a better startup community: one where more companies succeed.

It makes it challenging to advocate for changes to government policy, make better investment decisions, or know how to start a business with a chance of surviving.

Since then, we’ve come across an interesting project from Guy King, one of the co-founders of the phenomenal Kickstarter success, LIFX. While delivering on a $1.3 million campaign to produce the WiFi enabled LED light bulb has been keeping King busy (see our story on his co-founder Andrew Birt), he’s found a bit of time to muck around with a tool for comparing growth metrics of Australian startups.

It’s called StartChart and it works by pulling data from publicly available sources such as CrunchBase, AngelList, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and ahrefs.com, to measure the number of references to individual startups.

“I’ve been through a bit of angel investing since my exit a few years ago (King was a co-founder of RetailMeNot), but it’s not really quantitative how you invest. I started making this little pool of information, so I had an independent way of seeing how these businesses were going.”

King thought that despite the data being only a part of the picture, it was still useful. He’s since launched it publicly, and the site is tracking close to 1,800 startups. Either way, it seems to be a good database of current startups: “I hope at the very least I can get a list of startups in Australia.”

StartChart tracks Australian startup companies based on publicly available data (Image: screenshot)

StartChart uses the data to compare startups based on two metrics: fast growth and big growth. Big growth measures the increase in things like Facebook likes and back-links to determine the volume of growth. Fast growth is a little more complicated, using a logarithm to try and show the value of that growth. King says growth from one to two followers is measured differently from the leap from 1,000 to 2,000.

“It’s a tricky thing although I kind of anticipated this — people up high on the list like it, and those who aren’t, don’t.”

King says he hasn’t skewed the algorithm to boost LIFX, although it is the top performer at the moment. The algorithm can be seen by hovering over each column. Over time, he hopes to be able to determine if there are is correlation between these metrics and the financial performance of a startup. It’s an interesting proposition: a potential leading indicator for startup success.

“It’s nothing scientific, although it has been useful for me. There’s a fund I’ve been in and on paper it’s doing quite well, but on the site they look like they’re flatlining.”

Only time will tell whether this data is of any use, but it’s well worth keeping an eye on this project.

(Yes, FLT is included 😉 )

Search on StartChart to see if your startup is listed. If not, you can add it to the database.