SiMi - Startup Investment Model Index

SiMi™ Score is like a FICO™ score for startups

SiMi™ begins a new era in VC funding.

VCs disproportionately fund male-led startups. This is especially problematic in early stage startups. SiMi™ (Startup Investment Model Index) analyses the maturity of early-stage startups based on the merits of the startup. 

SiMi™ helps first-time minority founders get their first round of VC funding by objectively measuring startup maturity, opportunity, and risk while eliminating bias and prejudice in the VC-funding processes. 

SiMi™ assesses early-stage startups to level the playing field from the beginning. VCs struggle to evaluate early-stage startups because traditional metrics do not yet apply. SiMi’s methodology is tuned for early-stage startups. It begins with an evaluation from the founder and/or investor of the eight core aspects of an early-stage startup. It then uses this initial feedback to identify the maturity stage of the startup. At each maturity stage, different factors become more important. In response, SiMi™ creates a weighted score based on the importance of these maturity-stage factors, then recommends the best fits for startups and investors. Overall, SiMi™ delivers an objective assessment of a startup and provides a SiMi™ Score, so that founders and investors can make better decisions based on measured analysis. F4 believes the SiMi Score will quickly evolve to be the FICO Score for startups, providing an easy-to-evaluate common language for gauging a startup’s health and market viability.

To test SiMi, we used a data-set of 752 startups that received their initial round of funding. The results of the analysis revealed the fundamental funding problem and a SiMi-based solution.

SiMi™ showed a correlation between its score and the round/amount of funding. It further demonstrated that funded companies had statistically similar scores, regardless of founder.

The data analysis, showed, however, that female-founded startups are simply locked out of certain industries, likely never getting evaluated.

SiMi™ can help these female founders by giving them an assessment of their startups, where to improve, and where best to seek funding.

Only by giving diverse founders a greater opportunity to be funded, can we solve the diversity problem. SiMi™ can deliver that opportunity.

We want to develop SiMi to disrupt and revolutionize startup funding, so that more qualified startups succeed; regardless of gender, race or social economics.

SiMi is like a FICO Score® for Startups. Much like the impact of the FICO Score on consumer lending, SiMi informs and empowers startup founders on venture investability—outside of gender, race, or other identities. By focusing purely on the state-of-the-startup, SiMi also facilitates smarter investing. Using sophisticated data and analytics, SiMi delivers entirely new levels of funding transparency and bench-marking, creating entirely new positions of funding for under-served founders.

Despite the conversations, time, and resources dedicated to stronger support of women in STEM, female founders continue to be left behind.

We can increase the numbers of women in STEM, which is economically valuable for academia and corporations, and of women in leadership, which is vital to establishing role models, but without access to capital, few female founders can succeed in high-growth business markets. 

Using sophisticated data and analytics driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning, SiMi delivers entirely new levels of funding transparency and bench-marking, creating entirely new positions of funding for under-served founders.

With broad, free-of-charge SiMi adoption, we intend to bring female founders, especially, out of the shadows and further into the pool of successfully funded enterprises. We aim to raise the prevailing funding rate to female founders specifically from 2-3% to 20% by 2020. 

With SiMi we are mobilizing the venture capital community to adopt new standards that incorporate women into funding networks.

We are working to bring policy changes that help increase investments minority founders. These are the two policy changes:

• First, expanding the information we get from SEC form D can be invaluable in understanding what is happening in the VC space. We would like to gather more information about the founders. Data makes for the strongest arguments.
• Second, indexing the Class C company investment tax credit to inflation can open up new investments from VCs willing to challenge the status quo.

www.mysimi.org.

Hundreds of startup founders—of all identities—are ready to use SiMi on their path to venture investment. A subset of venture-capital firms and startup incubators wants to adopt and leverage SiMi. The goals of venture firms and women-led startups are the same: to expand marketplaces and make money. Firms that are female-founder friendly can make more informed investment choices and realize greater profits as a result of SiMi adoption.

By focusing purely on the state-of-the-startup and using sophisticated data and analytics, SiMi™ delivers entirely new levels of funding transparency and bench-marking. The baseline data model already includes more than 1,030 1st round funded startups, with input from both founders and funders.

All entrepreneurs will benefit from SiMi. Venture capitalists use proprietary methods for assessing opportunities; there is no single, transparent, method. Research proves specific groups, e.g., women, are systematically shut out of the US venture-capital market. Much like the impact of the FICO model on consumer lending, SiMi permits immediate understanding of venture-funding trends, customized to his or her startup, represented in a score, and placed on a maturity model. A SiMi Score will be the de-facto characterization of venture investment worthiness, not a face, race, or gender. By standardizing venture-funding processes, and awards, the playing field will level.

We founded Phala Data, a startup that developed a Big Data Analytics Platform, an innovative enterprise software solution architected for large high-tech B2B companies. 

We are committed to working with policy setters—including to ensure that Female Founders have more access to VC Funding. Female Founders Faster Forward (F4) is a 501c/3 non-profit organization, that will work with the SBA (Office of Innovation and Investment), the National Women’s Business Council, and Congress—corporate funds, VCs, and female-led companies to change the status quo. 

Our goal is to increase VC investments for Female-Founded startups from 3% to 20% by 2020.

SiMi will be available to all, free of charge. With its adoption, we intend to bring female founders, particularly in tech, out of the shadows and further into the pool of successfully funded enterprises. We aim to raise the prevailing funding rate to female founders specifically from less than three percent, to twenty percent, by 2020 (#20%BY2020). 

The goals of venture firms and women-led startups are the same: to expand marketplaces and make money. Firms that are female-founder friendly can make more informed investment choices and realize greater profits as a result of SiMi adoption.

Our baseline data already includes more than 750 funded startups, with input from both founders and funders. A data and model peer-review from Northeastern University is complete. We have the SiMi website launched to capture data on startup founders and investors wanting to leverage SiMi once developed and readily available – to all.

My motivation is partly personal because of my own startup’s failures in fundraising. “I was measured—me as a female, as a female founder." 

“My startup never got a chance objectively.’’

As a founder, it would have been useful to understand what made the VCs more likely to invest. I also realized it would help if they were able to get an evaluation that does not depend on "gut feel".

Working with Solve would help SiMi get developed so it's readily available – to all founders and investors.

Impact Measurement Validation and Grant Funding.